1⭐ Rating Bombing

[indyc]

It has been documented before that when certain teases hit the top 20, they suddenly get several 1 star ratings to knock them out. This happened today to a new author in the span of a few minutes in a very directed fashion.

I am not saying where they deserve to be but this behavior can and often does crush someone. I know it did quite a number on me after all the insane amount of effort I poured in and caused fapnip to never release another groundbreaking tease.

I completely understand if some highly rated teases are not to your taste and some may infringe on some teases you like more. However, there are very few teases I have ever seen that deserve an actual 1 star. Rating highly rated teases in that way is outright malicious behavior. (Please do not do this to anyone you think is causing or benefiting by this either)

To whomever out there is doing this - know that these actions are a good way to stop new authors from even trying to add new content. This has demotivated many creators and the site is poorer for it. I wish I could see what Darigaaz or fapnip had next in store for us among many others.

Your favorite teases may still be at the top but without us supporting content creators, we don't get new content. Without new content, the site will atrophy. IF you dislike a tease that is rated higher than you wish: rate if fairly and send them a message of feedback for how you wish it to be improved. A rising tide raises all ships. Maybe your favorite author might also improve to meet the competition without your help and you get even better content from them.

[fenway]

Yeah, I'm just going to be straight up about this.

Between 2 and 3 AM central standard time last night, basically all of my teases simultaneously dropped by 0.1 to 0.3 in the span of about twenty/thirty minutes. Here is what happened:

Your Girlfriend Calls went from 4.8 to 4.5
Your Girlfriend Ruins You went from 4.8 to 4.6
Your Girlfriend's Away went from 4.8 to 4.6
Your Girlfriend Warms You Up went from 4.8 to 4.7
Your Girlfriends' Friend Tries CBT went from 4.8 to 4.7
You Girlfriends' Friend Returns went from 4.7 to 4.6
Your Girlfriends' Friend went from 4.6 to 4.5
House Calls went from 4.7 to 4.5

I was online watching it happen.

I am with indyc in his opinion that users can rate teases however they want. However, in this circumstance, it was clearly a concerted effort by one or more individuals to sabotage tease ratings. I'm sure that if the teases went so far as to fly them to Jamaica for a week of getting handjobs from Blake Lively, all while being paid a million dollars an hour in real life, they still would have tried tanking the tease rating.

Whoever you are, you shouldn't do that. I believe admins should do something about this. If it's turning off people from creating content, it's a problem for the site, and community as a whole.

Speaking of the community! I'd like to extend a huge thank you again to y'all! You're lovely! Thanks so much for the overwhelmingly positive responses! And if you do feel my work merits only 1 star, be empowered to rate it as such. Like I said, that's totally fine if it's an honest reflection of how you feel about a teases content!

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

[RandomName]

Obviously rating bombing lacks reasoning. I myself rate one star for few reasons. (I.e. Very poor writing, borderline nonfunctional.)

There is one more reason I rate one star that may be quite divisive. I am not the kinkiest person in the world, preferring more vanilla/lightly kinky teases so when I encounter a tease that doesn't divulge "extreme" content t's quite problematic for me. I typically greatly prefer that there be a warning at the beginning on the tease of it's going to take the fetishes involved to extremes.

Now, I'm mainly staying this to give reasons that some people may use to rate a tease poorly, even without having finished it. Of course, none the less you shouldn't open teases simply to rate them low, simply wanting to give my two cents on why I personally may rate a tease that is generally considered good poorly. Not that it's bad, but that I strongly dislike some content inside it and wasn't told ahead of time that it included such fetishes and links. (This of course demonstrates the idea of rating something Objectively Vs Subjectively, but yeah, just trying to explain the type of idea that may have led to one star ratings.)

I do want to reiterate that tease bombing is unjustified, simply wanting to point out that different people are more critical and harsher when rating, resulting to what they consider to be fair ratings that are low even on teases that have performed well with others.

[anonymister]

Sorry to hear what's happening. There may be a few disturbed trolls infecting the forum.
I can't understand rating 1 star unless it's non-functional or spam advertising etc...

[zenetix]

Just going to throw this idea out there to add to the discussion.

I'm not sure if the rating system is all that great. It's helpful to a certain extent, but maybe it would be better if the ratings were restricted to forum threads/polls instead of how they currently are.

As other people have touched on - if some casual user tries out a tease and finds out that it doesn't match their kinks/preferences then I can easily see them leaving a one start rating regardless of how well crafted the tease was.

[Augustulus]

As far as I'm aware of you can only rate a tease once and have to be logged in at the moment.
I'm unsure how many votes it needs to affect the rating in such a way, but I assume that it needs at least a good amount of votes if it's a popular tease to drop the rating.
So, I guess there have to be a lot of accounts here, that only log in and rate all those teases, then log out again and this in certain time periods.
Additionally if there are a lot of teases that got down rated there must be some teases that benefit from this. Has anyone noticed some? I don't want to imply that these authors are definitely doing this rate bombing, but it may help to understand the motivation of the person(s) doing it .

And lastly a personal note regarding ratings: I don't care about the rating of a tease. For me tags and description are the only things I use to decide if I visit a tease or not. I don't know if I'm alone with this technique, but I would suggest every creator to not only look for the rating, but also the number of viewers the tease gets.

[playsafe9]

I'm giving a 1 star rating because I dislike his writing style. He's also using ellipses too often and wrongly and if he would make an effort and develop his writing skills further, I'd be able to read more than 3 pages. I've also blocked the author, but milovana is still showing his teases and he's just spamming them.
So my 1 star is both a bidding "less quantity, more quality please." and screaming "stop spamming me man!". As the thread owner said it would be mature if I'd unblock the author and telling him how he could improve. But I don't think this would help at all, because all it would take is for him to read something at all to notice that there is proper punctuation in sentences.
edit: I've written a PM with some friendly suggestions to the author.
And about the questions in other posts: Only registered user can vote once. The mentioned author doesn't have that much views and likes at all, so a 1 star rating is influencing his rating by 0.1 or 0.2 most of the time.

It would be a great feature for milovana if the "add foe" profile option would hide the authors teases. Completely, not just a "a blocked author posted something" spoiler tag.
I've added the feature request over there: viewtopic.php?t=24932

[kerkersklave]

Everything over a 3 rating is usually a decent tease and I will consider opening it. Teases over 4 are usually really good in at least some aspects. So if a tease is bombed down from 4.7 to 4.5 or something, that might be demotivating to the author, but it really doesn't mean much. At that point you have a lot of people liking your work.

Personally, I give 1 ratings only to spam and completely broken teases, that probably won't be fixed either.
Most teases I rate 4, teases that are exceptionally well made or complex or just turned me on a lot are a 5.

With respect to the bombing, can anonymous users vote? If so, it might be a good idea to remove that or list votes from registered users separately. It is much harder to create a lot of accounts and if it is detected they can be disabled.

[diogaoo]

Unfortunately this issue has been going on for a while.

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of the rating system and some of the other well-known recurring practices. I believe that these methods end up encouraging a competitive environment that may not be very healthy.

Of course, the problem is not the system itself, but how people use it. I'm sure the initial idea was to encourage content creators and generate instant feedback without having to write lines of text, but in practice it doesn't work.


If anyone wants a tip: As long as the system remains this way, don't expect too much from it, the feedback given by community members at the forum is much more valuable than any arbitrary number

[fenway]

I'm giving a 1 star rating because I dislike his writing style. He's also using ellipses too often and wrongly and if he would make an effort and develop his writing skills further, I'd be able to read more than 3 pages. I've also blocked the author, but milovana is still showing his teases and he's just spamming them.
So my 1 star is both a bidding "less quantity, more quality please." and screaming "stop spamming me man!".

I'm assuming you're talking about me. Before you make jabs at anyone's proficiency with the English language, you ought to make sure you're demonstrating mastery. You've used poor sentence structure, with conflicting tenses multiple times. There are a few run on sentences. You appear scared to use commas, and you use the wrong word outright a few times ("many views" is correct, not "much views"). Also, if you don't notice ellipses being used for story pacing as opposed to perfect grammar, I don't know what to tell you.

As the thread owner said it would be mature if I'd unblock the author and telling him how he could improve. But I don't think this would help at all, because all it would take is for him to read something at all to notice that there is proper punctuation in sentences.

Crazy how you'll admit when you hear a good idea, but find excuses not to implement.

edit: I've written a PM with some friendly suggestions to the author.

No, you didn't. Based on what you've written here, and that you seemingly rather rating bomb instead of make any effort to bring your concerns up, I doubt you're capable of writing "friendly suggestions" to anyone. You're going so far as to ask Milovana implement a toxic feature of adding foes? What's wrong with you?

The mentioned author doesn't have that much views and likes at all, so a 1 star rating is influencing his rating by 0.1 or 0.2 most of the time.

Here's a math lesson for you. If 500 people vote something 5 stars, and you go in and vote 1 star, that tease is going to be reduced by 0.1 rating. If 35 people vote 5 stars, your 1 star rating will lower the tease by 0.2 rating. It's not about how many good ratings a tease has, it's about how devastating a 1 star rating is. The system doesn't average the numbers after the first decimal point. So a tease that is 4.8888 is still showing up as a 4.8 on the site. Don't use "doesn't have much views and likes at all" as an excuse. You're being a dick. Stop justifying this behavior to yourself.

Fortunately, your opinions are not reflective of the majority of people, it seems. Unsurprising, as most people who exist don't waste every breath they take to shit all over everyone else. I understand you'd want to lash out though, given that in this world, you stand completely alone. Take cracks at me, fine, but leave your dinosaur-brained rating bombing in hell when it comes to other authors.

Friendly advice, if you're really a switch, you should try switching off being a completely ignorant and lazy asshole.

[fenway]

I'm sorry you all had to see this.

[playsafe9]

No worries. I didn't need to write anything at all, I just wanted to be open and give some feedback.
And to be honest you're behaving bad as well, you're attacking personally.

[fenway]

No worries. I didn't need to write anything at all, I just wanted to be open and give some feedback.
And to be honest you're behaving bad as well, you're attacking personally.

Don't high road me. You didn't give any feedback. You crapped all over me. Now I'm calling you out on your behavior and responding to your malicious intent appropriately.

If you had contacted me asking why I write the way I do, or suggested I review some things, that would have been entirely different. If you had written on the feedback forums you weren't a fan and why in a constructive way, that would have been entirely different. If you had, you would have found that I'm quite receptive to feedback.

Instead, you implied I'm a terrible writer who can't notice anything and that I'm too dumb to even bother with giving feedback. Then you backed up your position by saying what you're doing isn't a problem despite others clearly stating behaviors such as yours cause authors to stop writing anything. This may be fine for your god complex, but it sucks for everyone else who enjoyed that authors work.

Also, don't lie in forums. Did you really expect to get away with saying "I messaged him"?

Try to find a better use of your time. Going through an authors entire catalogue of teases only to vote one star on all of them at the same time shows me that you need a hobby.

YOU. CAN'T. WOB. THE. KOB.

[BlueballAsylum]

How about the highest rating and lowest rating being thrown out of every tease? It would at least take one sniper out as well as someone who rates their own. Just a thought. For most, like Fenways, taking the one high one wouldn’t hurt him.

[indyc]

So my 1 star is both a bidding "less quantity, more quality please." and screaming "stop spamming me man!".

I may not agree nor think that this is fair. However, I do want to say I appreciate the guts it took to provide a degree of reasoning. At the same time, please note that putting a 1 star review up does not communicate either point you wanted to get across. If you did block them, I don't think a PM can go through so you might want to check that.

To throw my own opinion in there, the "spamming" approach was off putting to me as well at first. However, I realized that I haven't really have seen that strategy in EOS (in the span of time I have lurked) and that there were many who really took to that method. I have come around to appreciating seeing a different path taken that lead to a new experience for those looking for something new. It also went so far as to make me question my own approach which is a good exercise.

So, I guess there have to be a lot of accounts here, that only log in and rate all those teases, then log out again and this in certain time periods.
Additionally if there are a lot of teases that got down rated there must be some teases that benefit from this. Has anyone noticed some? I don't want to imply that these authors are definitely doing this rate bombing, but it may help to understand the motivation of the person(s) doing it .

Though I don't think that is what happened in this recent incident, I have definitely seen this happen many times. While discussions have previously suggested what parties most benefit, I think this only leads to potential retribution if a finger is pointed on an open forum.

How about the highest rating and lowest rating being thrown out of every tease? It would at least take one sniper out as well as someone who rates their own. Just a thought. For most, like Fenways, taking the one high one wouldn’t hurt him.

You cannot rate your own tease (unless you multiaccount). I don't think the top and lowest being thrown out would help much of anything. I do think 1 star ratings (and even potentially 5 star) requiring one line of explanation might be something...? In the meantime I don't have a very good solution other than shining a light on what I see drive so many creators away.