selection bias leading to inflated tease ratings

[ScrawnyCat]

It occurs to me while browsing the archives that many teases have higher ratings than they deserve. While I like the idea of helping the community by rating teases, often when the first few pages of a tease are awful I just move on to the next one without doing so. I'm probably not alone in this. Thus we see many[1] teases with comparatively few votes averaging 3.something with painfully bad prose and repulsive models.

This makes it harder than it should be to find the good teases of yesteryear.

Suggestions:
Allow voting from the front page list, preferably by clicking the stars (like on IMDB).

-or-

Use something a little bit more sophisticated than an average to sort the teases. The number of times a tease has been opened is available, but mostly useless for this purpose[2]. Presumably the number of unique (registered?) viewers can be obtained though. This should make it possible to guesstimate how many people left in disgust after the first page.
What to do with that number is another question. The most straightforward way would be to add (viewers - voters) votes of "1" (or "0" if you are feeling extra mean (no pun intended)) to the average. But that might be a bit unforgiving.
In particular it doesn't address the fact that presumably lots of people who have completed a tease (and liked it) can't be bothered to rate it.
One might try to check for this (only add proxy votes for people who have seen the first page of a tease but not the last one, for example), but this is very inelegant.. Anyway the first approach is likely the best one, my inner computer scientist trying to find an algorithmic solution to the problem should probably be ignored.

[1]
In fact right now there are only _two_ published teases in the entire database with ratings below 2, and a few dozen between 2 and 3. The vast majority of teases that people have voted for[3] are between 3 and 4. This makes sense because people will currently only vote on the teases that are good enough to watch in their entirety.
[2]
Many of the really bad teases have views/votes ratios of about 10, suggesting that lots of people do quit before getting to the end of them. But some of the most highly rated teases have almost twice as bad (high) ratios. This is probably because people watch these many times. Which is why I suggested adjusting the averages using unique viewers instead of total views. Of course total views (and the ability to sort by it) is useful in itself, but that's somewhat beside the point.
[3]
Incidentally letting us rate teases from the list would also make it really easy to solve the problem of rating flash teases.



TLDR: let us vote on teases without having to click through to the end of them plz

[cumhardy]

I agree with this. now if i find a really bad tease (baddly written/bad pics etc- not teases that dont appeal to me) I usually try to skip to the end to rate it properly. If I open a tease but it just isnt to my taste I just exit it and look for another.

ive found its possible to rate teases more than once so its possible to cheat the ratings too (not that I do)

[Hockeyfreak2700]

Seems like that is way more complicated than it has to be.

Milovana should just list how many slides each tease contains. Then if you think it stinks you can jump to the very last page. I think they are trying to get you to read the whole tease before you rate it though.

[dark]

The idea is that nobody should vote a tease he don't know. I think it's very fair that you can only rate the tease when you read it full.

I understand the point, but this is a two sided medal. To be honest: I am not sure about the best solution.

[camipco]

Hmmm. Good point. Maybe if each page except the last could have a bail out button, and the number of bail outs is counted in the rating somehow.

[Mr.Panty]

You make some good points. However, I think it is only fair that you are allowed to rate a tease only after you have read the entire tease. You have to give a tease the benefit of the doubt and read through it. It's kind of like watching a movie and turning it off after five minutes. Some movies start off really bad, but by the end, they may turn out to be pretty good.

You can always just skip or click through the pictures if you don't like the writing. It doesn't take long to click the continue button a few times to skim through it. Some teases do get better after a few pages, and yes, some don't. But remember that the authors are giving it a try, and if people didn't try writing a tease than we would have no teases to rate in the first place.

[MartinC]

I hate to go all mathematical here, but actually in terms of the ranking of ratings, the absence of the very low scores does not matter all that much. A good tease scores a range of scores in the 4 to 5 region, and you are saying - correctly, in my opinion - that a poor tease should score in the 1-2.5 region but doesn't because those who would have rated it 1 or 2 often drop out before rating it. However, it seems to me that those who stick with it to the end and rate it probably still don't give it a very good score. Sure, its score ends up higher than it would have if rating were compulsory but it can never actually overtake a better tease.

So the answer to your "problem" (in quotes because I don't really think it is a problem at all) is to just mentally adjust your definition of a "good" tease ... teases really only rank from about 2.5 to 4.8. The fact that the scores don't go very low is not an issues as long as poor teases aren't getting scores somehow higher than the good teases, and I can't see how the evidence you've presented could result in that. The only bias I could see really is that LONG poor teases might get better scores than SHORT poor teases, but that's hardly a major issue because it really only affects the low end of the scale: no TOTM problems.

[Victor2184]

These are my opinions on the topic.

The rating system is quite fine. You absolutely should have to go through an entire tease in order to vote on it. This serves 2 purposes, for one you give THE AUTHOR a chance since i certainly consider this art and expression or if its soooo bad that you'll take the time to flip 30 plus pages just to vote it a 1 then it must deserve it. Making it easier to vote creates remarkably false numbers, both inflated for any reason or biased to the less than mainstream kinks.

So, while almost all my posts involve a suggestion of a way to better the site or simply a suggestion to better navigate the site as is, I'd would very much prefer the rating system in place STAY exactly as is.

That said i think a dump out button would be a remarkable idea. Basically great and good teases will end up with high votes and a good ratio of votes/views as well as a good score and few dumps. Decent to below average teases would have similar viewership yet a less consistent ratio and fewer votes altogether possible an up tick in dumps. Of course just plain bad teases would actually have more dumps that any other category though ratings could look similar to mediocre teases. It could help both sides of this community because authors can establish feedback without having people rip the tease on the boards, which needs to stop by the way, and viewers that are overcritical and not willing/able to handle less than perfection from the free artistic expressions found here could avoid them altogether.

Personally i think there are very few 'bad' teases on here, in classics or otherwise. Also I'll give any author a chance to close strong, if not better luck next time.

Lastly lets stop ripping on authors and contributors to this site and this board. You all have a right to say whatever but lets just stop unnecessary and non-constructive criticism. If we lost Princess Raquel permanently it would be a shame, on the flip side everyone has an opinion and boards provide people with no spine the feeling of invincibility. I suggest we all take things less personally when in such a public forum. If someone really has a problem with you I'm sure they'll take the time to privately discuss your differences, and if not then don't sweat it cause it must not have been important and neither are they.

[Argie Slave]

An idea starts to creep in my mind... what do you think?

Maybe we should change the overall tease rating system for a page by page basis. So each page would have an individual rating and the tease rating would be an average of them all.

[dark]

An idea starts to creep in my mind... what do you think?

Maybe we should change the overall tease rating system for a page by page basis. So each page would have an individual rating and the tease rating would be an average of them all.

Do you really think the people would like to rate every site of a webtease? That would destroy the atmosphere. A lot of people are already annoyed about the "continue" button, so we created the flashteases. But very creative idea, maybe you get some advocates