New readers .. maybe

As I open up the favorites of people who favorite or comment to me, I'm seeing a new thing - people who have an account member since date (not last edited) of very recently - like within 24 hours - but already dozens to scores of favorite authors or stories. I get that some people find this place and buckle in for some serious stroking, but with refractory periods and all it's hard for me to believe someone favorites 30 authors and 50 stories all in their first day. And I don't remember it being like this in the past.

Others seeing it? Possible explanations? Are these fake accounts, or people somehow renaming old accounts with new user names? It's shaking my already limited faith in the numbers.

I'd seen other shifts in the demographics of at least the people who favorite me, but there's not enough of a sample size to really get into that. This change seems kind of remarkable though.

HandsInTheDark said:

As I open up the favorites of people who favorite or comment to me, I'm seeing a new thing - people who have an account member since date (not last edited) of very recently - like within 24 hours - but already dozens to scores of favorite authors or stories. I get that some people find this place and buckle in for some serious stroking, but with refractory periods and all it's hard for me to believe someone favorites 30 authors and 50 stories all in their first day. And I don't remember it being like this in the past.

Others seeing it? Possible explanations? Are these fake accounts, or people somehow renaming old accounts with new user names? It's shaking my already limited faith in the numbers.

I'd seen other shifts in the demographics of at least the people who favorite me, but there's not enough of a sample size to really get into that. This change seems kind of remarkable though.

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One possible explanation is that people have been reading stories for a long time before signing up. I read stories here for years before joining. So by the time I joined I already knew a lot of authors to mark as favorites.

Some of it may be caused by people browsing stories and marking them as favorites so that they can return to them later for a full read. Whether that is going on more than in the past isn't anything I could test to.

MelissaBaby said:

Some of it may be caused by people browsing stories and marking them as favorites so that they can return to them later for a full read. Whether that is going on more than in the past isn't anything I could test to.

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Bingo, I think. Watch to see how fast they unfavorite your stories.

sr71plt said:

Bingo, I think. Watch to see how fast they unfavorite your stories.

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That's something different. This is people with elaborate lists of favorite *authors* and sometimes unrelated lists of favorite stories, on day 1. I've seen what you describe - favorites clearly used as bookmarks - and they don't seem to be day one readers.

I guess the "they've been reading for a while, just created an account and poured in their favorites" covers it. Hard for me to imagine someone doing that much bookkeeping - keeping a list for awhile and then setting it all up in Lit one day. It's certainly more work than I'd do.

(Does the site offer bookmarks now? I'd be happy enough to see the end of false Favorites.)

HandsInTheDark said:

As I open up the favorites of people who favorite or comment to me, I'm seeing a new thing - people who have an account member since date (not last edited) of very recently - like within 24 hours - but already dozens to scores of favorite authors or stories. I get that some people find this place and buckle in for some serious stroking, but with refractory periods and all it's hard for me to believe someone favorites 30 authors and 50 stories all in their first day. And I don't remember it being like this in the past.

Others seeing it? Possible explanations? Are these fake accounts, or people somehow renaming old accounts with new user names? It's shaking my already limited faith in the numbers.

I'd seen other shifts in the demographics of at least the people who favorite me, but there's not enough of a sample size to really get into that. This change seems kind of remarkable though.

Click to expand...

Have you correlated the names and stories on these lists? I got put on an initial and number favorites list probably by accident. On a hunch I checked the same initials up and down the numbers and found 27 lists all the same. They were favorites for certain incest story writers and stories. It explained to me how a certain writer who hasn't written a story in close to five years stays in the top ten favorites. It also explains why incest writers fly to the top so quickly in a lot of cases.

Yeah, this list was turned in to the management but I never heard anything back, nor did they disappear.

HandsInTheDark said:

(Does the site offer bookmarks now? I'd be happy enough to see the end of false Favorites.)

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The new user CP provides a Reading Lists facility that I think is supposed to serve as bookmarks. I haven't used it.

NotWise said:

The new user CP provides a Reading Lists facility that I think is supposed to serve as bookmarks. I haven't used it.

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I have. You can click on the Favorite button at the end of the story as always, and it adds it to the Favorites list in the new Dashboard. There you can Sort By and all that stuff.

You can't bookmark them from the Category lists. You have to either open the story or, in the new Dashboard, click on Add, then enter a title to search. Hopefully, at some point, we will be able to select a story in a Category, click on it and have it go to the Reading List.

rj

TxRad said:

Have you correlated the names and stories on these lists? ...
Yeah, this list was turned in to the management but I never heard anything back, nor did they disappear.

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Unfortunately, that fits my recollections. There's been a handful of times I've been favorited by someone clearly very into incest. It made no sense - but if you're trying to make a list of favorites look less artificial you'd salt it with a few unrelated authors and I'm about as "unrelated" as it gets.

There have been a handful of times I wanted a "Disfavorite" button - something I could click to take myself and my stories off someone else's favorite list. I was surprised that it even occurred to me to want it; but your theory explains a lot about the very occasional Ick factor I get from some of these lists.

I will start keeping track of these "day 1 and so many favorites" lists - and what topics they seem to favor.

Been saying this for a while. And it's pretty much what's going on elsewhere right across the internet as far as I can tell.

I'm not going to give an opinion on what's really going on. Recently people jump down your throat as soon as you say 'content farms' and 'astro-turfing' as if they're chief cook and bottle-washer at the NSA and know all kinds of 'truth' that I simply could not possibly know.

And I'm certainly not going to say there is a socio-political edge to any of it.

Far far be it from me to even vaguely suggest such a thing - because then we would clearly already be up a creek we didn't know we were heading into in the first place when Noam Gottesman and Warren Buffett handed 'Facebook' to their front boy whatsisname.

But if I were running this website I would bar ANY AND ALL incoming traffic from academia and academic libraries anywhere in the world. Because I wouldn't know that sort of thing because I am not in the NSA because they are the 'Illuminati' and the freemasons and they are evil and all of this stuff, and McMaster is bad and all of this, even gasp Zio-nazi etc whatever, meme meme memex...

Oh yeah, and Kaspersky is ba-a-a-a-d too.

Spirit-cooking is good though. And Trump is insane and a 'clear and present danger.'

Oh look, all my vote scores have just gone up. Wow. And my YT videos have all been monetized again.

Wait, while I post some threads about 'word puzzles' and fake modern 'grammar rules' and 'how to be a good writer' and 'get your work published by real publishers like those played by Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets.'

Not to mention, the writers here are all stupid men who don't know anything about sex or ESPECIALLY - THEY DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WOMEN AND HOW WOMEN LOVE TO COOK PLASTER MOCK-UPS OF BABIES BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT FEMINISM IS ALL ABOUT AND CORRECT POLITICAL THINKING AND TRUMP IS EVIL AND INSANE AND EVERYONE WHO SUPPORTED HIM IS A LOSER WITHOUT A JOB AND LIVES IN THE BASEMENT OF THEIR SCHMUCK PARENTS IN THE VALLEY.

And Islam is awesome and Reza Aslan is a genuine academic and scholar and anyone who disagrees is a fool and hates other races and anyway, you need an advanced degree in everything especially anti-fascism to be able to write porn because there is no such thing as erotica, it's all porn and you are a loser did I mention that.

Ooh look, my voter scores went up again.

And nah, no one is tampering with anything, you're just paranoid and a conspiracy thinker.

Yeah it's happening. I don't know what the solution is.

I'm not sure about the joined date, but for several years I've noticed being favorited within the last twenty four hours, and when I looked I saw dozens, and sometimes dozens and dozens of people favorited after I was. Quick work.

Surely they were for using the favorite button as a bookmark.

I like the new system where the system has a reading list, and you can add other lists as well, and chose if they're public or not. Just wish you could add to list directly from a story. But either way it saves saving the irl of a story on 'notepad'.

SimonDoom said:

One possible explanation is that people have been reading stories for a long time before signing up. I read stories here for years before joining. So by the time I joined I already knew a lot of authors to mark as favorites.

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The same for me, I was around for years before signing up.

Same here

SimonDoom said:

One possible explanation is that people have been reading stories for a long time before signing up. I read stories here for years before joining. So by the time I joined I already knew a lot of authors to mark as favorites.

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I fit in this group. Read as an anon for years before joining, and once I joined I favorited many authors and stories those first 24-48 hours.

Nothing nefarious on my part, just got tired of looking for my favorites the long way.

Selq said:

I fit in this group. Read as an anon for years before joining, and once I joined I favorited many authors and stories those first 24-48 hours.

Nothing nefarious on my part, just got tired of looking for my favorites the long way.

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There you go, a non-paranoid explanation of a curious phenomenon. My most recent follower just did the same - joined a couple of days ago, got a list several pages long. How they remember all the names I dunno!