Ratings trolls?

[yukonnights]

Great point, thanks!

I have a strategy now. We'll see if it works. I reasoned that if the downvotes happen within just a few hours of my first posting a chapter, the downvoter is following me, and getting notification when I drop a new story. So I'll set my published stories to disable voting, and then within 24-48 hours of them appearing, manually enable voting. I doubt there is no notification when an author's voting setting changes, and by then the downvote vultures will have tried to downvote and given up. The downvotes seem to come very early, with "legitimate" readers/voters later.

Might work.

I've not heard this idea before — be sure to come back and update us on the results once you put your strategy in place. I'm not sure it's something I'd want to do because it means you'll also miss out on a number of higher votes. This might be especially true in regard to your Followers who get a notice of your new story. They may read and comment, but be unable to give you that 5 star congratulations.

My experience has been that the periodic vote sweeps level things out in an acceptable way.

 

[lovecraft68]

Great point, thanks!

I have a strategy now. We'll see if it works. I reasoned that if the downvotes happen within just a few hours of my first posting a chapter, the downvoter is following me, and getting notification when I drop a new story. So I'll set my published stories to disable voting, and then within 24-48 hours of them appearing, manually enable voting. I doubt there is no notification when an author's voting setting changes, and by then the downvote vultures will have tried to downvote and given up. The downvotes seem to come very early, with "legitimate" readers/voters later.

Might work.

You'll lose out on a lot of good votes, and when people see voting disabled they sometimes get funny and you could lose comments too.

My advice is deal with the bombs and the sweep will help the score, plus once its off the new list the trolls forget about it and now you'll be getting decent votes from people who found the story another way.

 

[NotWise]

Great point, thanks!

I have a strategy now. We'll see if it works. I reasoned that if the downvotes happen within just a few hours of my first posting a chapter, the downvoter is following me, and getting notification when I drop a new story. So I'll set my published stories to disable voting, and then within 24-48 hours of them appearing, manually enable voting. I doubt there is no notification when an author's voting setting changes, and by then the downvote vultures will have tried to downvote and given up. The downvotes seem to come very early, with "legitimate" readers/voters later.

Might work.

Might work, but your early voters are probably getting your story off the New list, rather than trying to troll you.

Turning off voting in the first 24-48 hours may cost you 90% of the votes your story will ever get. I think you're better off just putting up with it and writing your next story.

 

[Mikethe3DGuy2]

Might work, but your early voters are probably getting your story off the New list, rather than trying to troll you.

Turning off voting in the first 24-48 hours may cost you 90% of the votes your story will ever get. I think you're better off just putting up with it and writing your next story.

Maybe. Maybe 24-48 hours is too long. Possibly 6 hours max? Out of my first 9 submissions, at least two of them got 1's within about 6 hours of release, and no other ratings had been cast yet. The trolls aren't wasting any time to read the stories of course, so they're quicker.

 

[Emirus]

I've not heard this idea before — be sure to come back and update us on the results once you put your strategy in place. I'm not sure it's something I'd want to do because it means you'll also miss out on a number of higher votes. This might be especially true in regard to your Followers who get a notice of your new story. They may read and comment, but be unable to give you that 5 star congratulations.

My experience has been that the periodic vote sweeps level things out in an acceptable way.

The strategy is novel but I also have doubts about it bringing the desired result. It could result in a number of other effects with none of them being desirable.

The periodic sweeps do tend to level things out but they can miss stories or not remove all the I’s. But I think I would leave things as they are and hope the sweeps rectify the ratings in the long run although by that time the story will be off the first page.

Getting 1’s does hurt but until there’s a way of identifying the trolls or Laurel/Manu alter the programming to make it impossible to vote 1 (snd they don’t seem to be in a hurry to do that) then you just have to accept it.

 

[NotWise]

Maybe. Maybe 24-48 hours is too long. Possibly 6 hours max? Out of my first 9 submissions, at least two of them got 1's within about 6 hours of release, and no other ratings had been cast yet. The trolls aren't wasting any time to read the stories of course, so they're quicker.

All of your stories are in Fetish. I don't know that much about how the category works, but I doubt you have personal trolls. I've heard others say that Fetish is a hard place to publish. More likely you just have one-handed readers who click on your story because it's next on the New list. It doesn't get them off or it kills their buzz, so they down vote.

The folks I call trolls are special people. More typical troll behavior is to read a story that makes them react, or read a post on this forum that makes them react, and then they repeatedly down-vote one story, or maybe you're entire catalogue. They're a delightful lot.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Maybe. Maybe 24-48 hours is too long. Possibly 6 hours max? Out of my first 9 submissions, at least two of them got 1's within about 6 hours of release, and no other ratings had been cast yet. The trolls aren't wasting any time to read the stories of course, so they're quicker.

That's typical. Don't worry about it - as others have said, the first half-day out the gate can kick-start a story or kill it. If you start futzing with the response parameters, you're potentially affecting the early score as much as a troll does.

I keep a curious eye on my scores out the gate but pay no attention to their "meaning" until a story is 20 - 30 days in. By that time the shenanigans will be over, you've probably gone through at least one sweep (more, if you've gone live whilst a contest is running), and your score will have settled down.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Great point, thanks!

I have a strategy now. We'll see if it works. I reasoned that if the downvotes happen within just a few hours of my first posting a chapter, the downvoter is following me, and getting notification when I drop a new story. So I'll set my published stories to disable voting, and then within 24-48 hours of them appearing, manually enable voting. I doubt there is no notification when an author's voting setting changes, and by then the downvote vultures will have tried to downvote and given up. The downvotes seem to come very early, with "legitimate" readers/voters later.

Might work.

IIRC, disabling the votes on a story will permanently exclude it from category top lists and (I think) the red 'H', even if you later reactivate them.

 

[KeithD]

IIRC, disabling the votes on a story will permanently exclude it from category top lists and (I think) the red 'H', even if you later reactivate them.

I don't think that disabling votes erases the red H. I think that's why some authors disable voting--when the story has run up to a red H, they disable voting to keep the red H. (No, I haven't done that.)

 

[yukonnights]

I don't think that disabling votes erases the red H. I think that's why some authors disable voting--when the story has run up to a red H, they disable voting to keep the red H. (No, I haven't done that.)

I've seen that too. It seems kind of cheesy to me. As both an author and a reader I value the scores as a guide to overall reader reaction to a story. It's easy to spot, the xxx where a rating would be, and a bright red H.

 

[yukonnights]

I've been wondering if having a story land on one of the All Time Favorites list is something that attracts the kind of organized attack we've been discussing. Anyone have any experience on that frontier?

 

[Bramblethorn]

I don't think that disabling votes erases the red H. I think that's why some authors disable voting--when the story has run up to a red H, they disable voting to keep the red H. (No, I haven't done that.)

See discussion here, in particular Manu's comment. It seems that while authors have been able to game the voting that way, it's not how the site is meant to work, and at least one had trouble getting his H back after reactivating voting. People might be able to get away with it for now, but if the bug that allows it gets fixed, they risk losing their Hs.

 

[KeithD]

The Web site changing or fixing something is a gigantic IF. The suggestion was that you can't turn off voting and keep the red H, but the current answer is yes, you can.

 

[RejectReality]

I've been wondering if having a story land on one of the All Time Favorites list is something that attracts the kind of organized attack we've been discussing. Anyone have any experience on that frontier?

Why would it? Favorites have no connection to score. Up. Down. Doesn't matter. Maybe they could suppress a story's advancement in the list by limiting its exposure through vote trolling, but that's questionable when a story already has almost 1k favorites, and thus probably around 10k votes.

The list is also somewhat obscure. A little less so with the new universal header that has a link to it in the drop down, but still...

The reason the toplists have such a problem with trolling is that they're prominent from being displayed and linked through each category hub, and changes in score change directly change a story's position on the list.

 

[yukonnights]

Why would it? Favorites have no connection to score. Up. Down. Doesn't matter. Maybe they could suppress a story's advancement in the list by limiting its exposure through vote trolling, but that's questionable when a story already has almost 1k favorites, and thus probably around 10k votes.

The list is also somewhat obscure. A little less so with the new universal header that has a link to it in the drop down, but still...

The reason the toplists have such a problem with trolling is that they're prominent from being displayed and linked through each category hub, and changes in score change directly change a story's position on the list.

Ah, I misspoke. It is the Top Lists I was asking about. The reason I asked is that I just figured out that I have one on a Top List. Earlier it was number 18 on the list and today it's number 30. Also the story score dropped from 4.88 to 4.87, which of course explains the drop in overall rank. I can't blame it on anything nefarious, was just curious about what to expect. Not only on this particular story but if such activity might carry over onto other stories in my catalogue. The upside is a noticeable uptick in new views and Favorite Author adds. Regardless, at least I can tell my grand-kids that I made a list for a day or two — but I'll have to wait to see if I even have any grand-kids

 

[oggbashan]

Fetish is a very difficult category.

If your story meets the reader's fetish exactly - that's great but a large proportion of fetish readers will not see anything in that fetish because they have different ones.

Once I belonged to a now long-gone Yahoo adult group about Unbirth - a very particular and rare fetish. I wrote a couple of stories specifically for that group and the response from the group members was fantastic because there are so few stories about Unbirth.

The response on Literotica was much more nuanced because there are so few people who share that fetish or even understand it.

Fetish will always be a difficult category to get and maintain high scores because more people will not have the fetish featured in your story.

 

[ElectricBlue]

IIRC, disabling the votes on a story will permanently exclude it from category top lists and (I think) the red 'H', even if you later reactivate them.

It used to be, if you froze after a Red H, it stayed. This might have changed. I speak not from my own story file - which has never been locked in any way - but from another writer, who locked his. All his Red Hs are still there, voting locked out (but he did that two years ago).

 

[Emirus]

Ah, I misspoke. It is the Top Lists I was asking about. The reason I asked is that I just figured out that I have one on a Top List. Earlier it was number 18 on the list and today it's number 30. Also the story score dropped from 4.88 to 4.87, which of course explains the drop in overall rank. I can't blame it on anything nefarious, was just curious about what to expect. Not only on this particular story but if such activity might carry over onto other stories in my catalogue. The upside is a noticeable uptick in new views and Favorite Author adds. Regardless, at least I can tell my grand-kids that I made a list for a day or two — but I'll have to wait to see if I even have any grand-kids

A friend of mine has had two stories in the top twenty of one Top List for some time. One of them got to number one. But they zoom up and down as do stories by other writers. One writer dominates the category (I’m not denigrating their stories) and when their stories slip they move back up. It would seem their supporters keep an eye on the list and when their favourite drops they vote to send them back up. I find it endearing for a writer to have so many loyal fans.

 

[SisterJezabel]

If you're in the U.S., when you wake up in the morning, you're probably seeing the Australian vote. Possibly complete with Australian trolls.

... In retrospect, it sounded like I was accusing our Aussie friends of a proclivity to troll. That wasn't my intention. In fact, I understand they have elite troll hunting outfits over there.

Nah, we're too effin lazy ;-)

 

[RejectReality]

18 is on the category hub hall of fame, 30 isn't. So, yes, it's possible you were trolled to bump you out of the top 20. Some toplists are worse than others, but they all have shenanigans in that top 20.

It's also possible that you were on the threshold of that .01 change and a 4 or two was enough to make the difference. More exposure from the toplists also means you're going to attract more of the readers who don't just vote 1 or 5.

If it was trolling, a sweep will eventually remove it, and you'll pop back up. Of course, you'll probably get trolled right back down again. The thing to remember is that every time you make that list, you're attracting new eyes, and new votes. As you accumulate votes, it becomes more difficult to knock you down, and requires increasingly risky tactics that may attract the attention of the Hoover.

I've got two that do that fairly regularly. "Rim Fire" in Anal and "Holly Jolley Christmas" in Incest are forever bouncing up and down by .01, which moves them in and out of that top 20. As soon as I see a flurry of new activity, I know it's peeked back into the hall of fame again.

Ah, I misspoke. It is the Top Lists I was asking about. The reason I asked is that I just figured out that I have one on a Top List. Earlier it was number 18 on the list and today it's number 30. Also the story score dropped from 4.88 to 4.87, which of course explains the drop in overall rank. I can't blame it on anything nefarious, was just curious about what to expect. Not only on this particular story but if such activity might carry over onto other stories in my catalogue. The upside is a noticeable uptick in new views and Favorite Author adds. Regardless, at least I can tell my grand-kids that I made a list for a day or two — but I'll have to wait to see if I even have any grand-kids

 

[Wannabeauthor]

Troll control

Mike, at the risk of repeating myself (from a recent post elsewhere):


I’m pretty new (6 months) to this site and creative writing in general, so I’m not jaded yet and I do watch my scores. I had hoped they would serve as a broad-based reflection of reader opinion. Unfortunately, my stories still have low vote counts and (inexplicably!) a few have scored well, so they are vulnerable to trolling.



In mid-May I had a couple of stories climb onto page 1 in their categories (under “Hall of Fame.”) I don’t recommend this! Within a day or so, a third of my stories, all over 4.75, were trolled with multiple votes of 1 or 2. Others have been trolled since. My latest story was trolled the moment it was posted (presumably by someone “following” me), which seems to have depressed both viewers and (IMHO) the ultimate score. I’m almost certainly not alone; nearly every story on the first page of the E&V Hall of Fame was down-voted to some degree during the same period.



Now the trolled scores will prevail until the next sweep, because as every good troll knows, it takes many 5’s to offset a 1 if the story score starts high enough. A single 1 will knock a 4.85/100 down to 4.81, and another, to a 4.77. Then it takes over fifty consecutive 5’s to recover, so sweeps are the only answer. Unfortunately it’s been almost a month since the last sweep, at least for me. What’s more, the trolls are apparently so highly motivated that they troll again within a day or two, so the trolled scores effectively prevail all the time and views languish.



I’ll survive, and I still like writing, but trolling defeats things the site should want to promote: encouraging the authors who create its free content, giving them accurate feedback, and directing readers to good stories.



The obvious question is, why does the site tolerate such pervasive trolling? Troll defense doesn’t seem that hard. The site could:

· sweep constantly to wear the trolls down (intervals are at least 9 days, in my limited experience, and usually much longer),
· dilute troll scores by more strongly encouraging regular readers to vote (only about 1 in 1,000 seem to vote now, if view counts are accurate),
· allow authors to disable followers, since following probably facilitates those early 1 votes,
· react (perhaps automatically) to reports of trolling submitted via the “Report Story” link, and
· best of all, simply not register scores of less than 50% or 45%, or whatever, of a story score after a threshold number of votes has been cast.

None of these measures seems conceptually difficult. Why isn’t there more action on trolls? Is anyone else mildly annoyed?

Under the circumstances, this post is not from my author account.

 

[RejectReality]

· sweep constantly to wear the trolls down (intervals are at least 9 days, in my limited experience, and usually much longer),

Do you realize how enormous the database is, and how much traffic the site gets? Not feasible. The site updates that run now at around midnight central time slow the site down to a crawl for about 30 minutes to an hour. Drop a daily database sweep in there, and the site would be all but inaccessible for hours every day.

· dilute troll scores by more strongly encouraging regular readers to vote (only about 1 in 1,000 seem to vote now, if view counts are accurate),

How are you supposed to do this? Intrusive pop-up warnings that "Hey, you forgot to vote" when someone tries to leave the page? That won't end well. People simply don't provide this kind of feedback on the internet. Never have. Never will. When you throw in "adult site" to the mix, it's going to be even worse.

· allow authors to disable followers, since following probably facilitates those early 1 votes,

The only way someone is going to use the followers system to track your releases for 1-bombing is because they have a personal vendetta against you. It might be a convenience for them, but they could just as easily bookmark your page, quickly scroll down to look for Ns, and be on their merry asshole way to your latest work.

Someone who is determined to fuck with you will work at it.

Meanwhile, people who follow you because they enjoy your work are alerted and provide those early 5s that can get you an early H and thus much increased exposure. They're going to be far less likely to work for it than someone who hates you. I can pretty much guarantee that disabling followers would result in a negative result for your readership and scores.

· react (perhaps automatically) to reports of trolling submitted via the “Report Story” link, and

Automated response via any link on a site this large is a recipe for abuse by assholes and the swarm of bots that are on the site at any given moment, creating the same problem as daily database sweeps would. You're basically creating a built in denial of service attack system.

· best of all, simply not register scores of less than 50% or 45%, or whatever, of a story score after a threshold number of votes has been cast

If nobody is allowed to cast a 3 or less after some arbitrary vote number threshold, the scores are all going to homogenize, and a score of 4 will become the new 1-bomb. That's not speculation. One of the sites I'm on has a score average like this. There are literally people crying about 4-bombs every day because anything less than a perfect 5 won't make the first half dozen pages of the popular lists, and thus quickly becomes invisible to anyone who isn't directly following you.

I have one that came out over there in October one year. It has a 5.0 score and 182,804 views. A story that came out in December the same year in the same category has a 4.98 and 31,555 views because it's on page 6 of the popular list for the category.

That's what even more homogenization of scores looks like.

Just keep writing, posting, building your following, and you'll slowly pick up enough regular readers to counter the assholes.

 

[Bramblethorn]

· dilute troll scores by more strongly encouraging regular readers to vote (only about 1 in 1,000 seem to vote now, if view counts are accurate),

That doesn't seem right. I usually see about one vote per 100 views.

· react (perhaps automatically) to reports of trolling submitted via the “Report Story” link,

Literotica does respond to this. I've used the report functionality now and then to request sweeps when something weird was going on, and it has worked.

It's not an automated process, and rightly so - like RR says, trolls would abuse the hell out of it.

· best of all, simply not register scores of less than 50% or 45%, or whatever, of a story score after a threshold number of votes has been cast.

https://youtu.be/s9F5fhJQo34?t=77

I know a lot of authors don't want to believe this, but: not everybody is going to like your story. Even if ninety-nine readers love it, the one-hundredth reader might still hate it, perhaps even for the same aspects that the other ninety-nine loved, and their one-star vote is still legitimate and deserves to be heard.

Separating those genuine downvotes from trolls abusing the system is challenging, but if we try to block every downvote we might as well just give every story an 11.

The system already inflates our scores massively. A reader who enjoys my story is more likely to finish it, and vote, and then go check out my others and vote on them too. It's like going to a Tom Cruise movie and polling the audience on what they think of Tom Cruise. If we could wave a magic wand and force more representative voting, most of our cherished "H" stories would probably turn into low 3s. No need to exacerbate that further.

Another problem with your proposal is that it significantly disadvantages stories that haven't yet reached the threshold. That makes it hard for new stories to compete against old ones, and it gives authors (and over-zealous fans) a new incentive to multi-vote, so they can push their story over the threshold as quickly as possible.

None of these measures seems conceptually difficult. Why isn’t there more action on trolls? Is anyone else mildly annoyed?

If these things seem simple, I'd suggest it's because you haven't thought through the details and the implications.

 

[Mikethe3DGuy2]

All of your stories are in Fetish. I don't know that much about how the category works, but I doubt you have personal trolls. I've heard others say that Fetish is a hard place to publish. More likely you just have one-handed readers who click on your story because it's next on the New list. It doesn't get them off or it kills their buzz, so they down vote.

I don't think I have personal trolls either, simply those who are looking for certain keywords that set them off into their angry "must vote down!" spasms.

I understand now that the Fetish category is apparently a difficult one. When I posted my first chapter I was brand new to the site and didn't realize it made a difference. If I could revisit that decision I'd probably choose BDSM.

I don't imagine there's any feasible way to retroactively change the category on published stories?

 

[RejectReality]

I don't think I have personal trolls either, simply those who are looking for certain keywords that set them off into their angry "must vote down!" spasms.

I understand now that the Fetish category is apparently a difficult one. When I posted my first chapter I was brand new to the site and didn't realize it made a difference. If I could revisit that decision I'd probably choose BDSM.

I don't imagine there's any feasible way to retroactively change the category on published stories?

Copy-pasta time!

Actually, category is one of the few iffy prospects. You'll probably want to explain why you believe the story fits better in the new category than the existing one in the "notes" section. If Laurel doesn't agree, it may not move.

Here's the editing method for Lit.

• Take note of the url of your story/chapter. That's the address appearing in the address bar of your browser when you view the first page of your story. You really only need the last part after the /s/ that represents your title.
• Start a new submission.
• Use the same title as the original ( or as much as will fit ) plus something such as *EDIT*
• Fill in the same category, then fill description and keywords with placeholders, as they don't matter. ( Unless one of these things are what you're editing )
• If editing the story text, paste/upload the new text in the "story text" section. You need to upload the whole story/chapter, not just the edited sections. If editing anything else, copy the "notes" section detailed below in order to fill this section.
• In the "notes" section, say what you are editing. If story text, then put that. If title, then put the requested NEW title here. You can fill in edited descriptions/keywords/category above, but you'll still want to list any such changes here. It's a good idea to list the url that I mentioned in step 1. This is unique to every story/chapter, and can help eliminate the potential for human error. As mentioned above, if you are editing something other than the story text, copy what you put in the notes section to the "story text" as well. This is simply because there must be something in that section for you to submit.
• Click "Review", then "Submit"

Edits have a lower priority than new stories, and may take longer to process.

Edits will not appear on the public side immediately. Wait at least 24 hours after the "edited" submission vanishes from your private author list or from the "pending" folder before worrying that your changes haven't been applied. Changes may not all appear at the same time, either. Page 1 may change, while page 2 will remain the same until an hour or so later. Be patient as the system catches up.

If you edit the story in this manner ( as opposed to deleting and re-submitting ) you'll retain your votes, views, comments, etc. The only thing that will be changed is what you say that you want changed. It will not appear on the New List again.

If you wish to delete a story, use much the same method, except put something such as *DELETE* in the title, and say that you want to delete the story in question in the "notes" section.

If you wish to delete all of your stories, an entire series, etc., then use the normal delete process, but explain in the "notes" section that you want to do a mass delete, and what type.

Convoluted, but it does work. It gets a little easier as you get used to it.