Sep
8th
2014
What makes you give a thumbs down? · 4:06pm Sep 8th, 2014
The vast majority of stories that I look at, if I don't like I simply don't rate. Usually I don't like it because it doesn't hold my interest, or the characterizations aren't sufficient, or the writing is passable but not really impressive.
Really the only times I give thumbs down is when I run across something really objectionable. Usually it's something terribly cliche or pretension masquerading as depth. Occasionally it's because an interesting premise is utterly ruined by bad execution. Thing is overall I rarely give thumbs down on works. I also rarely favorite works, though I'll give them thumbs up. Oddly, I've noticed for most people it's the other way around. There's about 10-15% more favs than ratings on all my stories.
I'll give a thumbs down mostly on stories I see in the feature box that are bad, or disappointing in some way. Or on stories that are older but popular in the fandom. But it's generally only on stories that are actually popular in some sense, but bad.
I've noticed the favs/ratings thing too. I assume it's because a lot of people use favorites as a bookmark, to keep track of stories they're interested in (but haven't yet rated).
For me to thumbs-down a story, it has to be an obvious troll, have really objectionable content, or be some kind of trick. I don't do it much, because I figure it's way more productive to encourage good writing than it is to punish bad writing. Punishing someone for putting an earnest effort out there doesn't do anything but make them less likely to try again.
My thumb up/down is solely based on writing quality. If it looks great, like it has few typos and grammar errors, I thumb it up. If it looks like a wall of text, no formatting, slang like 'omg' and '4evr' or the like in it, it's a thumb down. Now, if it's in between them, I usually don't thumb until later chapters prove to me which it is.
Oh, and faves are for those stories that interest me. Basically only so I can keep track of them.
I usually never give thumbs, up nor down, unless either the story is something I'm Absolutely enamored with, or if it's utter garbage (no editing, stolen stories, stories made entirely to piss off others etc.)
I'm generally good at telling whether I'll like a story before I actually read it. When I do get it wrong, I often won't finish the story, and therefore can't justify rating it. I think I've only ever given one downvote, but I can't remember which story it was. It was a case of fixable mistakes, though, and I pointed them out to the author.
I only Favorite to track in-progress fics, then remove them when they finish. I upvote every story I like.
I'm much more liberal with my thumbs-down.
If I've read at least a bit of a story, it gets a thumbs-up (if it was good) or a thumbs-down before I close the tab.
Any story that is completed and I enjoyed gets favored, in the hopes of catching blog posts about sequels.
Stories that are incomplete but interesting enough for me to read future chapters of also become a "favorite."
I preferred the old favorites system which kept chapter notifications and public favoring separate. Because "good" and "interesting" can be independent for me I sometimes end up with stories that are both favored and thumbed-down.
I will downvote for two reasons.
The first one is objective: if the fic is grossly mistagged or misrated in a way I find harmful. Such as a story with explicit sex rated anything below mature, or a Cupcakes wannabe without the gore tag. In this case I will post a comment pointing the issue and, if not corrected in a few days, I will downvote it regardless of quality or how much I liked (or, more likely, disliked) it.
Otherwise, I will downvote the story if I both disliked it, and I don't see how a reasonable reader could ever like it. In other words, if I disliked it, and I don't think it's merely personal preference; for example, I dislike most shipping, but I will not downvote a shipping story just for having a ship I dislike.
If I like a story, I give it a thumbs up.
If I dislike a story but manage to finish it, I don't give it a rating since it still managed to keep me interested enough to see it through to the end (very short stories are an exception to this rule).
But if I dislike a story enough that I give up on it halfway through, I give it a thumbs down.
Fortunately for me I'm very picky about what stories I begin to read, so I can only think of 3 stories that I have actually given up.
I'll fave an incomplete story without voting until I'm confident it won't jump off the tracks. I generally only downvote a story if I find the content offensive. I haven't downvoted anything for spelling or grammar issues but I don't click on stories with poorly written descriptions anyway.
Edit: I pretty much agree with SGDragon. I remember every story I've downvoted.
The instances where I thumbs-down a story are very similar to yours. Most of the time, if it's poorly written or uninteresting, I'll just leave the story alone.
I give merely a thumbs-up in those instances where I like a fair amount of what the story has, but it lets me down on one or more other fronts. I also thumbs-up when I fave a story (of course).
Faves are for where a story holds my interest enough for me to want to see more of it - which, since I am very good at fishing stories I'm likely to enjoy out of the lists, is most of the time.
I also fave some poorly written stories that I can see had a lot of effort put into them despite the questionable writing ability of the author as a means of encouragement. On those occasions, I use the email updates feature so I can read through each chapter and give constructive criticism along with the odd grammar/spelling fix in comments.
Many of the stories I have favourited would not have been faved if there existed an option to watch a story without also awarding that golden star.
I sometimes give stories a second chance, if they don't catch me on the first time I try reading them. For me thumbs-down are a reminder to myself, when I go searching for stuff to read, "No, don't give this a second chance, no matter how interesting the blurb sounds."
2438240 Yeah I rather wish "read later" would be renamed to "watch"
Things I'll downvote:
-trollfics that aren't honest about being trollfics and aren't funny for the reader, just the author
-stories that go completely off the rails for no discernible reason, or have a nonsensical "surprise" ending (or an "I don't care anymore" ending)
-absolutely terrible "not even trying" grammar and spelling
-stories that start out just fine, but then suddenly become a giant author-rant that has little to do with the original plot
Basically, it takes the author being deliberately dishonest, refusing to care, or going completely nuts halfway through the story. Other than that, I'll give it a neutral non-vote if I just don't care for it. (I miss my 0-5 star ratings.)
My reasons for giving a thumbs down are very similar to yours but might be a little different when it comes to objectionable content ("objectionable content" winds up being pretty broad.) Giving something a thumbs down for objectionable content is something I don't do often. But if the author is proselytizing and clearly projecting their beliefs in their story it is almost a guaranteed thumbs-down from me.
At some point I became a lot more liberal with thumb buttons. I thought throwing thumbs around would devalue them. But I could only read so many comments of "GIVE MOAR PLZ" on terribly done stories before I realized inaction might do more harm then good. I've been thinking for a while now that while likes are nice and give a general idea of a stories initial reception; comments about the story can be far more valuable.
As for favourites, for me, it's really more like a list of stories you wanna watch or have read and not really something for actual favourites. I wish there was a way to watch a story with functionality similar to how favourites works now and also have a separate favourites list but there isn't so ya have to make do.
2438252 On 0-5 star ratings:
Google did a big huge analysis on it (since YouTube originally had it) and found that they were essentially useless. People were no good at assigning an arbitrary value to a subjective quality, so rather than a nice bell curve over 3 star it was clustered at nearly-5 and nearly-1 stars. Thus the switch to up/down.
I tend to go with the "if you don't like it, leave it alone" rule, unless I really have a strong hatred for that particular story. I think that I've only downvoted 4 or 5 stories on FiMfiction, which considering how many I read isn't very many at all.
I can't remember when I gave my last thumbs down directly to a story. This isn't a network of writers sworn to hold a professional standard but a fandom that recruits from an exceptionally large circle. So I think people do their stuff in a way they are able to and with an invested workforce they feel comfortable with. If it doesn't convince me and/or the quality is to low I either throw a comment with tips and my opinion at the author or leave it alone. Some may be offended or demotivated by a downvote, plus other readers may think the story isn't worth the read because it got too many thumbs down. In general, as you don't have to comment to vote, I stopped paying attention to this ratio at some point. The relations between title, description, tags and word count are way more important to me than a rating. Others may think different, e.g., what promise can be delivered with what word count. As a writer/editor the thumbs-ratio tells me mainly I liked the concept/execution or I didn't like the concept/execution. If people comment on whatever element of a story it is to me much more worth than an anonymous vote. No matter if they liked it or not, I see the person (or at least his profile) that took time to at least drop into the first chapter. It creates an interaction, what I like. That is also the reason why I would wish for an additional function to vote on single chapters, but that may needs too much resources. Of course, the longer a story has been up/running, a new vote also shows that a new person found the story or finally made up his/her mind whether to like the story or not.
I probably am bastardizing the system this way, as the general idea behind it is 'Would you like others to have the same experience as you had?'. Especially on Steam, a digital platform that sells games and software and allows its users to vote on them with a comment/review, I see how this can take way different directions. As you are forced to write at least one line on what made you do this rating, and then even allowing other people to vote for the quality of his vote, the votes regarding the concept are largely filtered. This leads to very interesting thumbs-down votes, where people that have played a game 1000 hours+ still give it a thumbs down. The reasons range from recent game developments to how much they enjoyed those hours. A review on EvE Online does that latter thing, saying that all those hours felt like he was literally working, doing things that are not fun to make progress in the game. So he does not recommend others to play a game he enjoyed for many hours. Going back to stories, this would be a thumbs down given because you may not walk out of the story at parts. Some chapters may felt clumsy and some elements were may not to your liking. But would that suffice to tell other readers to stay away? I don't know. What I do know is that without this filter nobody knows how deep the voter dived into the story, and whether it was the story's fault or not.
TL;DR: In my opinion the current system supports votes on concepts too strong to truly pay attention to it. However, an additional voting for single chapters would add interesting depth to it.
Regarding the favourites, I am a dinosaur who still uses it mainly as a tracking function. If the story fav'd is updated it will show me just that, what is all I care about. So I naturally end up faving less one-shots than longer stories, albeit I read more one-shots simply because of time. I may not instantly thumbs up a favourite because I want to wait for more chapters to see if an improvement happens.
I am one of those people who like and favourite everything that manages to hold my interest. Like because I, well, Like it and find it interesting, and favourite more as a way of keeping track of the story.
The only times I dislike is if something is abysmally bad or an otherwise interesting story just spirals downward and ends up becoming really bad.
This sort of includes stories that suddenly change direction and becomes something they were not (a romance that suddenly turns into a cheap comedy and then a battle fic), or something alon those lines. I view myself as fairly forgiving, and have handed out less than 10 Dislikes in the entire time I've been here on Fimfic. But the times I did... they destroyed themselves
I'll give a thumbs down based on objectionable content or if the story really cheeses me off. This doesn't happen very often, I could probably come up with a mostly complete list just off the top of my head in 15 minutes or so. Occasionally I'll switch an up to a down if a story does something that I wouldn't normally thumbs down, but that I don't want to leave an up on.
Like 2438271 I fav and like almost everything I read. The former to track my reading, the latter because I'm usually pretty generous in my ratings. That sometimes bites me back a bit.
2438137 I can see down-voting for sever quality issues... But how do you define a bad story?
1.Do you include poor execution; such as in pacing, characterization, story structure and style to decide?
2.Do you consider the concept(very subjective)?
3.What about construction(spelling and grammar primarily)?
And do you factor in the Authors willingness to take constructive criticism and make improvements, as a factor on the decision to vote?
I can see down-voting a unapologetic, serious hate or bigotry fic(I am on the fence about troll fics. And I am fine with tasteful satire myself).
I can't agree with trying to displace older popular stories just because of their age and high profile(it seems almost petty. Pardon the proceeding if the down-vote is primarily about other real failings of said story)
2438321 One that I'd probably end up downvoting that falls into Otterbee's criteria is IADB. It was popular and well-received at the time, but I find it so blatantly derivative and poorly structured that it feels like a cheat at this remove.
I only thumbs down things I don't want to subject others to. Since I usually 'favorite' and read longer stories, this means I thumbs down things that have failed to match their descriptions or have become too unrealistic about an originally serious subject.
Usually I'll try to make a comment describing what's gone wrong before I downvote, and if the author acts childishly, then I will downvote and unfavorite.
Otherwise, I tend to share whatever things the story made me think of in the comments, and I upvote when I want everyone to see the masterpiece that I found.
2438249
Favorites and Tracking were once separate entities. But apparently, so many people just used Tracking as a Favorite that Knighty merged them.
Tracking is supposedly coming back when we get the Bookshelves feature.
As for downthumbs, they generally go to stories that have really actively irritated me. There's a certain kind of egregiously bad characterization that comes from an author with a very silly axe to grind that tends to get to me. Stories drowning in really bad livejournal-y angst are another one. Badly-executed cliché stories that have hit the feature box get them sometimes (if it didn't go anywhere, popularity wise, I don't want to kick them when they're down). I have a high tolerance for cliché, though--I just ask that you execute well.
The only downthumb I can actually remember the specific reason for was a story that was ticking along perfectly well (if in a fairly soap-opera way), and then suddenly descended into straight-up internet libertarian fellation of Von Mises, Hayek (both by name, no ponification), and Austrian economics in general, complete with actual, active, very childishly executed name-calling of Keynes, pouring out of Celestia's mouth, in a story where economics had nothing to do with the plot. It was just a total digression to use ponies as a polticial mouthpiece.
I am also pretty liberal with up-votes. If its at least a decent read or shows potential very early on I'll up-vote. Favorite to track interesting stories, or ones I plan on re-reading(good stories stay Favorited).
I need to make more(useful) comments though
*
*that's supposed to be a head hang...
I try to dredge up enough interest in any story I read to rate it. I walk away giving no rating only when I walk away completely unaffected by a story. I downvote whenever I care enough to rate, but it hasn't earned an upvote.
Earning an upvote isn't strictly about appealing to my tastes (although I admit it helps). I've upvoted a few stories that I didn't like, but which were exceptionally well-executed.
I feel like downvoting a comment is a more serious action than downvoting a story. No story is for everyone. Every story should accumulate downvotes. If people were more willing to give them, the downvote ratios would be more moderate and a single downvote would no longer have the power to kick something entirely off the top rated list. Downvoting a story is no threat to the voice of the author. Downvoting a comment, by contrast, indicates that you'd like to strip the comment author's voice. A comment that accrues enough downvotes will drop below a threshold and cease to be visible. So I downvote a story just for failing to impress me, but I only downvote comments when I think the comment thread would be improved by the removal of the comment from it.
EDIT: Oh, and like 2438137, I hold popular old stories to a higher standard. There's some highly rated old crud. It got held to a lower standard in a younger fandom. Downvoting these things helps deprecate them so that good new stuff can shine in their place.
2438344 ...that sounds incredibly surreal.
2438351
It was. My mouth was literally hanging open. Popular story, too--a continuation of Past Sins by another author.
2438339 Pardon my ignorance(or momentary brain-fart here
). Which story was IADB again? I am failing to recognize the acronym.
2438367 It's a Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Front Door.
I like things that are good.
I favorite things that is great.
I ignore mediocre and bad stories.
I dislike horrible stories.
A horrible story usually is poorly written (Once I saw someone spell Spike "SPick" FFS!), or has a plot that I find Offensive/Disgusting/Weird/Bad.
If it was bad or alright, I leave it alone. If I liked it but not enough to fav it, I give it an up thumb. Most stories I fav get an upthumb; usually if I don't, it's just because I forgot.
I thumb down stories rarely and usually when the author tries to pass off terrible, terrible themes by using "artistic license" as an excuse. This is mostly subjective, of course.
If it really pisses me off I may leave a comment that attempts to explain why but I think I've only done that once.
I literally never downvote (I actually am lying and downvoted that original Fall of Equestria story because fuck that shit) and am vehemently against the downvote system for the very reason of why we are talking about this: the majority of the time, people downvote for no reason. "It's a troll fic," they say. So? Many of the greatest literary works are troll fics. Things Fall Apart was a troll fic meant to combat Heart of Darkness because the author did not agree with the moral behind that book.
There is simply no reason to downvote, in my opinion. If you don't like the story, don't like it. Tell the author in a comment instead about your downvote. We can have a system where downvotes do not exist and still be fine. We'll still have our precious rights; we'll still be able to call My Little Dashie, Past Sins, and Fallout: Equestria terrible stories. It's really not that big of a change.
Downvotes, in my mind, serve only one purpose: to allow people to troll. Look at your first comment. But it also allows people to say something's wrong without saying why it's wrong. Sure, we can have work around for this and keep the downvote system, but it's honestly useless and serves to be abused more than it's used properly.
I don't down-vote at all. Besides, a down-vote counter seems almost useless to me because I don't understand the motivations of down-voters. I prefer "likes/views" ratio as a rough estimation of fic quality.
2438371 Ah, thanks. It was one I had heard of, but never got around to reading.
Anyway enough thread derailing from me(I was going to edit in the thank you on to the previous post, but FiMFiction derped it)
2438393
I agree with this. However I believe that rather than remove downvotes altogether we need to put a kind of 'tax' on them. By this I mean that, in order to downvote a story, you would be required to explain why. So you downvote, a small text box comes up and you say "Felt too fast paced" or "OOC scenes".
I'd prefer being able to see how many people disliked something and knowing why; to merely seeing how many liked it.
2438393
2438428
I agree too. I wouldn't mind seeing downvotes removed or somehow taxed, mostly because it's unhelpful feedback that should actually be useful.
"I like this," in whatever form, isn't all that helpful even if it does stroke the ego. It's only "I don't like this" that can carry some information on flaws that may exist and subsequently corrected.
What I really don't understand is the thumbs up/down on comments. 'Cause I have the ability to curate comments on my stories, and I have in fact deleted ones that were just spam. Which is really the only thing that should be removed - comments people don't agree with are just that.
Ultimately though no version of quality rating is perfect. Up/Down is significantly better than star ratings (for reasons I detailed), but whether it should be restricted to ups (e.g., facebook likes) or not is really not a clear thing. Although I like the idea of taking the view/like or view/fav ratio over the up/down ratio. Something of a "clickthrough conversion" idea.
2438344
Oh god. I can't even picture this.
I'm the same way. I down-vote only stories that I find actually objectionable, beyond merely disliking them, and I rarely mark a favourite either.
I, too, am quite annoyed that the site mechanics conflate favouriting a story and tracking it. A while back there was an announcement about plans for customisable lists that would separate these aspects, but they haven't been implemented yet. Until that day arrives I'll make do with the "Read Later" list, even though it lacks the "only unread" filter that the favourites have.
This is an interesting question, and one I may have an unusual answer to.
I "favorite" every story I read, because I want to have an easily accessible list of what I've read, and "tracking" everything seems to be the only way to do that, short of keeping my own local list, which I also do. In fact, I wrote and use a Firefox extension to store additional personal metadata (such as links to comments I post about stories) and inject it into the story list views when browsing, because sitting around waiting for FimFiction to become the site I want it to be is futile.
2438249 A rename is not really enough, since flagging something RIL and fav/track-ing it have different behaviors. A RIL item will not notify you when the story is updated, so I really have little way of marking a story "tell me when this is complete". Having the back-end conflate "favorites" with "I want to know when this story updates" and "I want to have this story in a personal list" is a serious design problem, and makes looking at "favorite" statistics relatively meaningless, or at least somewhat misleading.
I vote/rate in a similar pattern to what you describe, only giving an upvote if something really impresses me, and only downvoting if I'm reasonably sure a story is really bad in a way that's at least not completely subjective. I suppose I'm more likely to give an upvote than a downvote, simply because I don't bother trying to be objective. I generally also try to leave a comment of some sort on everything I read, but it's hard to keep a 100% comment rate, since some stories just don't seem to leave me with anything to say.
When stupidity is involved with either the author and what they do with the story or the story itself.
Preachy stories set me off. If a story isn't a real story but is actually a big author tract, like something Reality Check would make, I'll downvote it.
There's a reason for this. FIMfic used to have separate "watched" and "favorited" lists. Now, if I want to be notified the next time something updates, I have to 'favorite' it, even if, strictly speaking, it's not my favorite story.
So, a lot of people distinguish the stories they're watching from the ones they actually consider their favorites by whether or not they give both a favorite and a thumbs up. (If I like but decide not to watch a story, I'm more likely to give it a thumbs up, ironically).
I have given no thumbs downs on this site, or any others.
unless we're counting thumbs on comments where people are being unnecessarily rude, inciteful, or disrespectful.
Although I do get the fav/green thumb paradox, it still bugs me. I wish that read later would let you know when something's updated just like favorites does, and then we wouldn't have this annoying discrepancy in the numbers.
I only give them to really objectionable stories that somehow managed to sucker me into reading. If it's clear from the description that the story is something I'd rather chew my own arm off to escape reading, I don't read and I don't vote. If a story is merely not very well written or boring, I don't vote.
But if the story is freakin' awful and makes me waste my time finding that out, then it gets a thumbs down.
The fave button really should be renamed, in my mind. I just use it as a way to be notified when a story updates, I don't necessarily have to count it among my favorites. As for voting, I can't even remember any of the stories I've downvoted, there've been so few and it's been a good while since I've done it. I'll pretty much only downvote something if there's something outright offensive in it, whether it be offensively misleading (e.g. a story with a summary that might as well be describing something else), the author genuinely portraying something that is offensively not okay as morally acceptable (e.g. a story about someone disguising themself as someone else's love interest to 'prove' that they're not worth loving, and it being portrayed as an acceptable or even good thing to do), or, yes, someone having an amazing idea and disappointing the hell out of me with the execution. That doesn't happen often, thankfully. Though it did happen recently, with the story Mother. I really like the idea, but by the developments of chapter 3, I just couldn't enjoy it anymore. Though I still didn't downvote it; I've long since learned not to vote on an in-progress story so close to it's beginning, as the only way to remove an upvote is to change it to a downvote, which is kind of stupid.
tl;dr: People fave but don't upvote stories because the fave button is used by many solely for tracking, and I'm far more likely to not vote than downvote.
I've thumbed down four things total.
One involved Rainbow Dash getting raped and somehow, according to the author, "becoming a better pony" as a result. The author had the gall to try to promote it on the fimfic IRC channel. It was not well received.
One was a parody of a certain popular horror fic. It consisted entirely of fart jokes, weed jokes, and gore.
As best I can remember, the other two involved Hitler in some capacity.
It takes a fair degree of personal affront to make me give a thumbs down, and normally I'm choosy enough about what I read that I'm not in a position to do so. For most of what I read, I often give a thumbs up for effort even if I didn't really love it.
Stories I like I thumb up.
Stories I dislike I thumb down.
Stories that I disagree with in some way or that just don't hold my interest I abstain from voting on.
2438357
Are we talking about the infamous RealityCheck here?
I usually just thumb down things that I think are really fuckin' dumb. And yes, the cuss word there is necessary.
The only stories I've ever downvoted were blatant plagiarism. Other than that I either don't vote or give a thumbs up (perhaps too liberally, but progress is happening).
Generally, despite how rarely it occurs, I can barely remember the stories that I've disliked too much to finish. Either I'll force myself through to the end, or just abandon it, but even then I wouldn't leave a downvote, particularly since I'm not likely to give a constructive comment.