What is the purpose of down-votes?

I think my biggest issue with downvotes isn't so much that it can be abused(And I have been on the receiving end of at least one person who down voted my chapters without any regard to the quality of my writing) or that it exists. Just that it has such a disproportionate effect on the story's rating rating. It seems as if the dislikes are much more heavily weighted than the likes. Take my story A Fantasy Dynasty as an example.

A Fantasy Dynasty has 1,251,186 views as of writing this post, 3,010 likes, and a 94% rating. By most metrics it has done really well. Way beyond any of my wildest dreams. However, despite its seeming popularity. I have almost literally no chance of ever breaking the top 10 stories under the current system. Even though it's in the top 100 most viewed stories on chyoa, when sorted by rating(how the site determines top stories) it ranks 794 . All because it seemingly has enough dislikes to drag it down. It takes something along the lines of 27 or 28 likes and zero dislikes to have a higher rating than A Fantasy Dynasty. At least when you go into the search function and sort the stories by rating.

Now, I'm not saying that my story deserves in the top stories. There are plenty of stories that have many more likes and they are much more deserved to be in the top stories than mine.However, when I go in to search for a story and sort it by Rating, I would expect it to have some sort of correlation with the most popular stories on the site. One would make the assumption that the most highly rated stories are also the best and most popular. Yet as it is, there doesn't seem to be much of any correlation between popularity and rating.

Just to cover as many bases as I can. I don't think there's anything wrong with the current top rated stories.I don't think there's any story there that doesn't belong there. Just that they haven't been dragged down by the inevitable downvotes that tend to hit popular stories eventually. It only takes one or two people to go through and downvote all of the chapters of a particular story to sink that story's chances of becoming a "Top Story" considerably.


I also don't think downvotes should be given because something isn't to the reader's fetish. As A Fantasy Dynasty has a lot of non-consent stuff. I'm sure I have had people dislike my story and chapters based on that alone.

 

Besides the overweight of downvotes as far as story ranking I think their main detriment is stifling constructive criticism. I know I've been reading a story before that I liked but saw some things that I thought were either confusing or detrimental to the story but I I did not comment on them for fear that my criticism might be taken the wrong way and I would end up on the end of retributive downvotes.

 

Today I've disabled the dislike functionality. The reason was a sudden increase in daily down votes from 25 to 125 per day (while we have about 1000 likes). It will probably stay this way until I have the chance to fully rewrite these parts of the code.

 

I would like to say thank you Friedman. I had noticed a great story by one of my favorite authors recently was downvote bombed. I think this will help strengthen our community.

 

On behalf of the Solsazar clan thank you. I for one am tired of getting a negative vote every time another male character enter acts with one of the sisters. Now if you could let us up vote what we like more than once this horn dog has more than one author he'd be more than willing to use it on! Again Friedman Thanks for ridding us of the down vote!

 

I'd like to thank Friedman for this as well, people downvoting chapters to push authors away from certain themes and scenes was getting old really fast, and so were the dislikes given out of spite. People were ruining what was supposed to be an useful source of feedback.

 

Thanks for the shiny. I fully admit that I have used the Downvote feature as a way to steer authors away from content I disagree with, such as non-con, but will not miss that ability one bit.

 

I still believe we should keep the functionality. However, it should not show the dislikes like before. Just a general score. Add likes, subtract dislikes, that is the score of the chapter.

I believe this would be good, because some stories (sadly) are just bad. I am not talking topicwise or 'not my fetish' but rather 'grammatical rape' or just very badly written. And I believe that people should have the ability to show their dislike of certain chapters. If it is shown like now however, it just looks bad. If it would be summed up in one score, then the author would not be bugged if he just recieved one or a total of two dislikes, if he recieves more likes, he only sees that most people like his chapter. If the amount of dislikes is greater than the amount of likes, he maybe thinks about not writing about this or like this again.

 

The problem with dislikes was they were mainly used as a either form of censorship where people would downvote threads in a story they liked to try an kill that thread or force an author to work on a thread they did like, or as a way of manipulating the all time top stories lists.

I am glad they're gone. Might I suggest if you don't like.a particular story for whatever reason you leave a comment on the story explaining why. A well thought out comment works a lot better than an anonymous downvote.

 

And we have the ability to intercept and undo these attempts, as well as the third reason of just being an asshole to people you don't like. The only reason we couldn't do this in the cases people have listed here is because it was done anonymously, and the down-voter didn't have to explain itself. Thus, how can tell who's being responsible and who's being juvenile? It was easy with our two big trolls because they lacked subtlety.

Except that people are more likely to read their comments and find criticism if they also have an accompanying down-vote, especially if they're strapped for time. Personally, I keep a very tight schedule every day, meaning I have to choose very carefully which comments I read. How do I tell which comment is the most prudent? I don't. I throw the dice and hope I find something meaningful. Of course, this works the other way, and a down-vote with no comment means I don't have time to establish legitimacy. In other words:

The ideal situation: I know exactly where to find constructive criticism.
The CHYOO situation: Either I'm scouring a low-rated thread for something to establish if the low-rating is warranted, I know a troll hit me and can dismiss the low-rating, or I'm in the ideal situation.
The previous CHYOA situation: Either I'm choosing random threads with comments and hoping I find myself in the ideal situation, I'm scouring a down-voted thread for something to establish if the down-vote is warranted, I know a troll hit me and can have someone override the down-vote, or I'm in the ideal situation.
The current CHYOA situation: I'm choosing random threads with comments and hoping I find myself in the ideal situation.

Thus, we have strayed even further from the ideal situation.

I'll say again: the problem was anonymity and absence of comment requirements, not down-votes themselves. Down-votes are useful if users can be held accountable for their use.

 

I agree with this. When I down voted I almost always left a comment, and I had no problems. (Even if it was my oft repeated "Rape is BAD mmmkay?")

 

I absolutely 100% disagree.

Negative feedback...even constructive...Should always be as anonymous, or nearly as anonymous as possible. Especially on the internet where other peoples' thoughts, beliefs, and feelings aren't always taken into consideration.

Nobody should ever be afraid that their opinion or comments could make them the target of retribution from either the Story Creator, or the fan's of the story and it has happened in the past...more than we probably know. Lack of anonymity for negative feedback is just asking for the server admins to have to deal with petty squabbles of who did this when and who started this argument and who is or isn't abusing the system, or bullying someone else on a regular basis.

There's quite a few nice, mild tempered writers here who would happily receive criticism. It's definitely the majority. However, I also know from personal experience that there are a few bad eggs....Even ignoring the obvious ones. Assuming the site grows, the number of bad eggs will always increase(hopefully to a much lesser degree than the good ones, but welcome to the internet).


I'm not against a dislike button...even though I don't think It should have such a weight on a story's rating(as explained in a previous post). However, set it up so that if you dislike a story, you need to provide constructive criticism in a paragraph or more. Then set it so that it gets delivered to the story owner and editors(if applicable) as anonymous feedback....Perhaps in a separate feedback section. Then if you disagree, or it's just "you suck" over and over again, you can take it to the admins to get it appealed.

Any kind of non-anonymous negative feedback is going to be risking potential retribution every time you say something negative.

 

And this is encouraged by anonymity. I know someone who openly says killing most women and beating the rest into submission is the path to a better future (among other things). However, I've also tricked him into admitting he only declares this behind the anonymity of the internet, never in the real world. And the moment the administrators changed his username to his actual name, he stopped posting with that username. Anonymity is the enemy of courtesy, not the ally.

And now they're the ones who can go to the administrators to resolve the situation. Plus, again, the lack of anonymity would discourage users from perpetrating this behavior. Unless of course this is also their first day on the internet and have not yet seen the hellstorm that befalls people who go to war with online critics.

Anonymity or not, Friedman's dealing with the fallout. And ideally, he's nipping it in the bud since, generally, the site is user moderated via the report feature. Losing the anonymity isn't for administrative benefit, it's for user benefit. Let's take our two most notorious troll efforts as example: they made the mistake of posting venomous comments without anonymity (as either comments, threads, or forum posts), and they lost privileges in less than a week because the entire community was calling them on it. Anonymity would have made that impossible had they been better writer; and even if literary fingerprints were the only identifiers, some users simply don't have the time to dust for them. Community moderation is a site's best friend, especially as it grows. Anonymity hinders this. Hiding it where only select users can see it hinders this.

That's because you have a well-received story. Using the figures you threw out in your previous post (and assuming 3,010 was only likes, not total votes), I was able to calculate you also had a total of 3,202 votes, 192 dislikes. and a more accurate approximate rating was 94.003%. I subsequently ran the following calculations for the next vote:

At 3,203 votes via an additional dislike, the average became approximately 93.974% giving the vote a weight of approximately 0.029%
At 3,203 votes via an additional like, the average became approximately 94.005% giving the vote a weight of approximately 0.002%

While this seems to prove your point, let's suppose your story had the same number of votes, but the likes and dislikes were swapped. The approximate rating becomes 5.996% and subsequent hypothetical situations look like this:

At 3,203 votes via an additional like, the average became approximately 6.025% giving the vote a weight of approximately 0.029%
At 3,203 votes via an additional dislike, the average became approximately 5.994% giving the vote a weight of approximately 0.002%

You'll notice, by swapping the likes and dislikes, the weight of the subsequent vote swaps as well. A heavy dislike proves your story is considered good, not that the system is skewed.

 

I think you're skewing a couple of issues here. There's no question that people who use their actual name on the internet tend to be more courteous. However, we're not talking about changing everyone's usernames to their real name. If that was the case, I probably wouldn't even be writing here for fear that a future employer might do some research on my name and find out what I write.

We're talking about putting a username onto criticism. Which on the internet, always has the risk of backlash.

The issue's and situations now are nowhere near as bad as they could be. Imagine a situation where two users went back and forth for months before an admin having to interfere. Then both users says "No, I didn't dislike his story and leave those comments, because he did the same to me. I really believe his story is bad." On top of that, what could have just been a couple of dislikes passing in the night turned into a whole drama. It's unlikely that those two writers will ever work on anything together.

It could be even worse if two popular writers on the site butted heads, because other people may start taking sides and doing things in "support" of their favorite writer and/or against "the other side".

These are all situations have have happened many times in various places all over. The word 'opinion' is a very dangerous weapon on the internet. I have an opinion on someone's story and all of a sudden they have an opinion on mine, or someone else that enjoys that story also has an opinion on me and everybody hides behind their "opinions". Even if it's fairly easy for the admin to work out what happened, users may become so sickened by what happened that they leave the site.

I certainly have left sites where a handful of members of the community become so caustic around opinions. Once I played a game called Freelancer. However, when I got the game it was already fairly old (5-ish years). I joined an fairly active online community. It probably wasn't any larger than chyoa. They had a site, forums, etc.

The forums for the longest time were restricted to talking about the game only...Until one day they opened a special section where you can talk about general discussion topics. I ended up getting into a rather heated political argument with another member of the community. All of a sudden, I ended up getting targeted in-game by people I have never even had contact with before and It was bad. I couldn't log on without being targeted by someone and it actually prevented me from enjoying the game. So I talked to the server admin who I was actually pretty good friends with. Hell, I think I still have him as a contact on various messaging services. He said that there was nothing that he could really do. They weren't breaking any rules or posting anything bannable in-chat. They were all within the constraints of the rules and he recommended that I play under a different name for awhile. So I decided to play under a different name until things calmed down, but they never did and I left.

I would rather go back to the old like/dislike with no feedback needed system than risk a potential war of opinions between people who all believe they're in the right.

The difference is that was widespread, blatantly venomous comments. A criticism war could occur between two people and nobody else on the site would be any the wiser unless they happened to read all the posts involved which may be an issue if criticism appears on the specific chapter and not the story itself.

For example. Say i disliked one of your chapters because of grammar. Then you take a look at my story and dislike one of the chapters because I didn't use proper capitalization. Then I criticize one of your chapters for punctuation and this continues on ad-infinitum until we either run out of chapters to critique, or things become caustic and the admins need to beat us with a rolled up newspaper. Well, then what? In this example, I truly believed that chapter deserved a dislike because of the grammar and when you looked at my story you truly believed that it deserved a dislike because I didn't capitalize a single word.However, I viewed that as a rebuttal dislike and decided to return the favor. Now, I don't think either of us would do that, but that's just an example of how things could get out of control.


There's another issue...which admittedly is one with any written critique is this: What deserves a dislike?

I, for one, believe that dislikes should only be quality based. You could write about scat, or watersports, or something else that I don't personally enjoy and I won't dislike it. I may not like it either, but that's another story.

However, there are people who dislike chapters based on their content. To avoid the obvious example that was posted in this very thread(Hi Nemo!). I want to keep my examples strictly hypothetical. Say someone read a story that involved Incest, or Interracial, or Mind Control and disliked it based on that alone. The writer of those chapters may be more critical of that someones' chapters in the future, because they didn't even give it a chance. They saw that it involved something they didn't like and disliked it, left a comment that they don't like those things, and moved on.

Again, this is strictly hypothetical. I think it's fine if someone doesn't like a certain thing. There is definitely things that I have no interest in being a part of. I just disagree that it warrants a dislike that's not based on the quality of the writing at all.

I think you misunderstand. The problem isn't how the rating percentage is calculated, or how likes and dislikes factor into that percentage. The problem is how the site determines the most highly rated stories on the site.

Go into the search function and sort it by rating. You'll see the top 10 stories(obviously). this is how the site determines the top stories on the site. By rating. Now, I don't feel like scrolling through 70 pages of ratings looking for my story again. However if you go back far enough, you're going to start noticing the oddities.

Here's an example that I found from a quick look. 99 and 100. Page 10 at the bottom. Restless Sleep and Lisa(screenshot link in case it changes). Lisa has 173 more likes than Restless Sleep. so why is it ranked 100 while Restless sleep is ranked 99? A disparity of only 3 dislikes. Restless sleep has 3 dislikes and Lisa has 6. Those three dislikes has nearly as much weight as 58(57.6) of the likes on Lisa.

want another example? At the Cabin is one of...if not the most highly rated stories on the site with 8,078 likes. So why is it sitting at 43? Well, above it is another good story X-change at 42. However, it only has 1,297 likes(another screenshot link). The difference? At the cabin has 188 dislikes. X-change has 70. So a 6,790 like difference between the two and a 118 dislike difference and the dislikes on At the cabin has again...nearly as much weight as 58(57.7) of the likes.

The point that I'm trying to make is that it takes far more likes to overcome a singular dislike than it takes dislikes to overwhelm a singular like. A single person going through and disliking all of your chapters can sink your chances of ever being recognized as one of the top stories on the site for a very long time. Any story with a huge number of likes....It's obvious that the vast majority of people who have read At the Cabin enjoy it. So why is it being held down by just a comparatively handful of dislikes?

 

Nickname based anonymity is just the second layer after internet anonymity.
If someone uses a second nickname, he would be "anonymous" even though you can see the name.

I would try to keep it simple. Reduce moderators work and necessary attention to a minimum.

 

The only issue is you lack vision. This isn't simply some forum, this is a place to post stories. The very fact that you're suggesting backlash is all the reason we need to not be a jerk. By attaching our usernames, we make ourselves vulernable. The very risk of backlash is what forces us to behave.

The only people who run no risk of backlash are those who only read, but this too is intercepted by forcing them to be open. This allows administrators to intervene and revoke their privleges.

And how is that any different than what we risk now? We can still make comments and initiate wars. The difference is that if it's done in private, the war simply festers behind the scenes. If criticized openly, it can be intercepted before it escalates to a war. In fact, we still may have secret wars due to the PM system.

As for taking sides and exasperating the problem, they won't be leaving. Not before they're silenced at least. Assuming we're dumb enough to let this fester, they all lose.

And your example fails miserably. All you outlined was an admin with no common sense. No set of rules is perfect simply because people are not perfect. Anyone who doesn't inject common sense into a situation is inherently a fool. This is how we in positions of power run CHYOA and how Torg and I ran CHYOO.

So you're overly sensitive? That's what you just described since, in this example, I did nothing wrong and you took criticism the wrong way.

Besides that, this once again lacked context. If we have to exchange comments, then the motive behind each vote can be clear as day. As the votes become venemous, the presentation becomes atrocious. Who descended first becomes as blatant as our two trolls.

You're not alone on this one, but the reality is critics in the real world who are paid for their opinion do this as well. Sexism, racism, theme biases, and much more have dictated criticism for as long as criticism has existed. You have two choices: suck it up and market your product so that more people off-set it, or get out of the business.

That's how the weighted system works. The story needs to stack up to the site average as well as need numbers. In this, yes, you'd need many more likes to rank up. However, without it, one of my older stories on hiatus with only 5 threads, 4 likes, and 0 dislikes would outrank your Fantasy Dynasty. That you most certainly wouldn't find fair. The weighted system at least means there's some measure of popularity and activity in the Top Stories List.

Except we have the tools to tie an alternate to the writing name. If Friedman actually tried, he'd establish my writer name in a heartbeat; in fact, most of you could since it's related to Kaitou1412. Once we force motives into the open, we can connect the dots.

So why aren't you also fighting to do away with comments, private messages, and the forum? After all, the wars now only exist because these things exist. Friedman won't have anything to do but update the site if there were no means of communication.

 

I always do that. Whenever I dislike I leave a comment.

And about the manipulation: I already suggested, make each chapter have a score. That score is calculated by likes - dislikes. The score of a story is all chapter-scores added. With that dislikes are still implemented, usable and you can not manipulate the top rated story that much. You can only dislike the one chapter you dislike, which is the point of them.

About forcing authors on other threads: Authors are usually guided by many likes against fewer likes as well as dislikes, so yeah. Not that much power lost. I would say dislikes are needed. Just not the way we had them, but a different kind of dislikes.

 

The threat of backlash hasn't stopped people from being jerks and idiots if they want to be jerks and idiots. Especially in situations that are in the heat of the moment or done out of frustration.

If you went in and disliked all of the chapters in any of my stories and didn't say anything, then I would have no clue who did that unless you also made a comment about it. Sure, if you made a comment about how you disliked all of my chapters for some reason and I was the petty sort, then I could go through and dislike all of your chapters. However, it's likely that would be where it would end...unless the comments got personal.

My example was simply an example of how a few caustic people in a community of nice people could drive someone off. Nothing more.

People take criticism the wrong way all the time. It would hardly be the first argument to have started from a misunderstanding. Comments don't always make motive clear. In fact, it's easier to hide motive in text than it is in other situations. Say I had a grudge against you. I don't know why I would, but let's say I do and I write a scathing review of one of your chapters. It's not great, you don't think it's particularly accurate, it's not personally attacking you and it's leaving a pretty obvious negative mark on your chapter(where I assume all critical comments would be visible). When confronted, I remain adamant that it is my "honest" opinion and it was in no way targeting you or your story(even though it was).

At that point, one has a choice. They can either move on and accept that some bad eggs are always going to be around(which i assume most sensible people would take), they can quit, or they can reciprocate. Assuming that most people will do the first one doesn't mean that the other two won't happen. Especially in a situation where dislikes outweigh likes in terms of your story's rating.

But for most, it isn't a business. The vast majority of people here write here in their spare time. If i was writing something niche, I certainly wouldn't go off and market it. I wouldn't for example, go write a furry story, make a fur affinity account, and post part of it there with a link back to here. There's not enough time in the day for that. One shouldn't have to worry about analyzing the average chyoa reader before doing something less popular for fear of being downvoted into oblivion and it certainly isn't in the site's best interests to only pander to those that are already here.

Well, it's certainly not fair now.

At the Cabin is both a very popular and very active story. The fact that it's so far down the list is just baffling.

I'm not familiar with the site tools, but I assume that those tools aren't really used unless there's a reason to. Such as if there is a smoking gun(like gratuitous semicolons). If you have no real evidence that Person A and Person B are the same person, why would you use those tools to try and correlate them?

That's like saying if there's a disease in a corn field, burn it. I think gene.sis's point is that we shouldn't be implementing a system where the farmer has to examine every kernel of corn for disease to pick them out, because then the farmer wouldn't have time to do anything else.

The idea of removing all anonymity from feedback will almost definitely increase the number of squabbles and fights that have to be sorted out.

 

Will you all kindly SHUT UP?

You're not resolving anything, your just shouting at each other to no purpose.

 

Because that features have additional benefits for everyone. (e.g. collaboration, adopt a story, story ideas, "non-embarrassing feedback" (PM), community help, and so on)
For a war, you will need at least two users who are willing to fight. Dislikes can come from one side and you can't clearly determinate if a dislike is objective.
(Well, should dislikes be objective? Is the purpose of the feedback to tell the author if or how to do better?)

I still feel discussing.