Ratings of webteases and counting views

[cactusman]

I posted a very long tease last night "Lori's Fantasy-Based Teasing" and a few seconds after it was posted it supposedly had 67 views. I wonder how views are counted, just by someone opening up the first page? If so I'd suggest that a view should be only counted if someone accesses the second page (of a tease with at least 2 pages), or if someone accesses the last page.

I also wonder if robots or spiders are automatically accessing the teases and if those are counted as views.

Similarly, I wonder if some web robots or spiders are rating teases, as some of them 'click' various buttons to see if they access new content. If that is the case it might be best to only allow users who are logged in to rate teases.

Finally, here's a suggestion that will be controversial, but I think is an issue. Last month, I looked at the other TOTM nominees, and one of them "So, Guys Really Do Make You Hot" (http://www.milovana.com/webteases/showtease.php?id=6695) has a lot of gay content. I personally don't like that, and rated the tease poorly, and I assume that the author of that tease would have the same reaction to my teases (which are somewhat opposite, as I never so much as show a guy in the pictures, etc.). But this just means we're reflecting our own different prejudices onto the ratings. If users were logged in and said what their preferences were (gay, straight, etc.) in their profile then the site could use that to make the ratings be sub-categorized. So a gay guy could rate teases and other gay guys could search for ratings based on what other gay guys thought, instead of having those rating be lost in the general swamp of everyone. (A default for sorting teases by ratings could be to use the same orientation as the user asking for the rating sort.) Similarly, straight guys could look for teases based on ratings from other straight guys. I think this would have the effect of a more useful rating system for everyone, and especially for minority groups, which presumably the gays are here, whose ratings are currently swamped by the larger masses (I assume).

Anyway, that's just a suggestion, and I hope it's not misinterpreted. (I am happy to have everyone do their own thing, and I worry that this will seem to be gay-bashing, when it's not intended that way.) I will now duck and run.

[cactusman]

I also wonder if robots or spiders are automatically accessing the teases and if those are counted as views.

If you look at the user list, you will see several bots and spiders currently accessing the system (currently there seem to be 5 of them).

I suggest that perhaps that you make a robots.txt file that stops them from accessing the webteases area of the site. This would not only solve the problem of them being counted as "views" but would also make it harder for certain companies to find stolen copyright content (like all the pictures in all the teases ).

[Drum]

robots & spiders do not click buttons if its a post action and usually do not support javascript. So they should not be able to vote. They do index teases which is a good thing if you want new users to join this site. So stopping them from indexing the webteases would be a bad idea.

As for the gay content. The description of the tease had a warning in it. The easiest solution would be to simply not vote. I do not like most of the teases. I'm not into being a slave or something. I simply close the tease and look for something I like.

Also the lines between gay & straight in this world are very vague. Would you be gay if a mistress forced you to do something bisexual/gay?

The only thing that might making searching for teases easier is perhaps adding weight/priority to keywords. If the tease is mainly with shemales the weight would be bigger and always the first shown on the front page. Right now not all keywords are shown on the frontpage under the tease.

[cactusman]

robots & spiders do not click buttons if its a post action and usually do not support javascript. So they should not be able to vote. They do index teases which is a good thing if you want new users to join this site. So stopping them from indexing the webteases would be a bad idea.

As for the gay content. The description of the tease had a warning in it. The easiest solution would be to simply not vote. I do not like most of the teases. I'm not into being a slave or something. I simply close the tease and look for something I like.

Also the lines between gay & straight in this world are very vague. Would you be gay if a mistress forced you to do something bisexual/gay?

The only thing that might making searching for teases easier is perhaps adding weight/priority to keywords. If the tease is mainly with shemales the weight would be bigger and always the first shown on the front page. Right now not all keywords are shown on the frontpage under the tease.

I'm not sure about what robots and spiders do but if what you say is right, then that's not a problem.

I agree there isn't any easy way to categorize things... I guess tagging is probably the best one can do.

[curved]

Last month, I looked at the other TOTM nominees, and one of them "So, Guys Really Do Make You Hot" (http://www.milovana.com/webteases/showtease.php?id=6695) has a lot of gay content. I personally don't like that, and rated the tease poorly, and I assume that the author of that tease would have the same reaction to my teases

If I start a tease and then find it has content I am not into then I just quit it. Seems a bit unfair to rate a tease as bad just because of personal taste of the content rather than actual quality of tease. But of course there are no rules to rating so thats entirely up to you.

Personally I like the surprises that some of the teases have so putting warnings up will ruin that for me. I guess you, and most other users of this site, are not likely to actually be offended by any tease here even if you are not keen on the content. For that reason I hope there are no changes at all and tagging remains at the discretion of the author.

[cactusman]

If I start a tease and then find it has content I am not into then I just quit it. Seems a bit unfair to rate a tease as bad just because of personal taste of the content rather than actual quality of tease. But of course there are no rules to rating so that's entirely up to you.

Yes, I think that is the right thing to do and it's what I usually do also.

[seraph0x]

Our forum software has heuristics to tell bots and spiders apart from regular users (that how they are shown separately in the user list). We use the same functionality to not count views from bots on the webteases.

But even if we didn't, it wouldn't make much of a difference. About 5-10 views are from bots as opposed to several thousand from our users.

Bots can not vote just like Drum explained.

I suggest that perhaps that you make a robots.txt file that stops them from accessing the webteases area of the site. This would not only solve the problem of them being counted as "views" but would also make it harder for certain companies to find stolen copyright content (like all the pictures in all the teases ).

We are far, far too big to try and hide from content owners. We are constantly talking to content owners and fortunately they are always looking for subscribers and quite willing to pay for it. Usually we don't charge of course. However, after successfully launching the cooperation with Kink.com we are now looking to increasingly ask for revenue shares and increase the percentage of so-called gallery teases (= teases created from the galleries we provide, rather than user-uploaded images.) There we usually get the free images plus 50-60% of whatever the company makes from our referrals.

Our hosting costs alone still vastly exceed our revenues, by the end of 2010 I want to get to a point where the site sustains itself.

If users were logged in and said what their preferences were (gay, straight, etc.) in their profile then the site could use that to make the ratings be sub-categorized.

We are working on a pretty in-depth profile/preference system, the launch of which is another one of my goals for this year.

I posted a very long tease last night "Lori's Fantasy-Based Teasing" and a few seconds after it was posted it supposedly had 67 views. I wonder how views are counted, just by someone opening up the first page? If so I'd suggest that a view should be only counted if someone accesses the second page (of a tease with at least 2 pages), or if someone accesses the last page.

If we only counted the last page, longer teases would be at a large disadvantage. The views are only showing how many people gave the tease a shot after reading the title and description. For a more in-depth idea of how well the tease was received I recommend you look at the rating instead.

We used to also show the number of people who rated the tease, which may be closer to what you're looking for. I'll think about a way to bring that number back, maybe as part of a more in-depth statistics page for authors.

As always, thanks for the suggestions.

[curved]

We are constantly talking to content owners and fortunately they are always looking for subscribers and quite willing to pay for it. Usually we don't charge of course.

Any likelihood with a link up to Only Tease? A fair few of their pics are used here and, though i havent subscribed for a bit, it is one of the few pay sites i have felt i got good value for money.

[seraph0x]

Any likelihood with a link up to Only Tease? A fair few of their pics are used here and, though i havent subscribed for a bit, it is one of the few pay sites i have felt i got good value for money.

We're already signed up with OT Publishing Limited.