A Sweep?

Bebop3

Really Experienced
Joined
Oct 24, 2017
Posts
293
Was there a sweep last night?

I woke up, logged in and every one of my stories had gone up in ratings, some significantly.
 
It's interesting. The sweep thing isn't a one time thing. I've experienced several sweeps so far in the last 6 hours. Each time 1 to 4 votes have been knocked off -- obviously "1s" -- and my score has gone up. So, presumably, it's not just an algorithm at work.
 
Haven't been paying attention to most of my stuff recently, but there was a sweep of the one I was loosely watching. It was 2 votes from crossing over to 2400 votes, and now it's 6 away. Score unchanged, because 4 votes is less than a drop in a bucket.

Most likely there were others, but I'm not familiar enough with where they were to even guess if they were swept as well.
 
From movement on my entry, at least two sweeps have gone through, one just before the contest closed, and one after the close.

My score jumped back up to where it was when it left the Category front page (several days after the contest opened), when it had already picked up 80% of its current views. Once it was off the category front page (ie: main point of entry being the contest front page), its score steadily declined to a low of 4.30. After the sweeps, it's now just shy of a Red H, pretty much where it was before the contest readership kicked in.

My conclusion - out-of-category readers (ie, those reading because it's in a contest) still don't like reading stories outside their usual category, and will still run the story down. All the added faves were from the first week, none came during the extra contest time. So, any benefit from being a contest entry? Based on my huge empirical data set of two contest entries over three years, for me, why bother?
 
My score jumped back up to where it was when it left the Category front page (several days after the contest opened), when it had already picked up 80% of its current views. Once it was off the category front page (ie: main point of entry being the contest front page), its score steadily declined to a low of 4.30. After the sweeps, it's now just shy of a Red H, pretty much where it was before the contest readership kicked in.

Unless you were on the category hub for a week then you were also on the New list when you dropped off the hub.

My lone experience in SciFi&F was somewhat like yours, although that was not a contest story. The score was okay while the story was visible on the hub, but it's a smallish category. Views/Vote was pretty good, but there weren't a lot of views. It was still visible on the New list after it slipped off the hub and the score dropped quite a bit. It just didn't have enough votes from the category readers to save it from the less-interested folks who found it on the New list.

Subsequent sweeps have raised its score a little, but not back to where it was.
 
They must've taken away at least 30 one-star-reviews from my story. Phew. I was afraid it was doomed to stay under the four-star-mark forever.
 
Yes, there was a big sweep on mine last night, which had followed by just a few hours the second of two obvious concerted attacks on it in the two and a half weeks it's remained in second place. And after last night's big sweep on it, it's been knocked down massively again. It's fairly obvious where the attack is coming from--and why. But there will be another big sweep sometime on Monday/Tuesday and no opportunity to zap after that. And the response to this coauthored piece (have there been coauthored pieces in the contest before?) has been quite nice regardless.
 
None of mine look like they've changed at all.

Dear Laurel, could you at least sweep the one that's under 4.50?
 
Yes, there was a big sweep on mine last night, which had followed by just a few hours the second of two obvious concerted attacks on it in the two and a half weeks it's remained in second place. And after last night's big sweep on it, it's been knocked down massively again. It's fairly obvious where the attack is coming from--and why. But there will be another big sweep sometime on Monday/Tuesday and no opportunity to zap after that. And the response to this coauthored piece (have there been coauthored pieces in the contest before?) has been quite nice regardless.

I can see that. The sweep last night brought one of mine up from 4.79 to 4.87 (with a "wow" on what sort of voting would cause that difference), to third place, just .01 behind yours and one other, which were at 4.88. And after the sweep today, it was knocked back down in one maneuver to 4.82. But that old first-place story, it's just been cooking along for three weeks on the same number. No one knocks it down. :rolleyes:
 
None of mine look like they've changed at all.

Dear Laurel, could you at least sweep the one that's under 4.50?

I've seen almost no change. Counting the contest entry, I have four stories up since the last contest, so they've never been swept. I expected to see some changes in them, but so far the contest story has had a few votes removed, one of the other stories has had one vote removed, and both scores went up by 0.01.

I haven't seen anything else change.
 
But that old first-place story, it's just been cooking along for three weeks on the same number. No one knocks it down. :rolleyes:

Gosh. I've been watching that one too. It's so amusingly obvious. And I can laugh given none of mine are up there this time so they haven't been picked on this time round. So good luck guys, may the best story win.
 
I saw it it on one of my stories. Not many votes so far, but after hanging at 3.8 for a week, it popped up to 4.1ish. Saw other stories that were around 4.8 fall a tenth. C'est la vie.
 
Most likely won't matter. It's always the final sweep that truly erases the garbage. By the time that one comes around, most of the bad actors have outed themselves, and the type of garbage they're dropping on your doorstep won't matter when the Hoover makes the final round to pick it up.

Only three days out from the end of the submission period, the recent sweeps probably aren't even contest targeted.

Scumbaggery isn't limited to the contests. The toplists are constantly manipulated. There are category haters. Personal trolls. All of them trigger sweeps, and no doubt gather data.

Only the sneakiest and most knowledgeable turd-flingers are likely to have any chance of escaping that final sweep. In the meantime, the sweaty masses of unsophisticated trolls are creating static that make utilizing that knowledge difficult.

The dedicated trolls probably hate the 1 star carpet bombers almost as much as authors do.

Not only Laurel sweeps; some dedicated followers put me back in place. My vote/view rate increased significantly, and my score dropped.

I can't be sure, but it looks like so far, no-one gave me 1*s for my story. I wouldn't be surprised if bombers bomb strategically, knowing that sweeps exist which erase the real outliers. I wonder if 2* and 3* are the new 1-bombs; with my number of reads, they can easily handle it, and I do see that nice seesaw pattern which makes that my story doesn't cross a certain limit (they still have a bit of work to do after the last sweep, but also I'm no real threat, so don't bother)
 
I am a threat to nobody. Two of mine got bombed and lost their hot status. Oh well... :eek:
 
And, just like that, down again. Somebody's apparently got a hobby. Well, it matters little come royalty time, right? :rolleyes:
 
And, just like that, down again. Somebody's apparently got a hobby. Well, it matters little come royalty time, right? :rolleyes:

The bigamous asshole. That troll is mine, I tell you. All mine. (Laughs maniacally while looking thru the gun safes for that Lahti 20mm and the AP rounds coz you know, for a troll you need AP).
 
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