Volatile Votes

[polynices]

I know Literotica regularly trawls story votes and weeds out suspect ones - presumably from addresses that have registered a vote more than once, for instance. I'm all for that. However, I've recently come to suspect that the system may go haywire at times.

The votes on my five-part novella have gone up and down like a yo-yo. The volatility is especially obvious in this case because the series hasn't had very much attention, either in reads or votes. So it's been fairly easy to track the changes and calculate the actual votes cast. Over a two day period, the number of votes for the final part has varied from a high of 12 to the current low of 8. After twelve votes had been cast, the story's score stood at a very unimpressive 3.83. Currently, however, the part has a score of 4.75, though I doubt it'll stay there long, and I know it could plummet back into the depths again almost immediately. (The cancelled votes, by the way, were as follows: two 1s, a 2 and a 4 - as far as I can tell, that is.)

On its own, this may not seem remarkable, but similar things have happened to the other parts of the novella as well - and I've noticed it to a lesser extent with other stories.

People will, of course, point out that this primarily demonstrates the meaninglessness of votes, and I agree - especially in cases like this, where the total number of votes is relatively low. However, given that this yo-yoing has happened with all the parts in this series, I'm beginning to wonder if there's some kind of glitch in the system and if, at times, positive votes can register as negatives, so that a vote may be deducted rather than added to the total after a reader votes.

I know this is in a sense trivial, but I wonder if anyone else has had similar suspicions?

(I'm also curious as to how votes are trawled through and deleted. Is it automatic or is it done 'by hand' for example? But having read other posts asking the same question, I'd doubt if anyone actually knows about that.)

- polynices

 

[fridayam]

It's curious you should write this thread, since I have read enjoyed and voted on your story--and I have also had an issue with the voting system, but on my poems. See my thread on the poetry forum, "Vanishing Votes". Since so few people vote on poems, I actually know most of the people whose votes have been "scrubbed" and it really pisses me off that their votes are being treated this way.

 

[polynices]

It's curious you should write this thread, since I have read enjoyed and voted on your story--and I have also had an issue with the voting system, but on my poems. See my thread on the poetry forum, "Vanishing Votes". Since so few people vote on poems, I actually know most of the people whose votes have been "scrubbed" and it really pisses me off that their votes are being treated this way.

Hi fridayam,

I've just read your post in the Poetry forum, and you've confirmed my suspicions - though I still don't have an explanation. As somebody else says there, the system seems at best arbitrary. Your example of a 'scrubbed' vote from an identifiable voter, who also commented, is bizarre.

I accept a need for some regulation of votes, however imperfect, but I think at least a general statement from Literotica's management of the criteria used to decide which votes to scrub would be very helpful to a lot of authors.

(And thank you very much, by the way, for your consistent encouragement throughout 'Joanna'. As I said in the prefatory note to the final chapter, it really did keep me going.)

- polynices

 

[Darkniciad]

Telling people what the sweeps are looking for would be like putting an alarm system on your house, and then posting a schematic of it outside the front door.

Everybody loves them when they're zapping those 1s from the guy whose story you just supplanted on the toplist, or the guy you disagreed with on the forum, and hates them when they decide that five from your best forum friend shouldn't count.

The sweeps came about because of authors screaming about malicious voting, and we've been screaming about the sweeps ever since. It's really about the best you can do on a website that allows utterly anonymous voting. I've had a story with more signed comments than surviving votes, and it sucks, but you just have to roll with the punches and accept the friendly fire for the greater good of having at least some sort of law out there in the wild west.

 

[polynices]

Darkniciad: Telling people what the sweeps are looking for would be like putting an alarm system on your house, and then posting a schematic of it outside the front door.

Everybody loves them when they're zapping those 1s from the guy whose story you just supplanted on the toplist, or the guy you disagreed with on the forum, and hates them when they decide that five from your best forum friend shouldn't count.

I take your first point - in fact, I considered making it myself in my original post. And, as I've said, I certainly accept the need for some form of vote scrutiny and regulation. What I'm suggesting here, though, is something more extreme, and I think fridyam's example points it up even better than my own did. I suspect there's actually something wrong with the system - that it perhaps deducts instead of adds votes at times - irrespective of whether they're 'good' votes, e.g. 5, or 'bad' ones, like 1s. If I'm wrong about this, then a general statement of the 'scrubbing' criteria would be reassuring. It wouldn't necessarily have to go into the nuts and bolts of the system.

As for your second point, of course I agree that the system as it stands is a matter of swings and roundabouts. In fact, I chose the example I gave partly because the deductions were in my favour in this case - though I could, of course, cite opposite examples.

- polynices

 

[Darkniciad]

The only thing we know for sure is that votes from the same IP/ID are gone. Beyond that, there was word long, long ago that "unusually low, out of sync votes are removed" That's the 1-bomb sniffer.

I don't know what they could offer up as general criteria that wouldn't be sign posts for malicious voting to escape the sweeps. Any hints they give are just going to make the 1-bombers and 5-bombers jump with glee, because they know some activity that they need to avoid in order to cast those votes in favor of/against some story.

Most of the painful sweeps that get large numbers of votes ( with an alarming percentage of those not-so-low ones ) are probably related to the contests -- either monthly or themed. Those sweeps probably look down deeper into the IP attempting to weed out multiple votes from people with rotating IPs. By consequence, they also probably remove votes from people who live on the other side of town.

I can't see any code mistake that could possibly subtract a vote instead of add one when someone clicks the stars, nor any sort of server glitch that could do that. The operation is just too simple. Votes=Votes+1 and New Score and New Average ->Save. Any mistake there wouldn't give a rare WTF? moment, it would be a catastrophe.

Not saving a vote... maybe. But, that's just the internet, more than likely, and nothing to do with the coding of the website.

 

[fridayam]

I have been told a lot of technical stuff over the last few weeks about how vote scrubbing is supposed to work and frankly I think all of it is bullshit. On my poems, I had identifiable voters (and let's be honest, very few of them), no Anon shit like on stories, but people, fellow poets, who took the trouble to comment and vote. Often they were kind enough to say that they had voted and commented. When these votes started disappearing I smelt a rat. I currently have two poems that show no votes that had two identifiable voters each--what kind of scrubbing software could possibly object to those votes? I only had two of the fuckers!

I also have a story which has been up for 8 months now, and it amuses me that is never gets past 60 votes: time after time it has got there, and hey it's back to 59 again. I have seen no evidence of malicious voting, just an out-of-date and capricious scrubbing mechanism. The story bizarrely reached 61 votes a couple of weeks ago and I am waiting for the inevitable cull.

(polynices, I'm glad you found the comments I left encouraging--and I'm glad you finished a wonderful story: if I had the tiniest part in that I would be proud indeed. It perhaps illustrates the importance of comments--and votes--and further underlines the frustration we feel when these are seemingly buggered about for no obvious purpose.)

 

[evanslily]

Painful, isn't it? I lost 262 votes from one of my chapters last week and 0.4 from the average vote score. That was courtesy of a major sweep performed to find out the winner of the September 2009 Readers' Choice awards, sigh. A similar sort of thing happened with a chapter of mine last year - a chapter that had sat quite happily at the top of a toplist for 6 months, LOL (not that I'm meaning to brag or anything ). I actually wasn't convinced that there'd be that many duplicate votes because they seemed to be coming from new readers who found me on that list but what do I really know?

I try not to care anymore (yeah right ) and just enjoy the comments instead. The sweeps are supposed to remove malicious votes (though they never seem to get rid of those on my stories) and sweep the duplicate votes awarded by well-meaning readers. I do know of at least one author who actually writes something like 'please only vote once' at the foot of each story/chapter.

So those up one, down one votes (and yes, I get a lot of those too) are presumably due to readers coming back to a story/poem after a break and voting again - only for that magic vacuum cleaner to sweep it away again a day or so later.

C'est la vie...

 

[polynices]

Another eccentricity of the system, of course, is that the same submissions are 'swept' several times, often months apart. Consequently, a story that was swept a month ago and had say, two votes 'scrubbed' can have another vote or two deducted much later - even though the deducted votes had previously been scrutinized and found valid by whatever criteria the system uses.

I'm mentioning this because I've just noticed it's happened to me yet again, on several stories - on at least one of which the voting numbers haven't moved upwards for months. I found Darkniciad's suggestion that contest sweeps may look down deeper into the IP convincing. Nevertherless, if the same set of votes is swept numerous times - as seems to be happening to a lot of my longer-standing stories - and deductions are made months apart, surely there's something wrong? Does every contest sweep automatically deduct more votes?

Another of Darkniciad's suggestions - that they also probably remove votes from people who live on the other side of town - is especially persuasive, but it argues for serious failings in the system, of course - for inaccuracies, not mere eccentricities.

I've also noted that deducted votes seem to get reinstated sometimes, then deducted again, then reinstated ... almost ad infinitum at times. Of course, I can't be sure that happens; it's possible that a fresh vote is added, then deducted for some reason, then another new vote comes along and so on. But that kind of yo-yoing looks suspicious nevertheless.

And, of course, evanslily's loss of 262 votes is simply staggering. Surely, in those extreme circumstances at least, a personal note from the management to the battered author is warranted - a note that might be triggered by the code when a certain value for votes deducted is reached?

- polynices

 

[Darkniciad]

Two hundred votes seems like a huge number, but how many votes did the story have to begin with?

There's all sorts of possible reasons that a story might lose votes in second or third sweeps that survived the first bloody harvest. Maybe the new sweep is a contest sweep, and it's looking deeper.

Maybe there's some sort of "blacklist" trigger that goes off when an IP casts a certain number of malicious votes, and the system then wipes out every vote in the system from that IP, regardless of age.

Maybe some sweeps are looking for out-of-sync 1s, while others are searching for duplicate votes, and yet others are looking for voting patterns ( voting 2 on every story in a category toplist, for example )

The last is actually the most likely. A database query with too many parameters on a database this huge would probably slow the site down to a crawl. Rotating sweeps, each with specific goals, would be easier on the system.

Really, there's not much anyone can say. Everyone is going to agonize over the loss of precious votes that are too few to begin with compared to the views. You just have to get used to it. After you've been writing for a while and picked up some regular readers, they become a lot less painful.

 

[fridayam]

Two hundred votes seems like a huge number, but how many votes did the story have to begin with?

There's all sorts of possible reasons that a story might lose votes in second or third sweeps that survived the first bloody harvest. Maybe the new sweep is a contest sweep, and it's looking deeper.

Maybe there's some sort of "blacklist" trigger that goes off when an IP casts a certain number of malicious votes, and the system then wipes out every vote in the system from that IP, regardless of age.

Maybe some sweeps are looking for out-of-sync 1s, while others are searching for duplicate votes, and yet others are looking for voting patterns ( voting 2 on every story in a category toplist, for example )

The last is actually the most likely. A database query with too many parameters on a database this huge would probably slow the site down to a crawl. Rotating sweeps, each with specific goals, would be easier on the system.

Really, there's not much anyone can say. Everyone is going to agonize over the loss of precious votes that are too few to begin with compared to the views. You just have to get used to it. After you've been writing for a while and picked up some regular readers, they become a lot less painful.

I'm so sorry but I got these apologetics for a painfully awry system on the Poetry Forum. Why should we get used to this? As other writers have pointed out, other sites seem to have better voting systems, and Lit seems to have fallen behind the times. Because I have painfully few votes for my poems, I can see the stupidity of the vote scrubbing more clearly, perhaps, because that is what it is, And there is no way to object to it either or have legit votes reinstated--I have tried and received no reply.

I don't know any reason why authors should just get used to this ridiculous system.

 

[Darkniciad]

I'm so sorry but I got these apologetics for a painfully awry system on the Poetry Forum. Why should we get used to this? As other writers have pointed out, other sites seem to have better voting systems, and Lit seems to have fallen behind the times. Because I have painfully few votes for my poems, I can see the stupidity of the vote scrubbing more clearly, perhaps, because that is what it is, And there is no way to object to it either or have legit votes reinstated--I have tried and received no reply.

I don't know any reason why authors should just get used to this ridiculous system.

I would be willing to bet that most of those sites ( if not all ) don't allow anonymous voting, though. There's a big difference when someone has to go through the effort of creating multiple accounts to drop extra votes, and it's much easier to track down a troublemaker account than an IP.

I don't know that it's ever been stated in black and white, but generalities hint that Lit will never have a members-only voting rule, so that's more or less out of the question.

I think I'm also reasonably safe in guessing that those sites don't have anywhere near the visitor traffic, author numbers, or story volume that Lit has, either. That all makes a difference.

You certainly don't have to like it, and I think everyone can more or less sympathize, but the majority of people who post work here eventually settle into a reluctant truce with the necessity of the sweeps and the acceptance of the inperfections involved. You're just not going to find the sort of overwhelming support for a complete change in the system that you'd need to convince Laurel and Manu that it has to be done.

In the end, you get more exposure to readers here for erotic fiction than pretty much anywhere else on the internet. It's a matter of deciding whether you're willing to deal with what the site is, no matter how imperfect, in exchange for that reader base.

 

[sr71plt]

I don't know any reason why authors should just get used to this ridiculous system.

Because to do otherwise is largely a waste of time and effort and opportunity to be doing something else constructive. Certainly yammering to the forum, where we go through this three times a week, isn't getting anywhere. You/I don't have a vote. It's a free use site belonging to someone else. Our choices are either to post to it or not. You have good reason to complain and make suggestions as far as I can see--but making them to the forum, where we'll all been through this a thousand times to no avail, rather than directly to the site owners/managers who don't read the forums is just so much spitting in the wind--and at other posters who have nothing to do with the decisionmaking around here.

So, not getting used to the system and ineffectually complaining to the forum is just an irritant to the rest of us who have decided to get used to the system given us and going on about our writing or posting (or going away).

The site mangers, Laurel and Manu have PM addresses and there are "give us your suggestions" here and about. Use them.

 

[fridayam]

Because to do otherwise is largely a waste of time and effort and opportunity to be doing something else constructive. Certainly yammering to the forum, where we go through this three times a week, isn't getting anywhere. You/I don't have a vote. It's a free use site belonging to someone else. Our choices are either to post to it or not. You have good reason to complain and make suggestions as far as I can see--but making them to the forum, where we'll all been through this a thousand times to no avail, rather than directly to the site owners/managers who don't read the forums is just so much spitting in the wind--and at other posters who have nothing to do with the decisionmaking around here.

So, not getting used to the system and ineffectually complaining to the forum is just an irritant to the rest of us who have decided to get used to the system given us and going on about our writing or posting (or going away).

The site mangers, Laurel and Manu have PM addresses and there are "give us your suggestions" here and about. Use them.

Your problem is you don't read what is written.

"And there is no way to object to it either or have legit votes reinstated--I have tried and received no reply."

It's only two posts back, but it is at the end of the post--perhaps you'd stopped reading by then in the haste to express your tiresome opinions.

 

[polynices]

Because to do otherwise is largely a waste of time and effort and opportunity to be doing something else constructive. Certainly yammering to the forum, where we go through this three times a week, isn't getting anywhere. You/I don't have a vote. It's a free use site belonging to someone else. Our choices are either to post to it or not. You have good reason to complain and make suggestions as far as I can see--but making them to the forum, where we'll all been through this a thousand times to no avail, rather than directly to the site owners/managers who don't read the forums is just so much spitting in the wind--and at other posters who have nothing to do with the decisionmaking around here.

So, not getting used to the system and ineffectually complaining to the forum is just an irritant to the rest of us who have decided to get used to the system given us and going on about our writing or posting (or going away).

The site mangers, Laurel and Manu have PM addresses and there are "give us your suggestions" here and about. Use them.

I think that's a bit strong, sr71plt. It's perfectly reasonable to suggest contacting the site owners directly - I've been considering it, in fact. But to say:

ineffectually complaining to the forum is just an irritant to the rest of us

is odd to say the least. This is just one thread in an enormous number. You certainly don't have to waste your time with it if you don't want to. I notice irritating or trivial threads on these forums all the time, but I just ignore them. Why don't you do that too, if you feel that way about this one?

In fact, I think this thread has served a useful purpose, for me at least, and possibly for others. First, it's the first time I've raised the issue, though I've been thinking about it for some time. Surely one valid function of these conversational threads is to allow people to get things off their chests, even if there's no practical payoff at the end?

Secondly, you may be bored with the topic, but you ought to recognise that new people come to the site all the time. What's old hat for you isn't necessarily old for some of the rest of us. There's inevitably going to be a lot of repetition on forums like this.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, I have learned some useful things from the responses to this thread. First, there's been confirmation that I'm not alone in thinking something funny is going on with the voting system. And, on top of that, there have been informative posts from Darkniciad suggesting very plausible explanations for at least some of the oddities we've been discussing.

I really didn't want to get into a shouting match with you about this - I've valued quite a lot of the things you've written here at various times - but I did predict to myself that you in particular would post very much what you wrote here before I even wrote the first post. It's part of your often-stated 'Why-are-you-wasting-your-time-with-this-profitless-conjecture-when-you-could-be-writing-fiction-instead?' line. But 1. why are you telling me and others how to spend our time? and 2. If the whole activity is so pointless, why are you bothering to respond to the thread at all? Why don't you get on with your own important writing instead?

And if you're irritated, perhaps you should consider the possibility that you may have an especially low threshold for irritation.

I'm sorry to have had to do this. So many threads on these forums descend into this kind of meta-wrangling and the net result is to just shut down discussion. But, intentionally or not, you are trying to exercise a form of censorship here - you're telling us what we should and shouldn't say - and I'm sure a lot of people who might otherwise post opinions don't actually do so because they think they'll lay themselves open to the kind of attack you've just made. Please stop telling others what to do. If you don't like a particular topic of conversation, just ignore it.

- polynices

 

[sr71plt]

It's ineffectual because it never has resulted in anything that I've seen; it's irritating to other authors, because we're all affected by it, I've seen no one who is happy with it (although in most cases vote stripping has improved the rating), the forum is not the place to make suggestions those in power will read them, and it's frustrating to see the complaint come up over and over again--when combined with it being ineffectual.

So, I'll just stick with the phrase.

I will say, though, that I have little sympathy for someone who loses 200 votes. I gotta believe there was massive cheating going on in these cases. I have over 400 stories here and I've never lost more than four or five votes in a sweep.

I think the issue would be minimized by adding another level of "hot" for the stories rating between 4 and 4.5 and/or permitting voting only by signed-in members. But I and others have suggested that for years and here we are again with no changes--and someone declaring that the authors can and should do something about it. You may not call that ineffectual and irritating to hear for the thousandth time. But I do.

You may enjoy spinning your wheels whining about it. I don't. I'm busy writing stories. (And I'll post whatever I damn well please to whatever forum thread I please, thank you very much. I pay my dues to this site. The amusing thing about your post is that you are trying to choke off--censor, in your words--my posting to the thread by claiming that my post is attempting to choke off . . .)

 

[polynices]

And I'll post whatever I damn well please to whatever forum thread I please, thank you very much.

Exactly my point. Me too. So why are you telling me what I can and cannot talk about?

- And surely your own wheels are spinning rather a lot at the moment, aren't they?

- polynices

 

[sr71plt]

Exactly my point. Me too. So why are you telling me what I can and cannot talk about?

- polynices

Why because you're telling ME what I can and cannot talk about--and doing it more directly than I have.

Maybe when you've been here for a while, you'll see the point--and the utility of whining about what's not going to change in the wrong venue to the wrong folks.

 

[fridayam]

Why because you're telling ME what I can and cannot talk about--and doing it more directly than I have.

Maybe when you've been here for a while, you'll see the point--and the utility of whining about what's not going to change in the wrong venue to the wrong folks.

If I have come across some smug and self-satisfied people in my life--but you sir take the biscuit.

 

[polynices]

sr71plt: I pay my dues to this site. The amusing thing about your post is that you are trying to choke off--censor, in your words--my posting to the thread by claiming that my post is attempting to choke off . . .)

That's the basic paradox about freedom. One can't defend it without restricting the freedom of those who seek to limit the freedom of others. It's rather like the statement that the only thing a tolerant society cannot tolerate is intolerance.

As for your: I pay my dues to this site. - WTF? is just about the only response possible!

- polynices

You seem to be into self-censorship now - of a sort, at least. The quote I've just responded to was your earlier, uncorrected version.

 

[sr71plt]

[You seem to be into self-censorship now - of a sort, at least. The quote I've just responded to was your earlier, uncorrected version.

What did I "correct"? I augmented. I often do that. If that irritates you, perhaps you have too low a threshold of irritation.

As for your whining about my comments on the whining of the two of you, get stuffed.

 

[fridayam]

What did I "correct"? I augmented. I often do that. If that irritates you, perhaps you have too low a threshold of irritation.

As for your whining about my comments on the whining of the two of you, get stuffed.

Perhaps if you ceased your perpetual butting into everybody's threads with your stultifying opinions, the world would be a happier place?

 

[polynices]

What did I "correct"? I augmented. I often do that. If that irritates you, perhaps you have too low a threshold of irritation.

As for your whining about my comments on the whining of the two of you, get stuffed.

... get stuffed ... - A nice command of British vernacular. I salute you.

I'll leave the last word with you, if you want it. I'm off to bed. Goodnight.

- polynces

 

[sr71plt]

Perhaps if you ceased your perpetual butting into everybody's threads with your stultifying opinions, the world would be a happier place?

Lovely. Not only do you think you are inventing the wheel about what authors should/can do about the voting system here, but you also believe that the one who starts a thread owns it and can dictate who can respond to the thread and what they can say.

And you call me smug and self-satisfied. That's rich.

Also, it certainly isn't irritating--it's highly entertaining.

 

[scouries]

sad really....

always has to have the last word, doesn't he?