Down-voting · 10:44am May 30th, 2014
It is impossible for any story to appeal to every reader simply because different readers like different things. The system of up-voting or down-voting a story can give a fairly reasonable idea of how good a story is though, and it's unreasonable to expect that a story will never get a down-vote, no matter how many people like it, so when one of my stories gets a down-vote, I can't be too fussed about it. However, what drives me nuts is wondering what it was that they did not like about it. Did they think it was poorly written? Did they dislike the character(s)? Did it annoy them because it clashed with their own fanon? Unless the down-voter chooses to comment as well, I am left forever wondering, and that's where the system fails the writer. If it's a genuine failure in one's writing ability, one cannot get the necessary feedback to correct it. A disagreement in personal taste can be shrugged off, but writing mistakes can linger forever.
Yeah, I can see how that would drive some writers bonkers. I know personally, I only rate things down that are written poorly, or just a mess. But I know if I was to post the one story I'm working on right now, I'd get downvotes because "Oh, look, an OC comes to Ponyville" *Down-Vote*. It wouldn't matter if it was good, or grammatically correct, or whatever. Just look at the concept, click down, proceed on their way with not a word read.
In other words...
i50.tinypic.com/24n318k.gif
Try not to let it get you down. It's silly what some folks do, but you shouldn't let them stop you from being creative or writing what you want. Speaking of which... I should get back to writing this story of mine.
There are also those individuals that will see a story that contains a particular character that they happen to dislike and they downvote on that basis alone, i.e. "Yuck, changelings, I hate changelings" and then downvote a changeling fic with that as their only reason for downvoting. Or it could be that they dislike that particular author for whatever reason and downvote a story, no matter how well received, because they dislike the author for whatever unrelated, scatter-brained reason.
And then there are even those that would downvote due to the story "deviating from canon" in the slightest bit, such as a character sneezing differently than they might in the show. But such logic is faulty the instant you take a step toward fanfiction, as it is the nature of fanfiction to deviate from canon is one way or another. Unless the story is an actual episode put into written form, it is a deviation from canon from it's beginning, as the contents of said story never took place in canon.
It is true that you cannot please everyone, but to expect a reason everytime someone dislikes a story is folly because, simply put, there are asshats in the world that have nothing better to do than to inflate their own egos by ruining the day of other individuals through whatever means they can find. The best that we can do is to place our best foot forward and do the best that we can. You cannot appease everyone and to attempt to do so is folly and, in the end, shall appease no one.
Just an old sailor's two cents. You may carry on now.
Or, to summarize, the problem with downvotes is that, even if every reader were perfectly helpful and benevolent, which will obviously never happen, it's still unclear where objective quality metrics end and subjective taste begins when voting.
I asked a user who down voted a story I read the other day why they downvoted. They said that they downvoted because they did not like the fact that Scootaloo was handicap in the story. No other reason, they admitted it was good writing and good plot (Heh, it was some nice clop.) but that they were tired of people saying Scootaloo was handicapped.
Pretty much the only time I downvote without commenting is when the story is an obvious troll-fic trying to be as offensive as possible. (An example of this would be "Jesus appears in Ponyville, converts Pinkie Pie to Christianity, and together they proceed to preach fire and brimstone at how wicked and sinful Equestria is because they allow lesbian couples like Lyra and Bob-Bon to flaunt their relationships in public." And I wish I was making that up.
)
People downvote for the most petty and superficial reasons sometimes. Some bronies are still driven to fits of Seething Raaaaaage!! over "Alicorn Twilight", and will just automatically downvote anything that has her in it without even reading it. Personally, I just look at the ratio and trends, rather than the actual numbers; given that all of your stories have "likes" in the hundreds, and the "dislikes" are in single digits, I don't think you have much to be concerned about.
2163013 I'm not really "concerned" per se, it's just that I'm the kind of person who wants to know why someone does something like that.
2163128
Eh, if I had to venture a guess, I'd say most of those downvotes are probably due to either:
* "Changelings are stupid, and this story's about changelings, so it probably sucks." (Downvote without reading it.)
or
* "OCs are all stupid mary sues, and this story has an OC in it, so it probably sucks." (Downvote without reading it.)
There are people that downvote based on just one tag it has. This happens for the following tags, primarily: Dark, Crossover, Human, Anthro, OC, Changelings, Twilicorn. Those are the big ones you can expect a bunch of random downvotes for. If you have all of them? May Celestia save your fic, because it could get downvoted to Tartarus.
I know I'm not a usual brony, but I have only disliked two stories thus far, and I actually gave some rather in-depth reason for why I did so on both. Hell, the author of one of my downvotes actually followed me after I gave my review.
I've written three Soarindash stories... each one has received EXACTLY 6 downvotes within three hours of being submitted, and then over the course of the next 3-5 months received only 1 or 2.
I'm convinced people go on anti-shipping crusades. And/or some people can be very immature and downvote because they don't like the author and or they are in a competition against the author.
THAT BEING SAID, i can see why people downvote for certain reasons, however, it really grinds my gears when i get the instant downvotes after submitting because there was no way they actually READ the story.
The fastest way to get a downvote is to put up a Twilight x OC shipfic marked "Romance."
I had 2 of the little red thumbs inside of 5 minutes of it showing on the site. Even my "Traveling Tutor" series got a lot of red waifu stealing hate.
Believe me when I say it. EVERYBODY KNOW HOW YOU FEEL. Half the times I wonder when I see the down votes on my works without saying why simply boggles my mind. If they're going to hate it, at least a explanation would be nice.
Still I'm not here to complain about me, I'm here to complain with you about the reasons why people down votes without a say of why.
Simply put, some people either hate the work in it, what's it suppose to be, the story, the tags on the story, or they simply hate it because they HAVE NO LIFE!