What's going on the the vote counts?

[Tecunuman]

I have several stories which have been up for quite a while and they have remained relatively stable, picking up a vote every now and again, but today I noticed they suddenly have less votes than before, or the same number of votes, but a different score... Anyone know what's going on?

Regards.... Tecunuman

 

[Emperor_Nero]

I have several stories which have been up for quite a while and they have remained relatively stable, picking up a vote every now and again, but today I noticed they suddenly have less votes than before, or the same number of votes, but a different score... Anyone know what's going on?

Regards.... Tecunuman

Noticed the same thing. I understand there are regular sweeps where votes can come and go, but one of my stories has only gotten two new votes since April '07 and today it suddenly loses 7 votes -- and since it was in the little read Letters category, that was almost half of the votes it had. I know we've had several sweeps since last April, so what's different this time?

 

[Weird Harold]

...one of my stories has only gotten two new votes since April '07 and today it suddenly loses 7 votes -- and since it was in the little read Letters category, that was almost half of the votes it had. I know we've had several sweeps since last April, so what's different this time?

Just a WAG, but if they identified someone as an alt used for the purposes of fraudulent voting, they might remove ALL of that user's votes from the system, including some very old votes not identified by previous sweeps -- and not necessarily fraudulent on every story affected.

Of course, it coud just be database problems like the forums experienced over tha last week spreading to the stories and votes daabases.

 

[starrkers]

WAG? Qui est ce?

 

[Weird Harold]

WAG == Wild Ass Guess

As opposed to a SWAG == Scientific Wild Ass Guess.

 

[starrkers]

Danke. (My I'm being European - and misspelling grossly - tonight)

I think there may be some tweaking of scores. I just checked mine and they looked pretty much the same, although a couple appear to have risen by 0.01 without vote numbers altering. This is mostly of little consequence, but I'd love for it to happen on the story with a 4.49 score

 

[TxRad]

WAG on my part

Lit is catching up on the monthly contests and running indepth sweeps on the old monthly data. There seems to be three or four different types of sweeps that look at the data differently. So things change. There's also the end of the year coming up so that probably has something to do with it also.

 

[Tecunuman]

I don't know how the sweeps are done and I'm sure it's not an easy situation to handle. For example, there are several people in my office who read the stories and vote on them, but all from the same computer. Are these votes discounted? What could be done about that? Not too much I suppose. What about people who are members, but use the same computer?

I also would like to see the "hits" reported differently. I wonder what it would look like if the hits were reported when someone visited the last page of a story instead of just the first. That would give you a much clearer picture of how many people actually read your story.

Oh well... still a great sight and I'm grateful for it.

Regards to all... Tecunuman.

 

[snowy ciara]

If the sweep in question is snagging multiple votes from the same isp, (which is one way to catch alts artificially inflating their own scores) then yes, the votes from your office may have gotten purged. But like TxRad said, there's several different ways they can mine the data to remove fake votes. I'm sorry you got caught in some Alt's mess though. That's the only problem with the sweeps; legitimate votes can be lost in an unrelated story to the ones that are suspicious.

 

[Weird Harold]

...For example, there are several people in my office who read the stories and vote on them, but all from the same computer. Are these votes discounted? What could be done about that? Not too much I suppose. What about people who are members, but use the same computer? ...

The question was asked many years ago about married couples shouse the same computer; the answer was that if they're logged in, they are counted as separate voters. but if they're NOT logged in the vote are logged as anonymous votes and all votes from that ISP might get purged if there is a suspicious voting pattern.

I don't know what, if any, changes have been made to vote tracking or distinguishing beween registered voter and anonymous voters but the basic principle is the same -- if they can identify a single fraudulent voter then only that voters' vote get purged; if they can only ID a source for fraudulent anonymous votes then that source's votes get purged.

 

[CharleyH]

I have several stories which have been up for quite a while and they have remained relatively stable, picking up a vote every now and again, but today I noticed they suddenly have less votes than before, or the same number of votes, but a different score... Anyone know what's going on?

Regards.... Tecunuman

I'd like to just say grrr, you people piss me off. That's about it, though. Good luck.
CH

 

[secretme]

Funny this has come up. Maybe then my problem isn't what I originally thought. Who knows. Every score I had that had been relatively stable for quite some time suddenly dropped several points over the past week. Well actually since the Daniellekitten incident. I'm friends with Danielle. But people had been accusing me of being one of her alts since some of our stuff is similar in content. I had thought I was being sniped by someone giving her a hard time, thinking that I'm her. WHICH I'M NOT! So if that is the reason all my scores and I mean ALL my scores have suddenly plummeted I'd like to point out to everyone e-mailing me and calling me "DK", sorry you're wrong. You're picking on the wrong girl.

If it is some kind of score epidemic though it's an awfully annoying one...

 

[TxRad]

Funny this has come up. Maybe then my problem isn't what I originally thought. Who knows. Every score I had that had been relatively stable for quite some time suddenly dropped several points over the past week. Well actually since the Daniellekitten incident. I'm friends with Danielle. But people had been accusing me of being one of her alts since some of our stuff is similar in content. I had thought I was being sniped by someone giving her a hard time, thinking that I'm her. WHICH I'M NOT! So if that is the reason all my scores and I mean ALL my scores have suddenly plummeted I'd like to point out to everyone e-mailing me and calling me "DK", sorry you're wrong. You're picking on the wrong girl.

If it is some kind of score epidemic though it's an awfully annoying one...

Usually scores go up during sweeps as the random and malicious troll votes are removed. You might want to send a PM to Laurel and let someone check your scores more indepth.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Funny this has come up. Maybe then my problem isn't what I originally thought. Who knows. Every score I had that had been relatively stable for quite some time suddenly dropped several points over the past week. Well actually since the Daniellekitten incident. I'm friends with Danielle. But people had been accusing me of being one of her alts since some of our stuff is similar in content. I had thought I was being sniped by someone giving her a hard time, thinking that I'm her. WHICH I'M NOT! So if that is the reason all my scores and I mean ALL my scores have suddenly plummeted I'd like to point out to everyone e-mailing me and calling me "DK", sorry you're wrong. You're picking on the wrong girl.

If it is some kind of score epidemic though it's an awfully annoying one...

If DK has alts writing the quantities of stuff she was already writing under DK... I'd have to start believing in time machines and alternate dimensions and stuff... cuz, geez, I don't care if you type 150 wpm, no human being could write THAT much, could they?

 

[Oblimo]

I just checked mine and they looked pretty much the same, although a couple appear to have risen by 0.01 without vote numbers altering.

They're ripening. I wouldn't expect any less from your stories.

 

[Oblimo]

If it is some kind of score epidemic though it's an awfully annoying one...

*Looks*

Holy crap, my vote counts have gone ker-plop. And secretme's kicking my ass in the (Casey Kasem's) Nonhuman Top 50 once again.

 

[secretme]

Usually scores go up during sweeps as the random and malicious troll votes are removed. You might want to send a PM to Laurel and let someone check your scores more indepth.

Already did a while ago. Didn't work...

 

[secretme]

If DK has alts writing the quantities of stuff she was already writing under DK... I'd have to start believing in time machines and alternate dimensions and stuff... cuz, geez, I don't care if you type 150 wpm, no human being could write THAT much, could they?

Logic and/or adultlike behavior seems to have gone out the window in this case!

 

[secretme]

*Looks*

Holy crap, my vote counts have gone ker-plop. And secretme's kicking my ass in the (Casey Kasem's) Nonhuman Top 50 once again.

I don't know which top 50 you're looking at but every score I had, and there WERE quite a few, over 4.91 is gone! How exactly does a 4.94 with more than 200 votes that has been sitting solidly in that spot for weeks turn into a 4.90 over night? How many brand new shiny 1's does that take? I suck at math.

You know what I need? Some acorns to turn trolls to stone! Anyone know where you can get some of those?

I'm going to stop whining about it now. I still have pretty much all the stuff I put effort into above a 4.74 and that's with all the effort someone's putting into bugging me. I'd say that says a lot in and of itself.