Voter Apathy on Literotica

why I don't vote

I understand your concerns, BUT, listen to my reasons for not voting. I read using the android app, I haven't seen any where on the app to vote. To get here to respond I had to open my browser, get to the lit page look for your story, realize that the mobile site doesn't have voting, or comments. Then I have to back up go to the desktop version, again find your story, then comment using my tablet keyboard. This took me about 5 minutes, not counting the times I was interpreted by my kids. If literotica adds voting to the app, I might consider voting. I'm not trying to start anything, just wanted you to know why some people don't take the time to vote or comment. Thanks for reading my response.

I do ....

... vote, whether I've liked a story, or hated it!
Sometimes I also leave a Comment.
But - if a story is, apparently, a writer's first Posting then if I want to make an adverse Comment I send it as a "Private" Comment in the hope of encouraging the writer to tend to what it is that's got up my nose, usually clear indications of a total lack of proof-reading. I usually suggest that they go to "Volunteer Editors" and ask someone to give them some help and advice.
However, there are some writers with a catalogue of 30+ stories who clearly haven't a clue about proof-reading, wrong choice of word, spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc., and yet continue to inflict their miserable outpourings on readers and expect to get good ratings.
Mind, I have seen some stories with appalling spelling, punctuation and grammar and yet some 'named' Literotica Members have 'favorited' them! Doesn't say much for those readers!!
I've also seen some dreadfully written, poorly spelled, punctuated, etc. Comments - the written equivalent of "It is better to be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and prove it"!
I know this missive of yours is not a 'story', per se, but since I understand what you are saying, and agree, I have 'rated' it.

While there is much in what you have to say ...

... you should be aware that many authors solicit votes and comments, often with the loftiest of sentiments about 'good' and 'bad' comments, suggesting they are equally open to either, but this is, in fact, rarely the case in practice.

I vote, more often than not, on the stories I read and I make comments, usually under my own pseudonym or occasionally, when pushed for time, as 'Anonymous'.

In spite of this, I receive precious few acknowledgements of the comments I have made, which are, in the main, positive. I admire anyone with the gift of story-spinning; sadly. it is one I don't possess, but I try to encourage and support writers, especially new ones, but there is little reward in it.

'Motes and beams' springs to mind, or 'what you get out depends very much on what you put in' to use a more modern turn of phrase. Perhaps 'don't tar everyone with the same brush' might be appropriate, too.

Thank you for an interesting post. I have decided to pass on voting this time.

An insoluable problem

It has been obvious that few people take the five minutes necessary to write a comment saving only the hot button issues (Loving
wives) I had no idea so few votes were cast; that being the case it appears to me fairly clear that ratings are skewed by this fact. One author appeared about a year ago and gets consistently high (4.0 - 4.5) ratings for what amounts to the same misogynistic rant he has posted close to a hundred times. The stories are short and invariably involve the rape of virgins. Short stories are easy to read, and if debauching innocents to show the inherent superiority of males lights your fire, it won't take many similar thinking voters to reward consistently mediocre writing.

I have no suggestion to make other than to plead with prospective readers to rate the story if they read it, and devote a couple of minutes to feedback (assuming the feedback is at least marginally constructive - many of the comments are not, particularly in the LW section.

Voting

I actually never gave voting much thought until recently.

Now I do vote, especially when I like a story and want to boost its rating.

Another reason...

... why some folks may not be voting is that many of your stories are multi-chapter tales. While I DO vote for YOUR chapters as they come, sometimes, depending on how things in each chapter play out and leave off at the end of said chapter, I may not vote until the story is completed. Actually I find myself doing that more lately due to the fact I've seen many tales abandoned part way through after an author promises numerous chapters and gives up part way through. If an author starts their first chapter of a story with a promise of any kind of length, I'm probably not going to take the time to vote, even if it is something as small as a couple seconds to click a star, until I see if that author is going to come through for the readers and if the story as a whole is any good. I've seen stories with outstanding first and second chapters with the remaining story little more than a rehash of what's happened or the ending is rushed. I know I've gone off on a bit of a rant here that doesn't really apply to SirSinn at all. He's never promised more than big titted, hot moms fucking their big dicked son's and/or big titted daughters and he hasn't failed yet as far as I'm concerned. I'm kind of hoping other authors read this and understand the point of view I'm coming from. If other authors are reading this, please consider these suggestions: don't state a story will be a specific number of chapters unless ALL of them are ready to go; in fact don't mention how long you THINK a story will be unless it's all ready to go. Also, show a little respect to the readers. If you HAVE promised a lengthy story and you get stuck, get writer's block, real life takes precedence or even get to the point of giving up, if you've got fans looking forward to what you've been doing, have the decency to put something in your profile or the comments of your last chapter letting folks know what's up. OK, off my soap box. SirSinn, looking forward to what's next for the Trophy Wives and Three Horny Moms, may they bang away for a long time to come. Sometimes all I want is to read about a hot broad with big tits getting a good hard pounding, thanks to you, I know where to find it pretty quick.

Voter Apathy

I can not disagree with you as apathy is a problem that I have, but I do try and vote and on occasion even leave comments, not destructive ones. I use anonymous as I do not have an account, keep forgetting passwords.
But also RARELY receive a comment in return; YES I know that I should not except a comment back, but comments work both ways and readers like to know that their thoughts are listened to. I hate to say but with the world becoming more the way it has, apathy will probably increase but I will try to vote more often myself.

I'm probably not the typical reader (after all, *nobody* is average right? Something like 80% of people polled think that they're better than average drivers; I'm sure that conceit extends to other areas of life), but I'll provide insight into my style of reading/voting.

Similar to you, I don't vote on pieces that I've 'mistakenly' selected to read. I try to be discerning about my choices (something about the title, description and category need to be appealing; if not new, a story needs to be reasonably well rated; and if new, the author has to have other well-rated stories - unless it's a completely new author), but occasionally I do open the wrong story. You know, in the first page we find out precisely how well endowed the main actors are; all of their vitals. I've tired of seeing if the author can climb out of that pit.

Clearly this doesn't explain 99% non-voting.

For the stories that I do read - at least for a while - I only vote on those I actually finish. I'm not going to find the end of the end page - especially when reading on a tablet - to vote on something I didn't find worth finishing. Unless... unless the story was despicably bad, wrong, demented (not in a good way). Then I'll go out of my way to drop a 1-bomb.

This leaves me with the stories that I actually finish. Say... well, I probably only bother opening about 2% of new stories posted (see discerning tastes, above - my two main categories don't get a lot of traction typically), and then I'll only finish half of those. Since I don't read to the finish a piece I don't really like, I'm usually left with a 4- or 5-vote - and often it defaults to a 5 to rectify obvious troll voting. Really? You didn't expect to find two women enjoying themselves without a guy in the lesbian section so you voted 1? Right.

So how do we get 99% of a story's openers not voting on it? I see two possibilities. 1) if Lit counts every opening and not just your first reading - you probably only vote once per read. If there is something you particularly like about the story, that will reduce its vote rate, and anonymous readers can't be tracked. 2) somewhat related to #1 is a story's stroke factor - if someone's reading to get off, they'll probably not get to the point of voting... after all, the author's not immediately right there to complain if they don't get a cuddle afterwards!

Still I find it hard to get to 99% - especially if the story isn't the stroke sort (I'm curious what the voting rate is on some of the longer "slower" {sexually that is} stories).

I wonder if Lit is counting web crawler opens? Also I've noticed at least a few sites that rip off Lit (it's obvious that they're not other story sites that the author has cross-posted to); these must also crawl Lit. I have to think that it's the robots that are killing the percentage.

Slightly off-topic: Does anyone else intentionally up-rate new authors whose story you manage to finish, to hopefully encourage another effort?

Voting

I agree with you. In this world now, people live for themselves, they expect every thing but rarely give...

In my case, if I read a story, I'll vote, whether I like it or not...

People don't vote... period

It's a general apathy I think, although I don't really care whether people vote on my stories or not because it's the comments I enjoy. Even the negatives are welcome because at least they were interested enough to put the effort in to express their opinion, although when they get personal that's when I think it crosses the line. Never say anonymously what you wouldn't say to somebody's face is what I try to do.

Loving wives get comments no matter what. They come out of the woodwork for those. One time I wrote an angry and admittedly shitty Loving Wives story when in a bad mood one morning. Just started typing and submitted it with so little thought that it shames me now to look at it.

Did people vote and comment on it? In droves. Way more votes and comments than five other stories I've written that have won prizes here - COMBINED! Go figure.

The voting has changed over the years with the addition of the explanation of what each vote score indicates. Seven or eight years ago it just indicated the score possibilities without the "Great! One of the Best" explanations and that had lowered the score I believe because if you go by the explanations then it's tough to vote a 5 since most good stories are more like 4's (even my own) and a 4 is almost an insult for contest purposes.

Thoughtful essay on an interesting topic.

I do vote, but I have a feeling it’s in a way you won’t like.

The default rating is 3. Neither good nor bad. Average. The story has to, well, earn, a lower or higher rating. If it’s average, if it’s okay but there really isn’t anything special about it, it’ll stay a 3. If there’s something different about it, I will give it a 4. For me, the highest rating is by definition a superlative. A story has to be really exceptional, far above the norm, to earn a 5. They are very rare.

However, it’s far easier to lower a rating than it is to raise it. I have some very basic rules.

If the story doesn’t include a chapter number in the title and it’s not a complete story (such as ending with “to be continued”) it gets a rating of 1. There are NO exceptions. I don’t care how good the story is, it I don’t receive a warning it’s not a complete story before opening the story, as far as I’m concerned, that’s nothing but a “fuck you” from the writer who doesn’t give a fuck about its own story or the readers. I’ve been coming to this site since the 90s, and after years of putting up with this shit, I decided enough was enough.

I hate stories that just go on and on and on, adding chapter after chapter. If you can’t end a story in 15 chapters, you have no idea what you’re doing; anything after chapter 15 gets a 1.

I don’t expect professional level writing, but I do expect some indication the writer’s grasp of English didn’t end with what they learned by the time they were 10. For example, piss poor punctuation, such as writing conversations as one paragraph, gets a 1.

I HATE trying to read long stories online, especially given Liteoritica’s on breaking up stories into (what seems to be) 20kb junks – a remnant of the days of dial up. I will not read anything longer than 3 pages. However, if I open a story and it’s page after page and there’s no warning of this, as far as I’m concern you wasted my time.

I hate people who break chapters into parts

Wow! These are shocking statistics

I'd say I vote on about 85 to 90% of stories I read. I will leave a comment if I feel like it(about 10-15% of the time). Sometimes I will comment anonymously since I've gotten some crap(I don't need) using my Lit nick. And I've contacted some...not many, but some authors directly, usually to encourage them.
I hope this essay will be widely read, sensitize readers and effect some change on these numbers- Good Luck, SirSinn.

I vote and comment

On almost all stories I read. I do not do either if the spelling or grammar are so poor in the first couple of paragraphs as to make me hit the back button. Hopefully, your article will motivate readers to add just that little bit of effort to the project. The comments are also often very helpful in explaining confusing passages or raising interesting alternatives.

But, it is irritating to me to have commented on a story, in which the author apparently accepts comments, only to have my comment deleted. My comments are never generic or four letter ones. I really try to make a specific comment to a story if I comment at all. It the author is so sensitive to negative, pointed comments, then he or she should block all comments. Otherwise those that are left are deceptively positive.

reasons for not voting

Some of us don't vote or leave comments because we just don't feel like interacting with the author. Sometimes when I read half a dozen short stories in one sitting, I just don't give two shits about stroking the authors ego. In my mind, If I post one of my short stories on this site, I could care less how many views it got, how many comments or ratings it got. In fact, I would probably disable the comments and ratings if I could. You don't like it? Fine, you have a back button, use it. You like it? Fine, earmark my screen name, see if I write something else you like sometime. I don't really care what the reader thinks. If I post something on this site, I do it for me, and not for anyone else.

When I read a story

All through to the end I will vote. When I quit halfway through I don't vote.

Like you said, when I read a story to the end I will showmy appreciation.Sometimes I will even comment. I love that people take the time to put a story together for our enjoyment.

Maybe the ones not voting feel that its not worth voting on what YOU write, after reading what you said the intro was for that story, I would have hit the back button and not read it. Not voted and found another story, so maybe if all you wanted was your ego boosted go crying home to mommy, she'll boost your ego since you're so obsessed with moms fucking their sons, which is just sick.

frustrated reader = no vote

I refuse to vote on unfinished works. This may not be fair to the individual story in that series but that is how I feel. There are a lot of unfinished pieces on this site. I often wish there was an in progress or completed label that can be attached to a story so you don't spend days reading a series only for it to come to an abrupt end. I also think it ironic no one has voted on this story yet.

story size

I wonder how many readers are like me, and don't bother to read short stories. For instance, if this had been a story, I'd click on the link to see it, immediately see it's too small for me to bother reading. Since Literotica doesn't show story size, I don't know the length until I look inside, and there is really no point voting on something I can't even bother to read.

Hits vs. reads

As others have already stated, if a story fails to hold my interest or turns me off in some way, I don't bother to scroll to the end and vote; I simply hit the Back button. There is a big difference between the number of hits a story gets and the number of people who actually read that story through to the end.

Some of the comments here are amusing. The anonymous commenter who insisted that he writes only for himself and couldn't care less about whether anyone reads his stories is apparently in a state of denial. The entire purpose of this site is to share our stories with others. If one were only writing for his own amusement, then why on earth would he publish his writing on a public forum such as this?

Of course writers want their stories to be read, and of course they want their readers to enjoy their stories. When you give a gift to someone, and they react positively, that feeling you get isn't an "ego boost." It is a feeling of pride that you were able to add some amount of joy to another person's life. Writing is very similar in that respect.

Well...it is an erotic story site...

And I hate to admit it, but I'm not usually thinking of a critique when I am reading any of the works on this site. My rating usually ends up on my hand, or in especially positive cases, waking up my wife. You do make a valid point about our woeful lack of participation in the voting process and I for one, pledge to amend my ways and vote more often.

You Are Right

I can offer several reasons why votes are not cast
.
Literotica should make the vote area more visible. It is easy to miss. Put a heavy box around it and use a larger bold typeface.

I am inclined to vote when a story is well written and doesn't have very many typos.

Many stories are so poorly written that I don't even get to the end to vote. My guess is that well written stories get a higher percentage of votes cast.


Authors could also help by putting a reminder to vote at the end of their stories.
Many websites do not make it clear that anonymous readers may cast a vote. I suggest a reminder, right above the vote area, that everyone can vote.

Thanks for a well written post.

Why I vote.

When I remember (what someone said about highlighting the vote box is a good idea), I'll do so when I have a clear idea of what I think the story should rate. When I'm undecided, I won't, as I don't want to get it wrong and inadversely affect the score.
I'm afraid I'll always vote down a story with no prior warning of incest. Call me straitlaced but I find it icky and it always ruins any buzz I have going.

do you truly want a vote when its a one?

I feel bad about scoring someone really low so if I didn't vote it means I didn't like the story

Here here!

Well rounded statement outlining the apathy of readers and the need to provide feedback to the authors to encourage them on their journey to better penmenship for all of our enjoyment.

I will take your comments on board and never again read a story without at least voting and if I consider I have a vaild comment to make I will post it for the author and other readers benifit.

I usually comment

I almost always vote on the stories that I finished reading. I only read stories of 2 - 5 pages. So I don't vote on the others that I only find myself passing through.

I enjoy character developement and that is usually not possible in just 1 page. Over 5 pages usually get boring for me, so again not vote.

I usually comment when a story is still fairly new (less than a year) and it was poorly written or very unique and fun. Authors need to know what people think of their writting to improve.

Don't know why you're complaining

Most of your scores are about 4.5. Very good average if you ask me. Most of your stories are in categories which normally score higher than average. If you want a lot of feedback and scores, try something in Loving Wives. Then you can bitch about negative feedback and low scores.

Comments

First. The story title and description has to attract me, if it doesn't I don't read it, so therefore no vote.

Second. The first few paragraphs have to hold my interest to keep me reading. As soon as I feel the story is too far fetched you have lost me, sorry.

Third. The story has to be "appealing" to me. If I think it is good I will usually vote a 4 or 5.

You forgot about multiple readings by the same people

Not sure about others, but I, for one, have a few favorite authors, and I have probably read their stories 5 or more times each. I am not going to vote on the story every time I read it. I would suggest that the same may be true of any story read 10,000 or more times.

Amusing to read about readers "punishing writers" with votes

I shouldn't break this to the world but since some of these Rex Reed wannabees think they are "punishing writers" by voting a story a "1" if they don't like the writer or think the story is below their standards, let me inform you that the votes are routinely scanned by a program at literotica and most "1" votes are removed (because they are usually just vindictive) along with duplicate votes. Writers here know that the vote scores and totals change (downward) especially during contests. I don't think many of us care about the voting scores, or at least not the ones I've chatted with. It's the comments that drive us and ones that are thoughtful and well written (good OR bad) are the ones we write for and appreciate.

Nothing wrong with people making valid comments - even negative ones - but it would be nice if the tone was kept somewhat civil. If you are trying to be constructive, calling the author names and telling them to crawl in a hole and die is not serving that purpose.

Another thing - if you are making a negative comment regarding poor spelling, punctuation or grammar, try not to make more of those same errors in your one paragraph rant than the author did over three pages. Nothing funnier than somebody complaining like this... "You're story is full of grammer mistakes. Your the worst writter on this sight."

Many readers complaining about stories being in the wrong category should know that while authors do indicate what category their work should go into, literotica is the final judge of that. If you write enough here you will have a story go into a different category than you intended, and while you might not agree, their decision is final.

Finally, this is a free site for AMATEUR writers to post their work, and while it is reasonable to expect decent quality stories it is not fair to expect Henry Miller writing either. If you are eating mediocre Filet Mignon at a restaurant that gets $60 for it, your complaint is more valid than if you bought the meat at the market and paid with food stamps. You get what you pay for.

Thank you all!

I hoped to get some response from this but the outpouring of (mostly) positive comments with one or two negatives is more than I expected so thank you all for taking the time to comment.

To pick up on a couple of points raised here - - I'm pretty sure I respond in the comments to those who leave a note on my stories, certainly within the first few days, mostly because it's just polite. If someone leaves a comment, I try to say "Thanks" for doing so. I might miss comments left weeks or months later but that's because there's no way for me to know when a comment's been left - - I have to open every story to check.

Which, in turn, brings me to another point raised about views and multiple reads counting each time. Opening the first Trophy Wives chapter to check if there's been comments has probably added a dozen or more of my own views to the total I quoted in the essay above! That's okay, though - - I didn't think 133,000 unique individuals had read my story but I can only work with the numbers Literotica gives me.

Regarding use of the back button if you find you don't like my stuff upon opening it? I do not have a problem with that as I said in the essay. I try and make it clear what you're going to get but if you still back away after opening it, I don't hold it against you.

There's a few other things I could pick up on and I might collate these notes and respond on my blog later but if I don't stop now, this comment will be another essay in itself.

Again, thanks for the comments. Now, as the Anonymous poster said, I'm off to cry to my mommy to boost my ego. I don't know why I didn't think of doing that rather than trying to engage with my readers......

:)

This is good...

...but can you refine this so that it can appear on a Literotica FAQ? just so it underscores why it's important to vote, how when and why to vote, and what prospective wanna-be authors can look forward to.

Thanks....

Voting

Hadn't thought about the vote I had but your essay made me think. I will vote whenever l read a story from now on.

Before reading a story

I like to look at the writer's profile to try to understand his/her perspective of life and who they are. Where they come from. What their likes and dislike maybe be but most important if they are writing about two lovely ladies making mad passionate love by tribbing, it would be nice to know if it's a lady writer or a guy trying to write from a different perspective.
So I do vote but if I can't figure out the author's sexual identity I may give it a little lower grade. I also give two talons ( " ") up if it's really good.
the Eagle

voting

I myself find stories i really enjoy, and often read them multiple times(one set in particular possibly a few dozen times) , however i will only vote on a given title once. there may be others like me who also do such a thing which could count for a good chunk of the discrepancies. This is also the first time I've ever made a comment in the over a decade I've been using this site.

Thanks to everyone who commented

I've posted a response to each of the comments here on my blog - - you can find it by clicking my profile name and then the Contact tab.

Voting

I agree ppl should vote. My pet peeve, though maybe a little off topic, is you get almost to the end of a chapter or story and you find out the incest story is about the women getting pregnant with no warning of pregars, I agree with your pet peeve and there is mine. You are one of my fave authors too.

right on

You are so right, SS. It takes very little to cast a vote. It would also be nice to see people who add comments actually grow a pair and do it from an account instead of anonymously. That's my pet peeve. That and people who complain about the spelling mistakes in a story but their comment has about ten spelling/grammar errors in it! If you're going to join the spelling/grammar Nazis, make sure you either can spell correctly or you use a good spell checker.
All kidding aside, SS, you're one of my favorite authors. Your stories about big titted mothers fucking their well hung sons really get me going! I hope to see a new Trophy Wives Club chapter soon.

VOTING

I select a category and then a story from within that group.

If the piece captures my interest and holds it through to the end I vote. In cases of really bad stuff I jump to the end and do not log vote but post a comment.

When a story has characters I enjoy and action that carry's me all the way to completion I'll vote and write a comment.

A piece which becomes interesting but then bores me I back out and move on with no vote and no comment.

Rationalization of my voting activities makes sense to me and because I like you have an asshole my opinion of what I do smells worse to others than it does to me. The inverse is also true. Write and derive pleasure, or don't write and go pout because either road you choose will be fine by me.

Off line reader

I tend to download and read later. Sorry this does not give you the feedback and commentary. I will sometimes go back and make a point of commenting on the exceptional ones especially if there is an ongoing series even if not related. The longer stories with many chapters are not always read promptly. The Wilbraham Fungus is very good so far. A little different in story structure and topic but very readable. Please continue and I will make an effort to vote more often.

Possible "fake" reads.

I don't know how views are calculated? I suspect the view count may be artificially high.

If I am logged in (so it knows via cookies who I am) read page 1 and 2 of a story in one sitting, then come back later and my browser reloads page 2 (after my computer was shut down) before I then read page 3, how many views is that? I could see arguments for 1 (I read the story), 2 (two different sessions), 3 (pages read) or 4 (times pages were loaded).

Possibly more importantly, I've occasionally forgotten a stories name I was halfway through reading when a crash happened (really bad power out here!), so I've used a search engine finding a sentence I remember to locate the page again. That means there are probably lots of search engines indexing the page, and probably viewing it multiple times over a year to see if the content has changed. Does the page views include all of these automated views?

vote for nobody

Vote for nobody.....because nobody cares.

There are many times and many reasons that I do not vote.
If I read it and say to myself "Meh" I don't bother voting, if the default rating is 3 a vote of 3 changes nothing.
If I don't finish it, no vote.
If the writer didn't finish it, no vote.
If I follow a similar story link to a story in a category I don't read (i.e. gay*), no vote close it and move on.

(* Not the only, just the shortest)

Voted on this one!

Gave you a "5"! This is one where it is a little easier to vote. I've long visited Literotica, but never really hung around long. On rare visits, I never even thought to rate, never looked at ratings or comments. I'd skim titles, read bits here and there, read a full story if I found one that was interesting. For some reason, after years of sneaking in and out, I happened upon some great writing and have been visiting the site more, exploring all the topics. I still don't feel terribly compelled to vote on every story I read, though if one stands out, I think I will try express that to the author.
I don't feel terribly compelled to vote because I'm not really sure what I would be voting on. Usually, I can read a few paragraphs, and tell the person is not a writer and I move on. I don't think that person deserves a negative rating for still being in the process of polishing writing skills. I guess it is like there are two things going on here - smut rating and writing rating, at least to me. So I guess maybe I should just be leaving comments as such: "5 on the smut scale! Keep working on yer writing!" ;-)

Absolute Fucking Garbage

Hehehehehe

I suspect Kalrissa's right ... on the search engines if not the rest of it. But there are lots of times when I'll bookmark a story to read later. My browser doesn't, but there are ones that will periodically check your bookmarks to see if they've changed. That could dramatically increase 'reads'.

And then there are the stories that are SO bad, you can't even make it through the first page, much less the whole story. I would suspect that would mean that the first story in a series would have more of the problem. I just bail rather than go to the end of the story to give it 1 star.

But there are stories that I admit I don't for. When I think it's been placed in the wrong category, I don't vote. I also won't vote for a story in a contest when I think they completely dropped the ball on the contest theme ... there was a nude day one this year that was a great story, but I saw no connection to nude day. Or the really good stories that have just enough grammar errors that I'm not sure if I should mark them down for it.

So anyway ... not voting is not necessarily apathy. In this particular case, I'm not voting because I don't know if I can agree with your premise, or if I think it should be looked into further to show if it's really a problem of the method of counting.

Other possibility,

Not sure if this was mentioned in the other 44 comments because I didn't bother to click on and read through them all, but my cookies sometimes don't let me re-vote on a story, even though I liked it enough to re-read it 5 or more times in a week.

Another possible reason (and the best in a writer's mind) is that they are too busy taking care of another problem, one created by your story, to even think about rating the story.

That said, I am also sure that apathy is the primary culprit. After all, 99% of the people who read the stories have probably never written one to share (I have shared a story before, although you can't read it anymore) and so they can't relate to your point or have never thought about it at the end.

Don't even pay attention to the gulf between number of views and voted. Let the rating rule and keep typing out the next story!

Totaly agree

Yep, I'm with you on this completely. Ithink it's only fair to vote, I always do!

voting

i did not know of this feature, i am still learning how to use this page, thanks for the info, have been writing a story, my english is terrible.

Berated for not voting? Seriously?

This isn't government. It means nothing in the end. If you enjoy writing erotica, as you claim, then by all means...continue writing. But if you're doing it for "votes" - and if you somehow have convinced yourself that you're "entitled" to those votes - then you're wrong in the most basic, common-sense meaning of the term "wrong". That is to say, it's not working the way you hoped it would, yet you still insist that it should and further frustrate yourself.

This site isn't about you. Just as you write for your own reasons, others visit this site and read for their own reasons - and not always for enjoyment of erotica (as is the case for me), but often simply due to morbid curiosity and/or a need to lash out at and attack anyone who publishes anything remotely sexual. Do you REALLY want those kind of "trollers" writing comment and voting? Think hard about what you wish for.

But the real point is, complaining about people not voting for your stories smacks of pure, self-deluded narcissism and any "results" you might get from it will, for the most part, be insincere and temporary. As I stated before, this site may be a "big thing" for you...but in the scope of All That Is Real Life, it's a drop in the bucket.

to vote or not

I read a lot of erotica on this site and on several others. I generally vote on those stories I like and more rarely comment on one here and there. I almost exclusively read incest stories, generally mother+son, some Brother+sister, and to a lesser extent father+daughter. I usually vote 5 stars (on this site) vary rarely 4. My reasons: 1. If a story is poorly written and I do not enjoy it if I vote a low score it might cause an aspiring author to quit writing before he or she developes the experience necessary to better themselves and very few if any authors start out fully capable of their best writing. 2. Many of the grammatical errors, misspellings, use of incorrect homophones, tense errors, and such like reflect problems a good editor could have corrected had one been available and I know that even experienced best-selling authors can experience these problems without a good editor and excellent proofreading. If I low grade a submission based on this again I may lose a potentially good author. 3 I, like most people, have certain likes and dislikes, for instance I personally prefer small breasts, b cup average a is not too small c is not too large, beyond c I am less comfortable and the larger the breast the less comfortable I am.
Breasts the size of medicine balls I consider a deformity. The same situation applies to penises, I myself am average size. I have used it successfully with many, many women in the 60 years I have been sexually active since I turned 12. I must admit that I had an excellent older woman as an early sexual partner and she taught me many things that contributed to my success in pleasing women. While the passing thought of a slightly longer and/or thicker penis has crossed my mind I have known men with large penises and women that have experienced those same penises and the problems that such size can cause. beyond 7"s and I start becoming uncomfortable with the story and penises the size of fire hydrants forced into "tiny virginal vaginas or pussies or cunts" makes me lose my suspension of disbelief. If I rate a story low because of my personal quirks I an doing an author and his/her avid readers a disservice whether the story code informs me of "size" or not. Other things that turn me personally off are facials (few, very few women I have known wanted to be subjected to facials or my other pet peeves which I shall mention here, this may be due to my subconsciously selecting women with high self esteem and there have been exceptions) but I am also not into scat, watersports, verbal degradation, snuff, rape, permanent damage and such. These factor into whether I like a story enough to rate it at less than a 5 or not. I usually do not rate a story if I cannot honestly give it a 5 since the lower rating may be due to my personal quirks rather than the authors story telling ability. I appreciate any person willing to attempt writing and wish them well. I hope that those authors that don't inspire me as a reader will find other readers that do find their submissions appealing. I thank all of you that write and wish you all well.

A bit contradictory

I sympathize with you over the lack of voting on stories. When I consider reading a story, I will shy away from low-rated ones so they are helpful. Still, the site doesn't make it clear how helpful it can be to vote. Some people may be concerned about voting for fears, although unwarranted, of some sinister horror after clicking.
I do take issue with you over the "this was garbage" complaint. You cannot bemoan the lack of interest in voting and commentary and then complain because you didn't like what someone says. If that person also voted a 1 should that vote be eliminated as well?
In any event, I am a great fan of your work and hope that you will continue to contribute it. Thanks.