After reading all the other posts I almost had to laugh. Like many others I post my stories and other sites and have received both positive and negative comments. Here, I've received mostly positive comments. While I won't lie that the first time I received a low score I did freak. Then I realized it was that person's opinion and what right did I have to lose my shit like that.
I'm not sure when Gav added the feature of changing the score you give a story, but it was a feature I felt was long over due and very necessary. It's too easy to click the wrong number (either higher or lower). Yes, a low score can be a morale killer, but if it's backed with constructive criticism, then there is room to grow.
For me personally, once I accepted that not everyone will like what I write, I stopped stressing about scores. I have read some amazing stories and some stories that... well... have room to improve. On those stories, I will send the author a PM with some suggestions. What they do with that is their business.
Most people's names here don't mean NUTHIN' anyway!!!
xx SF
Mine DOES!!! (But you have to LOOK for what my REAL NAME is!!!)
Or just ask and I'll fucking tell you...
By the way, NONE of those profile photos are REALLY ME...
NOT ONE!!!
xx SF
Me: "This message is dedicated to Ms Hermione Blanchard-White of Gosport, Georgia..."
Mysteria27: "You fucking cunt..."
Btw. A four is not a low score. How about a 1-10 scoring system instead of 1-5. Maybe an eight might be received better than a four. Just a thought.
Certainly there can be stories with perfect grammar that still suck because they are written very bland, the subject and action is boring and so forth. There are fabulously entertaining stories that are weak in grammar. The job is to continue to improve as a writer and enhance your ability in both areas.
People would be surprised at the famous and successful authors who were never very good at grammar, were horrible at spelling or poor at punctuation. But they had excellent professional editors and proof readers.
Lushstories provides amateur writers an avenue to explore and grow in our writing. The 1-5 scoring system is the most common one used throughout the internet by sites such as this. Possibly a 1-10 system would be more accurate, but can you imagine the nightmare it would cause in making the change to the thousands of stories that are posted?
If you want honest voting all voting has got to be ANONYMOUS.
xo
No matter what scoring system you use, there are going to be a large number of authors who don't like it, and there are going to be people manipulating it.
It's an internet poll, and thus inherently flawed.
The lowest score I have given was a 3, and I also took the time to explain why. In all honesty, 3 was overly generous. I think most low scores are personal attacks anyway when the reader
The lowest score I have given was a 3, and yes, I took the time to explain why. In all honesty, 3 was overly generous. I think most low scores are personal attacks anyway if the reader decides to forego the opportunity to give criticism. I do remember a case a while back where someone got dumped and gave a shit score and comment as payback. Lame.
I love the comments too, and if I don't like something, or find some errors, I try to send a message if the story is good enough. If it's full of errors, I just abandon reading it.
Every site has its curve. I've posted on several, including one where the voters were just other writers, playing a vicious game of tit for tat. On that site, scoring meant nothing as the writers fought for display time on the top list. It was a very poor experience.
Another very old site was cold and sterile. Its system was harsher than we have here and few bother to comment, but the scores seemed to be consistent and not so inclined to trolling.
I write for enjoyment, not for future fame. I like it here because our community has respect. If it ceased to be that way, Id just pull off and write indy ebooks. I have no time for vindictive or nasty personalities in my life.
Simple--If you don't have anything positive, then say nothing at all. Just move on to the next story. Nobody is the literary critic for the NY Times.
I seem to have been getting more scores of 3 and 4 recently. I dont' mind but I would appreciate a comment, even if it is along the lines of "I could write better than this in junior grade". Actually, comments mean more to me than scores, although I am reluctant to make commenting obligatory, because they represent feedback, as I am never sure whether my stories fail to hit the mark from an erotic point of view, because the plot and characterisation is poor, or just because I can't write decent English.
After reading a lot on various threads about the scoring system, I'm not sure if the following has anything new to offer.
I do think the scoring is inflated, but I've been won over to the idea that the generally supportive nature of the lush community more than makes up for some idea that the scores are too high.
Anonymous scoring? Sure, the scoring would more honest, but would it be worth it? Enough people have written about their experiences on other sites where anonymous scoring makes for a very mean-spirited experience.
More graduations in scoring? 1-10 or 1-5, but with half points? I think it could work, at least in terms of allowing more honest scorers to give scores of 4.5 for a very good story that's perhaps not truly "excellent" in their minds. Would people still give all their friends 10s and 5s for all kinds of reasons? sure. And yes, I know it would artificially inflate old stories, but over time some of those old stories would start accruing some of the newer scores as well.
My biggest beef, and there is nothing to do about it, I think, is the fact that the scoring system isn't consistent, not to mention that there are plenty of people who game it.
I've read a few anecdotes about a very prominent author here who blocks anyone who gives any story of theirs anything less than a 5. As a result, this person's voting pool must be fairly self-selected down to people who will only give him or her 5s.
At this point the "honest" voters, and I am not sure I include even myself in this, are sort of like that one hold-out of a teacher or professor who is trying to fight grade inflation at a school all by him or herself. If everyone else is giving out As, then that one teacher giving out mostly Bs and even Cs doesn't really fix anything for anyone, other than to lower their students' GPAs somewhat arbitrarily in a way that isn't "fair" given the situations that the other students are in.
I'm certainly someone who enjoys getting high scores, but I think my thinking has evolved on this over time.
When I would get a 4 on a story, it would originally bug me, in part because I'd see other stories out there get nothing but 5s, and in my mind, some of those were fairly badly written. "How come my score on my last story is now 4.92 when Johnny Hack has all 5s on his?"
However, it's getting to the point where I am suspicious of my stories when they get all 5s. It's as if the scores don't mean anything if *everyone* is giving me 5s all the time. Am I really that good? I like to think I'm decent, but I'm not that good. So when I get a 4, especially when accompanied by a reasonable comment or suggestion ("the middle was a little loose, and you used the passive voice too much"), it actually makes the 5s mean more to me, especially when that same member has given me a 5 elsewhere. My most recent story has gotten a decent number of votes, in the 40s by now, and not every score has been a 5.
As a result, the overall score for that story stands at 4.98. When I look at that, I now think, "OK, that's a *real* score." At least a few people had the balls not to give me a 5, and I got some useful feedback from a few people. Will this mean that the story won't make it into the story picks section? Sure? does it matter all that much to me? No. At this point, I am most pleased by knowing that I am reaching a solid number of people who enjoy my stories and do me the favor of taking the time to comment on them, or sometimes write me PMs telling me how much their story meant to them.
Similarly, I recently had the good fortune of having a mod discover some of my older work, and she/he was enthusiastic enough to award a decent number of these stories recommended reads retroactively. After a couple, I started to wonder, hmm, "does this person just give out RRs like candy?" Finally, s/he read a couple of my stories and didn't give them RRs. This actually made the ones that I had received from this mod mean a lot more. I got a sense that they were discriminating, so that the RRs I had gotten meant more to me.
So, nothing new to add, perhaps, other than with all its flaws, I like this system. I wish it were a bit more consistent, and I wish people weren't afraid to give 4s, especially if accompanied by some reasonable feedback.
Just a thought, but if you change the scoring system from 1-5 to 1-10 won't people then start bitching about getting a 9 instead of a 4? and people can still give you a 1 or 2 so why change it?
Oh, it would still be flawed. I do think that *one* of the several issues that the 1-5 has is lack of gradation. a 5 out of 5, is in my mind, and perhaps in that of others, a 100%. In grade terms, that's an A+. a 4 out of 5 is an 80%, which feels like a B-, at least to me. So, if I think a story is very strong but not outstanding, what do I do? Give it an A+, which I think it doesn't quite deserve, or a B-, which is too low as well?
That's the only thing that I think that would "fix." All other issues would still stick around. People voting automatic highest possible scores for all sorts of other reasons would still happen no matter what system you have.
