Disappearing votes?

NotWise said:

Maybe I should put the big increase in votes into my list of anomalous voting behaviors. I haven't seen it myself, but I haven't published since August.

I'd be careful with things like high votes/view. Remember that there were hardly any views for more than four days (nineteenth through at least part of the twenty fourth) after the new story page became the default.

How are you guys distinguishing between new votes cast on stories, and old votes once lost and now being restored to the stories?

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I wrote a quick two-and-a-half page brother/sister stroker piece and put it on the site on March 27th. It was not my best writing, but that wasn't the point. I wanted to put something new out there despite the ongoing weirdness so I wouldn't feel like a "fair-weather friend" to the site -- holding back on publishing while they sort this mess out. However, this story has also served to give me fresh numbers to see what's going on.

Temper, Temper! wasn't on the site when all those votes disappeared and were subsequently reinstated, so everything on this new story (like HeyAll & Vix's piece) is new data.

I've written a few stories in this vein before. If it had been published 3 months ago, I would expect the score to settle somewhere in the 4.6-4.7 range. Right after the story appeared on the site, it had 4.7 with a dozen votes. Two hours later I checked on it again and the score had dropped to 4.19. It had over 300 votes and around 9000 views. A couple hours later I got a few comments, but not one of those was negative.

This was my 68th submission to the site, and it is an anomaly. None of those numbers make any sense when I compare it to everything else I've published.

Meanwhile, I am seeing a surge in new votes on my other stories. My scores across the board are dropping. Yesterday's snapshot showed 11 stories had dropped .01. Today another 13 stories dropped .01. Only one of those was published in the past 6 months. My overall average has dropped .03 from where it was this time last year (and I'm not counting this latest story in those numbers).

My greatest solace is that the site has actually acknowledged that something is going on and they are clearly working on it. I'm just sharing the data here since you don't really see those numbers on anyone else's stories without jumping through some hoops.

Manu has posted an explanation for the vote movements:

https://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1542934

I have all of my missing votes back, including all of the ones from what we thought were sweeps that had eliminated a lot of 1-bombs. My scores have suffered, some by as much as 0.1 lower than before. Not complaining, just an observation. So they have fixed the issue with the lost votes. Now, if they really do have a way to run sweeps, I wait eagerly for all of the newly acquired '1's to be swept.

Candy_Kane54 said:

I have all of my missing votes back, including all of the ones from what we thought were sweeps that had eliminated a lot of 1-bombs. My scores have suffered, some by as much as 0.1 lower than before. Not complaining, just an observation. So they have fixed the issue with the lost votes. Now, if they really do have a way to run sweeps, I wait eagerly for all of the newly acquired '1's to be swept.

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Well, I can't speak to the missing votes, but the ratings on all of my stories have gone deeply into the toilet. Stories that have been published for months with rating of over 4.5 and a "hot" tag are now 20-30 point lower with a few diving into the 3s.

Vote totals are exploding, ratings are dropping, three weeks ago I had seven stories labelled "hot" this morning only one."

LAH

In addition to Manu's thread today, here's a tweet from Lit a few hours ago.

We have an update on the recent Lit voting issues. TL;DR version: they should be fixed, expect a bit more turbulence. The long read version is on the Lit Forum:

https://twitter.com/literotica/status/1377686569838993409

New update:

Since the new Lit Story Page rollout, we've seen a big increase in new members.
The growth rate is much more than we anticipated, so you might notice slowness in the User Control Panel. Sorry for the slowdown while we work as fast as we can to increase the speed.

https://twitter.com/literotica/status/1379126396266577923

HeyAll said:

New update:

Since the new Lit Story Page rollout, we've seen a big increase in new members.
The growth rate is much more than we anticipated, so you might notice slowness in the User Control Panel. Sorry for the slowdown while we work as fast as we can to increase the speed.

https://twitter.com/literotica/status/1379126396266577923

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Thanks, but how weird is it that these explanations are being given on twitter, which many of us don't follow, and not on the Web site itself?

KeithD said:

Thanks, but how weird is it that these explanations are being given on twitter, which many of us don't follow, and not on the Web site itself?

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I agree!!!! Since the authors here are the life-blood of this great website I'm always surprised by the poor communication with the authors.

I'm retired now, but ran a dozen companies over the years --

(Production companies. It's not as if I was running real companies into the ground.)

-- and nothing killed one faster than poor communication. (I'm not suggesting that would ever happen here. Just that it's a poor practice.)

I have always believe that "failed expectations is the mother of bitterness.) Bad communication is frequently the cause for that...

LAH

Candy_Kane54 said:

I have all of my missing votes back, including all of the ones from what we thought were sweeps that had eliminated a lot of 1-bombs. My scores have suffered, some by as much as 0.1 lower than before. Not complaining, just an observation. So they have fixed the issue with the lost votes. Now, if they really do have a way to run sweeps, I wait eagerly for all of the newly acquired '1's to be swept.

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LAHomedog said:

Well, I can't speak to the missing votes, but the ratings on all of my stories have gone deeply into the toilet. Stories that have been published for months with rating of over 4.5 and a "hot" tag are now 20-30 point lower with a few diving into the 3s.

Vote totals are exploding, ratings are dropping, three weeks ago I had seven stories labelled "hot" this morning only one."

LAH

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Personally I don't think the problem has been solved. I've read Manu's post, and I appreciate the size of his task, but I think his confidence in the problem being solved is misplaced.

I haven't had many stories published and they don't receive the mass of votes received by others so it's easy to keep track of them. They haven't all been affected (although two of them lost the beloved H which has not been rectified which is annoying) but the one that stands out is my Summer Lovin' entry which has received the most votes of any of my stories. It was on 3.78 with 353 votes and then lost 60 votes, in more than one instance, which brought it down to 3.63. 40 votes have now been restored which brings it back to 3.73. What about the other 20 votes? I refuse to believe the other 20 votes are supposed to have been false 5 stars. I haven't got that many fans! If you aren't happy you would normally ask for a sweep hoping to get rid of the -bombs but how do you ask for a sweep to restore votes.

More work is required to fix things up it seems. An Indian lady I’ve edited a few stories for posted her latest two weeks before all this. It was bubbling along quite nicely and had settled at 4.6. It’s plummeted to 3.9 along with some of her other stories. It’s very depressing. She’s got another story ready to post, but it’s not going up until we’re confident things have stabilised.

She reckons Indian women here have their own troll army, but nothing as bad as this. I’ve suggested she waits another week to see if things get resolved, then PM Manu.

Emirus said:

Personally I don't think the problem has been solved. I've read Manu's post, and I appreciate the size of his task, but I think his confidence in the problem being solved is misplaced.

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Sadly, I fear you may be right. I got one-bombed two days ago and asked for a sweep. This morning, I had shifts in maybe half my stories. A couple went up, but most were down.

That's probably the reason the contest results were delayed for a week. To give time to try and fix things.

This has happened before but not from update problems, which is a whole other problem.

A large story site went down years ago. Shortly after that we had this site slow down because of the sudden influx of readers. Trolls went up and scores went down. It took years for things to settle out. This is also when the site went from basically a standalone site to a deluge of chapters that changed the face of the site.

Now we have another major reading site going down and there is another massive influx of readers and trolls. Welcome to the future.

TarnishedPenny said:

Sadly, I fear you may be right. I got one-bombed two days ago and asked for a sweep. This morning, I had shifts in maybe half my stories. A couple went up, but most were down.

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Two things:

1. How do you ask for a sweep? I would like one.

2. For everyone who is tracking this stuff right now, I went on to Non-Con tonight and counted the first 105 new stories starting at the most recently posted to I thought I had counted enough.

In 105 stories, only 7 had a rating of 4.0 or better. Seven!!!!!!!

"Something's wrong in the state of Denmark..."

LAHomedog said:

Two things:

1. How do you ask for a sweep? I would like one.

2. For everyone who is tracking this stuff right now, I went on to Non-Con tonight and counted the first 105 new stories starting at the most recently posted to I thought I had counted enough.

In 105 stories, only 7 had a rating of 4.0 or better. Seven!!!!!!!

"Something's wrong in the state of Denmark..."

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While the site is sorting out a global problem, I wouldn't be asking for a personal sweep. There's no need. The sweeps affect all stories, so when the site runs the algorithm, your stories will be scrubbed along with everyone else's.

TxRad said:

Now we have another major reading site going down and there is another massive influx of readers and trolls.

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The one you may be thinking of isn't gone, even if it wasn't for a day or three.

LAHomedog said:

Two things:

"Something's wrong in the state of Denmark..."

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Two things:

Denmark ain't a state.

The phrase as I recall it is ... 'Something stinks in Denmark and it ain't the rotten fish'.

jaF0 said:

The phrase as I recall it is ... 'Something stinks in Denmark and it ain't the rotten fish'.

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From Hamlet: "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

I'm not talking about mini hams.

I'm going to repost Manu's explanation from another board on this issue:

https://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1542934

Everyone needs to be patient. Based on my own results, the votes have stopped disappearing, and have been increasing steadily for almost all stories since around March 27. But my scores keep going down.

This appears to be the result of two things, but I think we need a little more time and explanation to know for sure:

1. When Lit reinstalled the lost votes in late March, those votes included some that had been removed before via their sweep system, so scores went down. They are still working on reapplying the sweep system, and that should result in some readjustment upward. It doesn't seem to have happened yet.

2. It appears there's an influx of new views and votes, possibly from another Site that went down, or possibly because the recent changes to this Site are prompting more votes. These new votes may simply be categorically lower, in which case we're just going to have to get used to them. It's no big deal IF the new voting scale applies to everyone.

SimonDoom said:

2. It appears there's an influx of new views and votes, possibly from another Site that went down,

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AS*** is not down.



As of now at least.

jaF0 said:

AS*** is not down.



As of now at least.

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Somebody said it was at some point recently, and when I checked it didn't come up. Now apparently it is there. So perhaps it was a temporary thing. But it might have been responsible for a temporary influx. I suspect it has more to do with changes to this Site.

SimonDoom said:

I'm going to repost Manu's explanation from another board on this issue:

https://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1542934

Everyone needs to be patient. Based on my own results, the votes have stopped disappearing, and have been increasing steadily for almost all stories since around March 27. But my scores keep going down.

This appears to be the result of two things, but I think we need a little more time and explanation to know for sure:

1. When Lit reinstalled the lost votes in late March, those votes included some that had been removed before via their sweep system, so scores went down. They are still working on reapplying the sweep system, and that should result in some readjustment upward. It doesn't seem to have happened yet.

2. It appears there's an influx of new views and votes, possibly from another Site that went down, or possibly because the recent changes to this Site are prompting more votes. These new votes may simply be categorically lower, in which case we're just going to have to get used to them. It's no big deal IF the new voting scale applies to everyone.

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The fact that the site folks have noted the issue, and said that it's being addressed, is heartening. I hope everything works out. But I note for the record that the problem seems still to exist. In the last week, one of my stories (posted a year and a half ago and lately with very little traffic), has had multiple instances of both vote loss and added votes that are very low, dropping its rating by three tenths of a point. Again, this isn't a complaint, just a report.

jaF0 said:

The one you may be thinking of isn't gone, even if it wasn't for a day or three.



Two things:

Denmark ain't a state.

The phrase as I recall it is ... 'Something stinks in Denmark and it ain't the rotten fish'.

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You are right. I have committed the cardinal sin of misquoting Shakespeare. It is "Something's rotten in the state of Denmark."

LAH

LAHomedog said:

You are right. I have committed the cardinal sin of misquoting Shakespeare. It is "Something's rotten in the state of Denmark."

LAH

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I’m pretty sure Shakespeare misquoted the Shakespeares he sometimes stole from, so it’s morally fine.

jaF0 said:

Denmark ain't a state.

The phrase as I recall it is ... 'Something stinks in Denmark and it ain't the rotten fish'.

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Yes, a country can be referred to as a state.