Disappearing votes?

[PeytonMirabelle]

Mine are all over the place--scores, views, and votes up or down, given the day. I gave up trying to track it or figure it out, and am trying not to worry about it.

If anything, it was disappointing that my best-rated story was flirting with the category Hall of Fame and has now fallen back to 100 or so. I know, complaining about a score that ridiculously high in the first place is dumb. If that's the worst I've got, I guess my Lit experience has been great so far ... which it has.

 

[SimonDoom]

Views for my stories were normal over the last 24 hours, so whatever happened before seems to have been fixed, for my stories at least.

Votes jumped spectacularly. I've never seen anything like it. My overall vote total is 2854 higher than it was 24 hours ago. An increase of about 6% in one day, and I've been writing stories for over four years. I have no idea how that worked.

What I noticed is that the stories that suffered most during the massacre were the new ones, and as of today those are the ones that have seen the biggest 48 hour gains. So whatever was happening before seems to have deleted recent votes and now they've been restored.

My average score went up somewhat as well.

 

[NotWise]

Views for my stories were normal over the last 24 hours, so whatever happened before seems to have been fixed, for my stories at least.

Votes jumped spectacularly. I've never seen anything like it. My overall vote total is 2854 higher than it was 24 hours ago. An increase of about 6% in one day, and I've been writing stories for over four years. I have no idea how that worked.

What I noticed is that the stories that suffered most during the massacre were the new ones, and as of today those are the ones that have seen the biggest 48 hour gains. So whatever was happening before seems to have deleted recent votes and now they've been restored.

My average score went up somewhat as well.

I'm not sure it's over yet. The site restored votes on one of my stories, but this morning two of my oldest stories lost a relatively small number of votes each.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Lotsa, lotsa votes back, but ratings are down from where they were.

 

[gordo12]

Lotsa, lotsa votes back, but ratings are down from where they were.

Yep, although still 400 votes or so short. Ratings are still down on several stories. I have no idea what this means because we have no idea WHAT is going on!

Maybe we're getting a new option.

The yoyo vote: up and down, up and down.

 

[Fervid]

Based on one story I keep track of, they seem to be restoring some previously swept troll votes as well as some normal votes.

 

[JeffJared]

Thank you for posting this thread, I was wondering what happened. And I agree with most people's assessment, which begs the question if we all notice it, there really is an issue.

Votes are disappearing, but mostly also ratings are dropping, it clearly means only high votes are deleted, while many 1 bombs remain. I don't know what this system is doing.

And I also agree with a lot of people's attitude as well, the frustration that we come here to write and share stories, suppose to be a hobby or something we distract ourselves from everyday life. Instead, we have to deal with a lot of unprofessionalism, judgmental attitudes from people who are out there just bent on trolling and being toxic. I mean, why are people 1-bombing stories?

We're not talking about someone actually disliking the story and giving it a 1. There are times as some others pointed out, instantly when your story comes out, you get a 1-bombed. In my experience, usually when my story get published, in the first few votes are always high, then a sudden massive 1-bombs to drag it ridiculously down. And again, I don't see any counter system here to prevent that.

Someone mentioned before the vote are not really all that critical b/c it is not very valid. I agree, I tend to judge my stories based on favorites. However, I think it is important at the very least in the first 30 days b/c it stays in the 30 day list for others to find.

Personal suggestion is that, Titles and short descriptions are the most important to attract readers so they know what your story is about. Don't worry too much about the ratings.

Good luck, fellow authors.

 

[HeyAll]

Something came to mind while reading this thread updates.

What if the site just ditched the scoring system all together? Just show views and favorites and comments.

 

[JeffJared]

Something came to mind while reading this thread updates.

What if the site just ditched the scoring system all together? Just show views and favorites and comments.

I'm totally down with that. It makes more sense really, views and favorites.

 

[Trionyx]

Nice idea.

Something came to mind while reading this thread updates.

What if the site just ditched the scoring system all together? Just show views and favorites and comments.

This would make the awards difficult if not impossible to manage. And I’m speaking as one who has never won nor is it very likely that I will. If you awarded prizes based on ‘favorites’ then those authors with the most followers would be overwhelming favorites to win.

It’s been mentioned here that scores tend to start out high and then drop. I believe that they are high at the beginning because followers read and vote early before the masses (and, of course, the so called one-bombers.)

 

[Bramblethorn]

Something came to mind while reading this thread updates.

What if the site just ditched the scoring system all together? Just show views and favorites and comments.

I could live with that, and it'd probably be good for a lot of people's blood pressure.

 

[SimonDoom]

Something came to mind while reading this thread updates.

What if the site just ditched the scoring system all together? Just show views and favorites and comments.

This would skew the system toward being more of a popularity contest, favoring those who write stories in heavily viewed categories.

Comments and favorites are to a significant degree a function of how many people happen to click on the story. Some people prefer to write stories in categories that do not get a lot of views, but where there is a smaller, but still appreciative, readership. Those people (both authors and readers) would be poorly served by scrapping voting.

I think the better answer is for people not to care so much.

I've seen my overall average score drop during this latest vote snafu. A couple of my stories have dropped below the red H 4.5 level. It's not that big a deal. It's had no impact on how many people continue to read my stories.

 

[LexxRuthless]

One thing to consider is that they may very well have turned off the sweeps temporarily. It's a logical thing to do to eliminate variables and reduce strain for large out of the ordinary queries going on. That would only apply to the last week or so, though.

ETA: The toplists all seem to have 4.50+ scores as recently as the 17th and 18th, so maybe that does jive.

This is consistent with what I observe as well. It is like a "throwback" to 2006, before they implemented sweeps. Really good stories were lucky to reach 4.4, and "Hot" ratings were scarce. You could pretty much expect contest stories were going to get carpet-bombed, and the winners had to have a large following to offset that onslaught.

It just really illustrates how diligently Laurel and Manu have been working the past 15 years to curtail that madness. Now it seems someone has found a way to ruin it for everyone.

I really hope they can figure it out.

 

[gordo12]

Something came to mind while reading this thread updates.

What if the site just ditched the scoring system all together? Just show views and favorites and comments.

How about we start scoring stories by the NUMBER of votes generated. I've generated votes up in the 2-3000 range on stories only to watch contests get won by someone with 26 votes. It's much easier to generate a high score on minimal voting. But which story was more popular?

That way even the troll votes would count for something!

(Tongue-in-cheek request I know it'll never happen)

 

[8letters]

My theory is that the change to the mobile version of the reader resulted in a change to the description of each star value. With the new star value descriptions, people are selecting 3 and 4 more than what they did before.

The old descriptions, which only appeared when you moused over the different stars:
1 star: I Hated It!
2 stars: I Didn't Like It Much
3 stars: Liked It - Keep On Writing.
4 stars: Really Liked It - Good Read!
5 stars: Loved It - One Of The Best!!

The new descriptions, which appear beneath each star:
1 star: HATE IT
2 stars: DISLIKE
3 stars: AVERAGE
4 stars: LIKE IT
5 stars: LOVE IT

Looking at the descriptions, the new descriptions would appear to lead to an increase in ratings as liking a story is now a 4 instead of a 3. But I think the visibility of what each star is suppose to mean is driving the reduction in rating. Before, people would decide how many stars to give it before seeing the description of each star was suppose to mean, and people used 4 stars as average. Now, they see well before they click the rating star that AVERAGE should be 3 stars.

 

[HeyAll]

My theory is that the change to the mobile version of the reader resulted in a change to the description of each star value. With the new star value descriptions, people are selecting 3 and 4 more than what they did before.

The old descriptions, which only appeared when you moused over the different stars:
1 star: I Hated It!
2 stars: I Didn't Like It Much
3 stars: Liked It - Keep On Writing.
4 stars: Really Liked It - Good Read!
5 stars: Loved It - One Of The Best!!

The new descriptions, which appear beneath each star:
1 star: HATE IT
2 stars: DISLIKE
3 stars: AVERAGE
4 stars: LIKE IT
5 stars: LOVE IT

Looking at the descriptions, the new descriptions would appear to lead to an increase in ratings as liking a story is not a 4 instead of a 3. But I think the visibility of what each star is suppose to mean is driving the reduction in rating. Before, people would decide how many stars to give it before seeing the description of each star was suppose to mean and people used 4 stars as average. Now, they see well before they click the rating star that AVERAGE should be 3 stars.

This makes complete sense.

 

[SimonDoom]

My theory is that the change to the mobile version of the reader resulted in a change to the description of each star value. With the new star value descriptions, people are selecting 3 and 4 more than what they did before.

The old descriptions, which only appeared when you moused over the different stars:
1 star: I Hated It!
2 stars: I Didn't Like It Much
3 stars: Liked It - Keep On Writing.
4 stars: Really Liked It - Good Read!
5 stars: Loved It - One Of The Best!!

The new descriptions, which appear beneath each star:
1 star: HATE IT
2 stars: DISLIKE
3 stars: AVERAGE
4 stars: LIKE IT
5 stars: LOVE IT

Looking at the descriptions, the new descriptions would appear to lead to an increase in ratings as liking a story is now a 4 instead of a 3. But I think the visibility of what each star is suppose to mean is driving the reduction in rating. Before, people would decide how many stars to give it before seeing the description of each star was suppose to mean, and people used 4 stars as average. Now, they see well before they click the rating star that AVERAGE should be 3 stars.

Very plausible.

If it's true, then this is a feature, not a bug, and it's one that should affect everyone equally. So while we might all have to make a downward adjustment of our rating expectations, there's no unfairness.

 

[SimonDoom]

I checked the daily stats again and what's odd now is that daily view numbers are up somewhat am my vote:view ratio is about three times what it was before the two-week vote deletion period.

The average story rating continues to fall, just a little bit.

 

[soulhouse]

I checked the daily stats again and what's odd now is that daily view numbers are up somewhat am my vote:view ratio is about three times what it was before the two-week vote deletion period.

The average story rating continues to fall, just a little bit.

I wonder if formerly swept votes may be getting restored along with those that were lost during the last week's shenanigans.

My latest story had 37 votes 8 days ago and was averaging about 1 vote a week when it went down to 30 votes suddenly and its rating dropped from 4.65 to 4.57, meaning 7 5* votes had been removed. It stayed at 30 until just now, when it shot up to 42 votes, while the rating has plummeted to 4.48. If that is partly because the previously removed 5* votes have been reinstated, a further 5 votes have also been added at an average rating of 3*. It's most unlikely it has been voted on 5 times in the last 8 days, hence my theory it could be previously swept votes - wild conjecture, I admit.

I'd been hoping the votes would be restored, but admittedly not at the expense of the score dropping from 4.65 to less than hot!

 

[JeffJared]

I tend to notice patterns and this one is a consistent one I noticed. You may want to pay attention to as well. Everything is speculative, but if it happens a lot...

What I notice is that when I publish a new story, it would always climb steadily, but drop sharply. This is clear sign of 1 bombs. But on the long term pattern what I notice is, this only happens during the first 30 days. After 30 days, the story will only steadily climb, rarely drops but if does also steadily and small. Again, it is speculative, but what I see from that is the 1 bombs are from some other authors who published around the same time as your stories. They are trying to suppress other stories to keep their story high on the 30 days list. After 30 days, there is no reason to do so and your stories are only voted by people who actually read it.

This is why the past week was odd as many have pointed out, stories that haven't been voted on for months suddenly gets vote dropped, so I knew something was going on with the system.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I wonder if formerly swept votes may be getting restored along with those that were lost during the last week's shenanigans.

I'm inclined to think the opposite. What little movement I've seen in my catalogue sees my "middle field" moving around some, but not the upper and lower ends.

I have one bell-weather story which I know has been serially trolled, which has gone from about 4.55 to 4.69. I reckon the site has developed a new sweep algorithm which they're running through the whole database - the story is several years old, and I've no reason to think it's recent traffic that has boosted it.

Maybe this will go down as The Great Equalisation, where some writers with unnaturally high vote numbers and scores are now finding out what readers really think, without the overlay of contest shenanigans and over eager bots.

As Simon points out, it's affecting us all equally, just some more than others. I put it down to restless penguins, myself .

 

[TarnishedPenny]

EB, you may be right, but the uncertainty is uncomfortable. It would be nice to know one could post a story without worrying about whether or not it’s going to get caught up in this. Manu referred to this as a ‘bug’ several days ago. It was certainly my impression that he or Laurel were going to announce that it had been resolved on the Tech board. Have I missed that?

 

[MelissaBaby]

How about we start scoring stories by the NUMBER of votes generated. I've generated votes up in the 2-3000 range on stories only to watch contests get won by someone with 26 votes. It's much easier to generate a high score on minimal voting. But which story was more popular?

That way even the troll votes would count for something!

(Tongue-in-cheek request I know it'll never happen)

More popular seldom means better.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Just going through the New list. Now this is entirely without any firm evidence, but it struck me that there were very few Red Hs. If - if - that’s so, then whatever might have caused it? A stiffer screening process, leading to lower votes? The new names on the rating stars? The good writers holding back submissions until this whole mess is sorted out? Damfino.

 

[soulhouse]

I reckon the site has developed a new sweep algorithm which they're running through the whole database.

If it has, then it appears to be adding votes, not removing them, in my case, and lower rated ones at that. I think it's more likely to be the voting bug (as acknowledged by Manu) continuing, or its aftershocks. Either way, it would be good to see things settle down.