Rating Your Stories and Articles

Marc Holt
May 9, 2007, 04:17

We discussed this on Shoocher too. My feeling is that a rating system is much too subjective. I don't write to be rated. I write because I enjoy it and I hope others will enjoy my thoughts and imagination too. But to be honest, if they don't I don't really care. Some people will, and some people won't like a story. What difference does it make?

Follow your gut feeling on this one Mike. You already said you were not sure about this feature. If you aren't sure, then you obviously have reservations. I always follow my instincts. They never let me down.

Not wanting to end on a negative note, I must say that TS.com is shaping up as an excellent site. Your admin program is great. And as long as you give us writers the option to turn the ratings on or off, you couldn't be fairer. It will stay turned off for my stories. But that's just me.

Dana
May 9, 2007, 13:44

"My feeling is that a rating system is much too subjective. I don't write to be rated."

I echo and endorse Mr. Holt's feelings with the addition of a lot more emotion. In my opinion the only person who can be depended upon to rate my writing is me. I recognize no other authorities, I seek and value no other opinions, and I am influenced not at all by others suggestions or input. My internal acceptance of myself as a writer is complete and admits of no outside influence. The only thing that gets my attention or endorsement is 100% rave reviews. The same reviews I give myself. The politically correct notion that we can benefit from criticism I find specious and stupid. I am not interested in criticism of any kind, at any time, on any part of my writing. If the writing has gotten to the 'net text' stage that is because I deem it perfect. You do not find fault with diamonds, you just figure out how you are going to pay for them. For me the concept on net writing sites of 'rating systems' I find offensive and incendiary. I am glad that the administrators of this site have decided to let the writers just write and the readers just read. Without naming names: on other net sites that admit of reader 'rating' it has been my experience to find that:

1. Many readers can not read.
2. Many readers do not have the stamina to read to the end of the essay/story/article or, god forbid, go back and read it two or three or four times; but they always have the stamina to make an ill informed opinion public.
3. Many readers are so poorly educated that they miss, or do not appreciate, or can not understand the allusions or references whether they be historical, or contempory, or literary or . . . in short, the meal is richer than their taste buds can handle.
4. Many readers are not readers they are skimmers. An essay or story of four thousand words that took weeks of writing and editing where every word is as important as every other word will be skimmed; and then commented on. Every word is there for a reason. I can barely believe I even have to type that.
5. Many readers can not get by the author's name. If they do not care for the style of the author or if they have heard negative things about the author the well water is tainted before they start reading. In my case I write about a tremendously diverse number of subjects, in more than one style, and often from more than one point of view. The worst/best case of this is that I am now being demonized on another website without regard to the actual words and ideas I promulgate in my writing. Newbies can be influenced by this public behavior and they become my writing 'raters'? No thank-you. If you lit one of the matches that burned someone at the stake you may have had fun, but do not tell me you knew them.
6. Some 'raters' of authors writing can not get past the subject matter. The words might be the most artfully arranged 1500 words on the subject in the history of the English language, but if the subject matter does not conform to the readers lifestyle and/or expectations they rate the writer as a poor wordsmith. Absurd.
7. Some rating systems can be corrupted by so-called readers artificially rating something lower than it deserves just to hurt the writer.
8. Many readers can not write. At all. And they are my critics? You have to be kidding. This would be like some gentleman who had never had intimate relations with a woman standing by your bedside with a clipboard and a survey sheet rating you and your girlfriend. Again, absurd. No . . . offensive and absurd.
9. Rating systems on writer sites have the possibility of being devisive, and incendiary, and trivial, and making people angry. This benefits no one. When I first got involved in writing for sites on the net I thought it would be a friendly clublike thing. Well, I have been thoroughly disabused of that naive notion; but I still think it is not a good thing to get involved in behavior that separates or inflames people.
10. Writer site 'rating' systems foster juvenile primal tribal behavior where statements are made and lines are drawn in the sand; and then the male posturing, and threats, and put downs start. The thread can then become quite lengthy but no one is talking about writing.

Mo
May 9, 2007, 15:13

I have to admit this comes as a bit of a surprise. Mike had already mentioned that he didn't like the rating system, but I was not aware the sentiment was pretty much unanimous amongst the writers.

Every person commenting on this has expressed a dislike of it.

So, we've taken this to heart and have turned the feature off again.

Mike
May 9, 2007, 15:26

Even with the rating system off ratings can be shown and articles rated as before. With the author checking his desire to be rated in the 'Articles Options' area each story's rating will show in their 'Author List' of all their stories. (Go to 'Author List' at the top of the page, click your name, and a list of all your stories will then show on the page. Here you can see, if the story has the option checked, what readers have rated your story. By turning off the ratings 'site' option the little yellow 'ratings' boxes under a story title will NOT show up. But, for those authors interested in how their stories are rated when they do check the options box they can still see this over in their listed stories in the 'Author List' section (which has been the case all along since we began the site). So those that are interested in seeing their stories rated can still do so. It just will not show up on the front page as those yellow boxes under the title of their story. Win/Win I think. :-) And no, I do not like the ratings myself, but it is a feature here that some can still see and take advantage of, whatever they feel the advantage is.

Mike
May 9, 2007, 16:35

You have many good points there, Dana. Some I feel are better than others, but all play into my own thoughts about why ratings system on a site like this are not desirable. And I have seen that a system of ratings can be abused by some that do not like an author for reasons other than his writings. The more controversial a writer, or even a story, the more problems this can cause in a ratings system. And, many authors have varying styles, topics, and storylines that makes me, as a reader, like some of their work above others. So I never reject a book/story just because I didn't like the author's previous work. I try to judge the story, not the author or his personality, or whatever else might influence me by prejudicing me to reading an author.

I've even found some stories/authors I've read and didn't like I reread in later years (I read so much that sometimes I'll pick up a book not realising I've already read it) and found I liked the story. I think we experience things over a lifetime that changes our perspectives so as to change our tastes and likes at times. So many publishers now include the first chapter of an author's 'series' of books that at times I have thought I read a book when really after reading further I realise I merely read the first chapter in a previous book by said author. This is why I don't do that any more! :-)

Also, writing for the net is a different forum and has differing devices one can employ as a writer to satisfy those reading on this sort of medium. I do see that shorter stories seem to do better on internet forums than much longer ones. I think this is not nly a generational thing, but also has to do with the fact that internet reading is a strain on many readers eyes. That is why we took our time and did much research on this so as to make our site as pleasant a reading experience as we could. Text size, text font, background color, etc. all needed to be researched and tested to see what was best for the site, and best for those reading the site. We not only wanted to make this a great site for writers, but for those reading the stories here. So it is a fine balance at times taking all the considerations and needs of both the writers and the readers here. We do try. And we intend to keep trying to improve the site through taking into consideration the feedback we get from both the writers and the readers. Then we decide what we feel will be best overall for everyone here.

Hans Meier
May 9, 2007, 17:00

Please keep the rating system, even develop it. I like it. You could even, like for pictures on flickr.com, develop "interestingness" - a ranking based on a formula of ratings, number of comments over time, views etc. It is always better than nothing.

(I thought i always turned on the rating on my articles. If it's off now, i don't know why exactly.)

Dana
May 9, 2007, 17:04

"I do see that shorter stories seem to do better on internet forums than much longer ones."

I agree with this (it has also been my experience); but I do not endorse it. I do not consider anything up to 15,000 words to be of such length that it should excite comment or alter peoples' behavior. Honestly, if someone can not read something of that length that is well written, and interesting, and in their category of interest than they are not readers. I am not sure what they are, but they are not readers. Reading is an athletic event requiring focus and stamina and the application of life experience and education and text deciphering skills. For the purposes of this conversation digesting food labels, or road signs, or comic strips, or menus, or movie schedules is not reading. I purposely for this web site tend to submit short submissions (or at least not lengthy ones) but I hate myself for doing it. It is pandering. One of my favorite pieces of writing is lengthy and complicated and demanding. If not here--where? Where are the readers? And I almost never (sometimes I do get emails that mention this) hear anybody mention reading an essay or story more than once. Did the reader really think they absorbed every one of the writer's intentions and tricks and clever or witty or funny or insightful or wordsmith tools on the first go round? Are people who read sophisticated submissions only one time readers? I'm not so sure. My experience on the net is that a large percentage of 'readers' are really just skimmers. I would really prefer they not read my material. It was not written for them.

mike
May 9, 2007, 17:28

I personally find that myself, as a writer, need to take into consideration my audience, and the medium I am presenting my stories to my readers. If you have noticed most of my stories are fairly long, some nearing novella proportions (consider my 'Gone Fishing' story). And I do agree that a writer needs to just tell the story and not tailor the writing for a certain medium. After the story is told however, then he may need to consider where best to place this story for the best effect. However, we do have a system here where we can make this optimal even for longer stories. We can 'page' the story much as is done in book form. The pages show like a book in length, and at the bottom of the page there is a clickable tab to turn to the next page. The other way (I have done both) is to 'part' the longer story into smaller parts and place them a few days apart as a series of shorter parts of a story. This can take some thought, and most longer stories have natural places where a story can be stopped for further continuance at a later date. Each has its merits and drawbacks.

So you question where? Well, here really is the best place I have seen to do this, and the 'page' feature was one I wanted here just for this. It is a solution to the problem of how to do this on the net and on a site for readers reading stories of length.

As for 'parting' I feel it is best to do this once you have finished writing the story. Then you can look over the piece and see where the natural 'breaks' are in the story (these breaks should be somewhere where a reader will want to look up the next part if they like the story to continue reading) and divide the story in parts accordingly.

The drawbacks? Well, a reader who is not really into reading longer stories on the net may balk when they see a story has 50 pages. (I have been told by those who like to read my stories that they print it out and read it later on paper at their leisure.) As for 'parting' the drawback can be that if there is too much time between parts the reader can either forget what he has already read, or miss parts, or not feel the other parts are worth reading if they were not sufficiently enamored of the first part they read.

Just my thoughts on the topic.

mike
May 9, 2007, 17:56

p.s. Just for reference purposes: 'Gone Fishing' has 26 pages and 1,187 reads. So you see those that do either - A. like to read a certain author or B. Do not mind reading lengthy pieces on the net - are not put off by a long story to read here. (I don't know how this story has been rated but I think it is fairly high in the ratings even though it is very long.) The longer a story, whether short or lengthy, is up on the site the more chance it has of getting read. I can guarantee one thing though, the story will get no reads while sitting on your computer's hard drive memory. :-) So short or long, why not place a story here to be enjoyed by others that may read it, rather than collecting dust sitting on your home PC? That really is the main purpose of this site. To be able to publish your stories that may either be waiting to be published in the print medium and gain you a following and to let others enjoy it, people who may one day buy your books, or for stories authors have written that they may never get published in book form to be able to find a home where readers can still enjoy them. Many authors have writings sitting about collecting dust that they have no 'home' for. Why not let them be seen in this medium? It is easy to do, many can enjoy them, and the way we have made this site they can easily be pulled down if they are ever printed in book form where the publisher may want exclusivity of the story/ies.

Bill
May 11, 2007, 10:24

As Mrs. Thompson my old English teacher would constantly remind me, my attention span at times can be very low. Have to say, she was right I am guilty from time to time of slipping into ‘skimming’ mode if the subject matter isn’t quite to my taste. (Sorry Dana, I know, it's not big and it's not cleaver). However in my defence I guess these days it’s mainly down to time, never have enough. You guys, don’t know how you do it.

This site is good, very good. I would love to park my backside down for the day and read more but some of us do have a life away from our computer screens and time is an issue when deciding what to download, print off and read later. Have to say though the rating system wouldn’t influence me one bit in making my choices. Of course I have my own personal favourite authors but to be honest a particular title, summery or even picture will grab my attention before any rating system would. We’re all different, like different things, writers and readers alike, horses for courses an’ all that. Down rating a story by just clicking a box without giving the author a chance to come back at you has no validity whatsoever. For me the comments/feedback box at the bottom of the submission is far better to air your views. Just my opinion.