Story Rating, Up Votes and Down Votes, and a Call for Critical Comments · 6:10am Apr 4th, 2016
Of course, I want every one of you up vote my stories! Seriously though, I've recently given some thought about those little thumbs up buttons and especially those insidious thumbs down buttons.
Personally, I've yet to down vote a story. I'm not sure I ever will down vote a story as the people writing on FimFiction are earnest folk, and while most are surprisingly well skilled, those that aren't really try hard and want to say meaningful things. The FiM in FimFiction is about friendship and helping others. Instead of a down vote, I comment on something the author can improve in his or her next story, together with encouragement to continue trying. I would only consider down voting a story if and only if it was blatant trolling, some kind of spam, or real world racism (or the ilk). And then, I would probably report such a story instead as these are against the site rules. There are plenty of stories I find offensive, but I choose not to read them, that's all. I have left comments that the author ought to consider applying a clearer T or M rating (or that it was really an E), or to set better genre tags, but that's it.
I would feel rude if I were to down vote a story because I disagreed with it. I'd comment, though...
I up vote stories that make an impression on me. These are almost always the same stories I choose to favorite so that I can recommend them to others or re-read them. I go further by devoting a module to recommend the really good stories I've read on my page (as well another module for guilty pleasures), but that's another matter.
I bring up this topic because as a relatively prolific author, I often submit stories and chapter updates to novels that display on the front page of the site. During this short window of time, voting and views determine the success of my story. Almost inevitably, usually in the first 5 to 10 minutes, someone slaps on a down vote, and I think, why? And this always without leaving a comment. I work very hard to properly tag my stories and to faithfully represent my stories in the long and short description, as well as to carefully chose or craft artwork. I even paid to commission special artwork for The Enforcer and Her Blackmailers. Why, I ask, don't these folks leave a comment and say, "You did this or that that I found wrong because thus and such; don't do that again!"? I find anonymous silent down voting useless, mean-spirited, arguably offensive, and would never do it. I ask you to consider leaving helpful comments instead of down voting stories, or at the very least do both.
Worse, up and down voting, and the proportion of down votes to up votes, together with views are used to calculate story popularity and whether a story will hit the feature box. Today, my mushy love-story The Forgiving Lesson, got as high as #12 in popularity, two short of the feature box. It was a second down-vote that added up to 10 votes to make my ratings visible. I think it was a third down vote that made me miss the feature box. Mind you, more up votes would have helped and I just didn't earn them. A mean-spirited down vote can quickly become the difference between a story getting a 100 views or 1000 views, depriving FimFiction viewers of finding great stories they might never have otherwise seen. If a story hits the feature box, the number of views increases almost immediately. In my experience, views can soar from 10 per hour to over a 100 during prime time. I had the enormous good luck of having one of my mid-tier stories, Mark Misconception, go "Pony Famous" and hit the feature box. It got as high as #2, but stayed in the feature box for almost exactly 100 hours. Getting there equates to a magnitude difference in the story's visibility, the number of comments, the number of added followers, the sheer number of views, and the additional up votes that pile on. You even find your story in a special search category: "Featured Stories."
One thing that occurs to me, and I feel mean-spirited even thinking someone would do this, is that by down voting a story you can improve the popularity of your own story, gaming the system. I hope this isn't happening. More than likely, I think it's a lack of thinking about the consequences of one's actions. Or sadly, thinking that an up vote is just the opposite of a Facebook style "like." Spoiler, for an author it manifestly is not. Post a critical comment, instead, please!
So, I am writing this in hopes of improving the collegiate atmosphere of the site. I, for one, am going to keep writing the very best stories I can for you to read and to improve my craft. Up votes, and even having a story being logged in a folder labeled favorite without an up vote, are my payment for my hard work. I am a published author, and publishers have paid me real you-could-make-a-living-at-this money for my work. That said, I must admit that I've never experienced the amount of praise and comradeship for my paid writing that I have received for the work I've published on FimFiction since I started publishing in May of 2015. Thank you everypony. As I write this, including unpublished chapters in revision, that totals about 170,000 words, or two novel-lengths of story. I quit writing in 2001. I am beginning to feel rehabilitated in 2016.
If you've gotten to this sentence, thank you for listening to me. If you liked the post, please link to it.
Now it's back to story writing, which has recently been all Starlight Glimmer all the time. (It's a phase, trust me.)
Knightly (a site staff member) talks about up votes and down votes in comments, and it gives a good general guideline that I think well applies to story rating.
Things you should thumbs up
People who add insight to the discussion; People who make interesting new points; Comments that are friendly and helpful
Things you should thumbs down
Spam posts; Posts that have no purpose in the discussion, eg "Adding to my read it later list" and image macros; People who post rude comments about other people
Things you SHOULDN'T thumbs down
Comments that you disagree with but are otherwise not offensive and not spam
