I lost half my votes

TANSTAAFL58

Lost and Profound
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May 18, 2018
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The score on my Geek Pride Story "The Lieutenant" just lost half it's votes, and the score dropped from a steady 4.39 (where it's been for four weeks) to 4.06. What happened?
 
The score on my Geek Pride Story "The Lieutenant" just lost half it's votes, and the score dropped from a steady 4.39 (where it's been for four weeks) to 4.06. What happened?

There was a sweep where the site removes votes that by some unknown criteria appears dishonest. Usually these sweeps target repeated 1-bombs, and the score goes up, but they also remove suspicious up-votes.

There appears to have been a pretty big but selected sweep recently. Most my scores seems unchanged, but one story had a massive reduction in votes, and went from around 4.47, where it's been trailing for the past year or so, to 4.67.
 
It looks more like they removed any 5s and kept all the 1s.

This sucks. So the story I thought was pretty good was actually a piece of crap?
 
It looks more like they removed any 5s and kept all the 1s.

This sucks. So the story I thought was pretty good was actually a piece of crap?

Again, no one knows what the criteria are. My guess would be they check if the same IP votes more than ones, if there is a sudden surge of repeated votes for a story that can't be explained by independent voters, or if the reader goes straight to the last page to vote without reading the whole story. But again, this is only guessing.
 
Stories posted in contest get all kind of weird voting patterns, so I'm not surprised if someone 5-bombed your story.
 
Sadly, this has been the case of many in the past.

It's my understanding this type thing is being looked into.

I've read several of the OP's stories. Pretty decent stuff. Though I did not comment or vote.
 
It looks more like they removed any 5s and kept all the 1s.

This sucks. So the story I thought was pretty good was actually a piece of crap?

Voting doesn't tell you if a story is good. Voting is an incomprehensible mixture of who happens to read the story, the mood they are in that day, whether you tickled their specific fetish, what category you put it in, how influenced voters are by previous votes, and then there's sweeps, which do whatever the site wants them to. Also consider that "some people just about never give 5s!" and some people will give a 5 simply if they managed an orgasm. About the best anyone can say is that if your score stays consistently below 4, the story probably has real problems; above that, you can at least claim that most people sorta liked it. But why do you care about "most people"?

Avoid contests if you care about scores. Contests amplify all the random factors listed above and add a hefty dose of fanboy and jealousy/hostility votes.

Better yet, don't care about scores. You're not paid by the point, and even if you were, the readership has a segment, probably sizable, of mouth-breathing basement-dwellers with a clear lack of critical evaluation skill. This isn't a group you want to seek affirmation from. Post what you think is good, and move on.
 
Voting doesn't tell you if a story is good. Voting is an incomprehensible mixture of who happens to read the story, the mood they are in that day, whether you tickled their specific fetish, what category you put it in, how influenced voters are by previous votes, and then there's sweeps, which do whatever the site wants them to. Also consider that "some people just about never give 5s!" and some people will give a 5 simply if they managed an orgasm. About the best anyone can say is that if your score stays consistently below 4, the story probably has real problems; above that, you can at least claim that most people sorta liked it. But why do you care about "most people"?

Avoid contests if you care about scores. Contests amplify all the random factors listed above and add a hefty dose of fanboy and jealousy/hostility votes.

Better yet, don't care about scores. You're not paid by the point, and even if you were, the readership has a segment, probably sizable, of mouth-breathing basement-dwellers with a clear lack of critical evaluation skill. This isn't a group you want to seek affirmation from. Post what you think is good, and move on.
Excellent advice to contemplate!
 
Voting doesn't tell you if a story is good. Voting is an incomprehensible mixture of who happens to read the story, the mood they are in that day, whether you tickled their specific fetish, what category you put it in, how influenced voters are by previous votes, and then there's sweeps, which do whatever the site wants them to. Also consider that "some people just about never give 5s!" and some people will give a 5 simply if they managed an orgasm. About the best anyone can say is that if your score stays consistently below 4, the story probably has real problems; above that, you can at least claim that most people sorta liked it. But why do you care about "most people"?

Avoid contests if you care about scores. Contests amplify all the random factors listed above and add a hefty dose of fanboy and jealousy/hostility votes.

Better yet, don't care about scores. You're not paid by the point, and even if you were, the readership has a segment, probably sizable, of mouth-breathing basement-dwellers with a clear lack of critical evaluation skill. This isn't a group you want to seek affirmation from. Post what you think is good, and move on.

This is excellent advice, and it applies to your story, which I just read. I didn't see any major problems with it and certainly don't think you can infer from the score that it's crap. You had a few misspellings, like writing "viscous" when you meant "vicious", but nothing major. Your story's score reflects two qualities of it that can draw negative votes: it's short, and it's humorous. Stories shorter than one page tend not to get the highest scores here, because many readers like more character development. Also, humor is a hit or miss thing with people. If you write a humorous story there always will be people who don't care for your sense of humor. Neither of these things indicates anything is truly wrong with your story.

The other thing to keep in mind is that with such a limited number of views and votes the randomness of the voting is heightened.

On the upside, you got a good number of positive comments, especially for a story with fewer than 2,000 views. Focus more on trying to reach the audience that likes your stories rather than average score. Obviously, you have succeeded to some degree in doing that, so focus on the positive.
 
Voting doesn't tell you if a story is good. Voting is an incomprehensible mixture of who happens to read the story, the mood they are in that day, whether you tickled their specific fetish, what category you put it in, how influenced voters are by previous votes, and then there's sweeps, which do whatever the site wants them to. Also consider that "some people just about never give 5s!" and some people will give a 5 simply if they managed an orgasm. About the best anyone can say is that if your score stays consistently below 4, the story probably has real problems; above that, you can at least claim that most people sorta liked it. But why do you care about "most people"?

Avoid contests if you care about scores. Contests amplify all the random factors listed above and add a hefty dose of fanboy and jealousy/hostility votes.

Better yet, don't care about scores. You're not paid by the point, and even if you were, the readership has a segment, probably sizable, of mouth-breathing basement-dwellers with a clear lack of critical evaluation skill. This isn't a group you want to seek affirmation from. Post what you think is good, and move on.

This is excellent advice, and it applies to your story, which I just read. I didn't see any major problems with it and certainly don't think you can infer from the score that it's crap. You had a few misspellings, like writing "viscous" when you meant "vicious", but nothing major. Your story's score reflects two qualities of it that can draw negative votes: it's short, and it's humorous. Stories shorter than one page tend not to get the highest scores here, because many readers like more character development. Also, humor is a hit or miss thing with people. If you write a humorous story there always will be people who don't care for your sense of humor. Neither of these things indicates anything is truly wrong with your story.

The other thing to keep in mind is that with such a limited number of views and votes the randomness of the voting is heightened.

On the upside, you got a good number of positive comments, especially for a story with fewer than 2,000 views. Focus more on trying to reach the audience that likes your stories rather than average score. Obviously, you have succeeded to some degree in doing that, so focus on the positive.

Thanks to you all for your help and comments. Much appreciated.

I guess it just takes some time to get used to how things work around here. No more fretting about the score.

My spelling has always been poor. It shows up in stuff like that. You can't blame Sell Checker for guessing wrong when I was likely very far off. On the other hand, "viscous" is an engineering term. I should have caught that one!
 
Our top story lost about 300 votes in a 3 day period recently. It's been posted for nearly two years.
-MM
 
I haven't noticed any sweeps recently, and I post stories at regular intervals.
 
My story file is steady state, which means to me it's been cleaned up in earlier sweeps.
 
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Its been so long since I looked at my scores/votes I wouldn't know if I was swept or not.
 
...
This sucks. So the story I thought was pretty good was actually a piece of crap?

Not at all - I agree with the other comments. The voting can be upsetting if you believe your story deserves better than it seems to be receiving, but it's all conjecture.

If someone didn't like your story because of some aspect of the plot or a scenario that they don't feel is 'appropriate', they may well mark it low. Also, if someone has a grudge, or if they just happen to be in a bad mood that day, they may mark it low.

I have published a few stories recently, and without fail these all get bombed within the first day or two. This started after I had an unfortunate altercation with just one other Lit member (she called me a catfish, having got her facts wrong, and I politely pointed this out to her - next day, all my stories took a hit :rolleyes:) - Anyway, the 'sweeps' run regularly, and generally fix the problem.

The best advice I can give is - ignore the scores - judge the quality of your work by the comments it receives :)
 
The best advice I can give is - ignore the scores - judge the quality of your work by the comments it receives :)
Or, in the absence of comments (which can be rare beasts) wait thirty days before thinking the scores mean anything.

Even then, I only look at scores in the context of my own body of work and how it's being received. I don't think my 4.72 story is comparable to another writer's, because their metrics will be completely different, but it might tell me something when comparing that story to another one of my own.
 
I submit the same stories to multiple Web sites. That does give me some index on how well they are received, taking into account the general tastes of each Web site.
 
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