So, how about a community grass roots action here · 12:22pm Sep 6th, 2014
The voting system needs an overhaul.
Case in point: Example. Within seconds of posting, this had four downvotes. SECONDS. Which is a clear indicator that people aren't even reading, just downvoting. I've been watching for a while now. One story hit almost twenty downvotes in less than a minute after being posted to the new stories queue. It had Flash Sentry. There was no way that people had read the whole story in less than a minute.
And something really needs to be done about this deplorable situation we find ourselves in. We need a way to remove anonymity with upvoting / downvoting so we can see what is going on. The voting system is not a reliable indicator if a story is good or not. It just just a way to crap on people or be petty as it currently functions. If it was revealed who was doing the meaningless downvoting, a bet a lot of it would disappear, or at least a lot of people would be called on their bullshit.
So... if this kind of stuff bothers you, reblog this if you can. Spread the word around. Maybe if we can get enough people vocal enough about the issue, we can get some sort of change. But do so nicely. We don't need a shitstorm or a drama bomb. Just a little change for the better.
Also, what is up with the pornographic advertisements I keep getting on this site when I am browsing on my tablet? I don't want to find hot asian teens. I want a mature fire breathing whore, not some little know-nothing skank.
That's really ridiculous. Perhaps an immunity period? Or the only availible place to down vote being at the bottom of the story?
We are in agreement on this matter, I've been feeling for quite some time now that the voting system needs to be improved
And some place where people are not as likely to hit it by accident on touch screens or tablets.
Which is annoying.
maybe instead of downvoting fimfiction could pull a facebook and make it so you can only upvote and you have to comment to give negative feedback?
just remove the anonymous side of it like facebook and everybody will be much nicer
2431665
But then they would just scroll through the story to down vote it?
Even if you would require them to post feedback to down vote, I'm pretty sure their feedback would be:
"CUZ DIS FIC SUX- and blah blah blah."
And I completely agree an this matter, but I don't have much people to spread this through...
Maybe you should put a link here in you next authors note, I'm sure not everyone checks or cares about their feed.
Immunity period sounds good, actually. Like a period of time where nobody can touch the up vote and down vote buttons.
It wouldn't be so bad if people gave a fucking reason for downvoting.
Also, a bit ironic that you're getting NSFW ads when we can't post NSFW pics is it?
2431733
Yes. Ironic and annoying.
You used to actually SEE who upvoted your stories. You just can't see who downvotes because then people go apeshit on others, even people who left a comment saying downvote for as little "I didn't like it".
Though there should be a flag for people who downvote a story within x amount of time and have a repeated pattern doing so that eventually strips them the ability to cast votes.
Though I can see it being a minor problem for people who prefer to download and read later who haven't clicked on an actual chapter yet who might come by to leave a like or dislike after reading the story. All they'd have to do is just wait it out on an open tab to make their vote and still not be obligated to leave a comment.
So, either way, you won't really remove anonymity. And personally I'm with Knighty on there should be no real reason to reveal anyone's identity. Especially not over a pony scat story. Thems the break.
Does everyone deserve to post a story of anything they want? Sure, within reason. Just like people have the right to express their dislike of something through comments or voting.
Until Knighty creates a filter system to expand on the mature tags to filter out scat, and other types of stuff by allowing more specific tagging to stories, people are going to see what they don't want to see and feel obligated to share their displeasure for it.
The mature filter only filters out so much. And for many that fetish isn't something they'd want in their cup.
Better filter system or bust. And it isn't like people like being spammed with "Thanks for the like on _____!" on their front page no more then having a pissed off author of a story raging over a dislike that prevented them from hitting the feature list. Not speaking of said author's delusions of grandeur to which do exist out there a plenty.
It's a tricky thing to balance. Some people make multiple accounts to bomb mature fics for whatever reason, good or bad, and others just do it for the lols. If you know something is going to recieve hate, and you post it, then you acknowledge that you accept regardless of consequence the likelihood of your story being bombed.
Those tend to come from the more sensitive people anyways who seek shit out, no pun intended, and this site is FULL of young teens among the countless adults on this site now a days. Stories like that scat one does little more than shit on the faces of those sensitive types young and old.
It's a lost cause trying to argue for a repeal of anonymity because all it'll do is create more drama...
I do love me some freshly brewed drama in the morning though. I say reveal ALL the people who dislike a story. And to all the people who write stories and post them on the site?
"I don't like it" is a super valid enough reason to hit that downvote button. No one deserves more then that and if they want to expand on their dislike it will always be on THEIR terms, not YOURS. ("their terms" being the readers, "yours" being writers in general)
Cheerios and sugar sprinkles my good fellows, cheerios!
2431728 As someone who actually READS freshly released stories and able to finish most 1500 word fics in under 5 minutes, it better be a minute per three-hundred words. But with how fimfic counts words with apostrophes as two separate words, there need be a bit of a word counter overhaul for such a system to be truly viable.
Not to mention many have valid reasons for disliking a story if the grammar is too jarring or the prose is so fluffy and the story has very little story to the story because they spend an hour's worth of reading describing Rarity's work area.
I don't think such a limitation will ever be feasible within reasonable parameters. But who knows. I'm down for a filter system at least.
2431669
Wow, it never even occurred to me that you could be banned from voting in the first place. How many votes in what amount of time did it take you to get banned?
Not just the voting system in need of fixing, either...I have an iPad, and read everything on it...but for some reason, the majority of stories on this site have massive errors when you download an epub of them. There may be a couple chapters that are ok, but the larger portion keep having these large pink boxes saying this at the beginning of the chapter...
“This page contains the following errors:
error on line 11 at column 8350: Opening and ending tag mismatch: i line 0 and p
Below is a rendering of the page up to the first error.”
And then it cuts off literally in the middle of a sentence somewhere in the chapter (wherever the "error" was, I guess) and goes to the next chapter...which probably has the same problem.
Copying and pasting is ok, but it removes things like bold and italics and is a pain in the plot anyway.
I've mentioned this to Knighty and three other mods, but nothing...
Agreed, this is complete bullshit. They should make it so that you have to post a comment with a minimum character count of 100 before you can rate the story.
I think they should simply do away with the voting system and instead either use the favorites compared to views for the rating or have a similar button you can hit to up vote without a down vote option. If you don't like a story you don't hit the button and you simply don't read it. Then you don't end up with people crapping all over a story just because they don't like the premise or a character.
2431839 ...nah. That would either mean comment spam for the author (if he's new, bad but budding) or an incentive to up vote, so the number of down votes on stories would decrease. This could lead to a problem of overrating, which I think is just as bad as instant down votes.
2431795 It's true. You can get banned from voting (regardless of down or up), probably for voting too much. Which, in my opinion, is weird because down votes or up votes don't really cost anything, nor do they spam notifications.
2431792 I dunno about that system, where immunity period is directly proportional to word count. Seems a little complicated, and in your words, not feasible. But I'm not a programmer so I don't know shit. But what we're talking about is the up vote/down vote button; heck, people can favourite the stories all they want but what we're suggesting are measures to curb instant down votes. So valid reasons for disliking the story can be described in the comment section first or thought through in your head, then leaving the down voting for later, after the immunity period has passed. Maybe by doing this you might read the story much more thoroughly and reconsider your decision, ignoring the down vote button or even hitting the up vote button after actually reading the story.
Or an option to disable voting completely on your user account.
I've said it several times. The need to set up a system that forces a person who is downvoting, or voting at all, to be forced to leave a comment before it goes through. That way we can tell if they are legitimate reasons the person is doing it or not. For Example the Flash fic you mentioned with Flash Sentry. Just because he is in a fic doesn't instantly mean it should be downvoted into oblivion, and with the system I have mentioned in place you the person would be able to tell if it was just Flash haters downvoting their fics and no real problem with their story otherwise.
I like the idea of temporary immunity from initial publishing, maybe base the delay time on the length of the first chapter of what is published? (To be fair not everyone reads at the same speed; maybe a minute delay per 200 words, to average things out?)
Also if people were forced to post a comment to downvote, that would still bring accountability and they could be blocked if it's a terrible reason.
Soapbox time!
Okay, so something that I've seen on the internet is the estabishment of identity and the establishment of anonymity. I've seen the merits and faults of both. I've basically been around since the internet was publicly available, and where I've been and what I've seen, both of them make total sense in my mind.
Nowadays, I notice that everyone is set up in two separate camps: Either anonymity is your protection of free speech without persecution, or anonymity is your means of attacking others without repercussion. Both of them are valid and true, but not always.
The upvote/downvote system isn't broken; it reflects the likes and dislikes of the users on the site. Anyone who understands the anonymous function of the system will understand that the votes are a reflection of lots of different things and may not necessarily reflect story content.
You noticed the abnormal amount of dislikes due to the inclusion of Flash Sentry. The other one was tagged as softcore scat eroticism, which I would imagine could also lead to blind dislikes, yes. That reflects the opinions of the users in general on the site; if you enjoy reading stories about Flash Sentry, chances are you don't look at the upvote/downvote ratio and will read it anyway based on the description. Likewise, if you enjoy reading softcore scat eroticism, you will read Royal Duty as well. The high amount of downvotes really only jeopardizes the likelihood of the story making the feature box--which is a joke anyway, more so than the upvote/downvote system.
There's a reason that the upvote/downvote system is anonymous, and it is most likely something that Knighty took into great consideration when he was creating FIMFiction. He wanted to decide on what kinds of issues the upvote/downvote system would cause, and decided that anonymity would be the best way to reflect general opinion of the story without causing unnecessary problems between users.
Simply put, if a user wants to make their negative opinion of a story public, they'll comment saying that they don't like the story anyway.There seem to be plenty of users who don't mind giving negative feedback with a name attached, and you see how most authors react to them--that being negatively. Now, imagine the ability to see a user who didn't leave a long, nasty comment, then giving these authors who can't imagine why anyone would dislike their story the power to see these people who simply didn't like it.
There's an anonymous way to express dislike without anyone targeting you specifically, then there's a non-anonymous way to express dislike where you can be the target of whatever your negative opinion may garner. Some people like the attention that having a negative opinion can bring; moviemaster8510, RealityCheck, and other various celebrities who are famous for having opinions are shining examples of what saying what you really think can manage to do. They both know that and are prepared to become targets, but there are plenty of people who don't want the headache that having a name holds. They want a way to express a simple opinion of "didn't like" with no stigma attached, and Knighty saw fit to give them a voice, too.
tl;dr This is the internet, and the internet values anonymity. Some people have their own reasons for wanting to keep their identity secret, and you should respect that, just as you should respect those who want to make their identity known.
2431859
The comment spam could weed out trolls and haters who could then be blocked.
2431862 It's called Deviantart.
Frankly, I no idea why people make such a huge deal over the health bar. Mods can see people abusing the vote system, timer from when they clicked on the story and downvoted, to if you even clicked on a chapter on that story.
If someone doesn't want to be judged, they can always stay unlisted. Share the link with friends. That's a valid thing where you don't show up on new releases but are still THERE for the people you WANT to see the story.
People rarely vote as it is already. If you get 1 vote for every 25 people who view the story, that's not very many votes. Now, on average, you tend to see even stories with huge view counts have not even a tenth of that in voting and much less typically in comments. Unless people start arguing amongst themselves as they typically do.
A health bar means nothing if you got the favs and comments. And a person who 'disables' voting on their user account? Well, have fun because you won't be seeing a popular list or feature and nor would they deserve it if they aren't open to criticism. I for one don't care how popular a story might be seen to some, such an act SHOULD come with penalties.
Shut off voting = Get no heat regardless of favs and comments.
Enabled voting = Same as it is now.
However, and this is something the mods I believe SHOULD crack down on more, if you HATE CLOP and DON'T LIKE MATURE STORIES, and you're seen to make constant comments bashing said stories either directly or being a passive-aggressive douche as a good number of people tend to be to not look like a douche, is ban people from viewing Mature content on their account. Perma banning people if they try to create a new account to get around it as well.
The problem with many people is they REFUSE to avoid the stuff that rustle their jimmies. There really needs to be more enforcement on that. And any story that gives proper warning tags for its content, though should never be used as an excuse to dodge criticism, give the mods regardless of their like or dislike for a story's content the right to ban-hammer or strip away their Mature Viewing privileges.
This would curb a lot of abuses. Seeing someone instant downvote a story because they don't like a character or the theme and didn't even read the story? Sure, strip away their right to vote.
Last thing we need is for Fimfic to become an Equestria Daily because Downvotes hurt too many people's feelings but stupidly leave Upvotes like it means anythings.
You know what? Knighty should shut off popular list, feature list, and voting system for a month. See how the site runs. In fact, I DARE Knighty to take up this challenge. Because it seems like nothing is ever good enough for people.
I can get behind requiring a delay of some sort before casting a vote. A simple timer, plus only allowing someone to cast a vote when you are actually on the story page. Those two changes should be enough to make the effort high enough to deter most drive-by downvoting.
One thing I can not get behind is requiring that people post feedback when voting, up or down. An example: I originally had up-voted Wanderings of a Non-Brony. At the end of the story, I felt betrayed enough that I down-voted the story, and I left a comment explaining my thoughts. The author responded, and the subsequent short exchange left a really bad taste in my mouth, and (in my opinion) did nothing helpful. The only thing it did was to open me up to feeling even more worse than I already did by switching my vote in the first place.
2440656 Thanks, I'll give it a shot. I just wish it'd get fixed...
2440656 Get this...the epubs don't work on PC either.
2504197 you, my friend, are the cat's meow. Finally got it a-going. Thanks for the step-by-step instructions!
+1 Rep to you!