Fraud Detection System

[29wordsforsnow]

Yesterday's Sweep turned it, for me, into the Frustrating Demotivation System. I'm now pretty used to see the latest 'love it'-ratings gone, and the 'hate it's sticking like tar. But yesterday, some ratings vanished that have been there for months, surviving several sweeps, and now for some unknown reason have become suspicious...why?

Poetry on Lit is already masochistic in itself, but that adds an arbitrary sour taste to it. A few more of such sweeps with ever changing definition of 'fraud' and there won't be anything left...of any non-1*-votes and motivation

 

[Smuttyandfun]

I noticed all the scores dropped on Mature, where I've got a new story. Overnight it went from 4.84 to 4.81, and everyone else's scores dropped too. I also wondered if the scores on our older stories will ever be corrected. A number of my stories dropped below 4.50, some by a lot. I don't think it's very fair that we lose scores because of a bug in the system.

 

[29wordsforsnow]

I'm not sure it's a bug, more a feature the trolls have understood better than anyone else...

 

[NotWise]

Yesterday's Sweep turned it, for me, into the Frustrating Demotivation System. I'm now pretty used to see the latest 'love it'-ratings gone, and the 'hate it's sticking like tar. But yesterday, some ratings vanished that have been there for months, surviving several sweeps, and now for some unknown reason have become suspicious...why?

Poetry on Lit is already masochistic in itself, but that adds an arbitrary sour taste to it. A few more of such sweeps with ever changing definition of 'fraud' and there won't be anything left...of any non-1*-votes and motivation

I saw some of the same behavior, but on the 25th. An old story that hadn't received a vote since early September had three 5* votes removed. Between the holiday contest sweeps and the monthly contest sweeps the most recent vote had probably cleared the sweeps ten times--others, even more.

It seems like they may have moderated the problem with leaking votes, but maybe they haven't completely fixed it.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

I waited a month to try submitting again after the mess at the end of March. And nothing has changed. I really enjoyed writing on here, but now that the votes don't really count anymore, and it's a crap shoot what score you'll get, I have to decide if it's even worth submitting on Literotica anymore. Especially since my older stories scores have been dropped, too. And the newer ones just keep dropping. I know this is supposed to prevent fraud, but I can't understand how knocking down the scores of three-quarters of what I've written has anything to do with that. Really demoralizing. Especially since I've noticed that some writer's scores have been restored, but none of mine have.

 

[Rustyoznail]

An Indian lady I do editing for has had the same issue. We'd managed to tidy up her recent work so she was getting 4.5+. They were all hammered with the worst example going from 4.6 to 3.8. After a request, they were sort of restored but she now has nothing that's hot. Pretty demoralising. And scores are still slipping down...

 

[Smuttyandfun]

I don't know if it matters if I ask about my scores, if nothing would be done.
Out of 136 submissions, 91 of my scores have dropped. 34 by 1 point, 18 by 2 points, 24 by 3 points, 8 by 4 points, 2 by 5 points, 3 by 7 points, 1 by 8 points and 1 by 10 points.
Some have dropped below 4.50, and others have gone off Hall of Fame, or moved off the main page to a back page.
I noticed that everything seemed to drop, even a lot of older stories, the week of March 21st.
I can't believe that submissions that I've have posted for over a year with basically the same score suddenly have a fraud problem.
It makes me wonder what my real scores are, if the program can arbitrarily start dropping points for no reason.
It sure doesn't make me want to submit anything else, unless this problem can be sorted out.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

Just thought I'd mention, we can all breathe a sigh of relief since I just noticed that BurnRedstone still has 11 stories on the front page of Hall of Fame, in Erotic Couplings, and the Fraud Detection System didn't seem to affect any of his stories. Strange huh, when everyone else has noticed that even our older stories have had their scores dropped. My story Unleashed Chapter 10 was scoring 4.88 before the new roll out in the end of March and was sitting on the front page of Hall of Fame in Erotic Couplings, as was my story Mating Season in Mature, and now Unleashed has dropped to 4.85 and Mating Season to 4.84, and both have been pushed to the back pages.
Hard to conceive that 11 of his stories were left unscathed.

 

[PhiroEpsilon]

It seems that someone is active in the German area again. Stories with 4.6+ go slowly down .01 every other day.

 

[PhiroEpsilon]

It seems that someone is active in the German area again. Stories with 4.6+ go slowly down .01 every other day.

My recent two stories both slid down from 4.7+ to 4.64 after they crossed the 100 votes-barrier. This is exactly the rating to push them our of the top 10 of their category. Then the voting stopped. Can anybody please look into that?

It's annoying and frustrating.

 

[PhiroEpsilon]

My recent two stories both slid down from 4.7+ to 4.64 after they crossed the 100 votes-barrier. This is exactly the rating to push them our of the top 10 of their category. Then the voting stopped. Can anybody please look into that?

It's annoying and frustrating.

My seond to newest story did not recieve a voting for more than a week. It was on 4.64. Then one 5*-vote arrived pushing it up to 4.65 and the next day the story went down to 4.63.

Too many coincidences to be coincidential I think.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

Scores Dropping

Can anyone tell me who I should email to ask about the dropped scores that were supposed to be corrected after the new page roll out in late March. I've had over 90 scores of my 136 submissions dropped, and they're still dropping. I'd just like to ask before I decide to hold off submitting on this site, possibly indefinitely. I'm not sure if I'm just supposed to report the issue at the end of one of my submissions, or if there is someone I should be messaging who would be able to look into this. Thanks.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Can anyone tell me who I should email to ask about the dropped scores that were supposed to be corrected after the new page roll out in late March. I've had over 90 scores of my 136 submissions dropped, and they're still dropping. I'd just like to ask before I decide to hold off submitting on this site, possibly indefinitely. I'm not sure if I'm just supposed to report the issue at the end of one of my submissions, or if there is someone I should be messaging who would be able to look into this. Thanks.

Laurel is the site owner and I believe she and Manu are working actively to fix this issue. I doubt you'll get any personalised attention though - the sweep system is a global thing that treats the whole story data base equally, and you're one of many with the same change in numbers.

You're assuming that all of your scores were legit, but they might not be - the sweep criteria has obviously been tightened up and is culling more - but it's across the board, not just your story collection.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

Normally, I'm not a regular visitor to the Discussion Board, until this whole thing started I barely checked in here. The reason I'm still questioning what's happening, is that I haven't heard of anyone else with three quarters of their stories being affected, including old stories with scores that basically remained untouched for ages, up until the end of March, when some were dropped by 10 points. One of my stories, Mating Season was chosen as reader's favorite in Mature for November. It was scoring at 4.88 and then dropped to 4.87 in late March. After the roll over it dropped to 4.84, and was relegated to a back page of the Hall of Fame. But I noticed that other author's stories whose scores were also dropped at that time, have been restored, and they now appear on the front page again where they had been sitting right beside mine. Which naturally has me wondering if every author's scores are being adjusted back to where they were, why my stories scores have not been corrected, and are still dropping. So not only am I confused, but I'm finding it pretty demoralizing.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Which naturally has me wondering if every author's scores are being adjusted back to where they were, why my stories scores have not been corrected, and are still dropping. So not only am I confused, but I'm finding it pretty demoralizing.

I get that, but whatever criteria the site is using would be applied equally to everybody's story file. A change from a 4.88 to a 4.87 is neither here nor there - as new votes come in, that can be as simple as a 5 followed by a 4. Scores move up and down all the time - my top 25% stories are constantly rearranging themselves as time passes. Don't worry about it - it's only feedback from 1% of your readers anyway, so any other variations are noise in the dataset, really.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

I get what you're saying. But if you read my post, I said after the roll-over the story dropped to 4.84 overnight. And that's quite a drop, by anyone's standards.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

Oh, and as I said, the drop in my submission's scores happened to over 90 of them, and not just one, all in the same week.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Oh, and as I said, the drop in my submission's scores happened to over 90 of them, and not just one, all in the same week.

That makes sense if a software routine moves through the data - it's not going to take long for each story to get crunched. Your circumstance is the same as everybody else's - it's been a system-wide thing, not targeted. I don't think you're going to get individualized attention.

Going from 4:87 to 4:84 isn't much movement, not really. I've got one bellwether story that moves around a lot - its score fluctuated from 4:67 down to 4:35 and back up again to 4:55 over a couple of months. It's my troll indicator.

 

[jaF0]

I still haven't figured out if maybe you can buy a cup of coffee with these scores and ratings.



Cookie?

 

[Smuttyandfun]

Obviously I don't think any author can buy anything with their votes, including coffee. But the fact that the readers do vote to let us know how a story is doing once it's published, is a good indicator on how we're doing as writers. If the votes mean nothing and can be arbitrarily changed by the fraud detection system or the occasional sweep, then I can't understand what the point is of having the readers vote on our work at all, if their votes don't mean anything. I had two stories chosen as readers choice for November and December in Mature, which had me thinking that I'd done something right. And later both scores were dropped during the roll over, and again recently, I think because of a sweep. So, what's the point in even telling us that our stories have been voted as favorites by the readers if the scores are going to be manipulated to change the results? Especially when it happens on three quarters of your efforts. It sure isn't very encouraging. I don't thrive on the votes, but is a good indicator on whether a story is a hit or a miss. I think most authors feel the same way.

 

[cadeauxxx]

I waited a month to try submitting again after the mess at the end of March. And nothing has changed. I really enjoyed writing on here, but now that the votes don't really count anymore, and it's a crap shoot what score you'll get, I have to decide if it's even worth submitting on Literotica anymore. Especially since my older stories scores have been dropped, too. And the newer ones just keep dropping. I know this is supposed to prevent fraud, but I can't understand how knocking down the scores of three-quarters of what I've written has anything to do with that. Really demoralizing. Especially since I've noticed that some writer's scores have been restored, but none of mine have.

It sucks and I understand your pain. I had to lock my votes all together due to a handful of trolls who kept one-bombing them with proxies.

But I can tell you this; the rating stars are more of a way of judging engagement on stories. If you are still getting a healthy dose of favorites and comments or feedback, then you have fans. Even if you just have one fan, it's better than nothing.

 

[PhiroEpsilon]

If someone's lookgin:

My story "Merlins Kinder 05" just got its 100th vote and is now in the German "SF&Fantasy" Top 10 on Rank 1 with 4.82. I expect the downvoting to start soon.

 

[PhiroEpsilon]

If someone's lookgin:

My story "Merlins Kinder 05" just got its 100th vote and is now in the German "SF&Fantasy" Top 10 on Rank 1 with 4.82. I expect the downvoting to start soon.

Well - it didn't take long - The count is now 101 and the rating 4.79.

 

[SimonDoom]

Obviously I don't think any author can buy anything with their votes, including coffee. But the fact that the readers do vote to let us know how a story is doing once it's published, is a good indicator on how we're doing as writers. If the votes mean nothing and can be arbitrarily changed by the fraud detection system or the occasional sweep, then I can't understand what the point is of having the readers vote on our work at all, if their votes don't mean anything. I had two stories chosen as readers choice for November and December in Mature, which had me thinking that I'd done something right. And later both scores were dropped during the roll over, and again recently, I think because of a sweep. So, what's the point in even telling us that our stories have been voted as favorites by the readers if the scores are going to be manipulated to change the results? Especially when it happens on three quarters of your efforts. It sure isn't very encouraging. I don't thrive on the votes, but is a good indicator on whether a story is a hit or a miss. I think most authors feel the same way.

You are making assumptions that I think are unwarranted. I don't see a reason to believe that the Site owners, through their fraud detection system, are "manipulating" the vote results. They're trying to get rid of fraudulent votes. The system may not be perfect, but even if it's not perfect it increases, rather than decreases, the incentive for real readers to cast real votes.

 

[KeithD]

I've never gone through a sweep that didn't better my rate, so I see no reason to complain about whatever "fraud detection system" is going. When I've seen something about the sweep lowering the score, my thoughts go to something the author and/or friends were trying to do. When the rate fluctuates from one or a few votes having been cast, I see that as just the reader voting, not any Web site control program.