Disappearing votes?

[TxRad]

I suspect you are correct and something like this is happening.

What's disconcerting for people is that the sweeps are unpredictable and sometimes result in weirdly large vote deletions. But that's not necessarily a bug. It could be a feature. It might be an essential feature for achieving the desired result without tipping off the gamers about how they can get around the system.

In any event, I see no cause for alarm. If votes are eliminated . . . so what? It's a problem if it results in a story that otherwise would qualify for a contest falling below the threshold. But I don't think that happens much.

Not these days but way back when it happened all the time.

 

[RejectReality]

Not these days but way back when it happened all the time.

Yep, it used to be a serious nail-biter for a quarter or so of the field during those final sweeps.

Now, you've pretty much got to put a story in an utterly dead category like Letters & Transcripts at the last second to not maintain 25 votes through the end.

 

[thanagar]

While I've been reading here for years, I only started posting stories in January. A whopping four, but you have to start somewhere. And this is my first forum post, so please be patient.

I've been getting killed the last two days. One of my stories lost 400 votes. I'd say I've lost close to 600 over all. Plus, most of my stories are frozen in the read counts. I had a story go live on Tuesday. On Thursday I was still getting about 500-600 views. Since Friday morning I've had 21. Three of the four stories have tracked down, with one dropping .14.

I mean, I shouldn't complain....I guess. They're all still highly rated, three of them over 4.8. And the comments have been extraordinarily kind. But it's not like I'm engaged in some Machiavellian scheme to inflate my numbers....I wouldn't know where to start.

I'm a new writer...I find the feedback, page views, and rating are a huge boost to me. And it helps keep me motivated to write. Maybe the sweeps are the norm....doesn't make it any less deflating watching it happen.

Anyway, I hope it's a glitch and things go back to a semblance of normal soon.

 

[NotWise]

While I've been reading here for years, I only started posting stories in January. A whopping four, but you have to start somewhere. And this is my first forum post, so please be patient.

I've been getting killed the last two days. One of my stories lost 400 votes. I'd say I've lost close to 600 over all. Plus, most of my stories are frozen in the read counts. I had a story go live on Tuesday. On Thursday I was still getting about 500-600 views. Since Friday morning I've had 21. Three of the four stories have tracked down, with one dropping .14.

I mean, I shouldn't complain....I guess. They're all still highly rated, three of them over 4.8. And the comments have been extraordinarily kind. But it's not like I'm engaged in some Machiavellian scheme to inflate my numbers....I wouldn't know where to start.

I'm a new writer...I find the feedback, page views, and rating are a huge boost to me. And it helps keep me motivated to write. Maybe the sweeps are the norm....doesn't make it any less deflating watching it happen.

Anyway, I hope it's a glitch and things go back to a semblance of normal soon.

The site has admitted to a bug/glitch. I don't know if they can repair the damage, but you should know that it isn't your fault or related to your story. Just do it again.

 

[KeithD]

It's a problem if it results in a story that otherwise would qualify for a contest falling below the threshold. But I don't think that happens much.

It happens to me frequently enough. There's a wide divergence across the categories on voting.

Last year, I lost a consistent 5 win in a themed contest when the final sweep put it at 24 votes. I just shrugged, as that's not many votes against what the ultimate winners had accumulated.

 

[TxRad]

thanagar, Go to the Site News & Tech Support Forum. There is a thread on Lost votes. Read what Manu, the sites main, if not only tech has to say. There is a glitch with the roll out of the new story pages.

 

[RejectReality]

While I've been reading here for years, I only started posting stories in January. A whopping four, but you have to start somewhere. And this is my first forum post, so please be patient.

I've been getting killed the last two days. One of my stories lost 400 votes. I'd say I've lost close to 600 over all. Plus, most of my stories are frozen in the read counts. I had a story go live on Tuesday. On Thursday I was still getting about 500-600 views. Since Friday morning I've had 21. Three of the four stories have tracked down, with one dropping .14.

I mean, I shouldn't complain....I guess. They're all still highly rated, three of them over 4.8. And the comments have been extraordinarily kind. But it's not like I'm engaged in some Machiavellian scheme to inflate my numbers....I wouldn't know where to start.

I'm a new writer...I find the feedback, page views, and rating are a huge boost to me. And it helps keep me motivated to write. Maybe the sweeps are the norm....doesn't make it any less deflating watching it happen.

Anyway, I hope it's a glitch and things go back to a semblance of normal soon.

The views are absolutely a glitch that's been acknowledged and a fix-in-progress announced for. It became blatantly obvious once the new pages were made the default, and nobody was getting views. Any you have are coming from people who have opted out and are reading from the legacy pages.

Votes, favorites, bookmarks, and comments seem to be working fine from the new pages, which is how you can have more votes than views LOL

 

[TarnishedPenny]

The views are absolutely a glitch that's been acknowledged and a fix-in-progress announced for. It became blatantly obvious once the new pages were made the default, and nobody was getting views. Any you have are coming from people who have opted out and are reading from the legacy pages.

Votes, favorites, bookmarks, and comments seem to be working fine from the new pages, which is how you can have more votes than views LOL

I'm on the new pages and am getting hammered. I've lost 430+ votes in the past week or so. Views have only dropped from triple digits to double digits in the past two days.

 

[RejectReality]

I'm on the new pages and am getting hammered. I've lost 430+ votes in the past week or so. Views have only dropped from triple digits to double digits in the past two days.

The sweeps and the view glitch/new pages being set as default are almost certainly unrelated. Complaints about "out of control" sweeps have been coming in since last year.

They're being connected here, but it's a case of something new that people are observing getting tangled up with something that's ongoing.

 

[gordo12]

I just downloaded some stats since last week. Over 1000 votes have disappeared. One story alone in Romantic has dropped over 265 votes. Yesterday, it had dropped 60, and this morning the full 265. Another story that has been around for quite a while dropped 5 points overnight. All have been through multiple sweeps previously.

Views seem to have gone up the normal amount and comments have gone up about the right amount based on my memory.

That's a hell of a glitch.

 

[NotWise]

Views seem to have gone up the normal amount and comments have gone up about the right amount based on my memory.

I've tracked my views daily for a few years. Views since Friday morning (two days) are a small fraction of the views in the preceding twenty four hours. Half of the stories have recorded no views.

 

[lovecraft68]

The sweeps and the view glitch/new pages being set as default are almost certainly unrelated. Complaints about "out of control" sweeps have been coming in since last year.

They're being connected here, but it's a case of something new that people are observing getting tangled up with something that's ongoing.

The sweeps have been out of control, whether deliberately or the system just out of whack who know, but its true. I don't believe there are that many fraudulent votes here, and I'm talking about other people's stories, not referring to my own stories because I've long since stopped paying attention to what they do vote/view/score wise.

Regardless to the why I understand why people get upset about, and don't understand why there's this attitude that they're wrong for feeling that way or should just keep swallowing what they're fed here with the professional response of don't like it leave.

Our stories are free, but the site itself monetized. They wouldn't have a dime without the authors, but seem to think they don't owe them anything.

 

[NotWise]

Our stories are free, but the site itself monetized. They wouldn't have a dime without the authors, but seem to think they don't owe them anything.

The site gives us quite a bit, including a platform to publish on and systems (that usually work) that allow easy access for readers, and a variety of support systems for authors.

That said, something feels really broken right now, and it's gotten recently worse. My most recent story was for the Summer Lovin' contest. Since the contest page was unlinked (when the story had already been swept and should have more-or-less disappeared), I've seen votes removed 40 different times. Over the same period, I've only seen it voted on 48 times. There's been a net loss of more than fifty votes with no change in the score, and more than half of those votes were removed in a short period on Friday.

I have one story ready to go, another waiting for final edits, and a third that could be ready in a few days, but none of that is going to be published here until at least the glitch on views gets fixed. I don't see that there's a point to publishing here right now.

 

[gordo12]

I've tracked my views daily for a few years. Views since Friday morning (two days) are a small fraction of the views in the preceding twenty four hours. Half of the stories have recorded no views.

I'll rescind my comment. Looking at the individual stats Mar 1, Mar 16 and Mar 21, some stories are down in views, some slightly up. It's nothing like the normal totals at all.

 

[lovecraft68]

The site gives us quite a bit, including a platform to publish on and systems (that usually work) that allow easy access for readers, and a variety of support systems for authors.

That said, something feels really broken right now, and it's gotten recently worse. My most recent story was for the Summer Lovin' contest. Since the contest page was unlinked (when the story had already been swept and should have more-or-less disappeared), I've seen votes removed 40 different times. Over the same period, I've only seen it voted on 48 times. There's been a net loss of more than fifty votes with no change in the score, and more than half of those votes were removed in a short period on Friday.

I have one story ready to go, another waiting for final edits, and a third that could be ready in a few days, but none of that is going to be published here until at least the glitch on views gets fixed. I don't see that there's a point to publishing here right now.

Look, shit happens and I think we all know that. Whenever they make a change something else goes awry. I have a limited understanding of tech, but I believe the issue is they try to fix/update one thing at a time because to do a total overhaul might mean the site going offline for a period of time.

So they put out a fire and start another. Again, I get that these things happen and its not on purpose or personal. My issue is the lack of response or concern about concerns. What would it take to make one post in the AH about what's going on?

And yes, without this platform...we'd be posting on LS or SOL or maybe for some even the dreaded A++R meaning those sites would be bigger and pull a bigger following. This is chicken or the egg and could be seen either way.

I ran my own business for several years, it was a comic shop, but still a retailer store and what I see here is the equivalent of me back then telling Marvel and DC...don't like my shop then don't send me your comics.

Apathy shouldn't be rewarded IMO...Or maybe I'm just being stupid and trying to hold them the standards of people who care about their bread and butter. Nothing that is done here for the authors is altruistic, it all benefits them. Keep in mind all updates are to keep up with the times because younger tech savvy readers won't go to a web version of a dinosaur.

Yes, the authors too in getting their stories read, but as far as treatment goes...to quote one of my mother's favorite expressions "They name streets after you"

 

[NotWise]

Posted by mistake.

 

[SouthernCrossfire]

My most voted story lost a lot more votes last night (down to 865 now). None of my others have anything close to that. On the other side, my new story is barely getting noticed. It's showing 252 views since being published yesterday versus over 1,000 as might be expected based on the performance of most past non-contest stories.
I hope that's due to the glitch, but with the low votes and reveiws, it's still disappointing.

 

[NotWise]

My most voted story lost a lot more votes last night (down to 865 now). None of my others have anything close to that. On the other side, my new story is barely getting noticed. It's showing 252 views since being published yesterday versus over 1,000 as might be expected based on the performance of most past non-contest stories.
I hope that's due to the glitch, but with the low votes and reveiws, it's still disappointing.

In I/T, stand-alone stories usually get 10's of thousands of views in the first day. The stories published yesterday average a few hundred views.

 

[RejectReality]

Why wouldn't you believe there are huge amounts of fraudulent votes? It's an internet poll.

Let me use an example you bring up often — the GB. If you believe there are a large segment of the population there who each have dozens of alts used as attack dogs and illusionary supporters, why wouldn't you believe that sort of behavior is happening elsewhere on the same site?

What about the petty "real men" most common in LW, but found anywhere a woman in a story is dominant or promiscuous? Is it really so unfathomable that those sort of people would cast multiple votes trashing stories that disagree with their ideology and boosting those that promote it?

Look at the complaints about the annual awards. Zero post n00bs suddenly coming out of the woodwork to nominate someone or their story in droves. Why wouldn't you believe that sort of boosting behavior is happening on the story side, or that there's a equal and opposite amount of trashing behavior?

( Noting that I've made my opinion on this clear. I don't believe your post count is the sole determiner of whether you qualify as a person. )

Let's look to the recent Gamestop stock controversy. Someone decides to stick it to the man, puts together a campaign, and causes utter chaos in the stock market. Some were in it to destroy the hedge funds. Some were in it to save a piece of their childhood. Why wouldn't you believe that people with similar attitudes exist in the Lit readership, and are using their votes as the tool?

A poll to name a research vessel comes out overwhelmingly in favor of "Boaty McBoatface"

There are examples absolutely everywhere of people behaving in a manner on the internet that is perfectly consistent with casting fraudulent votes on Lit stories — both 5s and 1s. When you combine all of those individual reasonings/rationalizations together, it comes up to a massive amount of potential ( and in my opinion, likely ) fraud.

That's why I don't find it surprising or frightening. I understand why it's disheartening, but this sort of thing has a snowball effect. People latch onto each other and amplify their concerns to extreme levels until it becomes a conspiracy that goes above and beyond what most of them believe at the outset.

When attached to a painfully obvious new bug in views, despite being an ongoing concern for almost a year, people are also more inclined to believe it's a connected mistake.

The sweeps have been out of control, whether deliberately or the system just out of whack who know, but its true. I don't believe there are that many fraudulent votes here, and I'm talking about other people's stories, not referring to my own stories because I've long since stopped paying attention to what they do vote/view/score wise.

Regardless to the why I understand why people get upset about, and don't understand why there's this attitude that they're wrong for feeling that way or should just keep swallowing what they're fed here with the professional response of don't like it leave.

Our stories are free, but the site itself monetized. They wouldn't have a dime without the authors, but seem to think they don't owe them anything.

 

[NotWise]

When attached to a painfully obvious new bug in views, despite being an ongoing concern for almost a year, people are also more inclined to believe it's a connected mistake.

The odd sweeps have been going on for months, but there seems to have been a huge increase in the number of votes being removed, and it appears to be connected to the views glitch because of the timing. The views glitch started Friday, which is also when people reported large numbers of votes being removed.

I've stopped looking at the loss of votes as being some kind of valid sweep. It looks like (as Lexx has said before) that votes are being removed at random. The vote losses often come without a change in the score, and that's consistent with random vote removal. They also happen to stories that have been repeatedly swept before, with more votes removed than have been cast over periods of months.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

The odd sweeps have been going on for months, but there seems to have been a huge increase in the number of votes being removed, and it appears to be connected to the views glitch because of the timing. The views glitch started Friday, which is also when people reported large numbers of votes being removed.

I've stopped looking at the loss of votes as being some kind of valid sweep. It looks like (as Lexx has said before) that votes are being removed at random. The vote losses often come without a change in the score, and that's consistent with random vote removal. They also happen to stories that have been repeatedly swept before, with more votes removed than have been cast over periods of months.

Logical.

Manu is aware. He asked for examples and they have been given. At this point, all we can do is wait and see what happens.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Hmm... I have just found that two of my stories are now missing from both my dashboard and my list that readers see but the Lit "Download Story Stats" lists them.

The two stories missing are About Last Night and About Last Night Ch. 02.

What the Hell?

ETA: The submission count is correct at 180, but the DB and AL only show 178 stories. I can find the stories by using the search tool too.

 

[RejectReality]

Think about how the data is presented.

Your personal control panel vote totals and scores update in real time. That means the votes are being averaged in real time. If the vote # was simply being reduced by a random bug, it would not cause the average to remain the same. It would recalculate the data available.

For the same reason you can only somewhat calculate what score someone has given you, you can't know what votes were swept. Stories with large vote totals also have the rounding issue that requires a large number of votes to be swept in one direction or the other to have any visible impact at all. If a mixture of low and high votes are being swept, it's not only probable, but likely that the visible average doesn't change on high-vote stories.

So even if votes are being removed by the Hoover going Skynet, unchanged scores with changed vote totals are no indicator of it. It's a common thing that happens with normal accumulation of votes, so it's going to happen with removal of votes.

People are suddenly noticing large sweeps. Why? Because there's a bug in the newly defaulted pages causing views not to increment. People look at the number that only represents views from people who opted out to read from the old pages. They then look at their other numbers — already knowing something is wrong — and automatically assume that everything is wrong. Unless you're paying very close attention, the daily wax and wane of vote totals isn't all that noticeable. When you go looking for problems, you find them.

While it's painfully obvious that the views have been affected by the change of making the new pages the default, where's the evidence that anything else has? My most recent release, which happened yesterday, and the couple prior to that all seem to be otherwise performing exactly as I would expect. If anything, I'm getting more than I would expect from the last couple of extremely short and off-brand releases I've put out.

The numbers on the hubs ( vote totals are still visible under the old version of the hubs, and I have one of my pen names opted-out ) look perfectly normal. So do favorites and comments.

There's nothing to indicate that the new pages are affecting anything other than view totals.

The one thing I can think of that might be removing votes in a way not intended is the flagging of VPNs that have been used by bad actors. That could possibly be removing legitimate votes by users on the same service. I don't know how much those IPs get recycled, but it seems like a possible scenario.

The odd sweeps have been going on for months, but there seems to have been a huge increase in the number of votes being removed, and it appears to be connected to the views glitch because of the timing. The views glitch started Friday, which is also when people reported large numbers of votes being removed.

I've stopped looking at the loss of votes as being some kind of valid sweep. It looks like (as Lexx has said before) that votes are being removed at random. The vote losses often come without a change in the score, and that's consistent with random vote removal. They also happen to stories that have been repeatedly swept before, with more votes removed than have been cast over periods of months.

 

[KeithD]

I'm a technical dunce. Not paying much attention to the stats before, I won't try to figure them out now. I'll just hunker down and continue at the usual pace of submission and hope whatever is broken gets fixed.

As far as fraudulent voting, it's always been obvious in the contests, where patterns there can be compared with the regular file (which there's no reason to believe fraudulent voting isn't going on in the regular file as well). The sweep system would not have been instigated if the fraudulent voting hadn't been so obvious in the themed contests.

 

[NotWise]

It doesn't surprise me that a small number of votes removed--especially from a story with hundreds of votes--doesn't change the rating. But people are reporting hundreds of votes being removed in 24 hours with little or no change in scores.

Personally, I saw the mass vote removal before I learned about the views glitch, and I expect other people did, too.

My largest removal was thirty votes -- much smaller than what other people have reported, but it's pretty obviously odd.

My most recent story was for the Summer Lovin' contest. When the contest was finalized, I'd recorded 909 votes cast, and 50 votes removed. From then until the contest page was unlinked, I recorded another 45 votes cast with 9 votes removed. The score dropped by 0.01.

From then through Thursday I recorded 48 votes cast, and 71 votes removed in more than 5 1/2 months. That's more votes removed then through the entire contest, including the contest sweeps, and the score did not change.

In order to account for 71 votes removed, all of the new votes and 23 of the votes that got through the contest sweeps had to be considered invalid for some reason. The average of the votes given and votes removed also had to be close to the original score, or the score would have changed.

Then in a span of no more than two hours on Friday the story had 30 votes removed -- three times the number of votes removed in the final contest sweep, and four times the number removed at any one time since the contest. The score did not change from 4.77. In order to remove 30 votes without changing the score, the average score removed had to be in the range of 4.62 to 4.92, which looks like a random selection from the story's votes.

Everything about the post-contest "sweeps" looks broken, and the 30 votes removed on Friday is eyebrow-raising at least.

Think about how the data is presented.

Your personal control panel vote totals and scores update in real time. That means the votes are being averaged in real time. If the vote # was simply being reduced by a random bug, it would not cause the average to remain the same. It would recalculate the data available.

For the same reason you can only somewhat calculate what score someone has given you, you can't know what votes were swept. Stories with large vote totals also have the rounding issue that requires a large number of votes to be swept in one direction or the other to have any visible impact at all. If a mixture of low and high votes are being swept, it's not only probable, but likely that the visible average doesn't change on high-vote stories.

So even if votes are being removed by the Hoover going Skynet, unchanged scores with changed vote totals are no indicator of it. It's a common thing that happens with normal accumulation of votes, so it's going to happen with removal of votes.

People are suddenly noticing large sweeps. Why? Because there's a bug in the newly defaulted pages causing views not to increment. People look at the number that only represents views from people who opted out to read from the old pages. They then look at their other numbers — already knowing something is wrong — and automatically assume that everything is wrong. Unless you're paying very close attention, the daily wax and wane of vote totals isn't all that noticeable. When you go looking for problems, you find them.

While it's painfully obvious that the views have been affected by the change of making the new pages the default, where's the evidence that anything else has? My most recent release, which happened yesterday, and the couple prior to that all seem to be otherwise performing exactly as I would expect. If anything, I'm getting more than I would expect from the last couple of extremely short and off-brand releases I've put out.

The numbers on the hubs ( vote totals are still visible under the old version of the hubs, and I have one of my pen names opted-out ) look perfectly normal. So do favorites and comments.

There's nothing to indicate that the new pages are affecting anything other than view totals.

The one thing I can think of that might be removing votes in a way not intended is the flagging of VPNs that have been used by bad actors. That could possibly be removing legitimate votes by users on the same service. I don't know how much those IPs get recycled, but it seems like a possible scenario.