So earlier this morning my poem was at #8 on the all time list thanks to 14 straight 5s.
A few minutes later it was three pages in due to a 3 and a 4. Now this might be just random chance but the statistical likelihood of that pattern is about 0.5%. I think it is rather more likely that someone decided they wanted to push their own work up.
Which got me thinking about how stories should be scored. For example, should a story with 14 '5' scores beat one with 15 '5's and one '4'? How about 50 '5's and one 4?
What I want from a scoring system is to be able to use it to find the type of stories I like. I am not very interested in the relative popularity of the stories. That is possible but very involved to program.
One approach that might help block this type of gaming the system and make it more fair would be to do what they do in the olympics and drop the top x% and bottom x% of the score. If that was the top 10% and bottom 10% I think it would kill this type of abuse.
Maybe what happened was instead of just your friends viewing your work it was opened out to a bigger field by being on the best of list. People more inclined to give a more honest assessment of your work
I doubt very strongly that everyone on this site having read your poem would have all given you five - it just doesn't happen. Once you get put up as best of the month, editor's pick or similar people will look at your work and assess it themselves and if they don't think it's all that they will mark it down. they won't give a shit about your run of perfect 5s.
We all feel hard done by when we get 3s and 4s - but that's the system. I've no doubt deliberate marking down happens but you also have to open yourself up to the fact that some people just don't like your stuff and live with it.
For the record i didn't read or mark your poem. I've since had a look at it and you'd be lucky to get a 4 from me
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Why not read some stories instead
NEW! Want a quick read for your coffee break? Why not try this... Flash Erotica: Scrubber I know it isn't just me who has had a problem with this. It has been an ongoing complaint for ages. And being on the front page means way more views than being on the best of pages.
If you look through the top stories you will find that in almost all the categories what separates the stories at the very top of the list is not how many 5s they get but how many 3s and 4s. And if you look closer you will see that almost all of them have the same pattern. There will be a couple of stories with 20 or so straight 5s and then a bunch with 80 or 90 votes that have been knocked off by a tiny number of low scores.
Dropping the top and bottom scores would make the system a lot fairer as a story with 89 5s and one 4 is no longer going to be ranked behind a story with 14 5s which is just as silly. They do this in olympic competitions to stop the national country judges favoring their own team by giving their competitors low marks and their own high. It works pretty well and is easier to code than trying to track what people prefer.
On the Cabo connection: adopting my approach of dropping the top and bottom 10% of the scores to calculate the average would mean that its 4.9 average would turn into a 5 with 197 votes and put it at nor near the top of the list on both schemes.
The current scheme results in a disconnect where the ranking of the top placed stories depends almost entirely on the number of not perfect scores which I think is bogus.
Since it's been re-emphasized by admin on more than one occasion that the scoring system is not up for debate, I'll take this back to the original comment/question, which appears to deal not with the scoring per se, but with the method with which stories are ranked. A slight but critical difference.
I agree that people who choose to vote honestly (i.e. not every story gets a 5) shouldn't have their votes invalidated, but that's not really the issue as I see it. I've often wondered the same things that Byron has. Namely, is it a straight average system with which stories are ordered, or is the formula tweaked one way or the other? Is there a minimum number of votes that a story has to get before it's ranked among the other scores in its category, or eligible to put the author in the Top10 on the front page? Why is it that names seem to pop on and off the Top 10 even if the author in question received no votes to cause the change? Is there a delay between the actual votes and their reflection on the category scores and Top 10 list?
I think having this spelled out would answer some general questions. And I believe we can have this discussion without reflexively deriding the OP as a score-whore who's just trying to grease the self-promotion wheels through the scoring system.
The scoring system is what it is. Most of the time I am pretty happy with it. I would much rather have scores than not.
My intent in responding here was not to ridicule or label the OP as a score-whore. My point is simply that to throw out scores, as is suggested, is to devalue a member's opinion. And that would be an unfortunate action. The rating system is what it is and is entirely subjective.
My suggestion is for folks to grow a thicker skin and accept constructive criticism or turn the voting off. Just a thought..
I just like to see anyone who posts a 3 or lower have to post a comment as to why they are scoring the story that low, rather than be sneaky about it. Have some guts!
I do think there are a very few small minded people who vote extra low scores on some of the best Lush authors' stories out of sheer jealousy.
Hello lord Byron.
Many others have made good points on here as to the nature of scoring on lush. There is truth to that idea that yes, if usually its just your friends voting then you will have perfect scores. I mean you can look around and notice three paragraph stories that are people's cybersex session put into a half assed structure... Do you think it's a perfect 5? Of course not... But no one besides their friends probably read it.
My stories tend to get get low scores in a timely fashion as well. Like just yesterday I must have pissed someone off cause someone gave my highest scoring story a 2. A story from a series... Maybe they didn't realize it was the second part and they gave it a two? Maybe it was one of the worst stories ever? Maybe I said something they didn't like? Maybe I was above them in the most "popular" section? Maybe they have a crush on someone that gave me attention? Maybe they feel like my story score was too high and wanted to cut me down to size? Maybe they misclicked the two? Maybe my name on the top author list is annoying? And on and on.
So many reasons why someone would want to lower your score LordByron.
There is really nothing you can do about it besides giving all your friends 5s and asking them to give you 5s in return. If you can get 100 perfect 5s going then a two or someone hitting you with a few threes or tons of fours from different devices shouldn't affect you score as much.
You could also turn off voting but what the fuck right?
I think the only way to get authors to stop whining or complaining is this... Might be a bitch to implement but I do think it's the only way to get authors to stop getting bombed or complaining when it happens.. This is my idea.
Similar to the way we can choose our activity feed preferences with the slide bar thingy we could have something for authors to pick their voting preferences.
For example.
Allow guests to vote 1. Yes/no
Allow guests to vote 2. Yes/no
Allow guests to vote 3. Yes/no
Allow guests to vote 4. Yes/no
Allow guests to vote 5. Yes/no
Comment needed for a 1 vote. Yes/no
Comment needed for a 2 vote. Yes/no
Comment needed for a 3 vote. Yes/no
Comment needed for a 4 vote. Yes/no
Comment needed for a 5 vote. Yes/no
Disallow guests votes. Yes/no
If authors had this kind of control then they could shut off guest 4 votes if they are paranoid that as soon as they hit some kind of top or popular list someone sabatages them with a few 4 votes in a matter of seconds.... Or whatever way they feel dicked with they can set their settings to stop it.
This would only work if mandatory low score comments aren't allowed to be deleted after being left effectively nullifying that safe gaurd. I also think its weird to have the option to hide your story votes from your feed. I guess it makes sense if you don't want to be bothered by while reading.. But you can set your boxes to give an automated message or set yourself to invisible or away.
There can be other Yes/No options that I'm sure would be helpful too.. Just haven't thought of them. I do feel that this would put an end to vote tampering and also concerns about sabatage from authors. It may be a bitch to program but in the long run might stop a lot of bullshit.
A truncated mean, along with our filters weeding out the votes of jerks, should be the optimal system possible.
I'm really not interested in re-opening discussions about the voting system, for the nth time...
I don't know why there's such an obsession with scores. It's the comments that matter.
I feel so cheap now) 
