The 1 bomb

[HandsInTheDark]

It appears someone went through and 1 bombed all my stories. I can think of very few people who'd be even vaguely motivated to do this, so I'll assume it's an author who got all threatened and stuff by my recent decent scores.

What I do not understand is why people who drop a series of 1 ratings in rapid succession aren't picked up and blocked from future voting. (Same should happen to people dropping a lot of 5s at once.) It can't be hard to add a feature like that to a website: track the IP, record the votes and times, and too many low scores in a few hours means your votes simply aren't averaged in, ever again.

I'm an advocate of the idea that scores are not all that meaningful, but maybe they could be if the crazy outliers and the clearly jealous/vengeful votes were discarded.

 

[TamLin01]

How many would "a series" be? Five? Four? Less than that would seem pretty severe, given the punishment you're advocating. And in what period? 24 hours? 12? If you got four 1's in 24 hours, you'd probably still be unhappy. Particularly since he could just come and do it again 24 hours later, and 24 hours after that. It's a little more trouble, but do you think some people don't have the time?

Any principle punishing people for voting assumes that we know the intent of the voter, but that's impossible. Sure, maybe if one person votes 1 on all your stories (and you know for sure it's one person), that might be enough to prove bad faith. But anything more narrow than that and it becomes speculation. People are going to vote however they vote. You can't stop the tide from coming in.

 

[lovecraft68]

First as to getting rid of the bombs go to one of your stories and click the report feature. Put in the notes to Laurel(the owner) that you feel your stories have been trolled and request a sweep of them.

She is usually pretty good about doing that, but it may take a day or to, most of the time she will delete the bombs

As to why? I looked you up and I see you have a lot of non con stories and mind control which many see as a form of non con/reluctance. I'm one of those who do feel they're one and the same

Point is non con along with incest has a lot of 'category trolls" meaning they don't even read the stories they just go up and down the file bombing all the stories because they hate them

Of course whether they hate them or hate them because they secretly love them...who the hell knows?

But Incest and non con are the two "real life crime" categories and they get a lot of that type of troll.

BDSM might get you a couple of those nimrods as well. After all non con mind control and BDSM are three 'violent categories' someone thinks you're "sick"

 

[SandraMustard]

Why assume it is a jealous author? We all know the futility of 1-bombs, (they get swept away - along with every vote the made from the same IP address). This must have been your first exposure to a troll who perhaps took exception to something you said or a comment you removed or just the category you submitted.)

Your options:
1) Sit tight, the votes will be removed eventually.
2) Use the Report Story feature - Other reason - "Check the voting" in the comments.

 

[lovecraft68]

Why assume it is a jealous author? We all know the futility of 1-bombs, (they get swept away - along with every vote the made from the same IP address). This must have been your first exposure to a troll who perhaps took exception to something you said or a comment you removed or just the category you submitted.)

Your options:
1) Sit tight, the votes will be removed eventually.
2) Use the Report Story feature - Other reason - "Check the voting" in the comments.

The only time I can see it being an author is if you just hit a high spot on an all time list and it takes hit, that's usually the author you just passed or his rabid fans.

Otherwise I stick with the category trolls.

The other type is the "forum troll" who bombs because they don't like what you say. The GB has led to me asking for many sweeps.

 

[sr71plt]

If you asked for a sweep, let us know how it worked. I've never asked for one. I think Laurel and Manu are busy enough as it is and I'm not that obsessed with the scoring. I think when someone malicious has seen that you've been swept (and there are some here who watch the scores of others like a hawk) they just come back after the sweep and zap it again.

 

[SandraMustard]

Asking works but I agree they are busy. I generally wait and let the contest sweeps take care of it (the sweeps clean votes from non-contest stories at the same time). The two times I asked was when a bomber hit every one of my stories within an hour. The other was when contest sweeps didn't clean a new story.

 

[Bramblethorn]

If you asked for a sweep, let us know how it worked. I've never asked for one. I think Laurel and Manu are busy enough as it is and I'm not that obsessed with the scoring. I think when someone malicious has seen that you've been swept (and there are some here who watch the scores of others like a hawk) they just come back after the sweep and zap it again.

In the past I've requested a sweep with good results. These days I'm usually content to wait until the semi-regular sweeps do their thing. I did once request a sweep on somebody else's story that was experiencing blatant vote-stuffing (story that's been out for weeks suddenly picks up 100 votes in a day, all 5s...)

IP-based blocking is tricky because you can easily have many different people using the same IP address. Like TamLin01 says, defining what counts as "in a short time" gets tricky - some people will read a whole bunch of stories offline, then come back and vote for them all at once. It'd also encourage them to switch IPs, easily done if you know how; letting them vote and then disappearing the vote latter might be the lesser of evils.

 

[Hypoxia]

My humble advice to other victims of 1-bombers: Get over it. You'll be glad you did. If you're here for high vote scores and you feel threatened by bombers, you will gnaw your guts with anxiety or something similar. I used to have high scores. I was seriously bombed, most of my Red-H's went away, and I got depressed. Now I don't give a shit and I feel much better. Give it up. Go with the flow. Ommm...

 

[HandsInTheDark]

As far as I can tell, silently leaving a score of 1 is always spite. Any story legitimately that bad you probably wouldn't finish reading, and if you did finish and scored it 1, you'd presumably leave a comment explaining where the author went horribly wrong.

Valid scores tend to cluster; if a story got 8 5's, 12 4's and a 1, it's likely the 1 doesn't represent anything valid. There are good algorithms for this kind of thing.

If there are periodic sweeps, I won't be overly concerned. My unabomber only managed to knock one of my stories off the hot list and it will crawl back on eventually.

I just think it's a pity that with reasonably good ways to detect unlikely outliers, we allow new stories to get pummeled this way.

 

[sr71plt]

I did once request a sweep on somebody else's story that was experiencing blatant vote-stuffing (story that's been out for weeks suddenly picks up 100 votes in a day, all 5s...)

I've seen 40,000-word contest entries pick up a hundred 5s in the first six hours of being posted. Yeah, right.

 

[AZMotherLover]

How can you guys tell you're being one-bombed?

My most recent story posted on 2/6/15 and currently has a score of 4.13. With 599 votes, how can I find out how many of those were 1,2,3 etc?

I'm happy with the score, it's a solid "B". Not bad for a one page stroker.

 

[TamLin01]

Valid scores tend to cluster; if a story got 8 5's, 12 4's and a 1, it's likely the 1 doesn't represent anything valid.

Really? I think it probably represents one person who really didn't like the story. Popularity is not a firewall against personal tastes.

Why can't people just accept that somewhere, sometime, someone is going to vote your story down? It's a fact of life.

 

[sr71plt]

Why can't people just accept that somewhere, sometime, someone is going to vote your story down? It's a fact of life.

And that some here are so highly competitive and "gotta have" that they'll sit on the scores of anyone they think of themselves as in competition with and even will come to the forum, make fun of the scores of writers they are targeting and run their stories down, right? Hard to believe that anyone would take scores that seriously and would be that juvenile here, right?

 

[ishtat]

It might be worth noting that a 1 is all too frequently a perfectly reasonable assessment. Unfortunately the capacity to dump them by the truckload is a problem. I suppose it's easier to clear them post event rather than restrict the number from any particular IP address per day.

But I think 5 bombs are just as bad as Pilot pointed out.

Personally I don't do scores much any more, but if the criteria were followed properly there would in my opinion be many more legitimate 1's than legitimat 5's.

 

[Handley_Page]

It appears someone went through and 1- bombed all my stories. I can think of very few people who'd be even vaguely motivated to do this, so I'll assume it's an author who got all threatened and stuff by my recent decent scores.

What I do not understand is why people who drop a series of 1 ratings in rapid succession aren't picked up and blocked from future voting. (Same should happen to people dropping a lot of 5s at once.) It can't be hard to add a feature like that to a website: track the IP, record the votes and times, and too many low scores in a few hours means your votes simply aren't averaged in, ever again.

I'm an advocate of the idea that scores are not all that meaningful, but maybe they could be if the crazy outliers and the clearly jealous/vengeful votes were discarded.

There are those for whom the disturbance of the author is the sole raison de etre.
Only the most keen of judges would bother to even finish a story worth a 1.

 

[Bramblethorn]

As far as I can tell, silently leaving a score of 1 is always spite. Any story legitimately that bad you probably wouldn't finish reading, and if you did finish and scored it 1, you'd presumably leave a comment explaining where the author went horribly wrong.

If it's bad, and seems unlike to improve, I don't think anybody should feel like they have to trudge through the whole thing before voting. The main point of voting is to help other readers identify good stories, and "I hated this so much I didn't finish it" is as valid as any other reader opinion.

I also don't agree that not leaving a comment is a sign of bad faith. Readers might feel uncomfortable leaving a negative comment, even as anon, or they might feel there's no chance of the author taking the comment on board.

Valid scores tend to cluster; if a story got 8 5's, 12 4's and a 1, it's likely the 1 doesn't represent anything valid. There are good algorithms for this kind of thing.

I get paid to know about stuff like outlier identification, and I'm not aware of any reliable method that would work for the example you give there. If you have reason to expect Gaussian or binomially-distributed data, then sure, you can look at that and conclude that the solitary 1 probably isn't legit. But there's no reason to assume those distributions apply here. It's quite possible for something to be loved by some and hated by others without much in-between; it's also possible that there are a lot of readers whose reaction was somewhere in the middle, but only those with an extreme opinion felt strongly enough about it to vote.

If you get a long string of votes that isn't consistent with previous behaviour (e.g. a story's averaged 4.5 for the first 100 votes and then starts getting lots of 1s) then you can identify that something fishy's going on, but an occasional 1 here and there isn't proof conclusive.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

I saw a rich Japanese guy over here at the Burswood Casino in Perth Western Australia once play 'red' on a roulette wheel that went 47 times 'black' in a row straight.

Then, he stopped playing briefly to get turn and order a drink and some food, and 'green' (zero) came up.

Next, he changed his bets to 'black' and fifty-two 'reds' came up in a row straight.

This all went from about 11.55 at night to oh god, I'm not sure now but I remember being extremely cold and having drunk too much coffee by 4.30 the next morning.

Just all looked a bit silly ta me.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Personally, when someone complains in the author section it makes me actually go and read their stories - which is one good thing I suppose!

Usually, I just look at the 'new' stories and flip through them to see what attracts.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

How can you guys tell you're being one-bombed?

My most recent story posted on 2/6/15 and currently has a score of 4.13. With 599 votes, how can I find out how many of those were 1,2,3 etc?

I'm happy with the score, it's a solid "B". Not bad for a one page stroker.

I can tell when I get several 1's at the same time, almost always when the story is posted. Afterwards I get few 1's, and the score slowly rises till its close to 4.5 and gets 1's to keep it below 4.50. The same thing happens to my alt stories.

I just peeked at the alt stories, and most are mired at 4.2-4.4. As few people know my identity I use the alt account to gauge my progress.

 

[JKendallDane]

And that some here are so highly competitive and "gotta have" that they'll sit on the scores of anyone they think of themselves as in competition with and even will come to the forum, make fun of the scores of writers they are targeting and run their stories down, right? Hard to believe that anyone would take scores that seriously and would be that juvenile here, right?

You have more imaginary friends...that are all out to "get you"...than a kindergarten class of five year olds trying to hustle the teacher for an extra cookie before nap time.

It's gotten to the point that I'm almost starting to feel sorry for you.

 

[SandraMustard]

Sometimes this forum sounds like a bunch of kindergartners

 

[sr71plt]

Sometimes this forum sounds like a bunch of kindergartners

It's fun that someone who fits the bill shows right up, though.

All I have to do is ring the bell and listen for the panting.

 

[49greg]

1 bombs suck and getting a bunch at the same time sucks too, but the Original Poster has a very high percentage of "H"s in his story list, so he shouldn't worry too much. Or else a comprehensive sweep has taken care of the problem.

Shit happens. Life goes on.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

I It's quite possible for something to be loved by some and hated by others without much in-between; it's also possible that there are a lot of readers whose reaction was somewhere in the middle, but only those with an extreme opinion felt strongly enough about it to vote.
If you get a long string of votes that isn't consistent with previous behaviour (e.g. a story's averaged 4.5 for the first 100 votes and then starts getting lots of 1s) then you can identify that something fishy's going on, but an occasional 1 here and there isn't proof conclusive.

There's no conclusive method, but there are some patterns I've spotted in the 1 bombs I've caught in action.

1) a series of 1's from a "new user", all aimed at stories in the high 4's. I infer this would work because when nasty comments get left, I check and they just about always seem to come from users created in the last day.

2) A series of 1s and 2s aimed at stories that just crossed over 4.5, or made it to the first page of a hall of fame. I watched a story of mine hit 4.86 within the first few days - and instantly sink into the low 4.7s over a few hours, and within minutes of hitting a hall of fame. Pretty clear what's going in there.

3) if a user just about always gives 1s and 2s, but there's one author that always gets 5 from him, that's just sheer fanboyism (ormore likely, sock puppet voting) and those votes can evaporate.

And for averaging, I'd think that once a story gets 50 votes or so, it's time to look at clustering. Doing a weighted average could be interesting: do a straight average, but then go back an re-weight each score by its distance from that average. Depending on how you weight the distance you can get gently nudge outliers towards less relevance, or make them effectively disappear. You're right this works best on a binomial distribution, but it won't do much harm to a 2 humped camel. In general I just don't see that much scatter in normal voting: my good stories seem to get all 5's, 4's and a few 1s, my weak ones get all 3s and 4s. I know what those 1's are.

Maybe the best solution of all would be: show each vote. I know that's awkward when a story gets hundreds of votes, and maybe the site doesn't even record them individually. But if it did, I can interpret 5 4 5 5 5 4 5 4 5 4 5 5 5 5 1 1 1 5 4 5 5 5 5 1 5 4 5 3 5 just fine, and without any math.