MarshAlien
Marshini, anyone? Hic!
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2007
- Posts
- 1,426
Fact #1: Vanity, thy name is Marshalien. Yes, it is true. I am vain.
“Story A” (honestly, I’m not looking for more votes or reads at this point) had been posted on May 29 of last year and had done very well. I went to my submissions page every week or so to make sure it was still doing well. As of last week, it had 69,000 reads, 563 votes, 72 comments, and a score of 4.93, which put it maybe second or third in its category.
This morning, it still lists over 69,000 reads and 72 comments, but now has only 64 votes and a score of 4.59. Since the average score of the comments was, and still is, 4.97 (71 100’s, which I assume are 5’s, and one 50, which I assume is a 3), it appears that that at least 12 of those comment votes were among the 499 votes swept away over the weekend. And that if all the remaining comments are valid votes, the only people who voted and didn’t comment gave the story a 4 or less.
As you can tell, this is obviously affecting me way too much. Something similar happened in October, while the Halloween contest was going on, when a story that had been posted in February of this year suddenly lost 250 of its 500 votes and dropped from a 4.94 to a 4.82. I PM’ed Laurel, and asked whether it was really possible for a story that had already been on the site through two earlier contests could suddenly have that many votes swept away. She sent me a nice note explaining that the sweeps were designed to weed out fraudulent votes.
So perhaps it is possible. Nonetheless, it has caused me considerable gnashing of teeth this morning, which at my age can be really painful. The grownup thing to do would be to just turn off the voting and say the hell with it. But then we get to:
Fact # 2: I’m way too childish for that.
I like the feedback I get from both the comments and the voting, particularly since the voting score varies a great deal more than the “comments” score. So part of me thinks that the answer is simply to allow feedback and comments, and then simply turn the voting off at the end of the year before I get caught up in all this contest angst. And another part of me thinks that once I turn the voting off then, maybe I should just go ahead and delete the stories too, since I’ve probably had all the “dialogue” with my readers that I’m going to get.
So what do you guys think? What is an acceptable level of pettiness in response to losing 85 percent of the votes on your story?
“Story A” (honestly, I’m not looking for more votes or reads at this point) had been posted on May 29 of last year and had done very well. I went to my submissions page every week or so to make sure it was still doing well. As of last week, it had 69,000 reads, 563 votes, 72 comments, and a score of 4.93, which put it maybe second or third in its category.
This morning, it still lists over 69,000 reads and 72 comments, but now has only 64 votes and a score of 4.59. Since the average score of the comments was, and still is, 4.97 (71 100’s, which I assume are 5’s, and one 50, which I assume is a 3), it appears that that at least 12 of those comment votes were among the 499 votes swept away over the weekend. And that if all the remaining comments are valid votes, the only people who voted and didn’t comment gave the story a 4 or less.
As you can tell, this is obviously affecting me way too much. Something similar happened in October, while the Halloween contest was going on, when a story that had been posted in February of this year suddenly lost 250 of its 500 votes and dropped from a 4.94 to a 4.82. I PM’ed Laurel, and asked whether it was really possible for a story that had already been on the site through two earlier contests could suddenly have that many votes swept away. She sent me a nice note explaining that the sweeps were designed to weed out fraudulent votes.
So perhaps it is possible. Nonetheless, it has caused me considerable gnashing of teeth this morning, which at my age can be really painful. The grownup thing to do would be to just turn off the voting and say the hell with it. But then we get to:
Fact # 2: I’m way too childish for that.
I like the feedback I get from both the comments and the voting, particularly since the voting score varies a great deal more than the “comments” score. So part of me thinks that the answer is simply to allow feedback and comments, and then simply turn the voting off at the end of the year before I get caught up in all this contest angst. And another part of me thinks that once I turn the voting off then, maybe I should just go ahead and delete the stories too, since I’ve probably had all the “dialogue” with my readers that I’m going to get.
So what do you guys think? What is an acceptable level of pettiness in response to losing 85 percent of the votes on your story?
