Thoughts on the Thumb System on FIMFiction · 3:19am Mar 18th, 2014
Okay, so someone wrote a post on a forum espousing that we should get rid of the down-voting on fics on this site. I can see where the fellow is coming from, but in the end I couldn't agree. So I typed up a response that got me thinking, and now I've decided to share my thoughts with you, and I wouldn't mind hearing how much attention you pay to the system.
I think that the dislikes aspect of the system plays an important role, at least in my experience with FIMFiction. The really bad fics get drowned by the red votes, and I think that's okay, honestly. I've found the ratio of thumbs is generally a pretty decent litmus test for readers. While it might not be accurate for determining literary quality, it does at least tell us how popular and generally appealing a fic is to random passersby.
I like the thumbs system as it is. It's useful if you're looking at it for the information it tells you: X people liked it enough to click the green button, and Y people felt the need to click the red button. And since it's a system that applies to all stories, I think it's fair for what it shows.
Now the problem comes when people equate quality to thumbs--that's not what the thumbs mean. You want to know how good people thought the story was? Look to the comments and reviews, those are the best indicator of quality and whether or not you will like the story (aside from, you know, reading the actual story).
Now, if you're not willing to read comments before starting on a story, then here's my personal take on the thumb rating versus the comments:
If there are numerous comments (40% times the number of thumbs or higher) and a very positive ratio. 50:1 or higher, then the story is probably going to be good and there's probably quite a few things that were done right in the story. While it doesn't guarantee that you'll like it, it at least shows that many people do like it, and they like it enough to talk about it. (Though quantity of comments does not necessarily mean quality of comments.)
If there are nearly no comments and a pretty high ratio (80:6), it means the story was good. Probably a light fluffy story, but not strong enough to compel as many people to talk about it. Maybe it's a common story with a small twist that makes it fresher, or a comedy that gets most people to chuckle a bit, but otherwise it doesn't drive people to comment after giving a thumbs up.
Few comments and a small ratio--maybe 8:0 with no comments. These are the stories that intrigue me and make me wonder why no one has commented yet, and I find these fics to often be wide-ranging wildcards. I've found some really great stories that fall in this category, and I've found some more... mediocre stuff.
With a bad ratio 20:20 or worse, regardless of the number of comments, you tend to get the fics that aren't well written and often with a catchy premise that falls short of the readers initial expectations. Alternatively, it could be a style that some folk decide to down-vote on sight: HiE, Foalcon, Clop, what-have-you.
So, that's my take on how I use the thumb system when glancing at fics and why I think it is very much relevant to the site. I just think that people wrongly equate a number of thumbs with quality. Sure, quality has a factor in getting people to click that fancy green button, but it also has to do with the premise, character choice, chapter length, popularity of the author, and a few other factors. I do still espouse that comments and reviews are hands-down the best indicator of the quality of a story.
I just felt like writing about this, and when the thread that this was originally going to be posted on got deleted, I felt it would be a waste of half an hour of typing and thinking.
What are your thoughts on the thumb system?
~SilentBelle
When you hit down vote it should ask you to comment, if you do not then it should remove it. Up voting should do something similar i guess.
Something I've wondered, since I came in a bit later in Fimfic History
What was the problem with the Star system?
1934808 I really miss the old star system. Especially on Eqd when stories actually meant something there.
I agree that the negative thumbs can be useful in gauging stories, but the moment you start using it to compare stories, it's terrible. I've long since stopped caring where my story is in the rankings.
Say a story has 2600 upvotes and 40 downvotes. That's a ratio of 65:1, meaning if a single person downvotes it, you need 65 people to upvote it to balance it out. Accurate? Sure, but any system where a single person can knock a story dozens of places down the rankings at a whim is just not a good system.
The problem with the star system is nearly every rating was either 1 or 5... so there is effectively no difference between the old and new systems.
I would upvote your blog if I could. Does that count?
1934797 I don't think I can agree with that. I don't think we should make it mandatory to comment on a fic when you give your thumb. It would definitely cause a bit more apathy and silence those that don't like to comment..
Sometimes people read a story, but they also don't really know what to say, or how to phrase it. There are a bunch of lurkers around, and we shouldn't force them to comment in order to vote (I know, because I was one of those fellows, and I would have been sad if I had to comment on whatever I wanted to upvote, because I would have thought it too much of a hassle at the time... I believe that would just lower the vote numbers and skew the meaning of the votes in general.
I could get behind a system that encouraged a user to comment after they clicked either the fave button or the like/dislike buttons (kind of like DeviantArt when you fave a pic there.)
I never thought about using a thumb to comment ratio. If I did use such a system though, I'd make sure to factor in the number of chapters. Austraeoh has nearly 5000 comments and *only* over 1000 upvotes in comparison, which is understandable once you see that there are 200 chapters. A lot of those comments are thoughtful, but it's a shaky metric.
I personally look at the ratio between likes and views. Stories that have at least 1 like per 10 views are pretty much guaranteed to be a good quality story so far as I've seen. Scion of Chaos is one such story that fits the bill. Most of my "Top Favourites" fit under this category. I don't like to factor in dislikes very much, since they're hard to trust without being in large numbers (something like 600-200 would merit some caution).
1934808
Same as it was for EqD: people would 1 star stories that had premises they didn't like, or people would give a story they thought was a 4/5 a 5 because its rating was at 3/5. Most star ratings are quite polarized anyways. 1's and 5's are far more common than 2's and 4's.
1934836
1934808
Gradation in ratings is useless without an established frame of reference. To one person, three stars might be a good story, to someone else, it might mean it's barely functional (think of what a 50/100 rating means in game or movie reviews). Not only that, but imagine you really liked a story, but it has one or two flaws. You give it 4 stars, but the average is 4.21... your positive four star rating just HURT the story's rating. Good job.
The best thing you could do with a star rating is to show each individual count, but again, if you want to use it for comparison, you'd have to boil it down to a single number somewhere, which isn't going to work.
Encouraged is fine too. Its just so many people up vote on impulse (like say they love the idea of the fic after reading the summary or seeing cover art) or they down vote simple because it sounds stupid to them (so they down vote without reading the fic) or say its a crossover and they simply hate the subject the user is attempting to cross into, they down vote without reading it.
I guess a good way to stop troll votes though is to put a system in place where the site detects if someone is doing nothing but up voting or down voting too often too quickly without doing other things like commenting, but then you'd get people mad too. I dunno... I guess the system works okay now.
Personally I feel favorites are the bigger issue. Often people favorite a story not because they read it, but because they intend to in the future. I've had friends admit to me they do this. So I can get favorites for my stories but those people have not even read a single word of my stuff, they simply thought it was interesting to look at and did not know they have a read latered list. (Or in some cases they want the site to keep emailing them updates of the story until they feel it is finished because lots of users will only read a fic if it is finished, which i can understand I guess, but a way to fix that is to have a checkbox that emails someone when a fic is set to finished).
Going back to votes, I think they work fine. But often people tend to use them to say a story sucks simply because they did not like the idea instead of using the voting system after they read the fic like they should. 1934852
I didn't even think about compare, huh, I guess some people will do that. But its most likely the same people who try to compare head canons with each other
I don't even want to start on that.
Do we have rankings on stories? Like a page that shows all stories in list of rank? 1934837
I think the system is fine the way it is mainly for the reasons you stated. I just don't understand why, once you up/down vote a story, you can never unvote it, you can only change from up to down or vice-versa.
I tend to disregard the thumbs if there are less than about 20 thumbs. With that small a sample, it's just not reliable.
Above that, I look at the green/red ratio more as a suggestion. Anything with 4 likes for every dislike, or more, is fair game for me.
I also pay far more attention to the comments than to the ratio, BTW. And if the author is active and nice in the comments it also sharply increases the chance I will read the story.
If I could suggest something, it would be for downvotes to have categories. Half a dozen, one of them being a catchall for anything not in the other five, would likely do the trick. Whoever is downvoting would need just one extra click, and the author would get at least some indication of why he received the downvote.
*thumbs up
*also leaves positive comment
1934863 Yeah, that's true. The number of chapters do play a part, and I should probably have mentioned that. It's something I'd take into account on a more subconscious level, so it didn't really cross my mind to mention it. For the most part, I used to think that I didn't pay the thumbs really all that much heed, but today I actually sat down and really thought about how much they influence my perception of a fic.
The thumbs legitimately do colour my impression of a fic, similarly to the cover of a book--as much as I hate to admit it--I am not above such petty influences. I do think the thumbs offer very little for the indication of a story's literary worth, but understanding in what way, and why they colour my impression of a story is worth my time to consider, I think.
A neat bit on the views though, I'll keep that in mind as I come across new fics.
I saw that thread and considered posting on it myself, but I figured it would be deleted. This, however, is almost exactly what I'd have said.
I like the "thumbs" system. I rarely use it to judge a story. (If a story interests me, I usually skim through the comments and see what people are saying before I make a final decision to read.) I can see how it can be easily abused, but I agree, it should stay.I go by number of comments/number of faves to judge the quality of a story anyways. But that's just me.
1934873
This is the reason why people tend to rate 5 and 1... combine this with the fact that people who don't have a very strong opinion tend to not rate, and there you go...
1934875
The favorites thing bugs me too. It seems like most people use it more as a story tracking feature than as a way to show that they really love a story.
Personally, I only favorite the stories that I do think are some of my favorites on this site. And I use the Read Later list, ordered by update date, to keep track of updates of stories that I want to continue to read but haven't quite earned a favorite yet (as well as all the ones that I just haven't gotten around to reading yet). It works, but it's not the most convenient thing ever. It would be nice if there was an easier way to track fics without favoriting them.
I think it would work fine if we had a maybe track, which lets you know when a fic has finished so people who fave for that reason have something for that. 1935072
I commented on the original post, but I had more thoughts since then. I didn't care for the double standard between upvotes and downvotes. You can't just ask for comments for dislikes while excusing upvotes because both are equally problematic in the long run even if the writer wants more likes and wants as many barriers to dislikes as possible.
As a person who both writes and reads fanfiction, I am surprised how differently I think about fanfiction from both sides. From the writer perspective, I admit that feel bad whenever I receive a downvote but don't know why on my philosophy niche story The Pony Dialogues. I know I make mistakes and sometimes I have controversial things in my stories, but I still would rather get something helpful.
From the reader perspective, I usually search for a particular genre of story, then word count, then last update date, then views to determine whether or not I will read it. The thumbs factor in but as a last indicator because what is left after considering the rest isn't very much. Since I go through phases of reading a lot of fanfiction, there are times when I read bad stories all the way through just because I like the genre. I don't dislike any story unless they are completely unreadable due to grammar and copy-paste scripting discrepancies.
In summation, I don't care so much about dislikes from the reading perspective but much more from the writing side.
1934875
1935072
There used to be separate tracking and favorite systems, but they were merged. From what I recall of the kerfuffle that went down at the time, the current favorite system uses the term "favorites" meaning bookmarks, and is indeed primarily for tracking. You are free to use them however you want, of course, but it is incorrect to imply that others are using it wrongly.
That said, the current favorites system has two defining features that are somewhat at odds: First, notifications of new chapters and listing of unread chapters, and second, visibility by other users on the site. The former is most useful for tracking, the latter is most useful for using favorites as a best-ofs gallery.
At first glance, these might seem to be of equal use, but the fact is, there are many ways to keep track of and/or display your favorite-favorite stories, wheras tracking unread chapters is much more difficult and kludgy to reproduce. Add to that that no one is going to actually know that you're using your favorites as a gallery unless you tell them, and I just don't see the sense in it.
You do what you want, though, I suppose
1935319
Then perhaps the problem isn't that people are using the system wrongly, but that it has a misleading name. Because I think we can probably agree that calling them "favorites" seems to imply that the primary purpose of the system is to showcase one's favorite fics.
And yes, there are other ways to show off your favorite stories, but I don't think that any of them are as good at it. The feature boxes you can put on your userpage can only hold five stories each, and I've got over 100 favorites, all of which I favorited because I really liked them. So that's not going to work well. But the favorites list is rather convenient to use, and there's even a count and link to all of a user's favorites in their userbox.
I guess the problem really is that the favorites system is designed to do two rather different things. It does both of them really well, and there aren't really many good alternatives to either function, but some of us wish that the two functions would split.
In all my time here on this site I think that I have only clicked the downvote button once maybe twice. The reasone for that is if I dont like the story Im reading then I will simply stop reading it. On the other hand I have clicked the upvote button a bit more, but only on fics that I think deserve it. So I dont mind the upvote, downvote system I think it gives a good hint on wether a story is worth your time or not (most of the time).
So many awesome dicussions *squee*
A solid post Silent and I tend to agree with you, I often glance at thumbs but don't always let them dictate whether I read or not, comments are sometimes a factor but since they often can have spoilers I tend to avoid them til I've read the fic.
I notice I tend up thumb up more than I downthumb, there are some fics I feel indifferent to and so don't do either but usually it takes more to make me downvote than it does upvote. When I downvote though I always try to leave a comment explaining why.
My biggest problem with the opinion of the circles I run in is what I call the downvote double-standard. Especially when hanging around a bunch of authors who consider themselves to be the best at whatever, like the "Intelligent Shipping Discussion" crowd, there's a weird expectation. It goes something like this:
According to the other members of those kinds of groups, if I have red-thumbed a story by ab author they respect and consider a good author, I need to leave a comment on the story about why that downvote is there. But I don't see detailed comments explaining why it was a story worth upvoting, either. And I personally believe that I should be able to think that a story is bad and let that be that. The few times I have left comments like some people have insisted I should, I've severely hurt the author's feelings. I am tactless. I am blunt. I pull no punches. So I should be able to spare them that, no? Especially when the people with the green thumbs don't have to leave several paragraphs'-worth of detailed commentary on why that thumb was deserved.
1935773 Ah, yes, exactly. That double standard is irking at times, but it's understandable.
What I don't like is how some authors view the thumbs. They look at the up-votes and think, "Sweet, X-number of folk really like my story
" They then look at the negative votes and think, "Huh, 
X down votes and no negative feedback... it must be trolls or something."
It just seems like wishful thinking, and it seems wrong to me. I think any vote is just as equatable as another, regardless of if a comment was left behind or not.
I happen to know that a lot--and I mean a lot--of readers like stories and dislike stories, but cannot really voice why. They just don't have the experience writing about what they thought about the writing itself. I know I've been there as a reader, and an up-vote/down-vote system at least allows them that small amount of feedback if they so choose to do so (and I know I'm still in that mind-set with things like: eating food, looking at visual art, and watching dance. I know if I liked it or didn't, but I don't critique it. I just don't think about critiquing it, and that's perfectly fine, since I'm a casual audience member for said activities) I spent my whole childhood reading stories, watching movies, and playing video games, but I'd never really thought about why I liked them. And when I started reading fanfiction, I was very much in the same head-space. If I liked a story, I'd give it my vote with a click. It made me satisfied to do so, as a lurker in the fandom.
Only more recently when I stared writing, just over two years ago, did I begin to seriously start asking why things worked the way they did, and why I liked or didn't like certain aspects of writing. That's because these questions are very useful to me as a writer. Asking helps me learn and helps me appreciate the work I am reading even more so.
Most comments any author will receive will be along the lines of: I liked this, I didn't like this, Moar!, Etc. Not because these people don't appreciate or disprove as much as the next person, but because they just don't know how to critique, nor do they really want to; they are casual readers, and that is perfectly fine.
It's because of this that it irks me when authors think that it should be mandatory to leave a comment behind to justify that thumb up or thumb down. Not everyone can or wants to leave some sort of quality feedback. Some just like to read stories about ponies and enjoy their time, and that is a perfectly fine thing.
I guess I got a little carried away there... Well, I find it a pretty interesting topic to consider. Thanks for your input, Herald.
Favorites system is used as a follow updates function. I largely use it to update downloaded stories I am still reading. Would prefer that tracking system, ofc.
Likes are irreversable, unless you dislike. This is annoying, since you might accidently like a story.
As it is, I downvote stories I keep clicking on and not immediatly recognizing as not to read.
I usually ignore ratings on stories. The omghate genres always get downvotes instantly.