Curious (computer whizzes welcome)

[wishfulthinking]

[Besides how do you spell whizzes] I was curious to know how you would go about discovering and eliminating trolls. Trolls don't just vote '1's - as can be seen by the flurry of 2s and 3s voted on all the nude day comp. We all know when it happens to us on an individual basis, but what would you do if you were in laurel and manu's position?

> have a record of known suspects? Eg, they have a tendency to vote no higher than a 2, no matter what the story.
> have a program that eliminates votes by particular ip address in curious patterns. eg 5 '1' votes in an hour?

Obviously I have no computer programming skills, and my question may seem pretty clueless, but I am very curious

But programming aside, we are a pretty creative bunch, how would you do it?

 

[Liar]

Hmm. define troll. A 2 or 3, or even a 1 vote on a story can be a totally honext expression of a reader's opinion on a story. He or she simply might not agree with your or the wider accented criteria for what makes a good story.

I don't think all trolls vote lows on all stories, but rather, some might value a story on the aount of G's in "I'mmmmm cummminnnngggggg!", the more the merrier, and therefore will slam a low vote on a story that other acclaim, what do I know?

#L

 

[Couture]

As long as we all get hit by the uno-voter equally, then it should all average out in the end.

 

[cantdog]

Liar's right. You give people 5 different available votes, they'll use them.

For me, trolls are folk who bait people into reacting by posting to a board like this, or a newsgroup, or what have you.

I don't need to worry about inventing other sorts of trolls.

Votes are fun. If they aren't, turn them off. You can always disallow them on any story.

 

[Clare Quilty]

[Besides how do you spell whizzes] I was curious to know how you would go about discovering and eliminating trolls. Trolls don't just vote '1's - as can be seen by the flurry of 2s and 3s voted on all the nude day comp. We all know when it happens to us on an individual basis, but what would you do if you were in laurel and manu's position?

Rather than engaging in censorship, which I find particularly onerous on a site devoted to erotic literature, I would use a weighted average rather than a raw data average. This would reduce the impact of 1 bombing. This is a rather obvious and practical win/win solution.

 

[Lisa Denton]

Some trolls want to be known, when some one got 1-bombed during a heated discussion on a thread the other night I called the troll a coward. Then when one of my stories took a downward slide I smiled imagining his impotence. I'm bad?

I didn't bother complaining cause the story had quite a few votes so I figured he was runnin an IP masker and 1-voting a lot on it.

I noticed some people give me a decent vote and then make suggestions. I have started doing that cause I liked it and think it will help me on my next story.

 

[Lord DragonsWing]

[Besides how do you spell whizzes] I was curious to know how you would go about discovering and eliminating trolls. Trolls don't just vote '1's - as can be seen by the flurry of 2s and 3s voted on all the nude day comp. We all know when it happens to us on an individual basis, but what would you do if you were in laurel and manu's position?

> have a record of known suspects? Eg, they have a tendency to vote no higher than a 2, no matter what the story.
> have a program that eliminates votes by particular ip address in curious patterns. eg 5 '1' votes in an hour?

Obviously I have no computer programming skills, and my question may seem pretty clueless, but I am very curious

But programming aside, we are a pretty creative bunch, how would you do it?

Basically we're stuck with them. There is no real way of discovering who the trolls are. They hit each of us. For the server it would be much easier to discover by isp and track them. But to take the time to do that is improbable due to the large membership of Lit. And I don't think Laurel and Manu have that time available. That would mean setting up alarms and continous scanning.

Basically, we have to hope that everything works out in the end. It has with some of my stories. But others still suffer from the troll that hit me.

 

[Lisa Denton]

Re: Re: Curious (computer whizzes welcome)

Basically we're stuck with them. There is no real way of discovering who the trolls are. They hit each of us. For the server it would be much easier to discover by isp and track them. But to take the time to do that is improbable due to the large membership of Lit. And I don't think Laurel and Manu have that time available. That would mean setting up alarms and continous scanning.

Basically, we have to hope that everything works out in the end. It has with some of my stories. But others still suffer from the troll that hit me.

I've heard you and others talking about this dragon. What did he do? 1-bomb all you stories or somethin?

 

[wishfulthinking]

Opps. I didn't mean to start another thread about who/what are trolls, criticising lit or anything like that.

I was just curious about how you would go about it from a global perspective. I can see the affect of trolls on an individual scale, and I agree with Liar, not all '1's are trolls, and am realising that some could view '5's as trolls.

So how would you even begin the large task of weeding out some of the trolls from 100,000s of stories. I have no answer. I was wondering if anyone else did, whether from experience with computer programming, or just sheer creative genious, or just a shot in the dark. The one thing I do realise is how hard, time-consuming, possibly inefficient, and probably little reward.

 

[snooper]

One thing nobody ever mentions is the time spent reading a story. If someone calls down a story and votes within a matter of seconds then that implies that they haven't read it, and are, perhaps, not in a position to make an informed vote.

There might be a case for disallowing such votes.

 

[Lord DragonsWing]

Re: Re: Re: Curious (computer whizzes welcome)

I've heard you and others talking about this dragon. What did he do? 1-bomb all you stories or somethin?

No Lisa. I don't know if he bombed me or not. I have been. But that's part of lit. I was just answering a tech question for the post.