Disappearing votes?

[JeffJared]

There seems to be some changes again, as I saw most of my stories votes restored.

However, I'm kinda curious why it only affects some stories, not all of them. The 2 stories that I have which were affected the most were old, not any new votes or views. While more recently voted stories were not affected apparently.

I still think they should just do away with the voting system. Total views and favorites are much clearer indication of how well a story is received.

High views with high favorites means the story is well received.

High views with low favorites means the story has a good title or description, but readers were disappointed.

Low views with high favorites means the story has a bad title or description, but those who read it loved it.

Low views with low favorites means neither the title, description, or story was appealing.

 

[soulhouse]

I still think they should just do away with the voting system. Total views and favorites are much clearer indication of how well a story is received.

Views vary hugely between categories though. One would be doing constant mental gymnastics to work out their significance.

 

[LexxRuthless]

Views vary hugely between categories though. One would be doing constant mental gymnastics to work out their significance.

Agreed. However, votes seem to be appearing at 3-4 times the normal rate, and a huge chunk of those are clearly down-votes based on the scores.

 

[TxRad]

Views vary hugely between categories though. One would be doing constant mental gymnastics to work out their significance.

Not to mention someone can sit there and click on and off a story for hours on end to increase the views. We had a guy who had the biggest thumbs in the world from doing that years back.

 

[soulhouse]

Agreed. However, votes seem to be appearing at 3-4 times the normal rate, and a huge chunk of those are clearly down-votes based on the scores.

Even as a server-side web developer myself, it's hard to imagine what went wrong with the voting a few days ago and what Manu must have had to do to both fix the bug and reinstate the correct vote totals while the system has remained live. It's why it seems unlikely to me that the continuing oddness can be explained as the repercussions of a planned new sweep system. The technical part of me would love to see what's going on behind the scenes.

 

[SimonDoom]

. I put it down to restless penguins, myself .

Penguin haters just gotta hate.

 

[NotWise]

I like the voting system, but it does seem to be fraught with problems. If you want to compare voter reaction between stories and categories, then I think the reader ratings are the best available tool.

I haven't posted a new story since August, so all the affects I've seen are on older stories. Counting from the 19th when the new story page became the default, I lost a few votes on a lot of stories, but I only lost a proportionately significant number of votes on four stories.

The site restored the two stories I was most concerned about last week. One went back to it's status at the beginning of the month and the other ended up with more votes and the highest score it's had recently (a voter this afternoon fixed that score for me).

They restored the third one a little bit ago, and reset it to exactly the rating and vote total it had at the beginning of the month. The fourth still awaits.

I'm concerned about the low ratings being handed out now. I've certainly not seen anything like it in the 5 1/2 years I've been here. Manu has not acknowledged a bug, but it seems like a huge change to be described any other way.

Also, by my recollection, it isn't entirely recent. The scores started trending downward at about the same time last summer that I started seeing vote leaks. It was a small change at first, but--like the vote leaks--it's now hard to deny.

 

[Rustyoznail]

A writer who've I've been doing some editing for has had her latest story shot down in flames. It was flying along at 4.67 with a good number of votes, and it's now down to 4.06. Unfortunately, neither of us had really tracked the changes.

That's either serious troll work or something bizarre.

 

[Payne_Hall]

Penguin haters just gotta hate.

You know what, I’m on with this theory. I saw Happy Feet. Those fuckers look cute but we all know the truth. Mumble was voiced by Elijah Wood and we saw him refuse to give up the One Ring at Mount Doom. Just because Gollum fell to his death and did the deed for him on accident, do we forget about it and just not bring it up while he tap dances as a penguin who can’t sing?

I THINK NOT.

 

[NotWise]

A writer who've I've been doing some editing for has had her latest story shot down in flames. It was flying along at 4.67 with a good number of votes, and it's now down to 4.06. Unfortunately, neither of us had really tracked the changes.

That's either serious troll work or something bizarre.

One thing I've noticed is that the low voting trend isn't the same in every category. Romance and SF&F, for instance, are still awarding the red "H." In I/T, on the other hand, the most recent rating over 4.5 was on a late chapter from two days ago.

I haven't checked LW. I doubt they could get worse.

That uneven behavior makes it look like maybe it isn't a site bug, but bugs in complex systems can have complex behavior.

 

[TxRad]

I/T is the main category that has been gamed by someone or a group of someones over the last six or eight years, so yeah, I can see a lot of scores and vote totals going down if the site has finally figured out who and what.

 

[NotWise]

I/T is the main category that has been gamed by someone or a group of someones over the last six or eight years, so yeah, I can see a lot of scores and vote totals going down if the site has finally figured out who and what.

I/T isn't an isolated example. There was a thread recently about how Mature was such an author-friendly place. Right now there's one score over 4.5 in the last ten days, and that's on a late chapter.

Anal was also held out as an author-friendly category, but right now there are just three stories rated over 4.5 in the last 27 days, and all of those are on late chapters.

 

[RejectReality]

I/T isn't an isolated example. There was a thread recently about how Mature was such an author-friendly place. Right now there's one score over 4.5 in the last ten days, and that's on a late chapter.

Anal was also held out as an author-friendly category, but right now there are just three stories rated over 4.5 in the last 27 days, and all of those are on late chapters.

Anal has never been a particularly high-scoring category. It's not horrible, but a 4.7X was enough to make the top 5 for 2019.

I suspect that the sweeps being turned off while other extensive queries are being run is a likely contributor. If that's what it is, then it will be a good example of just how much damage control they're actually doing when they come back online.

 

[SamScribble]

Of course, apart from whatever is going on deep in the clockwork, it could also be that the Lit readership has changed over the past year or so. Different motivations. Different expectations. I never got scores in the 3s; now every new story seems to start out in the high 4.6s before being smashed down to 3-point-something. I think that I may just fold my tent. I won’t stop writing, but I might just email future stories directly to my handful of loyal fans.

 

[NotWise]

I suspect that the sweeps being turned off while other extensive queries are being run is a likely contributor. If that's what it is, then it will be a good example of just how much damage control they're actually doing when they come back online.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Withholding normal sweeps might be a good explanation for changes since 3/19, but I think the ratings have been dropping for months.

I keep pointing to the AF contest results, and those go back before 3/19. The ratings there are in the bucket. I'd expect something like 40% of pre-sweep ratings to be over 4.5. In this contest, only the top nine stories are over 4.5. The median score is like 4.27.

 

[JeffJared]

I suggested this before in another discussion, 1 vote per user account. And every new account can only vote after 30 days, after a verified email. It should do some damage control on this issue.

 

[NotWise]

I suggested this before in another discussion, 1 vote per user account. And every new account can only vote after 30 days, after a verified email. It should do some damage control on this issue.

The sweeps are supposed to eliminate multiple votes by single users. That is per a canned response from Laurel. The computer cycles to do that in real time may be costly.

I know not about the 30-day limit. Something similar could already be installed. We don't know, but I think it's a good idea.

If RR is right and the sweeps aren't being done, then the one user/one vote restriction wouldn't be in place right now anyway. I'm not sure that the sweeps aren't being done. I think a sweep was done in mid-March for the February monthly contest.

As near as I can tell, the AF contest has not been swept.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think we need to wait this out and analyze it for a while before coming to conclusions or recommending changes.

It's worth saying again: if the votes reflect some kind of permanent site-wide change and IF this new change accurately registers real votes, or does so better than the Site did before, and IF whatever change has occurred applies to everyone equally, then we have nothing to complain about. The numbers have no absolute meaning. There is no reason to get attached to numbers from the past, or to be upset because the number scale has been recalibrated for everyone.

There was some sort of glitch for a while, and that seems to have been addressed, but something else is going on. I don't think any of us know what it is or whether it's something worth getting bothered by.

Maybe it's just the Site saying "April Fool."

 

[RejectReality]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Withholding normal sweeps might be a good explanation for changes since 3/19, but I think the ratings have been dropping for months.

I keep pointing to the AF contest results, and those go back before 3/19. The ratings there are in the bucket. I'd expect something like 40% of pre-sweep ratings to be over 4.5. In this contest, only the top nine stories are over 4.5. The median score is like 4.27.

The median mid-contest has gone up considerably since I was tracking regularly then. I brought up three that I'd logged medians on from mid-stream of the contest and the highest median was 4.23. 26/126, 11/52, and 20/90 over 4.5. Halloween, Earth Day, and Nude Day. This one is lower at 9/75, but not that much lower.

 

[NotWise]

I think we need to wait this out and analyze it for a while before coming to conclusions or recommending changes.

It isn't up to us to analyze things; we don't have the data, and there's not been the slightest mention from Laurel or Manu that they're even thinking about it. But it's their site. They don't have to talk to us.

From my perspective, if it isn't a problem, then they should tell us that it isn't a problem. If it is a problem, then they should tell us that they'll fix it. If they don't know, then they should tell us that they're looking into it.

Any kind of response from the site would be useful. Silence is just frustrating.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

It isn't up to us to analyze things; we don't have the data, and there's not been the slightest mention from Laurel or Manu that they're even thinking about it. But it's their site. They don't have to talk to us.

From my perspective, if it isn't a problem, then they should tell us that it isn't a problem. If it is a problem, then they should tell us that they'll fix it. If they don't know, then they should tell us that they're looking into it.

Any kind of response from the site would be useful. Silence is just frustrating.

This.

 

[SimonDoom]

Any kind of response from the site would be useful. Silence is just frustrating.

You're right. They don't need to give us the details, but they could allay a lot of concerns without doing so.

 

[KeithD]

Be very careful. If you do "should a" posts around here, you can get called a troll by management and your collection of Green E's can abruptly stop.

 

[KeithD]

Freaking hell. Has anyone of you actually read or written a good story, recently? To me, that's what counts.

What makes you think we haven't? I tool right along submitting what I think is a pretty good story at least once a week (for fifteen years) no matter what's happening with the files. I had one post here less than an hour ago. What about you? (I checked. You've only posted one story this year, more than two months ago. Why do you think you have a dog in this particular thread race?)

And why, when I'm providing the Web site with the product it's making a profit for itself from and doing so for free, wouldn't I have a right to be at least informed about what the Web site is doing with problems that disadvantage my stories? My most recent story (before the one posting in the last hour) is sitting at a 4.08 here with practically no traffic while it's rating at an equivalent 4.80 on another site.

 

[KeithD]

That said, the interaction between users and site management has actually improved the last few years. The inclusion of a Tech Support thread and any posting to the discussion board questions at all didn't start happening until fairly recently.