How do you lose votes?

[Bebeslut]

How do you lose votes? My story, The Crew: Cat, was up to 144 votes, and now is at 140.

 

[Darkniciad]

How do you lose votes? My story, The Crew: Cat, was up to 144 votes, and now is at 140.

The website regularly performs database sweeps that remove votes considered illegitimate. The only known criteria is votes from the same ID/IP, but there are almost certainly other reasons that votes get swept.

 

[Acal]

Multiple votes from the same IP, this is usually because either the server registers more then 1 vote, or the cookies haven't caught properly and instead of the page saying a vote has already been cast its blank to accept another vote.

These are when the server remove votes.

I just had this happen to me though, I requested votes to be removed because they were troll votes, posted deliberatly to sabotage my rating.

 

[Bebeslut]

What atre troll votes, and how do they sabotage your rating?

 

[Tio_Narratore]

What atre troll votes, and how do they sabotage your rating?

There are readers who vote against you if they don't like your theme, without regard for the quality of your tale.It happens a lot in the loving wives section, where there are trolls who give you a 1 simply because they don't like what you had the wife do.That undermines your story's rating for quality.
I have one story posted there which is in the high 3s, with a bimodal distribution: the votes are either =1 or 5.

 

[driphoney]

What atre troll votes, and how do they sabotage your rating?

"Troll" is the popular word used to refer to someone who votes low, such as "one-bombing" (give a 1-star vote,) for malicious purposes.

Until this thread, I've never heard of a single writer being able to request a personal sweep. How we even know this happens is because everyone will notice a swing in story vote totals and scores. Vote totals usually going down, while scores rise.

It's all pretty much a mystery though, and keeps us busy here in the AH with speculating and guessing. It's our own Lit version of trying to guess how the universe started.

 

[TxRad]

What atre troll votes, and how do they sabotage your rating?

Troll votes are votes from someone just to screw with you and or your story's score. Usually, in the 1 to 2 range.

We just finished a Contest and heavier sweeps are run during those on all stories on the site and not just the contest stories.

Some people want to know how these sweeps work and what is swept but to publish that would be to pass out a primmer on how to cheat.

By the way: The lowest score is a 1 and not a 0.

If you think you have someone bombing all your stories or a lot of them, you can PM Laurel and request that she check it out. Sometime a sweep on your stories will occur, shortly after.

 

[Handley_Page]

Acid and Statistics

Being a newbie and an innocent in these things, I cannot work out why anyone would WANT to deliberately screw someone's entry (or story). Why the acid ?

 

[Weird Harold]

What atre troll votes, and how do they sabotage your rating?

A low vote of 1 or 2 will reduce your average score below the 4.5 required for a "hot' rating or top placement on the the tops story listings.

A typical good story emerges onto the top story lists with an H a perfect score, and ten votes.

The eleventh vote is almost always a One for a score of 4.6 to knock it off the top of the story rankings.

That still leaves the H and most stories will lose that shortly after they appear on the story rankings; if the story is good enough, the H will return to stay.

Most people consider those initial low votes as "troll votes" but Lit doesn't -- unless they're part of a wider pattern of malicious voting.

Troll votes are low votes from a single source (or pattern of sources) on all(or many) of a single author's stories. low votes on all (or many) stories in a single category, or multple low votes on a single story.

 

[Weird Harold]

Being a newbie and an innocent in these things, I cannot work out why anyone would WANT to deliberately screw someone's entry (or story). Why the acid ?

For contest entries, prize money.

For the top of the story rankings, pride and ego.

For Loving Wives, Nonconsent, and Incest, "moral outrage" that the categories exist at all.

For some specific authors, retaliation for disagreements or flame wars in the forum.

For general trollishness, simply "because they can."

 

[soflabbwlvr]

For contest entries, prize money.

For the top of the story rankings, pride and ego.

For Loving Wives, Nonconsent, and Incest, "moral outrage" that the categories exist at all.

For some specific authors, retaliation for disagreements or flame wars in the forum.

For general trollishness, simply "because they can."

Nice summary.

 

[MicKay]

For contest entries, prize money.

For the top of the story rankings, pride and ego.

For Loving Wives, Nonconsent, and Incest, "moral outrage" that the categories exist at all.

For some specific authors, retaliation for disagreements or flame wars in the forum.

For general trollishness, simply "because they can."

"Moral outrage" on Lit. Does the thought of that depress anyone else?

 

[Weird Harold]

"Moral outrage" on Lit. Does the thought of that depress anyone else?

Even demented perverts have kinks, squicks and lines they won't cross.

The seldom make much sense, but they've got them.

 

[MicKay]

Even demented perverts have kinks, squicks and lines they won't cross.

The seldom make much sense, but they've got them.

Demented perverts w/ kinks? Oh, I didn't know politicians and religious folks were allowed to be members here. Please forgive my ignorance.

Honestly, the threads are entertaining but the troll vote issue really sucks.

 

[wildehafer]

It would be nice on the author's submissions page to be able to see a distribution of the votes for each story. That way you could tell immediately if it was troll votes bringing your score down and so ask for a sweep to be done.

 

[driphoney]

"Moral outrage" on Lit. Does the thought of that depress anyone else?

You're new here, eh?

Stick around. It'll make sense. Either that or you just get numb.

There are those who don't have any concept of the damage a "one" vote can do, and are giving sincere votes at that level. There are lots of reasons people give troll-type votes. I'm convinced that on some of the story boards fans of different writers bomb folks who out-pace their faves ... this being completely unknown to the sincere author who would, naturally, never condone such a practice. There is also the idea that when your story/chapter climbs to a certain level there are great expectations placed on it. When a sweep would come through and one of my chapters would jump to the front page of the Top List of my category (you can tell I haven't written much! ), it would immediately get hammered until it fell off the front page. Honestly, I had to admit to myself that it probably didn't deserve to be on that front page and was getting an honest assessment. Now that I've aged off the Top List and don't have enough votes to get onto the All-Time list, my scores stay remarkably stable, and often at that top page level.

Kind of makes you go, 'Hmm."

 

[driphoney]

It would be nice on the author's submissions page to be able to see a distribution of the votes for each story. That way you could tell immediately if it was troll votes bringing your score down and so ask for a sweep to be done.

*opens profile page*

*smiles*

*attempts to not stalk*

 

[Weird Harold]

Demented perverts w/ kinks? Oh, I didn't know politicians and religious folks were allowed to be members here. Please forgive my ignorance.

Honestly, the threads are entertaining but the troll vote issue really sucks.

Spend just one day following the General Board and nothing will surprise you about voting patterns here.

Also, non-members can vote on stories. AFAIK, non-member votes don't count toward contest results, but do count toward story rankings on the top lists.

 

[driphoney]

Spend just one day following the General Board and nothing will surprise you about voting patterns here.

Also, non-members can vote on stories. AFAIK, non-member votes don't count toward contest results, but do count toward story rankings on the top lists.

Learn something new everyday. No wonder there's such a rollercoaster on the contests!

 

[sdsioux]

I too learned a lot I really knew nothing about.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

How do you lose votes? My story, The Crew: Cat, was up to 144 votes, and now is at 140.

Did you check for holes in your pockets? Four could have dropped out somewhere.

 

[KillerMuffin]

Some people even vote high 5s.

 

[wildehafer]

*opens profile page*

*smiles*

*attempts to not stalk*

Mmmmm, my favourite dripping honey pot

I put up another story the other day and a new one pending that should be there in a couple of days.

Very different story lines, but I'm glad to see the Awakening is over 4.5, just

Just have to keep the troll traps set and they'll be ok

 

[driphoney]

Mmmmm, my favourite dripping honey pot

I put up another story the other day and a new one pending that should be there in a couple of days.

Very different story lines, but I'm glad to see the Awakening is over 4.5, just

Just have to keep the troll traps set and they'll be ok

I'll give them a look when I'm done with finals, and congrats on the red H.

 

[D_K_Moon]

Being a newbie and an innocent in these things, I cannot work out why anyone would WANT to deliberately screw someone's entry (or story). Why the acid ?

Mean people, jealous people, people with no lives, all trying to spread their brand of misery to all. That about sums it up. I've disabled the voting on my stories, so lost votes and scores are things I don't even worry about anymore.