Disappearing votes?

[gordo12]

Those Votes per View and Comments per View are pretty much what I would expect, and a .01 movement is nothing.

What do you define as a "point"? Going from a 4.4 to 4.3? Or going from 4.41 to 4.40? The latter could easily be done by someone giving a 4 instead of a 5 (once you have a high enough vote count), which is not trolling. If the former, then yes, that's more of an effort.

Curiosity question for you - how many of your LW followers are following you into another category and then subjecting you to their usual behaviour, do you reckon?

I define it as moving from 4.91 to 4.90 and downward. Over 800 votes so it takes a few bad votes to move it.

Right now the followers are split about 60/40 in favour of romance. The last two stories in romance have been hits (for me) and brought 100+ followers each. But understand, I never suffered much of the slings and arrows a lot of LW writers receive. They do like creative stories, not the endless rotting rote that gets served there every day.

Don't assume it is only troll work.

Once you've won the contest, readers will click on the story link directly from the front page. That opens you up to the complete mix of readers for all categories. We like to think readers are reasonable and if they see a category they aren't interested in, or a length of a story they don't want to read, they'll just move on. But that isn't always the case. You're a LW misogynist who is hoping to see the misery of a cheating wife getting her comeuppance and is now in a wheelchair, they won't hesitate to downvote just because that's what they do.

My point exactly. Although the true number of men hating women in LW are a small minority they're very active in the voting & comments. And yet they are just that. A small vocal minority.

I've looked at several past theme contest-winning top three and in all cases, after the winners are announced, the rankings and scores change drastically. More views but a broader, less respectful audience.

Exactly. You can tell by the voting and the comments. They're definitely not down on one knee worshipping the story...fuckers!

 

[NC_Coastal]

They're on your Home page, under "Works." Each entry on your list of stories has several icons and numbers. To the right of the star icon you should find two values, which are the score and the number of votes.

Thanks. Holy shit, one of my stories has 13 thousand votes. And it wasn't for a contest.

 

[NC_Coastal]

Thanks. Holy shit, one of my stories has 13 thousand votes. And it wasn't for a contest.

Check that, 1.3 thousand. Still..

 

[JGittes]

I define it as moving from 4.91 to 4.90 and downward. Over 800 votes so it takes a few bad votes to move it.

Right now the followers are split about 60/40 in favour of romance. The last two stories in romance have been hits (for me) and brought 100+ followers each. But understand, I never suffered much of the slings and arrows a lot of LW writers receive. They do like creative stories, not the endless rotting rote that gets served there every day.

......


:

It doesn't take as many 1 bombs as you'd think. 1000 votes, 900 five-star, 100 four-star equals 4.90. Add two 1 bombs and you're at 4.89. If your vote distribution includes votes less than four-star, it can take only one 1 bomb to lower the score by 0.01.

 

[gordo12]

Check that, 1.3 thousand. Still..

That's excellent for a story.

 

[gordo12]

It doesn't take as many 1 bombs as you'd think. 1000 votes, 900 five-star, 100 four-star equals 4.90. Add two 1 bombs and you're at 4.89. If your vote distribution includes votes less than four-star, it can take only one 1 bomb to lower the score by 0.01.

Which is an outlier effect and one of the reasons I believe that 1 votes should be eliminated. Period! But the scoring system has been discussed ad nauseum around here so let's not get into THAT!

 

[JGittes]

Which is an outlier effect and one of the reasons I believe that 1 votes should be eliminated. Period! But the scoring system has been discussed ad nauseum around here so let's not get into THAT!

I completely agree with you.

YouTube started out with a 5-star rating system when Google bought them. That was the standard Google voting system. A few years ago they did away with the star ratings and only had the like and dislike buttons. A few months ago they eliminated the dislike button, so now all you can do is like the video.

Google has thousands of software engineers working on what's best, and in this case, I agree with them.

But you're right, lets not get worked up about something we have no say over.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Which is an outlier effect and one of the reasons I believe that 1 votes should be eliminated. Period! But the scoring system has been discussed ad nauseum around here so let's not get into THAT!

There's a difference between a genuine one vote given by a reader who reads the whole story and scales their response on a 1 - 5 band, and a malicious one-bomb given by a troll who jumps to the end and bombs. My observation over the years is that the sweeps do detect most of the latter, just as they detect the "not so helpful fives" and strip those. But I'm not going to say more than that, for obvious reasons.

But fussing about a .01 difference in score? Seriously? Do people even notice that and worry? Wait, what am I saying?

 

[RejectReality]

I completely agree with you.

YouTube started out with a 5-star rating system when Google bought them. That was the standard Google voting system. A few years ago they did away with the star ratings and only had the like and dislike buttons. A few months ago they eliminated the dislike button, so now all you can do is like the video.

Google has thousands of software engineers working on what's best, and in this case, I agree with them.

But you're right, lets not get worked up about something we have no say over.

Google is concerned with what's best for it, which means nobody being able to see that the corporate content they're pushing is slammed with dislikes. They didn't eliminate the dislike button, they just hid the tally of them from the public.

The corporate line is that it was to protect the 'fragile egos' of small creators. Virtually none of those creators wanted this other than clickbait assholes and fake trailer creators. Meanwhile, those dislikes are still published to the dashboard, which means even if dislikes did bother creators, they're still there to devastate them.

 

[JGittes]

Google is concerned with what's best for it, which means nobody being able to see that the corporate content they're pushing is slammed with dislikes. They didn't eliminate the dislike button, they just hid the tally of them from the public.

The corporate line is that it was to protect the 'fragile egos' of small creators. Virtually none of those creators wanted this other than clickbait assholes and fake trailer creators. Meanwhile, those dislikes are still published to the dashboard, which means even if dislikes did bother creators, they're still there to devastate them.

Now that you mention that, I recall that is the case. The dislikes aren't visible to the public.

Certainly makes sense that YT doesn't want to discourage direct corporate sponsorship.

For all the talk about Google and FB being high tech, they derive all their income from advertisement. They are essentially advertising brokers. We're not their customers, we're the product. Not unlike another certain site we all enjoy so much.

 

[KeithD]

Voting is just a playground sport at Literotica. It doesn't tell the reader much. My recent "Clouds over Antibes" contest win in the sr71plt account, was zapped down from a 4.91 to a 4.65 by my private voting troll(s) overnight. Doesn't change the quality of the story or the blue W beside it in the listing at all. Some readers will let it control whether they read it or not, though.

 

[SimonDoom]

Which is an outlier effect and one of the reasons I believe that 1 votes should be eliminated. Period! But the scoring system has been discussed ad nauseum around here so let's not get into THAT!

I don't see how this changes things much in a meaningful way. If you eliminate 1 votes, all you do is shift the expectations goal posts. The numbers that result in the long run are no more intrinsically meaningful and convey no extra information to the reader than before. Conveying information to readers is the primary purpose of having a rating system. We tend to forget that as authors.

Also, personally, I think some stories deserve 1s. I don't give them out in practice, because I rarely finish stories that are that bad. But the way I see, if you grade all Lit stories on a curve, there are over 50,000 stories in the bottom decile. Why DON'T they deserve a 1, as a way of conveying useful information to the reader? That's kind of how I see. A 5 means top 10%, more or less, a 4 is roughly top 70-90%, a 3 is in the middle, a 2 is well below average, and a 1 is at the bottom of the curve. I can tell right away if a story I'm reading is below what I consider the top 20%, and I rarely finish them, so I rarely vote on them.

 

[gordo12]

Voting is just a playground sport at Literotica. It doesn't tell the reader much. My recent "Clouds over Antibes" contest win in the sr71plt account, was zapped down from a 4.91 to a 4.65 by my private voting troll(s) overnight. Doesn't change the quality of the story or the blue W beside it in the listing at all. Some readers will let it control whether they read it or not, though.

Yeah, that much attention from the front page isn't healthy score wise. I locked mine this morning for further scoring. I'm damned if I'm going to let them spoil my moment in the sun.

I don't see how this changes things much in a meaningful way. If you eliminate 1 votes, all you do is shift the expectations goal posts. The numbers that result in the long run are no more intrinsically meaningful and convey no extra information to the reader than before. Conveying information to readers is the primary purpose of having a rating system. We tend to forget that as authors.

Also, personally, I think some stories deserve 1s. I don't give them out in practice, because I rarely finish stories that are that bad. But the way I see, if you grade all Lit stories on a curve, there are over 50,000 stories in the bottom decile. Why DON'T they deserve a 1, as a way of conveying useful information to the reader? That's kind of how I see. A 5 means top 10%, more or less, a 4 is roughly top 70-90%, a 3 is in the middle, a 2 is well below average, and a 1 is at the bottom of the curve. I can tell right away if a story I'm reading is below what I consider the top 20%, and I rarely finish them, so I rarely vote on them.

Simon, you have a brain and use it to make good decisions. Not everybody arriving here is so blessed. A troll has two weapons here. The 1 bomb and the comment. I just eliminated the 1 bomb and the comments...DELETE. Goodbye little troll.

 

[KeithD]

Yeah, that much attention from the front page isn't healthy score wise. I locked mine this morning for further scoring. I'm damned if I'm going to let them spoil my moment in the sun.

In this case, I think my zapping troll (there's an obvious campaign on the board and in my story files to harass me off Literotica) was upset that I blocked votes on my latest story in the KeithD file that the troll has been happily chomping on and punished me by attacking my contest-winning piece in the sr71plt file.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I don't see how this changes things much in a meaningful way. If you eliminate 1 votes, all you do is shift the expectations goal posts. The numbers that result in the long run are no more intrinsically meaningful and convey no extra information to the reader than before. Conveying information to readers is the primary purpose of having a rating system. We tend to forget that as authors.

Also, personally, I think some stories deserve 1s. I don't give them out in practice, because I rarely finish stories that are that bad. But the way I see, if you grade all Lit stories on a curve, there are over 50,000 stories in the bottom decile. Why DON'T they deserve a 1, as a way of conveying useful information to the reader? That's kind of how I see. A 5 means top 10%, more or less, a 4 is roughly top 70-90%, a 3 is in the middle, a 2 is well below average, and a 1 is at the bottom of the curve. I can tell right away if a story I'm reading is below what I consider the top 20%, and I rarely finish them, so I rarely vote on them.

Yup. If we eliminated 1s, we'd just be back here in a year discussing eliminating 2s.

 

[gordo12]

Yup. If we eliminated 1s, we'd just be back here in a year discussing eliminating 2s.

Sounds good!

 

[lovecraft68]

Yup. If we eliminated 1s, we'd just be back here in a year discussing eliminating 2s.

At some point all the griping about scores, bombs, sweeps, vanishing votes, etc...is going to lead to the site doing away with voting, and H's and contests, and Lit will just be a huge story file with nothing separating stories in any way.

The scoring here is not perfect, the sweeps also are not perfect and at times are as suspicious as the votes they're supposed to be getting rid of. A high score or an H doesn't translate into the story being better than a story with a lower score...

But its something, and if it ends up going away, then all the threads will be griping about...how we should have a scoring system.

 

[KeithD]

I doubt the scoring system will go away. Someone here frequently says the site delights in controversial systems and postings to keep participation and comment high. The scoring system, what users do in playing with it, and what authors do in wishful statistics thinking about it is, in this view, all good for business.

 

[SimonDoom]

At some point all the griping about scores, bombs, sweeps, vanishing votes, etc...is going to lead to the site doing away with voting, and H's and contests, and Lit will just be a huge story file with nothing separating stories in any way.

The scoring here is not perfect, the sweeps also are not perfect and at times are as suspicious as the votes they're supposed to be getting rid of. A high score or an H doesn't translate into the story being better than a story with a lower score...

But its something, and if it ends up going away, then all the threads will be griping about...how we should have a scoring system.

It's not going to happen, ever.

The Site is not going to do anything -- anything -- to reduce or diminish reader enjoyment of and use of the Site. Readers like having a scoring system. They don't give a shit that our feeling are hurt when we get 1 votes. It doesn't even occur to them. Traffic is driven by readers. It makes no sense for the Site to do anything that would make it even one iota more difficult for readers to use and enjoy this Site.

 

[lovecraft68]

In this case, I think my zapping troll (there's an obvious campaign on the board and in my story files to harass me off Literotica) was upset that I blocked votes on my latest story in the KeithD file that the troll has been happily chomping on and punished me by attacking my contest-winning piece in the sr71plt file.

Do you mean the story that on the thread you said started high out of the gate and stayed that way?

Doesn't seem to jive with your constant woe is me martyrdom routine.

In contrast to my KeithD entries, which had over 30 negative votes dropped on them within a couple of hours coming right out the gate (a continuing trolling in this account, which was repeated in today's story posting), both of which recovered in the final sweeps, my sr71plt account "Clouds over Antibes" ran between 4.84 and 4.88 for the first two weeks of the contest, keeping ahead of the pack. On 1 February, it was voted down to 4.79 by a couple of votes within the same hour, and it stayed there until the final sweep recovered it.

Sorry if being 'downed' to 4.79 on a story that didn't have a high vote total sounds like a concerted effort.

Everyone here talks about being bombed, I get bombed, whether its category trolls, people who legit think I suck, or people here who don't like me doesn't really matter.

Why?

Because unlike you I don't hang over my story file all day every day looking for changes and reporting them to the board and whining. Odd behavior for someone who denigrates the readers and authors here to be so concerned with your statistics.

You even knew someone here unfavorited you. To do that you had to be hovering over your favs, noticed one was missing, recalled the latest person you attacked, then saw you were no longer on their page.

That falls between obsessed and pathetic.

For someone who endlessly touts all their real world success, these meaningless numbers from readers who according to you know nothing, and authors who know even less, you're the most insecure person on the boards.

Now maybe I'll screen shot my page and check back in a little bit to see if 'someone' bombed me.

Nah, kidding, it doesn't matter. Once I took my writing to the selling level the scores here lost their shine. Same story you sling, except I mean it.

 

[lovecraft68]

Which is an outlier effect and one of the reasons I believe that 1 votes should be eliminated. Period! But the scoring system has been discussed ad nauseum around here so let's not get into THAT!

I'm sure lit will at some point give everyone a 5 for trying, and add an option for allowing comments that only heap glowing praise on the stories.

I find myself wondering when I see some people so concerned over some low votes or a shitty comment, how the hell do they deal with issues on real life?

I find getting bombed funny in the twisted way many in the LW category feel about getting nasty comments, its a sign you got under someone's skin.

 

[KeithD]

Sorry if being 'downed' to 4.79 on a story that didn't have a high vote total sounds like a concerted effort.

Wondered when you'd get around to your "didn't deserve" it mantra.

I didn't bother to read the rest of your sick little puppy rant.

 

[lovecraft68]

It's not going to happen, ever.

The Site is not going to do anything -- anything -- to reduce or diminish reader enjoyment of and use of the Site. Readers like having a scoring system. They don't give a shit that our feeling are hurt when we get 1 votes. It doesn't even occur to them. Traffic is driven by readers. It makes no sense for the Site to do anything that would make it even one iota more difficult for readers to use and enjoy this Site.

I'll do a little reverse logic to your point. What brings those readers, the stories, correct? Who writes them? Authors. How much has Lit taken from the authors recently?

So although I think your point makes a lot of sense, never assume what they will or won't do here. Having said that, I was bring sarcastic, but funny how quickly you were up in arms at the possibility.

But Lit in a way does take from the readers, for example if you sincerely didn't like a story and wanted to give it a 1 or 2 because in your mind that's a warning to others the story isn't good(In your opinion) and lit sweeps it...

In fact I don't understand the incessant crying over bombs, the sweeps at this point seem to think there's no such thing as a real one vote

I've mentioned before when I first started here, people could win a contest with a 4.86 or so, a 4.82 could get you third, now the winners are at a -sorry-ridiculous 4.9+, the sweeps now cut way too deep after a time where maybe they didn't cut enough, but the site is about extremes, never really a middle ground.

 

[JuanaSalsa]

In fact I don't understand the incessant crying over bombs, the sweeps at this point seem to think there's no such thing as a real one vote

I've had one-votes survive a sweep. I think there were at least three on my Valentine's story early on when it was easy to tell, and the score barely moved at the end of the contest.

There are also a bunch on my small cock and non-con stories, and those never get swept because they're not in a contest. Specifically, people seem to do a search for rape stories, one-vote mine when it gets too close to a red H, then it slowly gets bumped up again by 5's, then boom! 0.05 points down in a single vote. It's kind of amusing to watch.

 

[ElectricBlue]

...and those never get swept because they're not in a contest. .

When a sweep goes through, all stories get swept, not just those in a contest. I rarely enter contests, but my scores (especially on more recent stories) always move around a bit whenever a sweep is run. Trolls will go for any story, they don't limit themselves to contests.