Sort by rating is bad idea

O

orth0dox

Virgin
When i tried to search stories sorting them by rating, i was baffled why do stories with public contributions are ranked so high. Not once i seen a solid story among them, only overbloated abominations with inconsistent writing and fetishes. And yet, you stumble upon dead end after 3 clicks and have to choose another branch. Every single story from my favorites is private, has 1 author and ranked much, much lower while being (imo) much better.
And then it occured to me that since these public stories have much higher number of chapters, since everyone contribues, it allows them to rack more likes just because you can only like each chapter once. The result is what we have - truly excellent stories are burried somewhere in a middle of a query and you have to struggle to find them. So people first check these public stories and then like them and get them even more to the top.
So I propose a sort option that take that into account. Something like likes/views ratio, percentage of how many readers liked the story if you will. It will also help to discover new and trendy stories that didn't get much likes (yet).
 
Last edited:
I actually agree with you, albeit less harshly. Most public stories are messy and dominated by shoddy writing, but overexposed on the main page due to their frequent 100-word-chapter updates.

However, these stories are ranked highly by rule of the majority. Most CHYOA users just prefer straightforward interactive porn without story or logic. It's faster and easier, and of course it's accessible to anyone if they want to throw in their own fetish. Simply put, most people like public stories more than private stories, even if their content would contradict that. There's also the effect of authors like-ing the writing of other authors on the same story, even if they don't actually like it. It's a consequence of the collaborative nature of CHYOA.

orth0dox said:
So I propose a sort option that take that into account. Something like likes/views ratio, percentage of how many readers liked the story if you will.
Click to expand...
This wouldn't work, unfortunately. Unique views aren't counted, whereas likes are by definition unique to a user. We could take the average likes per view anyway, but then this number could be exploited by users 'attacking' other stories by constantly refreshing the page, thus increasing their view count without increasing their likes. It would also ignore lurkers, who probably make up ~90% of readers on CHYOA.

orth0dox said:
It will also help to discover new and trendy stories that didn't get much likes (yet).
Click to expand...
I think - and I might be a little biased here, as a mostly private story author - it might be beneficial to have some sort of section on the homepage for popular stories that only have one author. Something like, "Labour of Love," or, "Independent Works."

If you want to formally put forward any suggestions, you can make a post on the Suggestions subforum.

If you're looking for some of the more popular private stories, here are my recommendations.

Becoming a Warrior!

Now Mother's Gone

Pokemon Master or Bust!

You can also filter out public stories in search, using the buttons on the right.
 
i was buffled why do stories with public contributions are ranked so high
Click to expand...
It is untrue. AFAIK, there is 1 public story on top (Game monster) others are moderated. And good moderating\editing can do wonders for a story. (Bad moderating\editing can turn it into a mess)

Not once i seen a solid story among them, only overbloated abominations with inconsistent writing and fetishes
Click to expand...

Those "overbloated abonimations" are the reason why we need this site. There are places to read linear stories. There are places to read choose your own adventure written by a single author. Chyoa is about having stories written by multiple authors. Yes, that comes with inconsistences and questionable writing styles but it is what chyoa is about. Such stories should be on top.
 
Hvast said:
There are places to read choose your own adventure written by a single author. Chyoa is about having stories written by multiple authors. Yes, that comes with inconsistences and questionable writing styles but it is what chyoa is about. Such stories should be on top.
Click to expand...
Now we're talking! If you could kindly direct me to such place where I could find those stories, I'd be grateful.

insertnamehere said:
This wouldn't work, unfortunately. Unique views aren't counted, whereas likes are by definition unique to a user. We could take the average likes per view anyway, but then this number could be exploited by users 'attacking' other stories by constantly refreshing the page, thus increasing their view count without increasing their likes. It would also ignore lurkers, who probably make up ~90% of readers on CHYOA.
Click to expand...
Solid point. Well, if we can't introduce such sorting criterion, how about something else instead? Like adding another "refine search" filter where we get to choose if story is private, moderated or public.
 
insertnamehere said:
If you want to formally put forward any suggestions, you can make a post on the Suggestions subforum.
Click to expand...
To vote for an existing suggestion, like the first post of it.

orth0dox said:
Something like likes/views ratio, percentage of how many readers liked the story if you will.
Click to expand...
As stated above, the currebt view stat won't work for that.
Though I already suggested to have a ranking based on Likes per Unique Views.
See Story and Chapter Ranking: Likes per Unique Views.

Hvast said:
AFAIK, there is 1 public story on top (Game monster) others are moderated.
Click to expand...
I counted 4 out of 10.

Hvast said:
Chyoa is about having stories written by multiple authors.
Click to expand...
All kinds of stories fit the format.
 
You can have a rating search with a restriction on the chapter depth. It doesn't really do what you want but it will get rid of the top 10 stories. What is interesting to me is the top rated stores under 5 chapters. like did those stories just have a ton of branches and long chapters. Looks like it for the most part. Apparently a 10k chapter works for getting likes?

Maybe we could have a way to sort by number of authors in a story. I don't know how you would do the numbers like 1,2,3, 5-10, 11-20, 21-50, 50+ maybe. It would be interesting to see a graph with the number of authors to whatever.
 
Hvast said:
There are places to read linear stories. There are places to read choose your own adventure written by a single author. Chyoa is about having stories written by multiple authors. Yes, that comes with inconsistences and questionable writing styles but it is what chyoa is about. Such stories should be on top.
Click to expand...
No, that's the purpose of Editthis. CHYOA is about interactive adult fiction. Nowhere is it stated that, "CHYOA is about having stories written by multiple authors." Huge public stories are popular because people like to be included, not because those types of stories are some kind of pure, ultimate form of writing. There is no one true way to write on CHYOA.
 
DarthQWK said:
Maybe we could have a way to sort by number of authors in a story. I don't know how you would do the numbers like 1,2,3, 5-10, 11-20, 21-50, 50+ maybe. It would be interesting to see a graph with the number of authors to whatever.
Click to expand...
That seems like a good idea. Maybe post that in the suggestions forum if you haven't already.

insertnamehere said:
However, these stories are ranked highly by rule of the majority. Most CHYOA users just prefer straightforward interactive porn without story or logic. It's faster and easier, and of course it's accessible to anyone if they want to throw in their own fetish. Simply put, most people like public stories more than private stories, even if their content would contradict that.
Click to expand...

I somewhat disagree. I enjoy cheap wish fulfillment porn more than I'd like to admit, and I'd assume plenty of other readers do to. However, I think the rating system rewards quantity of chapters rather than quality. Say there are two stories. The first is public with 500 chapters most of which are terribly written stubs. But I dig through the muck and find 12 ones that are pretty good, so I give them all likes. The second story is private and each chapter is amazing. It's only 10 chapters in total, but they are long and tell a fantastic story. I obviously give each chapter a like. The end result, though, is that I've effectively the messy public story a higher rating than the private story I've enjoyed a lot more.

I suggested having a sort by like per chapter for this reason, but I'd be interested in hearing others ideas.
 
Is there any FAQ on how search works anyway? I can't properly do even simplest queries with it. Lets say my query is "femdom + crossdressing", almost every other search engine will find me a story that has both femdom AND crossdressing tag, but here it will find stories that have femdom OR crossdressing in it. And then lets say I want to find femdom + crossdressing story but without mind control so I'd type "femdom + crossdressing -mindcontrol", its very basic functionality that almost everyone has, but I can't do it here. Do I miss something and I actually can refine my search like that?
 
RejectTed said:
I somewhat disagree. I enjoy cheap wish fulfillment porn more than I'd like to admit, and I'd assume plenty of other readers do to. However, I think the rating system rewards quantity of chapters rather than quality. Say there are two stories. The first is public with 500 chapters most of which are terribly written stubs. But I dig through the muck and find 12 ones that are pretty good, so I give them all likes. The second story is private and each chapter is amazing. It's only 10 chapters in total, but they are long and tell a fantastic story. I obviously give each chapter a like. The end result, though, is that I've effectively the messy public story a higher rating than the private story I've enjoyed a lot more.
Click to expand...
You still liked 12 chapters out of the public story, as opposed to 10 chapters from the private one. From the system's perspective, it doesn't care that you liked the private chapters more, because you haven't done anything to communicate that. It also doesn't care that the private chapters are longer. The issue that you can game the likes system by breaking your story up into more chapters isn't inherent to public stories. In your example, there's no reason the private story can't be the one with shorter chapters and slightly less amazing quality. The reason public stories get more likes is because they have, on average, much more authors and thus much more content. I don't think it's particularly bad to reward stories for including more content.

If you're concerned about this, then I would suggest 'voting with your likes', so to speak. If you don't think a chapter deserves your like, then don't like it.

orth0dox said:
Is there any FAQ on how search works anyway? I can't properly do even simplest queries with it. Lets say my query is "femdom + crossdressing", almost every other search engine will find me a story that has both femdom AND crossdressing tag, but here it will find stories that have femdom OR crossdressing in it. And then lets say I want to find femdom + crossdressing story but without mind control so I'd type "femdom + crossdressing -mindcontrol", its very basic functionality that almost everyone has, but I can't do it here. Do I miss something and I actually can refine my search like that?
Click to expand...
This page covers all of the current search functionalities. I don't know if keyword manipulation will be in the next CHYOA version.
 
I wouldn't mind a category in the refine choices that let you search by mode. The search function typically works well enough for me but more choices are always better. I have no clue though how much work that would take the folks slaving away behind the scenes here at CHYOA though :)
 
orth0dox said:
And then lets say I want to find femdom + crossdressing story but without mind control so I'd type "femdom + crossdressing -mindcontrol", its very basic functionality that almost everyone has, but I can't do it here. Do I miss something and I actually can refine my search like that?
Click to expand...
try
Code: 
+femdom +crossdressing -mindcontrol
or
Code: 
+femdom +crossdressing -"mind control"
* at the end of a word as a wildcard
(there are more operators but they might not be that useful)

Unfortunately, there is a bug that removes the + as soon as you go to page 2.
To work around that, you can append
Code: 
&page=2
to the link (and change the number accordingly)
 
Wow, that actually works, thanks a ton!
I only wish tags were little less wild, cause up till now i saw: crossdressing, crossdress, cross dress, cross-dressing, crossdresser, cross dresser and so on. Is it because everyone can easily create their own tag?
 
How about authors can only use existing tags, and if its not enough, they can create one, but it has to past moderation with the site staff before its up. If moderator sees that tag is duplicate, he will decline and suggest using existing one (crossdressing instead of cross dress). Ofc before that one would need to weed through existing ones, to remove duplicates that are already there, as well as complete nonsense tags like some of these: "... Twins, It's Always the Quiet Ones, Cross C needs to take a shower, He seriously stinks, Cock, Yandere..." (found it while using cross* wildcard).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top