The Official Author's Hangout Earth Day 2013 Contest Support Thread

Are you guys kidding? I went from 537 votes down to 378 within 12 hours. I posted a complaint through the Report Story asking what the hell happened. I've not had a response.

I'm pissed.
 
You've been swept as the system does occasionally, especially at contest time, and apparently the system believes your story received ballot box stuffing. Did your rating go up or down? That will tell you what direction the system thinks the stuffing leaned. The sweeps on the current contest aren't over, by the way. The big one comes right after voting closes.

Nobody knows what formula the sweep system uses or how legitimate it is. (I think my contest story has been swept at about the same proportional rate so far as yours, if that's any comfort. The rating went up dramatically, though, so for me the sweeps have been a "good thing"). At the end of the day, it's not the number of votes in a contest you got (above 24), it's the rating.
 
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My rating went down big time. I don't know how or who was tampering with it. I have a killer story out there. It was clearly manipulated. For the first few days I could see it slowly but steadily climb. Then it dropped like stone.

I think I was 1-bombed to hell.

It's actually put me off the whole contest thing. It was fun at first. Now I feel stupid. I've wasted my time and effort.

The whole point was to deliver to others, to the maximum number of people I could reach, a bit of titillation. A bit of pleasure in their lives.

And that's been, it seems, denied by the manipulations of others. For the benefit of their egos.

Yeah, I'm pissed about it all.
 
My rating went down big time. I don't know how or who was tampering with it. I have a killer story out there. It was clearly manipulated. For the first few days I could see it slowly but steadily climb. Then it dropped like stone.

I think I was 1-bombed to hell.

It's actually put me off the whole contest thing. It was fun at first. Now I feel stupid. I've wasted my time and effort.

The whole point was to deliver to others, to the maximum number of people I could reach, a bit of titillation. A bit of pleasure in their lives.

And that's been, it seems, denied by the manipulations of others. For the benefit of their egos.

Yeah, I'm pissed about it all.

Personally, I don't enter contests with even a hope of winning. I do it for the exposure.

You didn't waste your time; your story's out there, and it's being read. Why should the votes and ratings matter?
 
My rating went down big time.

If your rating went down in a sweep (most of them go up in the sweeps), I'm afraid the system is giving the judgment that more ineligible votes (according to whatever its formula thinks are ineligible) voted in favor of your story than against it (ergo stuffing the ballot box in your favor). That's something to think about in thinking who to be pissed at.

It would take some imagination to think that the system favors some stories over the others in conducting sweeps (although there are a few here who do say they think that), so the ax should be falling pretty fairly across the set--going after the false voters, not the authors (assuming they aren't one and the same). Those who have people stuffing the box in their stories' favor are going to cause a decrease in rating in the sweeps and those who have people trying to deep six their stories in ineligible ways are going to benefit from a rating increase in the sweeps.

And, again, the greater sweeps are probably yet to come.

I'm pretty sure, by the way, that all of us who have stories in the contest think we wrote a killer story. Might think about that too when posting to the thread that the other contest authors are posting to.

Checking the current ratings on your two contest stories reveals them both still to be quite high relative to others in the contest. This may not be the thread to be producing sour grapes insensitively.

(By the way, developing thoughts that there's some sort of old-boy/girl network favored by the system in the contest is a nonstarter. A good many winners of contests here are first-time posters.)
 
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My rating went down big time. I don't know how or who was tampering with it. I have a killer story out there. It was clearly manipulated. For the first few days I could see it slowly but steadily climb. Then it dropped like stone.

I think I was 1-bombed to hell.

It's actually put me off the whole contest thing. It was fun at first. Now I feel stupid. I've wasted my time and effort.

The whole point was to deliver to others, to the maximum number of people I could reach, a bit of titillation. A bit of pleasure in their lives.

And that's been, it seems, denied by the manipulations of others. For the benefit of their egos.

Yeah, I'm pissed about it all.

This usually happens for one of two reasons or a combination of the two. The first is over zealous fans and the second is someone stuffing the ballot box which has happened to several in the past, especially if they were incest stories. Some person thinks they can either rig the contest that way or run off competition in that category. Sometimes the two happen together.

Sorry it happened to you this time.

Ask LC about it. It happened to him in his first or second contest.
 
Much more thoroughly and bitingly put than my post, sr.

Years ago, during one of the contests, I placed a single vote on two contest entries I had submitted. One was a 1, the other a 5. I was testing the waters, so to speak, about the way sweeps work. Both had low enough vote numbers that I was able to tell when they were swept, and they were.

I am not for a moment suggesting this is the case with eclare. However, if the software Lit uses to track voting can read votes from individual ISPs, then they could easily sweep away votes from the authors themselves and, more importantly, multiple votes from the same ISP. If an author has a bunch of fans who keep logging in to vote up their favorite, that could end up working against them.
 
Much more thoroughly and bitingly put than my post, sr.

Years ago, during one of the contests, I placed a single vote on two contest entries I had submitted. One was a 1, the other a 5. I was testing the waters, so to speak, about the way sweeps work. Both had low enough vote numbers that I was able to tell when they were swept, and they were.

I am not for a moment suggesting this is the case with eclare. However, if the software Lit uses to track voting can read votes from individual ISPs, then they could easily sweep away votes from the authors themselves and, more importantly, multiple votes from the same ISP. If an author has a bunch of fans who keep logging in to vote up their favorite, that could end up working against them.

Yes on the fan, since all votes by that ISP will be swept.
 
I wish I had your conviction on this matter, Tx. But unless we get a peek inside Manu's hard drive, I guess we'll never know for sure.

Over the years I've picked up on some of the patterns. Dark has also. We just don't pass along the information. A certain person would give his left nut to know how the sweeps work, since he is the main reason it was implemented in the first place.
 
However, if the software Lit uses to track voting can read votes from individual ISPs, then they could easily sweep away votes from the authors themselves and, more importantly, multiple votes from the same ISP.

Laurel has declared in a not long ago post to the forum that an author can vote on his/her own story. From a few experiments, I think that if an author does, that vote is going to be swept.

I think it's ludicrous for anyone to think that whatever the sweeping system is that it treats individual stories differently, giving favor to some over others. Thus, I think whatever the sweeping does, it has an equal effect across the board, and so the effect on one story relevant to another is a wash.

And as far as biting, I admit to be irritated at some of the insensitivities some entrants in the contests can show to other entrants when posting to the contest thread (among these would be begging votes--especially scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours--right there on the contest thread. Haven't seen too much of that recently, but, to me, that's a slap in the face to the other entrants--as is saying "my story's the best thing since cream cheese" on this thread, which I've also seen in the past.)

Logic, further, would dictate that you're putting your head in a noose to complain about sweeps that take your rating down. That just logically points a finger at you and yours as far as what the system is signaling.
 
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Gentlemen, thank you for your consideration in this matter. And the insights that you are providing me.

I've had 159 votes knocked off. There's something screwy going on.

I don't have a fan base like you guys do. I can't imagine that someone out there would just become so suddenly enamored with my work that they would stuff the ballot box a 159 times on my behalf.

And I'm not so stupid to believe that the software doesn't pick up IP voting address duplications right away.

Something's screwy.
 
And as far as biting, I admit to be irritated at some of the insensitivities some entrants in the contests can show to other entrants when posting to the contest thread (among these would be begging votes--especially scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours--right there on the contest thread. Haven't seen too much of that recently, but, to me, that's a slap in the face to the other entrants--as is saying "my story's the best thing since cream cheese" on this thread, which I've also seen in the past.)

I remember when there were quite a few scratch my back votes being passed around. I remember looking at my comments list and seeing all the names I regularly posted with, along with the votes they had given me. While I never thought I posted crap, I sometimes wondered if the votes given were an accurate reflection of my writing, or my forum personality.

Personally, the only time I commented on a story (back when the vote of a commenter was included with the comment; glad they changed that) was when I genuinely thought it deserved a 5. I once gave a fellow AHer a 4 in a comment and received a PM in response basically telling me I had killed that particular story. So I don't leave comments anymore, and if I vote, I vote according to what I've read.

Regarding what other writers post here . . . eh. :p We all think we're good. Ego goes with the territory. But I'll admit to having moments of "just who the fuck do you think you are" when I read some of the tirades.
 
Gentlemen, thank you for your consideration in this matter. And the insights that you are providing me.

I've had 159 votes knocked off. There's something screwy going on.

I don't have a fan base like you guys do. I can't imagine that someone out there would just become so suddenly enamored with my work that they would stuff the ballot box a 159 times on my behalf.

And I'm not so stupid to believe that the software doesn't pick up IP voting address duplications right away.

Something's screwy.

Keep in mind that any tracking software in use by Lit is, to us, speculative. So conjecturing on what it may or may not accomplish is ultimately a futile gesture.

As far as how many votes you've lost . . . .

I once submitted a story in a contest in the Mature category. It was my first (and thus far only) story in that category and had no idea concerning the readership there. In the first day, I had over 100 votes. After three days, it went over 500. By the close of the contest, it had something like 800 votes.

Then I lost 200 to sweeps. And another 100 or so. By the time it went into the gullet, there were only about 550 votes or so. That was the most dramatic series of sweeps I had ever seen on a story.

I learned that the more votes you get, the more will be swept during a contest. If you have 50 votes, you'll barely notice the loss of 5. If you have 500, that's an entirely different matter.
 
The average number of votes swept from a contest story when it's all said and done is about 20%, with 30-35% not being uncommon, and 50% not being unheard of.

As always, I'll tell you that your fanbase may very well be your worst enemy. I strongly suspect that once someone is identified as a "problem voter" that the sweep wipes out every vote from that IP/ID it finds. If your fans ( or fans of the category ) have been trying to "help", then they may actually be doing damage.

Once I started regularly requesting at the end of stories, on my website, etc. that readers play fair, I saw the percentage of swept votes on my stories drop, and the final scores rise. When I lapsed for a while, I saw the trend reverse. Then when I went back to putting it on pretty much every posting again, I went back to level.

When you enter a contest, or when the monthly ( rare :p ) contest results are tallied, you're going to lose a buttload of votes. It's always been that way.
 
My rating went down big time. I don't know how or who was tampering with it. I have a killer story out there. It was clearly manipulated. For the first few days I could see it slowly but steadily climb. Then it dropped like stone.

I think I was 1-bombed to hell.

It's actually put me off the whole contest thing. It was fun at first. Now I feel stupid. I've wasted my time and effort.

The whole point was to deliver to others, to the maximum number of people I could reach, a bit of titillation. A bit of pleasure in their lives.

And that's been, it seems, denied by the manipulations of others. For the benefit of their egos.

Yeah, I'm pissed about it all.



I think competitions are about more than votes. For me it's the comments I want. I don't get many but they help me identify where I'm at. The votes are just numbers- I know I'll never get enough to win and it doesn't worry me. I know I get a lot more comments in competitions. I suspect my stories are a little too vanilla mostly and some times a little too imaginative. I like to try new things to see how they go. I find that stories in competitions have a lot more context than other stories. I wonder if that's the observation of others. Competitions are simply a learning tool. They help to elevate the skills of the authorship on the site. That is a good thing, every one benefits- reader, writer and site.
 
The average number of votes swept from a contest story when it's all said and done is about 20%, with 30-35% not being uncommon, and 50% not being unheard of.


Why are the votes swept? As they seem to disappear wouldn't it be more appropriate that they have been vacuumed?- Just wondering.
 
Personally, the only time I commented on a story (back when the vote of a commenter was included with the comment; glad they changed that) was when I genuinely thought it deserved a 5. I once gave a fellow AHer a 4 in a comment and received a PM in response basically telling me I had killed that particular story. So I don't leave comments anymore, and if I vote, I vote according to what I've read.

I believe it would be nice if Lit could somehow institute a voting system that would require any votes of 1 or 2 to be accompanied by a comment, otherwise it won't go through. Authors are trashed for the strangest and most ridiculous reasons, and I believe authors who offer their work for free should at least be given some explanation of a low-vote because that can help us improve on our work. Now it's a voluntary system and the low-baller can do so in complete stealth, which isn't, in my opinion, fair to the authors.

Regarding what other writers post here . . . eh. :p We all think we're good. Ego goes with the territory. But I'll admit to having moments of "just who the fuck do you think you are" when I read some of the tirades.

I hope I wasn't one of them. I don't believe the shoe fits in this case, but I'd hate to know that someone has taken my comments the wrong way {happened to me many times before}.
 
You mean, you're just being your charming self as always? :D

No, it means I'm being straightforward and honest about it and applying common sense. The post I was quoting was obnoxious and insulting to other entrants in the contest, even if it might have been innocently clueless on sensitivities to others. Why shouldn't it be directly answered? Might jolt someone into broadening perspectives and doing research or at least asking questions about the system before jumping to "I'm being robbed in ways no one else is for a story I know should win because it's better than anyone else's."
 
No, it means I'm being straightforward and honest about it and applying common sense. The post I was quoting was obnoxious and insulting to other entrants in the contest, even if it might have been innocently clueless on sensitivities to others. Why shouldn't it be directly answered? Might jolt someone into broadening perspectives and doing research or at least asking questions about the system before jumping to "I'm being robbed in ways no one else is for a story I know should win because it's better than anyone else's."

I.O.W., being your charming self. ;)

Look, you can be straightforward and honest with a dose of common sense tossed in without being abrasive. You're a writer. It's your craft. Surely your vernacular and your power to convey your message to others is broad enough and good enough to be able to inform someone they're getting a little too cheeky without acting like a schoolmarm. No one likes to be talked down to or scolded, Pilot. Including you. :cattail:
 
No, it means I'm being straightforward and honest about it and applying common sense. The post I was quoting was obnoxious and insulting to other entrants in the contest, even if it might have been innocently clueless on sensitivities to others. Why shouldn't it be directly answered? Might jolt someone into broadening perspectives and doing research or at least asking questions about the system before jumping to "I'm being robbed in ways no one else is for a story I know should win because it's better than anyone else's."

I'm sorry if you found my post to be obnoxious and insulting to other entrants. It certainly wasn't my intent.

Furthermore, I didn't mean to convey the message that my story should win or that it's better than anyone else's. I'm not sure where that notion came from.

I saw the posts from SSS indicating that one, two votes are swept from stories. And I see mine swept by 159. Naturally I have to think - what the fuck?

You guys are now clearing it up for me. And I thank you for doing so.
 
I'm sorry if you found my post to be obnoxious and insulting to other entrants. It certainly wasn't my intent.

Furthermore, I didn't mean to convey the message that my story should win or that it's better than anyone else's. I'm not sure where that notion came from.

I saw the posts from SSS indicating that one, two votes are swept from stories. And I see mine swept by 159. Naturally I have to think - what the fuck?

You guys are now clearing it up for me. And I thank you for doing so.

As Dark noted, you had a massive number to total votes. Which is a good thing. You also had an extremely high rating (and still do--on both of your stories. Historical perspective, however, would tell you that either bragging or complaining about your story ratings on the contest forum thread will encourage grudge down voting). Which is another good thing. In spite of that, you aren't experiencing anything that the rest of the entrants aren't experiencing (many in the same sweep proportion) and have been down through recent contest years (the period in which the web site instituted its sweeping program because contest vote cheating was getting just ridiculous and targeted.)
 
I believe it would be nice if Lit could somehow institute a voting system that would require any votes of 1 or 2 to be accompanied by a comment, otherwise it won't go through. Authors are trashed for the strangest and most ridiculous reasons, and I believe authors who offer their work for free should at least be given some explanation of a low-vote because that can help us improve on our work. Now it's a voluntary system and the low-baller can do so in complete stealth, which isn't, in my opinion, fair to the authors.

Now, that's a suggestion that I would love to see implemented. Once upon a time, any comment had to have a vote next to it, or else the comment wouldn't be posted. But you're proposing the opposite. This suggestion would be worth a PM to Laurel.

I hope I wasn't one of them. I don't believe the shoe fits in this case, but I'd hate to know that someone has taken my comments the wrong way {happened to me many times before}.

No, I haven't seen you bitch that much. ;)

You guys are now clearing it up for me. And I thank you for doing so.

Welcome to the club. :D
 
I'm sorry if you found my post to be obnoxious and insulting to other entrants. It certainly wasn't my intent.

Furthermore, I didn't mean to convey the message that my story should win or that it's better than anyone else's. I'm not sure where that notion came from.

I saw the posts from SSS indicating that one, two votes are swept from stories. And I see mine swept by 159. Naturally I have to think - what the fuck?

You guys are now clearing it up for me. And I thank you for doing so.

SSS hasn't done an update on his numbers since the contest ended and the sweeps began.
 
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