So, coffee in hand/hoof, here you are in FimFiction's front page browsing the "New Stories" category for a new fic you can enjoy for the night. Sure, last night's afterglow of that one awesome fic still hasn't left you but what the hell? It won't affect the reading experience.

Browsing the "New Stories" category you decide to look at that OC M/M clopfic with 2 likes (probably 1 from the author) and 11 dislikes, for the kicks. You don't expect much because it has a lot of dislikes. At the back of your head, even before clicking the link, you imagine it filled with BAd GraMm3r, cliche's and an Alicorn Self-Insert Mary Sue. But then you did read it, and found that the story is new and fresh and exciting: the characters are alive and vibrant and spoke the most beautiful words that were never spoken before, the plot is original and demands the conscious attention befitting an intelligent reader, the meaning behind the theme is deep and the clop—dear Celestia, the clop!—you know you're straight and you know you're reading about horses, but the sex was the most touching part. You lean back, smile, knowing that you uncovered one of those hidden treasures in the site that nopony else will even read. And, as you link back, you discover that it now has 4 likes and 38 dislikes.

On the other hand/hoof, that fic waiting on the other tab of your browser was the one you intended to read since it has that 399 likes and 8 dislikes, not to mention it features your favorite shipping. But then you read it and, though the writing is not bad, it's dull, it's mundane, and it's formulaic. The plot is dry and predictable from the first chapter. The characters are stereotypical of themselves. It's the same shipfic with the same "I love you"s and the same "I love you too"s you've read since 2011.

Your coffee turns cold.

Alright, Discussion time: Several times now I've read, in the threads, the problem with the upvote/downvote system (the problem lies more in the people who do not know how to use it properly). What I want to discuss, and ask, everyone is how the rating system affects their reading. When a fic has more dislikes than likes do you automatically assume it to be bad? Dismissing it to the sidelines? What will change your mind to give that "3 like 30 dislike" story a try? Do those thumbs even matter? Do you read the comments of the readers? And what if the comments are generalized half-moanings of "Lol dis sux" or "Fuk OC sotries"? How many times, on both sides of the spectrum, did your expectations turn against you?

On that note, do you think that a feature that prevents a reader from liking (and/or disliking) a story until they post a comment will be helpful to the site?

As a rule, I read nothing that has the sex tag or anything that says it will have clop in it. It just weirds me out is all. Other than that, yeah downvote percentage does prove to be a factor in my reading preferences.

984523
I agree here, dislikes and likes will always be necessary but they should require something more constructive, even if it's just a tick box or something rather than an actual comment.

I think you should have to read the story before you are allowed to vote it up or down. That way people can't just read the description and press the nuke button.

984523

I'll admit, despite my disdain for the very concept of downvoting, I usually don't read stories with a ratio like that. However, I also take a look at its title and summary; if these aren't capitalized or punctuated properly, I'm almost certain I'm not missing anything.

I usually at least try to come up with a guess as to why a story has those downvotes before dismissing it though.

984523 I never actually considered this, but maybe I should look less on the downvotes if it is an OC only story... Thanks for giving me this grain of insight!

984523 Likes/dislikes have zero effect on whether or not I read a story. The first thing that catches me is the description. Does the idea sound captivating? After that, I might look at the comments. If twenty people are saying the story is boring then it probably is. If twenty people are arguing about the story, or gushing about how good it is, then it's probably worth a read. After that, they just have to catch me with the first page.

I would love that downvote policy, you can't say anything bad unless you say why you think it is. In response to the upper 3/4ths of your post, it is strictly a matter of opinion. I know that I have read stories with 380 upvotes and found it to be terrible. It does go both ways, but it's only opinion.

I tend to align pretty well with the general consensus, meaning I often discard fics with a high downvote rating (above 30 downvotes for new fics/ more than half the votes are downvotes for older fics).
New Fics with lower downvote ratings, I usually read the comments first, to see what brought about all that backlash. Depending on the nature of the comments I give the story a try.
And then there's the rare case where a description intrigue's me enough to give a story a try, no matter the rating (often with horrible results).

A special place hold fics with both high up- and downvotes (about 1/3 downvotes). I tend to be carefull with those, cause they usually have some form of extreme content.

I'm not a fan of likes and dislikes in general, and tend to ignore them entirely when looking for new stories to read.

My beef is thus: hiding behind anonymity and trolling aside, simply hitting the dislike button doesn't do anything to help a burgeoning writer improve themselves, and in fact often serves as a deterrent for new writers who want to try disrupting the status quo.

The entire system ought to be axed, or if it's so important, restrict thumbs to users that comment, as you suggested, 984523. But I envision it going a step further - say we remove the clickable thumbs, and move them into the comments themselves. Allow each comment to have a positive, negative, or neutral slant - the comments system on eBay is the first thing to come to mind. The benefit of a system like this is that the thumbs would actually mean something. Each like and dislike will come with appropriate feedback, and you will know exactly what works and what doesn't.

984523 To be brutally honest, I miss the star system only enough to feel like the upvote-downvote system is a bit more frightening when seeing something from your example compared to a 2-star gem. That said, I also am in full agreement with 984533 that there needs to be some degree of control in manipulating the vote spam. Now for a personal fact: it goes against my principals to upvote my own stories, though I've favorited one of my stories to screw with someone peering over my shoulder once I've since unfaved my story due to accomplishing my intended goal.

I tend to read the description, then if it seems interesting... I go to the comments and see the general consensus. But since the stories I'm attracted to seems to have good ratings already, I think I'm in the clear. ^^ I think I haven't found any story that has that kind of ratio where the downvotes are way more than the upvotes.

I probably do pay too much attention to up/downvotes, but I pay more attention to the description and tags.

I wouldn't be reading M/M clop anyway (or drinking coffee) -- I skip anything with a sex tag. I have no ethical objection to porn or erotic fiction, but it just doesn't fit in with cutle little ponies for me.

And coffee gives me gas.

If the description sounds interesting, I'll give it a go. A recent Transformers G1 crossover caught my eye and I gave it a try despite it having over a dozen downs to a few ups. Though it had flaws, I found a lot of the characters to be interesting and the story well worth my time.

984523

I like Cracked's comment up/down vote system. You only get a limited number of downvotes a day, but an unlimited number of upvotes. You get really choicy with those downvotes, because you have a limited number of them.

Of course, for this site it might be better to have a limited number of both (just so there's not huge overwhelming upvoting all over the place).

984565 I'm not really sure pushing a limit will help at all, but then again I'm one of those people who liked more than just going yes/no/meh like the up/down vote thing...

I find feedback to be better than just going upvote or downvote.

This isn't a fullproof system but, I think it does the author justice. Obviously I take into account the votes, however this is something I do. I will click on the author's user page and see their previous stories if they have any at all. If they have some that shows merit with past comments favs likes et cetera then I'll read the story. But there is a hesitation aspect to my trick do to the fact that diamond in the rough fics are few and far between. Sure there are some that are just mind glowingly awesome but then there are those where you just say was this person even trying? So even with me checking their past work, I still may not be able to bring myself to read their work. But thats my input in it.

Btw I don't read M/M fics so I can't really say anything on the downvoting/up voting phenomenon that they may or may not have.

984567

I meant more because it seemed to curb mass downvoting out of simple unpopularity.

In an ideal world, feedback would be available from a lot of sources.

984528
Same. Unless it's humanized, then it's way less creepy.

Rating can mean the world to a story without a lot of views because it means it still has some visibility . A story with a 20:1 positive rating ratio can still "outrank" a story with more views but with a 15:1 ratio. Conversely, more than a 1:2 downvote ratio means your story is flat out not going to be read and oddly enough, I think there's an ingroup bias that takes effect dealing with stories and their ratings. For example, I think someone is more likely to downvote a story with more downvotes rather than just walking away without downvoting, Likewise, a story with a lot of upvotes might entice readers to leave a thumbs up before they leave if they liked it

Yes, I see reason in this. To my shame, I have caught myself from time to time judging a fiction by its like/dislike bar before digging in. I have since tried to keep to old wisdoms, and stop judging by covers.

I thought about this conundrum recently, as I just received my first dislike in nearly five full months or so. To my apprehension, the one who thumbs down left no reason for it, so I am unable to fix what caused his or her distain. How can one improve, when no one shares vision or expresses a lack there of? I must admit it vexes me greatly.

I would very much like to see such a system instilled, to alleviate the persisting odor of nonsense red bars.

As I simply don't have the time to read very much, I have to be very selective of what I give a shot. While yes, the upvote/downvote system isn't perfect, there's a much better chance of a story being good if it had a 10/1 upvote/downvote ratio than a 1/1 ratio. Perhaps I have missed some gems, but I've still got more good stories to read than I have time for.

what i find is a bit annoying is that some voters 'like' or 'dilike' a fic when only the first chapter or so is posted. I at least until the story itself is underway before voting, its just not fair to writers to see a fic with so many downvotes and the story is marked incomplete, meaning there are still more chapters to come.

Rating shouldn't make or break a fic, though all too often it does. My most popular story went 40 and 0 at one point, and it's honestly kind of meh.

Anything under 10 or so total ratings, I won't pay attention to the ratio, since the impulse downthumbs and those who dislike just from description or subject alone tend to strike before the serious readers. Beyond that, I'll click just about anything with a majority of thumb-ups if I find the description intriguing.

I'm certainly influenced by the rating. If a story has many dislikes, I automatically become cautious. But I can still enjoy it, who knows? So what I'm doing is, the more dislikes a story has, the more interested I have to be in it, after reading the description, to put it in my read later list. If it has too many dislikes, say, double to triple the amount of likes, I'm not touching it anymore. If it has only under ten to fifteen ratings total, I tend to ignore the likes/dislikes. This does not mean that all the good positively rated fics automatically make it there, I just have to be less interested in them to read them, because they are potentially better written. What can I say, my time is valuable.
Also, I'd really like to rate a story more nuanced than only like/dislike. Like giving 4 out of five stars. Sometimes, it annoys me if I like a story completely, and another only enough to give a like, and I have no way of differentiating between them, only maybe by favouriting (Which it's own problems...).

984584
984580
I completely agree.

984533

That's a pretty good idea, even of people plan to just press the link to the first page, the first few sentences (if it's good) may catch their eye.

I don't allow rating to paint my view of a fic. I will always read a fic that has peaked my interest, even if it has a ton of dislikes.

984523
Oh! We're painting over-elaborate pictures of things to colour everyone's perception? Okay, me next!

So there you are, it's a bright, shiny morning. Birds are singing. There's a cheerful musical number being sung by a flash mob of your neighbors outside, about how absolutely brilliant the morning is. Your plucky 30's paper boy tips his hat to you from the window, when dropping your newspaper off. You smile and wave.

And you figure, what could possibly make the day better? Why, colourful ponies, of course! You click over to FiMFiction, and alas, no updates on your favorite stories. But not all is lost! There's pretty much a new story every five minutes. So, hey, you decide to give one of those a go! It's a cute F/F romance fic. Okay, so the rating is 16 downvotes to 1 upvote, and the picture is from the Pony Creator, but hey, the downvote system sucks, right? Every single fic that gets downvoted is actually a masterpiece of unappreciated art, if you go by the forum posts.

As you read, however, your day gets darker. The sun seems to shine less. The birds fall to ominous silence. You can barely read the fic! The authors period key must be broken, since they never use them. None of the dialogue is in quotations. The grammar leads you to believe that the fic was translated via Google Translate from Ming Dynasty era Chinese. Oh, and the OC effortlessly romancing the entire cast of the Mane 6 is a spectacular alicorn smarter and prettier than Celestia, and a million years older too! You want to tear out your eyes. But that wouldn't make the hurting stop, since it has burned itself into your memory.

You come to a conclusion then. A dreadful, horrible conclusion.

Despite what the boards have told you, 99% of the time, those downvoted ratings are entirely justified, and are a great and quick way to separate the wheat from the chaff.

You fall to your knees and curse the gods in a yell, between gasping sobs. But you know, deep inside, that you have nobody but yourself to blame for the smoking ruination of your morning. You doubted the judgement of your peers, those readers who just want to read good stories about colourful ponies, just like you.

(Okay, that was actually incredibly fun. Anyway, obviously I disagree. I've found diamonds in the rough without many votes either way. Ones that obviously slipped under the radar. But I can't say as I've ever found literary gold under a mountain of dislikes. The truth is, forcing a comment won't get anything. It'll just have less people bothering to use the dislike system, since most utter crap isn't worth a comment. So you'll diminish a good indicator of quality. And all you'll get back for your trouble is lot of one or two word comments like 'It sucks' in return. Which is actually worse, since now your comment box is filled with horror, and seems even more daunting to new readers.)

984708

Okay, so the rating is 16 downvotes to 1 upvote, and the picture is from the Pony Creator, but hey, the downvote system sucks, right? Every single fic that gets downvoted is actually a masterpiece of unappreciated art, if you go by the forum posts.

I haven't seen anyone say that every single downvote is unjustified.

But as I said in another thread about this topic, "it didn't impress me" and "it's horrible, take it down!" get mixed up in people's heads. Downvotes are supposed to be for utter garbage; things written in the style of My Immortal, for example, with horrendous grammar and no clear storyline. The idea of "everyone's opinion is valid" has gone way too far.

Why the hell does The Immortal Game have downvotes? Its genres are clearly marked - dark and adventure. If someone doesn't like dark or adventure, that is not a valid reason for a downvote. They should not be looking at it. At best, the story might not impress someone, but there objectively isn't anything bad enough about it to deserve a dislike.

I'm afraid it really is this simple - the more popular something is and the more upvotes it has, proportionally the more downvotes it's going to attract. Because people see 1000 likes to 2 dislikes and think the dislike stat could use some love. Obviously, this doesn't apply to every single dislike that has ever been clicked. My story received a dislike/constructive comment combo and it was perfectly justified.

Disliking something (and making your unwanted opinion known) because of its genre, premise or even CHARACTER TAGS is not justifiable. I don't care how you feel about OC stories; that's not a criticism. It's like saying no women are attractive because you're not attracted to women.

984523
I think you could have posed your little inquiry without references to clop... but to answer your question, I usually tend to avoid a story with a large number of dislikes (unless it's such a large amount I just have to see why people are hating on it.)

Also just to clarify, my defense wasn't... in defense of stories with 2 likes and 30 dislikes. I agree that most likely happens for a reason. I'm talking about the occasional dislikes that get sprinkled in with otherwise extremely popular stories that all but objectively treat the characters and subject matter with respect and don't deserve any form of hate. It's a counter-culture "hate what's popular" instinct bred into my generation from years of Youtube surfing.

984719
I can never quite understand where the idea of downvotes are only supposed to be used for the literary equivalent of a war crime. They're labelled as 'dislikes', presumably there to indicate you, y'know, disliked something. Oddly, they aren't labelled as 'lost faith in humanity'.

That being said, I do tend to use them only for stuff that is clearly a no-effort enterprise by the author, or things that are deliberately made to waste my time. I also comment when downvoting. Because, hey, I wish people would do that when they downvote me too. Most of the time, if I'm indifferent, I just move on.

But even if I don't practice what I'm advocating, I'm usually glad people take the time to downvote. Since it lets me know, at a glance, if a fic is likely to be trash. Like presumably many people, however, I give leeway where leeway is due. I know as well as anyone that controversy tends to breed more downvotes. So, hey, if I see a cloppy fic, or one with a polarizing premise, I take the upvote/downvote with a grain of salt.

As for the downvotes in popular fics. Well... I don't think anyone is going to look at the nearly 40 to 1 upvote to downvote rating on The Immortal Game and think that it was terrible. You're quite right in your clarification, in saying that some people will immaturely downvote popular things, just by virtue of popularity. But... I think everyone expects that, at this point, and more or less lets it fade into background noise. I've never seen a legitimately good, nevermind great, story that didn't end up with more upvotes than down by a relatively safe margin.

984738

Oh, I agree. Truly quality work (usually ongoing novellas that keep updating and hitting the spotlight) is very much safe, because the majority of people are decent non-trolls.

My gripe is that, due to the popularity of fanfiction, writing has become the "baseline" field. The problem is, it is a field, and fields have objective standards. Frankly, no one who looked at Immortal Game could conceivably think it was bad—certainly not enough to warrant them going out of their way to click downvote without leaving a follow up comment.

There are many ways to measure objectively good storytelling.

-Pacing
-Character depth
-Character development (realistic, fantastic)
-Appropriate prose (short words for action, lengthier for exposition, emotive language for emotionally charged scenes)

If a story nails all of those well, I'd defend to the death the fact that it's objectively a good story. If it still doesn't grab your interest, fine. We all have different quirks, interests and/or fetishes. But I feel it's stepping rather offensively out of line to go one step beyond and say something is "bad" for it. If you don't like dark, adventure and/or OC? You have no business being critical of a dark/adventure/OC story. You're looking for an excuse to be negative.

That's what really irks me here; the implied negativity of an anonymous downvote. If you don't have something nice or at least constructive to say, don't say anything at all.

So... yeah. Downvotes exist for a reason and are certainly useful for pointing out the chaff, as was mentioned. If something's got 2 likes and 30 dislikes, and I look closer and see it also has a lack of capitalization in its title... that tells me all I need to know in most cases. My gripe is when people throw them around offhandedly.

I'm not too affected by the rating system. Stories with a 5:27 upvote ratio will be avoided, but I'll take a look at something with a 15:17 ratio.

The problem with downvotes is that you can get one with no idea why. You view your story, you see someone has dropped a downvote, but 95% of the time they don't leave a comment saying what they liked or didn't like about the story.

The voting system should be like self-help pages of tech companies - you know, the places for when a product of theirs is having problems, and they have some troubleshooting tips posted. All those pages have "Was this article helpful?" at the bottom, and if you click "No", they ask you to leave feedback on how they could improve.

This could help the system a lot. A little nudge from the site could encourage more downvoters to leave a comment on why they did so. And if you still get a downvote without feedback, at least you know that person didn't have a very good reason to downvote.

A critique system, like the one I've seen used on Deviant Art, I think would benefit everyone and stop people from immediately down voting something that may not be to their tastes. I'm not a fan of excessive amounts of cutesy-wootsy shipping, but I just wouldn't read it.

If we had a system in place where people, possibly approved by moderators to give fair and accurate criticism, could give a short paragraph describing the strengths and weaknesses of the initial effort in writing the fic and people could judge it to be fair or not, it would stop so many 'hidden treasures' from being simply swept under the carpet and help people to improve their writing without being discouraged by demoralising down votes.

That's what I'd like anyway.

If i like the look of somthing ill read it then Pass judgement.

984523 I read based on the intro blurb and if it features my favourite character, Sweetie Belle (this leads me to read quite a few stories that just aren't that good) So far in those stories I've read, I've found the thumbs system fairly accurate to what I thought of the fic. I never thumbs down, but that doesn't mean I have to thumbs up either. I do, however, leave critique when I read a story and hope it helps the author improve. I always find the comments to be the most accurate depiction of what to expect from a fic.

Overall, no, I don't find the Like/Dislike system to be broken. But I don't read clop. I do read OC adventure stories fairly often though, and I still think the system works fairly well even though I have seen many people say that OC stories get an unfair number of downvotes. I can't speak for M/M shipping, or clop though. I like the system though.

984523

This scenario seems ludicrously improbable. If this ever happened I would question the judgement of the narrator more than the 38 people who downvoted.

984523
Usually I look at the likes to see how many people thought it was good. If it has a lot of dislikes I'll check the comments to see if anyone had constructive criticism. If I find the comments or description interesting ill probably read the story.

984554 This... is genius. Having a tally of the "vote" on comments would reduce random trolling and actually make sure people give a reason why they either like, don't care for, hate, or love the story. This could be expanded by even adding certain other types of "vote" or opinion to the comment.

And, well... to be honest, as much as I want to remain impartial, I do favor stories with lower downvotes quite considerably. I wish there was more... purpose behind giving downvotes, instead of just being able to stroll amongst the virtual streets of FIMFiction and tossing downvotes like rocks through every window of every fic.

When a fic has more dislikes than likes do you automatically assume it to be bad?

Depending on the description and genre, how I look at upvotes/downvotes will differ. i.e. If it's what you described, OC, M/M shipfic, I'll tend to expect a fair amount of downvotes due to the nature of the story and will look at the comments instead before deciding whether to read it.

I barely even notice the like/dislike ratio, and don't really let it sway my judgment. I instead look at the description of the story (And clarify with the character and genre tags). If I'm unsure, I'll skim the comments, and if that doesn't clarify the matter, I'll probably take a glance just to see (Unless my reaction is so "meh" that I don't feel like bothering).

That said, I've seen plenty of stories with very high upvote ratios that were incredibly mediocre (If not outright awful), and I've seen a few with significant downvotes that turned out to be pretty good (Generally just in an unpopular genre or some such). The former is certainly far more common than the latter, and probably the much larger reason why I generally ignore the like/dislike ratio.

Downvotes, AKA statistical sludge. If the person really hated the fic, they will have left long before the finished reading the fiction, thus not knowing what kind of criticism to give, because they did not read the entire thing. This is especially egregious if they downvote on the plot, because there might be a plot twist, lamp-shade, or something else which addresses the issue they may have. Heck, they could even leave a comment like "I feel that you're using this trend far too often, maybe you should shake things up a bit."

Like if someone downvoted because one of the mane-six get's hurt, but then you get the satisfaction later of seeing justice served. That ain't bad story-telling, that's creating an engaging story, just not for everyone.

Unless it's grammar, then you know for a plain fact if something was done badly.

984554 Im sorry to rain on your parade, but that will probably not work very well. Why? Ill tell you.

ALMOST. NO. ONE. WILL. VOTE.

Yah, down thumbs this post, but will you really be willing to comment on every story just to give it your rating?

Even people that DO comment and rate, this will be how most would be.

"This sucks." *downvote*

or

"This is amazing! Next chapter!" *upvote*

Yah... I doubt people will actually write more than 3 words for a rate, making it just as useful as simply up or down voting. Not to mention it will clutter the comments!

I am sorry, but I truly believe this will not work. It seems like a great idea, but that is in a utopian dream. Face it, Fimfiction users are lazy. There will just be less votes on stories (meaning there will be a whole lot of stories with no votes at all!) And the comments would be very messy and undesirable to read. I only want people to post things in comments that are worth reading, not what they are forced to write in order to rate the story.

984565 Limiting downvotes is a bad idea, in my opinion. That makes the notoriety of the downvote even worse, as only the worst stories would NORMALLY get it. If this tactic is implemented, then getting a downvote should mean that a person really, really does not like your story. If your story gets a couple of down votes, then it could really keep people from reading the story. So far, nothing too out of norm, right?

Well, HEAR ME OUT HERE

Therefore, if someone just doesn't like you, they can get all your stories down voted, for no reason. Then what? Everyone thinks your stories are not as good as they are, and you do not get the recognition you deserve. Then, in the end, people will stop relying on the rating entirely, because a person with a lot of haters would never get any views if they did.

Not to mention there would be too many stories with ridiculously high up to downvote ratios. How am I supposed to tell which story is best if all the stories have practically no downvotes and a million up votes? I kind of like it how it is now, in that sense. If I see a story with a majority of likes and a small chunk of down votes, I know it is at least an okay story. If I see a story with a thousand likes and 2 down votes, I expect it to be an amazing story. Limiting downvotes will make all the stories ratings much more unreliable. Not to mention downvoting for malicious intent would hurt your story's recognition much more than usual.

984523 I don't let the likes/dislikes guide my reading. If a story looks interesting, I'll give it a chance.
If I let popular opinion guide me, I'd be a Democrat, love the iPhone and iTunes (I hate them, IRL) and use a Mac (Yuck -- Spit!), watch the usual drivel and give a damn about the trivia that seems to give the sheeple endless pleasure.
Of course, the truth is even more irritating, but that's for another venue.

986407

I'm just some random site user. Nobody's going to listen to me anyway.

I generally take it to the comments if there are a lot of downvotes and see what has been so agonized over. Sometimes I find the obvious "not trying" or "total trollfic" types of things but it's even more disheartening when I see no criticism at all. Downvoting a story simply because you might not like a premise is bloody stupid. If I see something I don't care for, I'll let it slide. I don't use up/downvotes unless I feel they're well and truly deserved. Even stories I've commented on saying that they're quite awful and could use some sprucing up, I rarely ever go for the downvote button unless it's one of those authors that believe they are high king and their word is law. Then the attract my ire.

When I see a story with a horrendous ratio, I read the description to see why it achieved that rating. If the description is abundant with run on sentences, misplaced punctuation, and lack of capitalization, I understand what type of chicken I'm planning to eat. Plus, if the description is filled with writers quirks and uses simplistic words, or if the author is communicating to the reader directly, then I pass. The only time I would dislike a story if I READ it because I will have enough information to distribute judgement. I would usually leave a comment too because everybody deserves to know someone begs to differ about their story being great.

That's my philosophy of likes/dislikes. I let the description speak for me, but the likes/dislikes influences my decision of reading them. I'll be honest, I don't read half of the stories in the featured box because the description paints a negative picture in my mind, and that is a continuum of what I said earlier. Dislikes suck, but Fimfiction is a public opinion site, so taking away dislikes is defeating the purpose of the site.

For the sake of being fair, I'm going to point out that this issue swings both ways; the upvote system can be abused in its own ways. Everyone loves a good shipping story... enough to upvote it without looking.

We don't let random upvotes bother us because why would we? Positive attention is great! It's human nature to take the negative far more personally, and forget dozens of great days we've had in our lives in lieu of one crappy one. This isn't really a bad thing IMO; FiMFiction isn't an elite writing forum for 100% impartial critique. We're a laid-back fanbase here to have fun, and positivity is strongly encouraged!

(Oddly I think this is why my own story has so many upvotes—people not thinking before clicking—despite it being dark/adventure/OC. That's, like, supposed to be a recipe for disaster, isn't it?)