Malicious voting

I have been reading and writing on here since 2018, and I have never given any story a 1. If I'm not enjoying something, I just stop reading it.
 
I've noticed the same thing. Some of my top-rated stories have had significant drops. One dropping from 4.85 down to 4.80, in the space of a day. I just hope they're not doing a major sweep like they did a few years back that knocked down the scores on almost everything I'd written. I can see them deleting one bombs, but I can't understand the motivation for deleting 5's as well. If a reader enjoys what you write and rewards you with a five, I don't see why they think it's necessary to delete it.
It all depends how the five is dropped on the story. Just because it's there, doesn't mean the story was read. That's all I'm going to say about the mechanism, except that I think it's the same, regardless of the vote value.
 
I've been here more than a dozen years. I've published some amazingly popular stories on this site. I have a nice distribution of red H's Downward progression IS the natural course on L.com. OP is WHINING!
In Loving Wives, maybe. I've been here a decade, and my story catalogue is creeping up over time, score wise, even my earliest stories.
 
I've been here more than a dozen years. I've published some amazingly popular stories on this site. I have a nice distribution of red H's Downward progression IS the natural course on L.com. OP is WHINING!

When one person reports it, yes it's a whinge, absolutely. Boo-effing-hoo. But when several people are reporting it about not only their own stories but ALL of the stories on the top lists in a number of categories? Yea, something funny is going on. It's not a bitch at all.
 
When one person reports it, yes it's a whinge, absolutely. Boo-effing-hoo. But when several people are reporting it about not only their own stories but ALL of the stories on the top lists in a number of categories? Yea, something funny is going on. It's not a bitch at all.
I reckon I've seen at least three major shifts in score spreads/movements in the last ten years, which I put down to some refinement or other in the sweep mechanism. It's like the sunspot cycle: inevitably, there'll be another one.
 
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Assuming you're calling me out, I'm absolutely not complaining. In fact, i know exactly how blessed I am to have loyal followers that like what I write. I'm beyond humbled by their support and their responses to my work. My point is that with 1100 votes and an average score of 4.93, 98.6% of the people that voted on my story gave it a 5. That's math.

Since I took that snapshot, the number of votes on my story has only gone up by about 150 votes and the score has dropped to a 4.84. That's an average new vote average of 4.18. Also not to shabby, but a RELATIVELY dramatic impact on the score. My intended message was that, along with some malicious votes that disappeared during the sweep for the Halloween contest and have probably come back, something else is going on probably behind the curtain.

My opinion is that there is something in place that is also skimming excessive fives to go along with the malicious ones. I say this because the number of votes slowed as the score dropped. Yeah, I watched it like a hawk for a while and even reached out to Laurel. The story in question received over 1100 votes in 18 months and only 150 in the last 10. There are a lot of possible reasons for that, but the decreasing rate of incoming votes combined with the dropping score does indicate that some votes aren't making the cut and some of those are 5's.

I also noted that the drop in scores was across the entire T/CD catalog not just my stories. Others are now calling out the same thing for Lesbian and other categories.

It's a trend...

PS. since I'm now this frail little thing with super thin skin, who can't take the heat, I'm also a trans-woman. My fucking pronouns are she/her, not he/him! :ROFLMAO:
Seriously, i couldn't care less about stuff like that. I'd suggest you put your faux ire back in the box it came in and relax. I can suggest a good scotch.
No offense intended
Assuming you're calling me out, I'm absolutely not complaining. In fact, i know exactly how blessed I am to have loyal followers that like what I write. I'm beyond humbled by their support and their responses to my work. My point is that with 1100 votes and an average score of 4.93, 98.6% of the people that voted on my story gave it a 5. That's math.

Since I took that snapshot, the number of votes on my story has only gone up by about 150 votes and the score has dropped to a 4.84. That's an average new vote average of 4.18. Also not to shabby, but a RELATIVELY dramatic impact on the score. My intended message was that, along with some malicious votes that disappeared during the sweep for the Halloween contest and have probably come back, something else is going on probably behind the curtain.

My opinion is that there is something in place that is also skimming excessive fives to go along with the malicious ones. I say this because the number of votes slowed as the score dropped. Yeah, I watched it like a hawk for a while and even reached out to Laurel. The story in question received over 1100 votes in 18 months and only 150 in the last 10. There are a lot of possible reasons for that, but the decreasing rate of incoming votes combined with the dropping score does indicate that some votes aren't making the cut and some of those are 5's.

I also noted that the drop in scores was across the entire T/CD catalog not just my stories. Others are now calling out the same thing for Lesbian and other categories.

It's a trend...

PS. since I'm now this frail little thing with super thin skin, who can't take the heat, I'm also a trans-woman. My fucking pronouns are she/her, not he/him! :ROFLMAO:
Seriously, i couldn't care less about stuff like that. I'd suggest you put your faux ire back in the box it came in and relax. I can suggest a good scotch.
No offense intended. I think gender definitions/pronouns are just another means to divide us. I should have used the neutral "they" I apologize.
Statistics are a tricky thing. If you are a baseball relief pitcher who never got anyone out your ERA (Earned Run Average) is listed as the symbol for infinity even though infinity is a concept not a reality. Evidence of one bombing is at best anecdotal. What is the difference between two one votes and one two vote? Infinitesimal! Is mendacity in play? Perhaps but if your batting average was .1000, and you strike out, it is almost impossible to get back to a thousand even if you get three hits a day for the rest of the season. What you claim as a trend may, in fact, be a statistical abberation. Without looking into the minds of every L.com voter there is NO way to know for sure.
 
In Loving Wives, maybe. I've been here a decade, and my story catalogue is creeping up over time, score wise, even my earliest stories.
That's my (much more limited) experience too. Except when I publish an I/T story, the general trend is always upward.
 
It's difficult to tell if malicious voting is going on, and, without dismissing the possibility, I suspect internal bias toward our own stories makes us more likely to imagine that there's malicious voting than the evidence may warrant.

For instance, my most recent story was published a day ago. It picked up votes quickly. At 104 votes, it reached a score of 4.88. I was delighted, because that would be my all-time highest score. 7 votes later, it had fallen to under 4.8. Still excellent, but I was a little chagrined and suspected mischief. But now that it has over 200 votes the score is still around 4.77-4.76, which means that's around the average of the votes since its initial fall. So I suspect instead that the early score was inflated by a disproportionate number of readers who already were followers of mine and predisposed to vote high, and then the "public" vote took over and the score settled a bit.

I'll never know, although if a sweep happens and knocks off some of those votes and the score goes up then it would suggest there was some malicious voting.
 
It's difficult to tell if malicious voting is going on, and, without dismissing the possibility, I suspect internal bias toward our own stories makes us more likely to imagine that there's malicious voting than the evidence may warrant.

For instance, my most recent story was published a day ago. It picked up votes quickly. At 104 votes, it reached a score of 4.88. I was delighted, because that would be my all-time highest score. 7 votes later, it had fallen to under 4.8. Still excellent, but I was a little chagrined and suspected mischief. But now that it has over 200 votes the score is still around 4.77-4.76, which means that's around the average of the votes since its initial fall. So I suspect instead that the early score was inflated by a disproportionate number of readers who already were followers of mine and predisposed to vote high, and then the "public" vote took over and the score settled a bit.

I'll never know, although if a sweep happens and knocks off some of those votes and the score goes up then it would suggest there was some malicious voting.
Your last story was fabulous!!!

Surely every perverted middle aged man's dream?

What was there not to like!
 
I reported this to Lauren last month and got a polite reply. Maybe others have too. But nothing has been done. Maybe they are waiting for it to stop before they do a sweep? I don't know.

I do know that one of my stories was at 4.93 after 185 on 20th Oct (and in the top twenty). It's now 4.82 after 199 votes. Now, it's Chapter 5 of a pretty long story (87k words). There clearly hasn't been a reduction in votes, so it's not suspicious 5s being removed. Surely, genuine readers who didn't like it would have given up after Chapter 1 (if they even finished that). I mean, who genuinely reads to the end of a story like that to vote 2 or 3? So, I'm pretty sure it's malicious voting.

In contrast, Chapter 3 of the same story was on 4.84 on October 20th after 165 votes; it's still 4.84 after 172 votes. But then it's never been in the top list. Notice the difference in vote counts? 7 votes on Chapter 3, 14 on Chapter 5: I reckon those extra 7 votes are bombs.

However, something @pink_silk_glove said on another thread has made me feel phlegmatic about it all. The story hasn't changed. It hasn't got better or worse. This troll - whomever it is - is hitting every story and every author in the top list, so I know it's not personal. So I don't care that much. The thing I feared happening to my stories has happened and, you know what, it was no biggie. I'm still picking up new followers, new favourites and new comments on old stories every week.
 
However, something @pink_silk_glove said on another thread has made me feel phlegmatic about it all. The story hasn't changed. It hasn't got better or worse. This troll - whomever it is - is hitting every story and every author in the top list, so I know it's not personal. So I don't care that much. The thing I feared happening to my stories has happened and, you know what, it was no biggie. I'm still picking up new followers, new favourites and new comments on old stories every week.

I noticed this a long time ago, too, which is when I stopped worrying about all this. PSG and I have had occasional clashes in the past, but I've always thought she's a shrewd poster and I tend to agree with her about a lot of things.

What can I do? I can write stories, and I can make sure they're as good as I can make them. I've been gratified that people seem to like them. As you say, new followers and positive effects on my back catalogue continue. IF there are occasional dips in my scores, they seem to be tiny and they often go away (sweeps, I guess, though I am NOT a compulsive tracker of my numbers). So is that really something I can worry about?

I certainly can't control it. So why should I stress about it?
 
What can I do? I can write stories, and I can make sure they're as good as I can make them. I've been gratified that people seem to like them. As you say, new followers and positive effects on my back catalogue continue. IF there are occasional dips in my scores, they seem to be tiny and they often go away (sweeps, I guess, though I am NOT a compulsive tracker of my numbers). So is that really something I can worry about?

I certainly can't control it. So why should I stress about it?
Well said. Our focus should be on our work and what we can control, which is our work.

Haters are going to hate, and its far to widespread to take personally as @THBGato pointed out. We're all on the same playing field and should just play and not pay attention to the obnoxious drunks in the bleacher seats.

I also see the conversation is about older stories gradually dropping, but there are also a lot of older stories that started out meh and over time have climbed. Just seems the negatives always stand out more than the positive.
 
I reported this to Lauren last month and got a polite reply. Maybe others have too. But nothing has been done. Maybe they are waiting for it to stop before they do a sweep? I don't know.
This is contest season so there will be at least two sweeps between late October and late December. So she's not in a hurry knowing it will happen soon anyway.
 
Most of the top list in Lesbian Sex has dropped 0.02 / 0.03 in the last month or so. I am curious what's going on because things were static for a long time before suddenly starting to taper a month ago. (And I'm not just talking about *my* stories; everything seems to be catching it)

It's really weird.

Edit: just looked at Romance for the first time in a long time. Same story there; stories I remember being solidly 4.94/4.95 are now 4.92 etc.

I wonder if Lit's implemented some sort of outlier trimming that is forcing everything inwards towards the mean? 🤷‍♀️

@Bramblethorn I choose you! Use your discrete logarithm power!

I'm suffering from this as well. My top story in Lesbian Sex had been at a steady 4.88 - 4.89 since it was submitted over a year ago. Now, in the last two weeks, it has dropped to a 4.83.

x-x-x

Update as of 4/6/25: It's happening again. Same story, which had recovered to its previous 4.88, is now a 4.81 in the space of a few weeks. I don't know if the story's recovery was due to voters or admins running a sweep, but it certainly feels like intentional and consistent downvoting.
 
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Recently I had a story creep up to the number 1 spot on the Transgender category and it was up there for about a week before a few votes knocked it down (still now in the top 100, I think).

I don't think it's anything malicious. A more likely explanation is that getting to the top spot gave it more exposure. It definitely got other high votes, favs, etc but the broader exposure certainly attracted people with other tastes or who were pickier about my writing.
 
I'm suffering from this as well. My top story in Lesbian Sex had been at a steady 4.88 - 4.89 since it was submitted over a year ago. Now, in the last two weeks, it has dropped to a 4.83.

x-x-x

Update as of 4/6/25: It's happening again. Same story, which had recovered to its previous 4.88, is now a 4.81 in the space of a few weeks. I don't know if the story's recovery was due to voters or admins running a sweep, but it certainly feels like intentional and consistent downvoting.
Just wondering if your scores are still dropping. In the last few weeks nearly all of my highest-rated stories have dropped several points. I think it might be the site doing it rather than a one-bomber. But I can't imagine why the site would want to drop so many scores again. It happened with nearly all of my stories a few years ago, and now it's happening again. I just wish I could understand their motive.
 
Just wondering if your scores are still dropping. In the last few weeks nearly all of my highest-rated stories have dropped several points. I think it might be the site doing it rather than a one-bomber. But I can't imagine why the site would want to drop so many scores again. It happened with nearly all of my stories a few years ago, and now it's happening again. I just wish I could understand their motive.
When an account is deleted, all of the voting data associated with it is presumably purged. Some accounts are discontinued by the users, but it's likely that the site at least occasionally removes others, whether for suspicious voting or some other violation of the terms of service. In either case, high votes will be lost as well as low ones. Uno-bombing trolls may be the voter readers most want to see expunged, but ballot-stuffing cinco-bombers would likely be just as big a concern for the site, albeit probably much more challenging to identify. Removing even a few bot-ballot 5s can have a pretty dramatic effect on stories without a huge number of votes in the first place, just like someone dropping a malicious one-star. I have no idea if that actually happens, or if so how much it affects scores. Probably only marginally most of the time... but there's admittedly a significant difference between 4.49 and 4.50 on the site, or psychologically between 3.99 and 4.00, so tiny wobbles can sometimes have outsized effects.
 
When an account is deleted, all of the voting data associated with it is presumably purged. Some accounts are discontinued by the users, but it's likely that the site at least occasionally removes others, whether for suspicious voting or some other violation of the terms of service. In either case, high votes will be lost as well as low ones. Uno-bombing trolls may be the voter readers most want to see expunged, but ballot-stuffing cinco-bombers would likely be just as big a concern for the site, albeit probably much more challenging to identify. Removing even a few bot-ballot 5s can have a pretty dramatic effect on stories without a huge number of votes in the first place, just like someone dropping a malicious one-star. I have no idea if that actually happens, or if so how much it affects scores. Probably only marginally most of the time... but there's admittedly a significant difference between 4.49 and 4.50 on the site, or psychologically between 3.99 and 4.00, so tiny wobbles can sometimes have outsized effects.
The thing that's confusing me is why the scores on all my top-rated stories are suddenly dropping.

"The Dare" was at 4.87 since 2022, and suddenly it's dropped to 4.86 then 4.85, 4.84, 4.83 and is now down to 4.82, with most of the drops in just the last few weeks. The same thing happened to two of my other contest winners, "That Little Spark" and "Forever Valentine" which have both dropped from 4.86 to 4.83 in just the last few days.

I don't vote for myself, or downvote anyone else, so I can understand why so many of my scores are suddenly dropping. And judging by what's been happening, I'm expecting to see more of them drop soon.

I find it kind of deflating for a story to do well, and then have the site drop so many of my scores for reasons I can't comprehend.
 
The thing that's confusing me is why the scores on all my top-rated stories are suddenly dropping.

"The Dare" was at 4.87 since 2022, and suddenly it's dropped to 4.86 then 4.85, 4.84, 4.83 and is now down to 4.82, with most of the drops in just the last few weeks. The same thing happened to two of my other contest winners, "That Little Spark" and "Forever Valentine" which have both dropped from 4.86 to 4.83 in just the last few days.

I don't vote for myself, or downvote anyone else, so I can understand why so many of my scores are suddenly dropping. And judging by what's been happening, I'm expecting to see more of them drop soon.

I find it kind of deflating for a story to do well, and then have the site drop so many of my scores for reasons I can't comprehend.
Other authors have said in the forums that the top lists of at least several categories, perhaps all of them, have been in decline for at least several months. There are three scenarios that could account for this.
1) A campaign of malicious votes targeting the top-rated stories. This seems to be the preferred theory, but I find it unlikely, as it would be easy for the site to detect and counteract. Even if it were happening, the scores should be fluctuating up and down as the votes are cast and then removed.
2) A systematic removal of votes and/or accounts that were trying to increase the scores of certain stories. As I said, this is probably much harder to detect. Contest entries could be the ones most likely to be affected; the prizes might be incentive for ballot-stuffing, but whether or not that's the case, the site possibly scrutinizes contest votes a little more closely than for random stories, which means they might lose more votes.
3) The current audience of the site may have a tendency to vote more harshly than in the past. There are many possible factors, such as generational differences, social polarization, their diversity or lack thereof, etc. This would be very hard to test without a lot of intrusive data collection.

tl;dr: It is unlikely that the relatively minor dips in your scores have anything to do you with you personally, aside from the fact that you have a fair few highly rated stories that have further to fall if the site is purging suspicious 5s or new readers are more stingy with them. Other authors have reported similar drops with top-list stories in particular.
 
Other authors have said in the forums that the top lists of at least several categories, perhaps all of them, have been in decline for at least several months. There are three scenarios that could account for this.
1) A campaign of malicious votes targeting the top-rated stories. This seems to be the preferred theory, but I find it unlikely, as it would be easy for the site to detect and counteract. Even if it were happening, the scores should be fluctuating up and down as the votes are cast and then removed.
2) A systematic removal of votes and/or accounts that were trying to increase the scores of certain stories. As I said, this is probably much harder to detect. Contest entries could be the ones most likely to be affected; the prizes might be incentive for ballot-stuffing, but whether or not that's the case, the site possibly scrutinizes contest votes a little more closely than for random stories, which means they might lose more votes.
3) The current audience of the site may have a tendency to vote more harshly than in the past. There are many possible factors, such as generational differences, social polarization, their diversity or lack thereof, etc. This would be very hard to test without a lot of intrusive data collection.

tl;dr: It is unlikely that the relatively minor dips in your scores have anything to do you with you personally, aside from the fact that you have a fair few highly rated stories that have further to fall if the site is purging suspicious 5s or new readers are more stingy with them. Other authors have reported similar drops with top-list stories in particular.
I'm fairly sure it's the site tinkering with the scores again. The same thing happened a few years ago, when 90% of my scores dropped - and some by a lot. Manu's explanation at the time, was that the new system they were using was going after both low and high-scoring stories. Although he claimed that we needn't worry because the scores would be restored, they never were.

Now that it's happening again, I'm starting to wonder why I even take the time to submit stories on here. If a story does well because the readers seem to enjoy it, then the site arbitrarily decides to drop the score whenever they want, it seems pointless to even to try write a decent story if you know whatever score you've been awarded could be dropped for reasons that none of us understand.

I have been working on a few stories for the Summer Lovin' Contest but now I'm wondering if I'll even bother finishing them. Because if any of them do well the scores won't last, and they'll be dropped like all the others.

I can understand them wanting to rotate the top stories in each category. But I can't see why they feel a need to drop the scores on so many top scoring stories. Though I'm sure I'm not the only one, I still think it's kind of discouraging and confusing.
 
Now that it's happening again, I'm starting to wonder why I even take the time to submit stories on here. If a story does well because the readers seem to enjoy it, then the site arbitrarily decides to drop the score whenever they want, it seems pointless to even to try write a decent story if you know whatever score you've been awarded could be dropped for reasons that none of us understand.
If it happens to all of us, what does it matter?
 
I'm fairly sure it's the site tinkering with the scores again. The same thing happened a few years ago, when 90% of my scores dropped - and some by a lot. Manu's explanation at the time, was that the new system they were using was going after both low and high-scoring stories. Although he claimed that we needn't worry because the scores would be restored, they never were.

Now that it's happening again, I'm starting to wonder why I even take the time to submit stories on here. If a story does well because the readers seem to enjoy it, then the site arbitrarily decides to drop the score whenever they want, it seems pointless to even to try write a decent story if you know whatever score you've been awarded could be dropped for reasons that none of us understand.

I have been working on a few stories for the Summer Lovin' Contest but now I'm wondering if I'll even bother finishing them. Because if any of them do well the scores won't last, and they'll be dropped like all the others.

I can understand them wanting to rotate the top stories in each category. But I can't see why they feel a need to drop the scores on so many top scoring stories. Though I'm sure I'm not the only one, I still think it's kind of discouraging and confusing.
My last try.
Let's say I have a zealous fan who is happy to give me 5s on everything I write. I enter a contest, and they think I should win, so they take the extra step of giving 1s to my competitors. This is behavior that is likely to get caught in a sweep for fraudulent voting. It's too much work to try and decide which (if any) of their votes are valid, and they've surrendered the benefit of the doubt, so all of their votes are swept, including every 5 they gave me. All of my stories see a dip because of this fact.
I highly doubt the site is attempting to tinker with the scores of any stories in the way you seem to mean, but their sweeps for suspicious voting activity would be pretty useless if they only looked for one-bombs. I turned off voting for my stories more than a year ago, and I still see occasional changes in the downloadable stats from votes getting erased. Nobody's scores are static, except maybe the ones with so many thousands of votes that each individual ballot is lost in the ocean.
I like several of your stories, and your high scores are well-earned, but I can't feel very sympathetic about a 4.87 dropping to a 4.82, considering that there are many other fine stories whose high-water marks never get close to that level of admiration. If you feel aggrieved enough to quit that's unfortunate, but trying to lay the blame on score volatility isn't very compelling.
And now I'm done. ☮️🖖
 
In lesbian at the minute, anything over 4.86 gets voted down until it is at or below that. Then whatever bot is doing the voting, targets those at 4.86. I currently have three stories with that score in the top 20. I won't tomorrow. They all used to be 4.9+ too.

C'est la vie.
 
In lesbian at the minute, anything over 4.86 gets voted down until it is at or below that. Then whatever bot is doing the voting, targets those at 4.86. I currently have three stories with that score in the top 20. I won't tomorrow. They all used to be 4.9+ too.

C'est la vie.
It is the same in the First Time category. Same pattern.
 
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