Rapid changes to an older story's score

[Smuttyandfun]

So you admit that you are writing for scores. If that is the case, just pander more. Easy.

i didn't say that. I said it was discouraging when a story is well received, and suddenly the score drops by .10 points or more, for no apparent reason, it feels kind of deflating. I'm sure even you would agree with that.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

i didn't say that. I said it was discouraging when a story is well received, and suddenly the score drops by .10 points or more, for no apparent reason, it feels kind of deflating. I'm sure even you would agree with that.

If a higher or lower score encourages or discourages one from writing, then writing for a score is what's going on. How much you are writing for score we can't say, - 10%? 50%? 75%? But don't kid yourself, you are writing for a score in some way. ; )

Furthermore, the mean score on lit is roughly 4.4, so your disappointing 4.67 is still approx 70th percentile - a strong score. So if 70th percentile bums you out (makes you consider quitting publishing here - your words, not mine) then not only are you writing for a score, you are writing for a score more than you know you are.

Further furthermore, your score did not drop for no reason. It dropped because apparent fraudulent votes were removed. Your score should be more accurate now, and that is a good thing, so if you are still bummed by that, then you would be so totally definitely writing for a score, so much so that you would prefer an inaccurately high score.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

If there's a sweep, and your vote totals go down, and your scores go down as well, then you have overzealous fans who are engaged in scumbaggery on "your behalf". They're dropping extra 5s on you or trolling others to improve your position. If you don't believe you have fans, then you're wrong. If you don't believe any of them would do something like that, then you're wrong. And they'll keep on doing it until told by you to stop. Once you do, most of them will. It's just until they're explicitly told you don't want them giggling behind their hands and cheating for you, they take your silence as approval, even though you have no bloody idea they're doing it.

There's a reason virtually everything I post has a note like this at the end, right above the voting form.

This is an entry in the Literotica Nude Day Story Contest 2024. Your votes determine the winner, so I'd appreciate yours. One vote per reader, and don't down-vote other people to "help" me either. No stuffing the ballot box.

There's also a reason I consistently have a lower percentage of votes swept from my stuff in contests and such, and haven't seen a score drop in forever from sweeps. It's because I've been consistently telling every old and new fan to cut it the fuck out. Prior to that, I was suffering large numbers of swept votes and a roller-coaster on my scores. Then damn near simultaneously, two fans off-handedly told me that they voted every time they read a story, multiple times per year, and one of them admitted to bombing others who kept getting above me in the toplist.

Telling just those two "Please, no. You're not helping, you're hurting me because your first 5 on my stuff is going away along with any extras or 1-bombs." significantly curtailed the bleeding, because they did stop. Assuming that if there were 2, there were probably more, I started putting notes on everything, and it worked.

Whenever I have a story in a contest, I've never noticed a huge jump in the score once the sweep has gone through.

I write a lot of romance. Some people like it, some people don't. So, I wouldn't say I've got much of a fan base.

Though I do like your idea of asking your readers not to screw around with the scores.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

If a higher or lower score encourages or discourages one from writing, then writing for a score is what's going on. How much you are writing for score we can't say, - 10%? 50%? 75%? But don't kid yourself, you are writing for a score in some way. ; )

Furthermore, the mean score on lit is roughly 4.4, so your disappointing 4.67 is still approx 70th percentile - a strong score. So if 70th percentile bums you out (makes you consider quitting publishing here - your words, not mine) then not only are you writing for a score, you are writing for a score more than you know you are.

Further furthermore, your score did not drop for no reason. It dropped because apparent fraudulent votes were removed. Your score should be more accurate now, and that is a good thing, so if you are still bummed by that, then you would be so totally definitely writing for a score, so much so that you would prefer an inaccurately high score.

If you had a story scoring at 4.87 for for over four years, and it steadily dropped to 4.67 in the span of a couple of weeks, I think you would wonder what was going on, too. Which is all I'm asking.

 

[RejectReality]

Whenever I have a story in a contest, I've never noticed a huge jump in the score once the sweep has gone through.

I write a lot of romance. Some people like it, some people don't. So, I wouldn't say I've got much of a fan base.

Though I do like your idea of asking your readers not to screw around with the scores.

It only takes one with too much time on their hands and a twisted White Knight complex. No big jumps after contest sweeps is another red flag. Those are trolled to hell and back, regardless of category, so if you're not going up a fair amount with the sweeps, then that increase is being suppressed by 5s getting removed because fans are up to funny business.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

It only takes one with too much time on their hands and a twisted White Knight complex. No big jumps after contest sweeps is another red flag. Those are trolled to hell and back, regardless of category, so if you're not going up a fair amount with the sweeps, then that increase is being suppressed by 5s getting removed because fans are up to funny business.

I don't really know how it works. I know a few readers seem to read everything I write, just so they can tell me that they didn't like it. So, I'm thinking it probably balances out between the ones that enjoy my stuff, and the ones that don't. Which might be why there's usually not a big jump in my scores after a sweep.

 

[ElectricBlue]

It's not a sweep, unless sweeps add votes?

Sweeps remove votes, but if there have been a bunch of new votes at the same time, the numbers can wobble.

The activity I'm seeing is that the book is 15 chapters. Chapter 1 through 14 all gained the expected couple of votes (4-7 new votes) and scores did not change. Only the last chapter got over 20 new votes. It's been out a year and in the last two weeks gained a 10% increase in the number of votes while the number of reads increased inline with what's expected (chapter 1 was the highest, and it trailed off as the chapters went on). The new book chapters are doing about as well as expected. (I had a 1 star bomber but they stopped.) It's an outlier in activity. I was just trying to understand it.

That sounds like someone targeted, for whatever reason, that last chapter. For an older story, that is strange. But then, readers can be strange!

 

[pink_silk_glove]

If you had a story scoring at 4.87 for for over four years, and it steadily dropped to 4.67 in the span of a couple of weeks, I think you would wonder what was going on, too. Which is all I'm asking.

If the score goes down and the number of votes go up, you're getting hate-voted to manipulate the leaderboard. If the score goes down and the score goes down then you have had the benefit of illegitimate 5 bombs and the site is sweeping them out.

 

[RejectReality]

Sweeps remove votes, but if there have been a bunch of new votes at the same time, the numbers can wobble.

That sounds like someone targeted, for whatever reason, that last chapter. For an older story, that is strange. But then, readers can be strange!

You don't think that the fact he's actively posting a direct sequel right now kinda negates the age factor?

Trolling is always a possibility, but there are so many other reasons something like this can happen, and I'm seeing a lot of arrows pointing at other factors right now. Even that doesn't mean there isn't also trolling, but it may not be ALL or even most of what's causing the score drop. It could just be the rancid cherry on top of a shit sundae.

 

[ElectricBlue]

You don't think that the fact he's actively posting a direct sequel right now kinda negates the age factor?

I missed that bit. You're right, he's drawn attention to the older story.

Trolling is always a possibility, but there are so many other reasons something like this can happen, and I'm seeing a lot of arrows pointing at other factors right now. Even that doesn't mean there isn't also trolling, but it may not be ALL or even most of what's causing the score drop. It could just be the rancid cherry on top of a shit sundae.

It's entirely possible the final chapter enjoyed a high score for a long while, but the new readers are less impressed. As has been said before, a few 3s and 4s can quickly shift a score.

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

I write a lot of romance. Some people like it, some people don't. So, I wouldn't say I've got much of a fan base

Not much of a fan base?

<checks followers> 3907.

You’ve got a top 1% fan base on the site, my dude.

If you drop a new story and your followers all go read it, you will hit read numbers higher than half my chapters. If even a tenth of your followers drop a couple of anon 5s to help your score and they get removed, it’ll hit your overall number.

Don’t sweat it - you’re one of the most successful writers on the site by anybody’s metrics.

 

[TheLobster]

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/dc/cf/f7/dccff71b57adc21607d2dc0c9aadb420.gif

 

[Smuttyandfun]

Okay, this is getting really weird. All the favorites on my stories have just dropped by a lot. One was at 350, now it's at 112. I know they're dropping the scores, but I didn't know the site would also decide to drop favorites.

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

Yeah, looks like there may be a bug on the favorites thing.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

No shit. lol

 

[SimonDoom]

Okay, this is getting really weird. All the favorites on my stories have just dropped by a lot. One was at 350, now it's at 112. I know they're dropping the scores, but I didn't know the site would also decide to drop favorites.

Are you sure you're looking at the right numbers? A drop in favorites from 350 to 112 is extreme. I just checked my favorites for my stories, and everything looks normal. I have not observed any drops so far.

There are three numbers-- favorites, "to read" lists, and the sum of the two of them, which shows up on the far right of the regularly updated data file. Is there any chance of confusion in what you are looking at?

 

[Erozetta]

Are you sure you're looking at the right numbers? A drop in favorites from 350 to 112 is extreme. I just checked my favorites for my stories, and everything looks normal. I have not observed any drops so far.

There are three numbers-- favorites, "to read" lists, and the sum of the two of them, which shows up on the far right of the regularly updated data file. Is there any chance of confusion in what you are looking at?

No confusion. Mine dropped from 115 to 15. Definitely a bug and one I posted about in the tech support forum.

Story side is still accurate. Author's dashboard is not.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Are you sure you're looking at the right numbers? A drop in favorites from 350 to 112 is extreme. I just checked my favorites for my stories, and everything looks normal. I have not observed any drops so far.

There are three numbers-- favorites, "to read" lists, and the sum of the two of them, which shows up on the far right of the regularly updated data file. Is there any chance of confusion in what you are looking at?

Since yesterday 75% of my favorites across all my stories have poofed, so I'm assuming there's a bug. My AFD entry lost about 40%, and the four chapters of my romance have lost 50-80%.

No confusion. Mine dropped from 115 to 15. Definitely a bug and one I posted about in the tech support forum.

Story side is still accurate. Author's dashboard is not.

That's what I'm seeing too. Author dashboard isn't right, but the story-side tracks with what I had last night.

 

[NotWise]

Are you sure you're looking at the right numbers? A drop in favorites from 350 to 112 is extreme. I just checked my favorites for my stories, and everything looks normal. I have not observed any drops so far.

There are three numbers-- favorites, "to read" lists, and the sum of the two of them, which shows up on the far right of the regularly updated data file. Is there any chance of confusion in what you are looking at?

I don't keep track of favorites, but I watched it on my last story because comments and favorites were running about equal--21 and 22, respectively. Now my home page is showing the story with four favorites, and at least my most recent stories all seem to have low favorites.

Don't know if it's a bug or not, but it's definitely real.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

I'm looking at favorites - with the little hearts.

My story Breeding Bull had 395 favorites, and it now shows 118. All the rest have dropped, too. Not sure what's going on, but I'm hoping it's just a glitch.

 

[Erozetta]

Thread 'Favorites' https://forum.literotica.com/threads/favorites.1631010/

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Something weird is going on with favorites for sure. Also, the trust that people have in the sweeping algorithm is quite amusing.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

It looks like the favorites are inching back up, but they're not back to where they were yet.

 

[SimonDoom]

OK, I see it now. I was looking at the dataset that I downloaded. Those numbers, and the numbers contained in the favorites list, appear normal and unchanged. It's only the numbers contained in the My Stories list that are off. When I click on my story and open it, the favorites number there, too, is normal and unchanged.

So this looks like a glitch on the MyStories page.

 

[SimonDoom]

Looks like the favorite numbers are restored to their proper levels.