cyberbullies

[StanHigfield]

As many writers here (if not just about all of them) have experienced, I've had cyberbullies attack my writing and vote my stuff down. I call them cyberbullies because the negative comments are never constructive, their expressed in the most abusive language that can be mustered, and--of course--they're always 'Anonymous'.

What's more, sometimes I see chapters of my novel voted down, then--mysteriously--the average votes suddenly shoot up, and I see fewer, rather than more, total votes. Am I right in assuming this is because those who do maintenance on this website find who the cyberbullies are, then evict them from the site?

If my assumption is correct, could those maintainers please do some more evicting of cyberbullies? I ask this because I suspect the down voting and negative comments I've had on the more recent chapters of my novel ('Camilla') are less due to them not being so good, and more to do with the bias of cyberbullies, who are deliberately trying to give my novel a bad reputation.

I can imagine finding and getting rid of those nuisances is difficult; but I can also imagine this problem is true for many other stories, poems, and art on this website, and I'm sure those writers and artists would appreciate getting rid of those pesky people, too.

Thank you.

 

[sr71plt]

First, no, I don't think it's right that the website is campaigning against cyberbullies per se. They do sweeps periodically, but it appears to be more on the basis of duplicate voting (actually more stringent than that--duplicate voting from the same ISP, so if there are multiple Lit. members in a household using the same ISP, they're only going to get one household vote). That said, they won't reveal their formula for sweeping, so no one can give a definitive answer on what that formula is and precisely who is being targeted in the sweeps.

Second, this isn't the place to talk directly to the website owners. They don't appear to be reading the forum much, if at all. They also don't respond to e-mails. If you want to talk directly to either Laurel or Manu, who appear to be the only ones running the site, send a PM directly to one or both (the "private message" block at the upper right of this screen).

Here you are just talking to others in the same boat (my stories are certainly being trolled regularly too) who have no hand in the steering of the website.

 

[lovecraft68]

As many writers here (if not just about all of them) have experienced, I've had cyberbullies attack my writing and vote my stuff down. I call them cyberbullies because the negative comments are never constructive, their expressed in the most abusive language that can be mustered, and--of course--they're always 'Anonymous'.

What's more, sometimes I see chapters of my novel voted down, then--mysteriously--the average votes suddenly shoot up, and I see fewer, rather than more, total votes. Am I right in assuming this is because those who do maintenance on this website find who the cyberbullies are, then evict them from the site?

If my assumption is correct, could those maintainers please do some more evicting of cyberbullies? I ask this because I suspect the down voting and negative comments I've had on the more recent chapters of my novel ('Camilla') are less due to them not being so good, and more to do with the bias of cyberbullies, who are deliberately trying to give my novel a bad reputation.

I can imagine finding and getting rid of those nuisances is difficult; but I can also imagine this problem is true for many other stories, poems, and art on this website, and I'm sure those writers and artists would appreciate getting rid of those pesky people, too.

Thank you.

On the subject of your chapters seeing less votes but a higher average score what that reflected is the votes coming from a steady readership.

First chapters always receive the most views and votes(also the most low votes) then as the series progresses, people who are not really interested drop off leaving you with a "core" audience. They obviously like the story so you are getting higher votes from them and less trolling.

And yeah cyber bullying sucks and it is not limited to voting. every chat forum across the world is full of cyber bullies who are very brave from behind the safety of a keyboard.

 

[estragon]

Y'all can say that again.

 

[CarlusMagnus]

On the subject of your chapters seeing less votes but a higher average score what that reflected is the votes coming from a steady readership.

I think what he was talking about is the fact that the vote count for an individual story sometimes decreases—while the score for that same story goes up. I've observed this phenomenon for several of my stories. One of them, in fact, went from a score of 4.34 with 62 votes to a score of 4.53 with 64 votes over a period of a few days. During that period the number of votes oscillated up and down several times between 62 and 66, the score gradually rising (mostly) all the time.

For someone who likes numbers, it was fascinating to watch.

 

[Darkniciad]

Eventually, the Reader's Choice Awards for the month in which your story was published will be determined. At that point a very large sweep will run, which often takes out a lot of troll votes ( and unfortunately, a lot of nice votes too )

The trolls almost always give themselves away eventually. They get over confident and make mistakes that get them caught, and expunged from your score.

It's the smart ones that only bomb you once or twice with carefully selected votes that tank your score, using tricks to disguise the activity, that you have to worry about. They slip in under the radar, and can keep your scores forever in the blah to gutter range.

It depends upon the category, as well. Some categories have a higher average score, and low votes are more likely to vanish on stories in those categories due to the way I've deduced at least one of the sweeps to work.

In categories that are heavily trolled such as Loving Wives, you're less likely to see those low votes dissapear.

Likewise, if you have a lot of detractors, the low votes don't look as out of place, and are not as likely to dissapear in sweeps.

Avoid verbal battles on the forum and the Loving Wives category to reduce the risk of picking up these score assassins. If you've already ventured into those shark-infested waters... You're probably screwed Sometimes, if you back away from the activity that pissed the assassins off in the first place, they'll slowly vanish. Other times, the hatred is so strong that they'll follow you, blasting your scores on every story until they keel over dead clicking that final 1-bomb, no matter what you do.