How does scoring work?

[Ophelia_Coque]

This is weird. Last night my 3rd story had scored 4.76 with 38 votes.
I woke up this morning and the score was 4.87 with 39 votes.
That jump is not possible with only one vote.

How does this happen?

Ophelia

 

[PennameWombat]

Every so often the site runs ‘sweeps.’ These remove what the site considers ‘bogus’ votes from stories. These are often ‘1’ or ‘2’ votes cast by trolls. The site doesn’t reveal what methodology they use to detect such votes, and every so often a story will lose a ‘5’. It is not the case that ‘1’ or ‘2’ votes are arbitrarily and simply removed. If the site considers them ‘valid,’ they stay.

In any case, the latest sweep removed some number of low votes from your story while readers were casting additional new votes. Since you added nine points, there’s various combinations to get there. But the easiest would be a single ‘1’ vote was removed and readers added two ‘5’ votes (10 - 1 = 9). Given your story is highly rated, this wouldn’t be surprising.

 

[Ophelia_Coque]

Thanks, that explains it.

 

[lovecraft68]

I guess the algorithm they use detects multiple votes from the same IP address or MAC address, and cancels them.
It should also take care of those trying to raise their own score.
You can vote again and again by deleting cookies from your browser.
I will delete my comment in an hour, so as not to give people ideas.

If I have a constructive suggestion for the website owners, it is to hide the score for the first three days, and allow the story and the reader a fair chance without outside influence.
Many readers refer to the votes of their predecessors and thus may miss many good and special stories.

You don't have to worry, that ploy is as old as the voting itself, along with many other dirty tricks.

I agree too many readers select stories based on the score or an H rather than does the title and slug sound appealing. Its the same with everything. People go by the biased propaganda critic site Rotten Tomatoes to decide if they want to see a movie instead of just watching what looks interesting.

Being I'm a fan of movies so bad they're good in their own way I watch whatever catches my eye. For stories I'm a fan of clever titles in whatever genre I'm in the mood for in the moment and don't really look at scores until I'm done. Most of the stories I've enjoyed the most here are in the lower fours and not on the vaunted top lists.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

You don't have to worry, that ploy is as old as the voting itself, along with many other dirty tricks.

I agree too many readers select stories based on the score or an H rather than does the title and slug sound appealing. Its the same with everything. People go by the biased propaganda critic site Rotten Tomatoes to decide if they want to see a movie instead of just watching what looks interesting.

Being I'm a fan of movies so bad they're good in their own way I watch whatever catches my eye. For stories I'm a fan of clever titles in whatever genre I'm in the mood for in the moment and don't really look at scores until I'm done. Most of the stories I've enjoyed the most here are in the lower fours and not on the vaunted top lists.

I tend to agree, especially where the top list stories are concerned.

Far too many of these are unfinished chapter stories that leave the reader dangling. The earlier chapters scored high, and may have deserved it, but the overall body of work is far inferior to a lot of lower scoring, yet complete stories due to the fact that readers achieve closure.