Disappearing votes?

[RejectReality]

Random sampling from this name:

Title | Dec. 2018 | Dec. 2019 | Today

Coming In Third | 4.72/639 | 4.73/824 | 4.72/851
Beholding Dawn | 4.65/897 | 4.65/1024 | 4.65/1092
Boned | 4.60/2043 | 4.60/2191 | 4.60/2252
Holly Jolley Christmas | 4.84/3393 | 4.83/4054 | 4.83/3979
Nude Holly Day | 4.71/2167 | 4.71/2302 | 4.71/2370
Peppermint Patty | 4.68/4347 | 4.68/4519 | 4.68/4598

The 2018-2019 change is well before the sweep surge. The needle just doesn't move much on high vote stories with a normal distribution of votes. It's not unusual.

And a few of my highest vote totals from my other pen names

Lowborn Ch. 01 | 4.71/455 | 4.72/496 | 4.73/513
Lowborn Ch. 10 | 4.84/483 | 4.85/525 | 4.85/545
Mom's Second Chance | 4.59/3851 | 4.59/3987 | 4.59/4056
Mom's Stocking Stuffer | 4.64/4316 | 4.64/4420 | 4.64/4468

Again, little movement. Even a story with around 500 votes only moves .02 on 58 net votes.

 

[soulhouse]

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

Manu has acknowledged on the Tech forum that there is a bug in the votes. I quote:

..."the other two known bugs (views/votes)"

 

[RejectReality]

Manu has acknowledged on the Tech forum that there is a bug in the votes. I quote:

..."the other two known bugs (views/votes)"

I think you're reading more into that than was intended — and especially that it has anything to do with the new pages launching.

We'll see, but the data we can see and the very nature of what those pages are supposed to do doesn't jive with them having any relation to removed votes.

 

[Bramblethorn]

My latest story dropped from 701 votes to 562 votes. That seems weird. That's really dramatic. It's hard for me to imagine that 139 votes for that story were illegitimate. It wasn't a Loving Wives story. It wasn't the kind of story to draw a lot of trolls.

The score for that story dropped from 4.59 to 4.55. That, too, seems odd. Whatever the sweep is doing, it's not deleting 1-bombs. It's deleted more high scores than low scores.

I've seen similar changes on some of my stories, and I'm not aware of any significant trolling on them in either direction. I probably would've noticed a sudden rush of votes.

Can't rule out bugs, but under certain circumstances it's possible for people who reread a story to vote again without noticing that they've already voted. Presumably most of those would be 5* votes, so if the system is newly picking those up, that's a possible non-bug explanation for this kind of drop.

In some cases it would be hard to tell between "one person voting repeatedly" and "multiple people in the same household/dorm sharing a story and each voting once". Without getting into the technical details, I can think of some situations where you'd have a "maybe dodgy but can't prove it" set of votes. If the sweeps previously gave those cases benefit of the doubt, and now don't, that would be another possibility here.

 

[NotWise]

I've seen similar changes on some of my stories, and I'm not aware of any significant trolling on them in either direction. I probably would've noticed a sudden rush of votes.

Can't rule out bugs, but under certain circumstances it's possible for people who reread a story to vote again without noticing that they've already voted. Presumably most of those would be 5* votes, so if the system is newly picking those up, that's a possible non-bug explanation for this kind of drop.

In some cases it would be hard to tell between "one person voting repeatedly" and "multiple people in the same household/dorm sharing a story and each voting once". Without getting into the technical details, I can think of some situations where you'd have a "maybe dodgy but can't prove it" set of votes. If the sweeps previously gave those cases benefit of the doubt, and now don't, that would be another possibility here.

We have evidence that a second or later vote will just replace the previous vote. Readers can change their votes. I haven't tried it yet.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Manu refers to it as a bug. I will defer to his opinion.

 

[RejectReality]

We have evidence that a second or later vote will just replace the previous vote. Readers can change their votes. I haven't tried it yet.

If that actually works, it's dependent upon some very specific conditions, which can change without user intervention. It certainly isn't possible for a logged-in user. The stars lose all interactivity once a vote has been cast by a user who's logged in.

 

[NotWise]

If that actually works, it's dependent upon some very specific conditions, which can change without user intervention. It certainly isn't possible for a logged-in user. The stars lose all interactivity once a vote has been cast by a user who's logged in.

Do they? RustyOzNails tried it, and reported the results. It worked for him. You might want to test it yourself.

 

[RejectReality]

Do they? RustyOzNails tried it, and reported the results. It worked for him. You might want to test it yourself.

Just did. I voted on a story yesterday. Went back to it, and the stars are highlighted. They're unclickable. It's not possible for a logged-in user who hasn't taken steps to break the controls in place. ( whether on purpose or in pursuit of unrelated, non-nefarious goals )

I'm not going in off-account and double voting on something to test the theory and get my account flagged.

It also shouldn't be possible for an anonymous user on the same device who hasn't taken steps to break the controls ( which also can be done accidentally for non nefarious purposes )

ETA: I stand corrected. You can change your vote on the new pages. I forgot I cast that vote from my account that's opted-out and using the legacy pages. Just tested from my mobile on a short story and it let me change between 4-5 at will ( ending with 5, of course ) and that was not logged in.

Still doesn't mean you can't accidentally double vote. When you're not logged in, there are many things that can allow it.

 

[NotWise]

When Rusty did it, he voted on one of his own stories and saw the vote recorded. He went back and voted again on the same story. The vote count didn't change, but the score changed to be consistent with the new vote. I think he was logged in both times, but I could be wrong about that. Rusty?

Maybe we should ask Manu if that's the ways it's supposed to work. I can see why they might do that. It at least reduces the "multiple votes that have to be swept," problem. It also lets readers change their minds.

 

[RejectReality]

When Rusty did it, he voted on one of his own stories and saw the vote recorded. He went back and voted again on the same story. The vote count didn't change, but the score changed to be consistent with the new vote. I think he was logged in both times, but I could be wrong about that. Rusty?

Maybe we should ask Manu if that's the ways it's supposed to work. I can see why they might do that. It at least reduces the "multiple votes that have to be swept," problem. It also lets readers change their minds.

The new pages do let you change it, but those stars being lit up is dependent upon certain things. If they're not lit up, you're casting a second vote.

Going into it any more than that would tell people how to cast multiple votes. ( Though they would all almost certainly get swept barring unusual circumstances or additional steps. )

 

[MelissaBaby]

Here's a small piece of objective data. I tweeted a promo for my latest story, including a link. According to the Twitter Analytics, 31 people clicked through to the story. My view count went up by 2.

 

[SimonDoom]

Whatever was going on is still going on. My daily view counts are remarkably steady, most of the time, but in the last day they're about 3% of normal. I lost 480 total votes, across all stories. Several stories saw their scores drop. None rose. My mean story score for 36 stories dropped about .0022 in one day.

I've continued to pick up some followers and favorites at a fairly normal rate, so people obviously are reading the stories. The Site just isn't recording the views as it did before, for some reason.

 

[NotWise]

The story that lost 30 votes on Friday lost 104 votes over night -- that's about 1/8th of all the votes it had. The score dropped by 0.02.

 

[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.

They are now back.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Whatever was going on is still going on. My daily view counts are remarkably steady, most of the time, but in the last day they're about 3% of normal. I lost 480 total votes, across all stories. Several stories saw their scores drop. None rose. My mean story score for 36 stories dropped about .0022 in one day.

I've continued to pick up some followers and favorites at a fairly normal rate, so people obviously are reading the stories. The Site just isn't recording the views as it did before, for some reason.

Yup. Same here.

 

[joeyjax]

They are now back.

I wish I could say the same. I’ve been seeing similar behavior for a long time now (months) and just chalked it up to normal or maybe even just increased sweeping. Until I lost over 30 and ~70 votes on my two ~600 vote stories in just one or two days (last Friday-ish). In the one case that’s well over ten percent of the story’s votes, even after normal sweeps have been running against it frequently for months. And of course, it literally happened the day after I noticed the second story hitting 600 votes and was excited to tell my wife about it. Then the next day it was back down to 530.

Fortunately, the comments and the scores don’t seem to have been grossly impacted. I guess we’ll see. But I’ve also seen the same strangeness with view rates suddenly plummeting to very atypical lows.

I used to try to monitor numbers more closely but stopped several months ago when all this started happening. Just don’t see the point since I don’t think the numbers can be trusted. But even without the effort of downloading numbers and such, it’s hard not to notice over 70 votes and 10% of a story’s total vanishing in one night.

 

[SimonDoom]

I don’t think the numbers can be trusted..

I still don't see any reason to think this.

The most recent problem of the Site not properly recording views is a form of glitch. I'm not technical enough to understand what it is or how it might work, but it's clear from the data that people are continuing to read stories and giving them favorites and comments. The Site simply is not recording or reporting views properly. It's not that big a deal although it may give people pause about submitting stories while it's going on.

I see no reason to believe that the vote deletion is the result of something deliberately and intentionally wrong. It appears the Site owners implemented a more aggressive sweeping system last July, and it's continued, off and on, since then. Perhaps it's a bit out of control or is yielding results the Site owners did not anticipate. They must know about it by now.

What's going on with the numbers is, in my view, a good reason not to take the numbers too seriously. Don't get too invested in them. Get whatever you want out of them but don't let them bother you.

 

[gordo12]

The deranged vote removal is still proceeding. A romance story originally with 1269 votes is now down to 956. The score has dropped 3 points. That means a lot of 5* votes are being removed.

I can't imagine trolls so eager to pump up a writer they're logging in and voting 5's. Much less 25% of the votes in the romance category.

It's hit almost every story I have now. Generally, when you have a GLITCH, you stop the script from running and repair the damage. If that's even possible?

 

[Candy_Kane54]

Laurel has changed how reads are counted. I've been tracking my stats daily since November. In these past four months I've been averaging 450 reads a day over my stories. My five day running average was nearly 200 reads a day.

In the last three days, I've had a total of 15 reads. I've also had 84 votes scrubbed from my stories in the past three days. I even opened all of my stories yesterday to see if that made a difference. Today, the stats showed a difference of only three reads out of the 24 stories I opened.

I'm not complaining, just pointing out that a change has occurred. The upside to the vote scrub is that all of my stories will now have the coveted red H.

I finally caught up on the other threads about this so never mind. I was using the new page so that explains why I got no reads from opening my stories.

 

[soulhouse]

I see no reason to believe that the vote deletion is the result of something deliberately and intentionally wrong. It appears the Site owners implemented a more aggressive sweeping system last July, and it's continued, off and on, since then. Perhaps it's a bit out of control or is yielding results the Site owners did not anticipate. They must know about it by now.

Manu referred yesterday on the tech forum to "the other two known bugs (views/votes)", so it sounds as if they're aware of something not right at present with the voting.

 

[SimonDoom]

The carnage may have stopped. May. I checked my vote totals again this afternoon, and they've risen since this morning. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping they have solved the problem.

 

[NotWise]

The carnage may have stopped. May. I checked my vote totals again this afternoon, and they've risen since this morning. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping they have solved the problem.

Manu hasn't made that claim yet.

 

[Rustyoznail]

When Rusty did it, he voted on one of his own stories and saw the vote recorded. He went back and voted again on the same story. The vote count didn't change, but the score changed to be consistent with the new vote. I think he was logged in both times, but I could be wrong about that. Rusty?

Maybe we should ask Manu if that's the ways it's supposed to work. I can see why they might do that. It at least reduces the "multiple votes that have to be swept," problem. It also lets readers change their minds.

Yep. I anonymously logged a '5'. I closed down the browser, opened up my works page in a different browser, noted the change was recorded, closed out, went back to the original browser and amended the score to a '3'.

On review, the score changed but the count remained the same. From that, I assume you can amend a score if you have made a mistake.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Yep. I anonymously logged a '5'. I closed down the browser, opened up my works page in a different browser, noted the change was recorded, closed out, went back to the original browser and amended the score to a '3'.

On review, the score changed but the count remained the same. From that, I assume you can amend a score if you have made a mistake.

Not to argue, but how? I’ve hit the wrong score on occasion and have never been able to change it.