Aggressive story rating manipulation

[Escierto]

Why are people obsessed with this?

 

[RejectReality]

Why are people obsessed with this?

Because it's a significant traffic driver. The difference once everything has been bombed off the upper half of page 1 of the toplists is like night and day. The instant plunges and overnight spikes due to sweeps prove it's malicious bullshit, so it's naturally upsetting that some basement dwelling jackholes are shoving your readership off a cliff.

 

[Escierto]

Because it's a significant traffic driver. The difference once everything has been bombed off the upper half of page 1 of the toplists is like night and day. The instant plunges and overnight spikes due to sweeps prove it's malicious bullshit, so it's naturally upsetting that some basement dwelling jackholes are shoving your readership off a cliff.

Okay, I guess all that matters to some people. Personally I think a lot of the highly rated stories are absolute crap and many of the low rated stories are excellent. The ratings mean nothing to me.

 

[HectorBidon]

Where you you get this data from?

The scores and vote counts are given on the top-list pages and, for your own stories, on your Control Panel / Works / My Stories page. But you have to compile the history yourself by recording the numbers every day into a spreadsheet.

 

[Koba]

The people who vote these 1's on a constant basis have psychological problems. They derive a perverse sense of pleasure from bringing people down. It is what it is. These people will be with us always. Ok, if one can identify them and get rid of them, great. But in the scheme of things, does it really make any difference? What are these ratings good for anyway? Writers are egotistical and very sensitive. We crave praise. We crave being at the top of the ladder no matter how tall or short the ladder may be. If you write a story that is top notch it will be top notch no matter what anybody says about it, whether they are certified critics or lonely psychos getting satisfaction from rating a top story a 1. Ratings are illusory.

 

[candm4fun]

Anyone else picture Burt Reynolds in Boogie Nights saying I think this is my best work yet?

 

[Mayia]

The people who vote these 1's on a constant basis have psychological problems. They derive a perverse sense of pleasure from bringing people down. It is what it is. These people will be with us always. Ok, if one can identify them and get rid of them, great. But in the scheme of things, does it really make any difference? What are these ratings good for anyway? Writers are egotistical and very sensitive. We crave praise. We crave being at the top of the ladder no matter how tall or short the ladder may be. If you write a story that is top notch it will be top notch no matter what anybody says about it, whether they are certified critics or lonely psychos getting satisfaction from rating a top story a 1. Ratings are illusory.

I think for many authors it it less of this big question on their performance but rather a question on how visible their story is on this site. As (obviously) if I put a story on this site I want it to be read.
This is the issue I have with this kind of downvotings.
Less people will be able to find my story. Nothing more, nothing less.

I know we cannot do anything about it.
I stopped caring too much. But I think it is ok to make transparent what happens.

Cheers
Mayia

 

[HectorBidon]

Why are people obsessed with this?

The ledgers of a venerable institution are being vandalized before our very eyes. The clues are there for all to see. It's an intriguing puzzle.

 

[CrassiusNomex]

Any rating given in less time than it takes to read a chapter ot two should not be included in the stats. That wouldn't be a hoop to jump through for anyone. I would think most 1 bombs are given by scrolling to the stars straight away without reading anything.

Give no indication that it has been ignored just, "Thank you for voting". That should weed out most of them.

It is more about visibility, rather than ego and not making it so easy for sad individuals.

 

[OverconfidentSarcasm]

Any rating given in less time than it takes to read a chapter ot two should not be included in the stats. That wouldn't be a hoop to jump through for anyone. I would think most 1 bombs are given by scrolling to the stars straight away without reading anything.

Give no indication that it has been ignored just, "Thank you for voting". That should weed out most of them.

It is more about visibility, rather than ego and not making it so easy for sad individuals.

Yeah, you wrote that before while claiming to be a developer, but that proposed solution is still crap. As a develper myself, I can tell you that it would do more harm than good, even if it would do any good at all. There are two big problems with it.

1. It wouldn't solve the problem in the first place.
All I need to do is invest an hour of my time to write a script that pulls the story via curl or something similar. That's one of the very first things people learn when making their starting-attempts at programming. They can choose a random useragent from a prepared list to make it seem like each story-access comes from different people. They can use VPNs (or simply make it a Browser-script and use it in the Tor Browser) to switch out their IPs. Then count the words with a single line of code, divide them by 5, and that's the amount of seconds to wait before either sending the get-request for the next page of the story, or sending the post-request with the 1-star vote. I could let that script run in the background the whole day long, and Lit would have no way to identify these votes as malicious. Within a day they would make the legitimate good scores look like outliers in the statistic.

2. It would falsify the scores upwards.
Here's the deal. If I recommend something to read to you, and you realize that it's crap, you stop reading. And, let's be honest here... the majority of submissions these days are braindead masturbation fantasies that are RIDDLED with typos, weird grammer, and never had an editor looking them over. If I give something like that a one- or two-star rating after only reading the first two paragraphs, it would be more than justified. But with your solution, the only votes that would count were the votes by people who actually read the whole thing. The people who read a story completely, however, are ONLY the people who liked it in the first place and would therefore have given a higher score. All the lower votes, legitimate or not, would be excluded from the score.
And then what? People would click on a "Hot" 4.5+ story and find that they have to read every damn paragraph multiple times, just to try and understand the mess they're presented with! How long do you think it would take those readers before they start looking for another site, where the stories are of higher quality and the scoring was a little more honest?

I'm with Sunny3429 on this one. Just don't allow anonymous voting. I can switch my IP. I can switch my Useragent. And while I can just as well create a hundred free mail-adresses for a hundred free Lit-accounts, at least that would be A LOT more work than spending an hour writing above script, and Lit could easily identify brand new accounts that don't have any posting-history because they do nothing but one-bomb stories.

Or, going completely crazy, make it ALSO mandatory to accompany your vote with a comment that justifies your given score. That would certainly give Lit an angle to identify automated scoring, in addition to providing them with a reasonable way to weed out unjust one-bombing. Of course, that would only work if the authors lose their ability to delete negative comments to maintain their little bubble of self-verification, which we all know will never happen.

 

[Mei5ter]

I think for many authors it it less of this big question on their performance but rather a question on how visible their story is on this site. As (obviously) if I put a story on this site I want it to be read.
This is the issue I have with this kind of downvotings.
Less people will be able to find my story. Nothing more, nothing less.

I know we cannot do anything about it.
I stopped caring too much. But I think it is ok to make transparent what happens.

Cheers
Mayia

Exactly this.

I posted my one and only story here in 2018, and it sat with a rating around 4.5 for a year or two. Which I was delighted with, because I'm an amateur writer and don't pretend to be more than that.

A year later, when the rating had bombed to 2.03, I pulled the story. Because...what's the point? Who's going to find, or bother to read, a story with a rating which implies it's complete crap?

 

[RejectReality]

Getting rid of anonymous voting just causes artificial inflation and homogenization of scores, while simultaneously making any malicious vote more impactful because overall vote numbers go off a cliff. Most people won't bother signing up for an account.

The trolls will.

They'll be able to do massive damage with a couple of 3s, ( and eventually 4s ) making them even more difficult to ferret out.

Forcing a comment further reduces the average reader's willingness to bother with providing feedback, and therefore gives the trolls even more power.

This isn't speculation. It's what I watched happen in real time on another site. Overall vote totals plunged to a fraction of what they were while views remained steady. Scores were inflated and homogenized to the point where nothing short of a perfect 5 could maintain any degree of visibility. A 4 was a bomb that could destroy a story permanently. I had one that had been sitting at #1 in a category for years. A single 4 dropped it from #1 to #130 something because there were that many perfect 5s. It went from a few thousand views a month to a couple hundred per month overnight.

Anything you do to discourage the average visitor from voting only empowers those who want to manipulate the system.

 

[CrassiusNomex]

Yeah, you wrote that before while claiming to be a developer, but that proposed solution is still crap. As a develper myself, I can tell you that it would do more harm than good, even if it would do any good at all. There are two big problems with it.

1. It wouldn't solve the problem in the first place.
All I need to do is invest an hour of my time to write a script that pulls the story via curl or something similar. That's one of the very first things people learn when making their starting-attempts at programming. They can choose a random useragent from a prepared list to make it seem like each story-access comes from different people. They can use VPNs (or simply make it a Browser-script and use it in the Tor Browser) to switch out their IPs. Then count the words with a single line of code, divide them by 5, and that's the amount of seconds to wait before either sending the get-request for the next page of the story, or sending the post-request with the 1-star vote. I could let that script run in the background the whole day long, and Lit would have no way to identify these votes as malicious. Within a day they would make the legitimate good scores look like outliers in the statistic.

2. It would falsify the scores upwards.
Here's the deal. If I recommend something to read to you, and you realize that it's crap, you stop reading. And, let's be honest here... the majority of submissions these days are braindead masturbation fantasies that are RIDDLED with typos, weird grammer, and never had an editor looking them over. If I give something like that a one- or two-star rating after only reading the first two paragraphs, it would be more than justified. But with your solution, the only votes that would count were the votes by people who actually read the whole thing. The people who read a story completely, however, are ONLY the people who liked it in the first place and would therefore have given a higher score. All the lower votes, legitimate or not, would be excluded from the score.
And then what? People would click on a "Hot" 4.5+ story and find that they have to read every damn paragraph multiple times, just to try and understand the mess they're presented with! How long do you think it would take those readers before they start looking for another site, where the stories are of higher quality and the scoring was a little more honest?

I'm with Sunny3429 on this one. Just don't allow anonymous voting. I can switch my IP. I can switch my Useragent. And while I can just as well create a hundred free mail-adresses for a hundred free Lit-accounts, at least that would be A LOT more work than spending an hour writing above script, and Lit could easily identify brand new accounts that don't have any posting-history because they do nothing but one-bomb stories.

Or, going completely crazy, make it ALSO mandatory to accompany your vote with a comment that justifies your given score. That would certainly give Lit an angle to identify automated scoring, in addition to providing them with a reasonable way to weed out unjust one-bombing. Of course, that would only work if the authors lose their ability to delete negative comments to maintain their little bubble of self-verification, which we all know will never happen.

 

[CrassiusNomex]

Yeah, you wrote that before while claiming to be a developer, but that proposed solution is still crap. As a develper myself, I can tell you that it would do more harm than good, even if it would do any good at all. There are two big problems with it.

1. It wouldn't solve the problem in the first place.
All I need to do is invest an hour of my time to write a script that pulls the story via curl or something similar. That's one of the very first things people learn when making their starting-attempts at programming. They can choose a random useragent from a prepared list to make it seem like each story-access comes from different people. They can use VPNs (or simply make it a Browser-script and use it in the Tor Browser) to switch out their IPs. Then count the words with a single line of code, divide them by 5, and that's the amount of seconds to wait before either sending the get-request for the next page of the story, or sending the post-request with the 1-star vote. I could let that script run in the background the whole day long, and Lit would have no way to identify these votes as malicious. Within a day they would make the legitimate good scores look like outliers in the statistic.

2. It would falsify the scores upwards.
Here's the deal. If I recommend something to read to you, and you realize that it's crap, you stop reading. And, let's be honest here... the majority of submissions these days are braindead masturbation fantasies that are RIDDLED with typos, weird grammer, and never had an editor looking them over. If I give something like that a one- or two-star rating after only reading the first two paragraphs, it would be more than justified. But with your solution, the only votes that would count were the votes by people who actually read the whole thing. The people who read a story completely, however, are ONLY the people who liked it in the first place and would therefore have given a higher score. All the lower votes, legitimate or not, would be excluded from the score.
And then what? People would click on a "Hot" 4.5+ story and find that they have to read every damn paragraph multiple times, just to try and understand the mess they're presented with! How long do you think it would take those readers before they start looking for another site, where the stories are of higher quality and the scoring was a little more honest?

I'm with Sunny3429 on this one. Just don't allow anonymous voting. I can switch my IP. I can switch my Useragent. And while I can just as well create a hundred free mail-adresses for a hundred free Lit-accounts, at least that would be A LOT more work than spending an hour writing above script, and Lit could easily identify brand new accounts that don't have any posting-history because they do nothing but one-bomb stories.

Or, going completely crazy, make it ALSO mandatory to accompany your vote with a comment that justifies your given score. That would certainly give Lit an angle to identify automated scoring, in addition to providing them with a reasonable way to weed out unjust one-bombing. Of course, that would only work if the authors lose their ability to delete negative comments to maintain their little bubble of self-verification, which we all know will never happen.

Of course it could be scripted, is it do you think? Given the low percentage of readers that bother to vote (or perhaps that's just my readers) it wouldn't take many 1 bombs a day to drag down manually.

I take on board what you say and since the first reply I gave I'd slightly modified the second reply. (For the reason you give.) I'd meant to say one or two paragraphs but instead wrote "chapters". Requiring a couple of paragraphs I think is fair.

One might give up after one paragraph (or sentence) of utter garbage and lose a legit low vote. However, if it was so bad it's unlikely that it would ever reach 4.5 or anywhere near.

Of course there's also the other side of the manipulation coin, giving unwarranted high scores.

I hear what you say about logged on voters, but we'll have to disagree on that one. As others have mentioned it would give a logged on troll more impact.

Pros and cons whatever. I guess the best option is what already takes place with the sweeps I've heard mentioned.

 

[OverconfidentSarcasm]

I hear what you say about logged on voters, but we'll have to disagree on that one. As others have mentioned it would give a logged on troll more impact.

I really don't see how, though.

RejectReality wrote the same thing, but then, just like you, neglected to back up that claim. I mean, how in the world would a logged in troll, who can only vote ONCE on a story and can be easily identified as a troll, have more impact than an anonymous troll, who can cast as many one-bombs as he likes without any way for the admins to identify that? Please, someone explain that to me. Because, right now, it seems to me like you just want the admins to regularly sweep away low votes and artificially keep your scores up. And, please, don't just repeat that claim about homogenized scores without giving a reason for why this would happen. Lit has a massive and diverse userbase established. I'm gonna claim that it's gonna be hard to homogenize anything with THAT kind of voterbase.

I'm mainly active on another site that does require people to log in to vote, and it works out quite well for everyone. The example RejectReality gave was so over the top, I'm pretty sure he simply posted into an echo chamber before. If a SINGLE 4/5 drops your story from #1 to #130+, something wasn't right in the first place!

 

[RejectReality]

Only two types of people are going to sign up. Fans and trolls. Fans are going to vote 5s every time. The downward pressure caused by the casual readers on scores goes away ( see chapter stories and how latter chapters perform for an example on Lit ) and what you're left with are higher, homogenized scores.

Those higher scores with lower vote totals are then subject to much easier manipulation. The fewer number of middling votes you need to achieve the same end of moving a story down XX places in the ranking makes it more difficult to weed out people manipulating the score. You can do the same damage with a 3 as far as ranking goes, but not move the score as much, which further contributes to the inflation and homogenization.

Human nature and math dictate that this approach will not solve anything with regards to manipulation of scores. It just makes it easier for the motivated scumbags to accomplish their ends, and dramatically reduces interaction with the bulk of Lit's visitors, who choose to remain anonymous.

You're right. Something wasn't right over there. They went to members only voting, and exactly what I'm saying will happen happened. There were over 130 stories in the category with perfect 5 scores. Mine had the highest vote total. The moment I got a 4 that reduced it to 4.99, I was two pages deep in the rankings behind a story with a perfect five and about 12 votes. People cried about 4s over there the way people cry about 1s here, because it had the same effect.

( They've since switched to a like-only scoring system — which has its own manipulation problems )

You can choose to believe it or not, but I watched a real world example in real time. I'm not speculating. I'm reporting the results of the same experiment you're suggesting. It accomplished nothing other than giving authors a brief, feelgood moment where everybody got high scores. Once that was established, high scores were no longer enough, and only perfect would do. Things returned to the same level of anxiety as they were before the change.

 

[CrassiusNomex]

I think you answered it yourself except it wouldn't need hundreds of free email addresses.

I've a story I wrote last year that is sitting at 4.73 from 105 votes. Ten 1 bombs would drop it to 4.43.

Obviously I don't know how many of the 105 were anonymous but taking comments as an indicator a third to a half of the comments I get are anonymous.

So assuming 40% of the votes were anonymous and 4.73 came from just 63 logged on users. Thereafter ten 1 bombs would drop it to 4.26.

That's what was meant by more impact.

"easily identified as a troll"? How? Surely any legit user can choose to only rate stories they hate and not bother voting on the others. It doesn't make them a troll.

I'm really not bothered whether downvotes are swept away or not. When it happened to me it was when I didn't overlook one particularly shitty comment and replied to them, not in a shitty way). Over the next few days the ratings on all my stories started dropping.

 

[RoperTrace]

Exactly this.

I posted my one and only story here in 2018, and it sat with a rating around 4.5 for a year or two. Which I was delighted with, because I'm an amateur writer and don't pretend to be more than that.

A year later, when the rating had bombed to 2.03, I pulled the story. Because...what's the point? Who's going to find, or bother to read, a story with a rating which implies it's complete crap?

I may have agreed with you at one time, several(5 or 6?) of my stories at 4.5+, and eventually only one now. But two or three of my lowest rated stories have the highest number of reads, and quite a few comments also. So I let them ride and continue to get views. But I understand your sentiment.

 

[OverconfidentSarcasm]

Only two types of people are going to sign up. Fans and trolls. Fans are going to vote 5s every time. The downward pressure caused by the casual readers on scores goes away ( see chapter stories and how latter chapters perform for an example on Lit ) and what you're left with are higher, homogenized scores.

Really. Then, where do you think all the tens of thousands of currently registered users are coming from, given how you can vote and comment without registering!? What about the third kind who signs up to participate in forum discussions and write comments? What about the fourth kind who signs up to create reading-lists, add bookmarks, and follow authors? And what about the fifth kind to sign up to post their own attempts at writing?

Those higher scores with lower vote totals are then subject to much easier manipulation. The fewer number of middling votes you need to achieve the same end of moving a story down XX places in the ranking makes it more difficult to weed out people manipulating the score. You can do the same damage with a 3 as far as ranking goes, but not move the score as much, which further contributes to the inflation and homogenization.

The problem with the lower vote-amounts is completely off topic. The way I see it, every new story is equally prominent when posted. Therefore, every story has an equal opportunity to reel in readers to upvote and bookmark it, and then check out the author's page for more work. If that doesn't happen, it just wasn't good enough. Simple as that.

And you kinda seem to simply ignore the argument I already made multiple times now. A registered user can only vote ONCE on your story. So, a motivated troll would need to register multiple email adresses, to then create multiple Lit accounts, to then give you multiple "bad" votes after chaging his IP-Adress for every vote. Really!? It's absolutely ridiculous to use THAT as an argument in favor of allowing unregistered voting that makes it EASIER for the trolls.

Human nature and math dictate that this approach will not solve anything with regards to manipulation of scores. It just makes it easier for the motivated scumbags to accomplish their ends, and dramatically reduces interaction with the bulk of Lit's visitors, who choose to remain anonymous.

No, human nature and math dicatate the exact opposite of what you're claiming.

1. People are generally lazy. The amount of people willing to go through that hassle I just described above, just to mess with your scores, is WAY smaller than the amount of people willing to just click on the 1/5 star when they feel like it, as is currently possible.

2. Regarding the math... You seem to think that a vote of 3/5, which would indicate an average quality, is trolling?

You can choose to believe it or not, but I watched a real world example in real time. I'm not speculating. I'm reporting the results of the same experiment you're suggesting. It accomplished nothing other than giving authors a brief, feelgood moment where everybody got high scores. Once that was established, high scores were no longer enough, and only perfect would do. Things returned to the same level of anxiety as they were before the change.

I'm not claiming you're making that up. But, as I wrote before, I'm observing the exact opposite on a site that does require registration to vote. So...

 

[OverconfidentSarcasm]

"easily identified as a troll"? How? Surely any legit user can choose to only rate stories they hate and not bother voting on the others. It doesn't make them a troll.

Easy. If your story is actually good, most people will give it a good score. Then one user comes along and gives it a 1/5. So you check their voting history and see that they score multiple good stories that way. Things get suspicious now. But, of course, that only works when people have to register to vote, so the site can see what else you voted on.

 

[jaF0]

Because it's a significant traffic driver. The difference once everything has been bombed off the upper half of page 1 of the toplists is like night and day. The instant plunges and overnight spikes due to sweeps prove it's malicious bullshit, so it's naturally upsetting that some basement dwelling jackholes are shoving your readership off a cliff.

And that gets you how many jelly doughnuts from the local bakery every Thursday?

My vote is for Lit to dump the whole voting/ratiings thing.

 

[RejectReality]

Really. Then, where do you think all the tens of thousands of currently registered users are coming from, given how you can vote and comment without registering!? What about the third kind who signs up to participate in forum discussions and write comments? What about the fourth kind who signs up to create reading-lists, add bookmarks, and follow authors? And what about the fifth kind to sign up to post their own attempts at writing?

And they're doing that now. Completely irrelevant when talking about people willing to sign up just to cast a vote they can do now by simply clicking the star right in front of them. ( The few that do )

The problem with the lower vote-amounts is completely off topic. The way I see it, every new story is equally prominent when posted. Therefore, every story has an equal opportunity to reel in readers to upvote and bookmark it, and then check out the author's page for more work. If that doesn't happen, it just wasn't good enough. Simple as that.

And you kinda seem to simply ignore the argument I already made multiple times now. A registered user can only vote ONCE on your story. So, a motivated troll would need to register multiple email adresses, to then create multiple Lit accounts, to then give you multiple "bad" votes after chaging his IP-Adress for every vote. Really!? It's absolutely ridiculous to use THAT as an argument in favor of allowing unregistered voting that makes it EASIER for the trolls.

I could make a dozen alias email accounts that would all be conveniently delivered to a single inbox within a couple of minutes. Signing up for Lit with each of them wouldn't take much longer. Thanks to VPNs, I could not only have a different IP addresses for each of them with minimal effort, I could have every single one of them be from a different country. The effort is minimal — especially for a "long term investment".

Thing is, it wouldn't be necessary. Even conservatively speaking, the vote totals dropped by half and the scores rose by .25-.30 across the board when the other site went members only. It was closer to a 3/4 drop than a half, as best I remember.

Take a middling category like EC. Even at .15 rise, almost every single one of the 250 stories in the all time toplist would be perfect 5s. So cut it back to .10, which will make the first page bottom out at 4.98. The #1 story right now has a 4.94 with 761 votes.

To drop that off the front page as things stand, that requires 10 ( More likely 11 ) 1 bombs to drop it off page 1.

Now pop the scores all up by .10 and cut the vote totals in half. It takes 2 1-bombs to push the story off page 1. Only 1 will drop it to the bottom half of the page. But why would you do that when it's so obvious? Three 3s will do the same job, and only 1 or 2 of them will put it down out of the "threat zone" at the top half of the page. Fewer traces, and quicker than even the most unsophisticated workarounds for the way things stand now. The malicious votes are more likely to survive scrutiny ( After all, 3 is an average score, as you say. Why would those be suspicious? ) and it takes less time.

Thus, you make bad actors' behavior easier and more effective, while simultaneously putting barriers in front of average visitors with no agenda.

The same would apply to bombing stories on the new list to keep them below 4.5, thus dramatically reducing their visibility on the critical first couple of days when the majority of the activity happens.

No, human nature and math dicatate the exact opposite of what you're claiming.

1. People are generally lazy. The amount of people willing to go through that hassle I just described above, just to mess with your scores, is WAY smaller than the amount of people willing to just click on the 1/5 star when they feel like it, as is currently possible.

2. Regarding the math... You seem to think that a vote of 3/5, which would indicate an average quality, is trolling?

People are lazy. You know who isn't lazy? An asshole. They will go the extra mile to sign up for multiple accounts and whatever it takes to accomplish their mission. Who's more likely to make the effort? The person whose only goal is to reduce the score of a story, or the person who just came across it and thought it was good? When the average person sees that "sign up here to vote!" link instead of a voting form, they're clicking the home button as often as not. The asshole on a mission will be all over that shit.

Once the scores are inflated and the vote totals reduced, a 3 becomes a death knell for visibility. It doesn't matter if 3/5 is average on the scale when 90% of the stories are above 4.90 and even a 4 cuts the legs out from under you. There's the average of the scale, and then there's the realistic average of the scores. They are not the same.

Even as things stand now, with the majority of scores above 4.0, every vote of 4 reduces your score. The higher those scores go and the lower the vote totals go, the more that compounds. The reality is that stories that make the topist and/or maintain an H get dramatically more activity than those that don't. A three may not necessarily be a troll vote, but it sure looks more and more like one to people when it causes dramatic harm to their long-term readership. People mistake strings of 4s on their stories as one-bombing all the time. They're not doing math. They're just watching their scores plummet, and that's all that matters.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Where you you get this data from?

The guy will be pulling down stats regularly and compiling his own spreadsheet, I reckon. The site's download dumps are "time now" snapshots, to the best of my knowledge, not time phased.

 

[CrassiusNomex]

Easy. If your story is actually good, most people will give it a good score. Then one user comes along and gives it a 1/5. So you check their voting history and see that they score multiple good stories that way. Things get suspicious now. But, of course, that only works when people have to register to vote, so the site can see what else you voted on.

But good is subjective, as are all the rating levels. A story could be very well written with most readers liking/loving it yet somebody hates it because they wanted realism not fantasy, or it triggered them in some other unusual way.

If you give 5 levels you have to give freedom to choose. You can't police votes, wiping out votes just because you don't agree.

Of the five levels the first three are degrees of negative, as most authors strive to be better than average. My earlier post requiring at least two paragraphs of reader involvement before the back-end actually includes the vote in the stats, I think still has merit. The scores wouldn't go stupidly high.

Yes it could be scripted and we won't agree on this, so I'll make this my last post on this subject. I did think this was a forum where we could bounce ideas around without someone questioning your honesty and calling your idea crap.

 

[TheDok]

And that gets you how many jelly doughnuts from the local bakery every Thursday?

My vote is for Lit to dump the whole voting/ratiings thing.

With the greatest respect I am not sure most authors would agree with you. The scoring/rating system is imperfect but still gives authors some idea of how they are doing. Without feedback I cannot know how well my work is being received and although some folk write only for themselves I suspect many (most?) write for an audience as well. Many great stories get low scores, but more often than not, they don't and I haven't yet seen a poorly written story littered with spelling and grammatical errors do well.