I don't care what anybody says, scores can be manipulated...

[laptopwriter]

It happens too often. Once again, every single story I have except one, has dropped a minimum of 3 points in the last two weeks and one story has dropped 8 points. This after they've held steady for months. The difference seems to be in direct correlation to how many votes a particular story has. The more votes, the smaller the drop. The one and only story not to drop has almost 2,000 votes, but I expect it to drop by at least a point or two soon.

 

[lovecraft68]

It happens too often. Once again, every single story I have except one, has dropped a minimum of 3 points in the last two weeks and one story has dropped 8 points. This after they've held steady for months. The difference seems to be in direct correlation to how many votes a particular story has. The more votes, the smaller the drop. The one and only story not to drop has almost 2,000 votes, but I expect it to drop by at least a point or two soon.

Has anyone denied that they can be?

I think most here agree that trolls will bomb your story to bring it down for some lame reason.

The thing about a story with a lot of votes is the average troll who can only drop a couple of bombs can't effect them much

But the ones that can mask their ip address can go and go and go, so you probably have a garden variety "hater" that targets you

 

[Bramblethorn]

It happens too often. Once again, every single story I have except one, has dropped a minimum of 3 points in the last two weeks and one story has dropped 8 points. This after they've held steady for months. The difference seems to be in direct correlation to how many votes a particular story has. The more votes, the smaller the drop. The one and only story not to drop has almost 2,000 votes, but I expect it to drop by at least a point or two soon.

If you think it's not a bona fide vote, I recommend using the "report this story" on one of them to mention a suspicious voting pattern and ask for a sweep of your stories. It won't always work for individual 1-bombers but if you've got somebody repeatedly bombing stories from different IPs, a sudden spike in votes on all your stories should be a sign that something's up.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

One reason I have turned off voting...and comments.

 

[laptopwriter]

Yes, I've asked Laurel for a sweep before

and it works to a degree. I'll wait until the attack is over and ask again.

 

[Vanadorn]

I have two chapters that keep vascilating between 4.48 and 4.5 - and I know from the feedback that there are at least two one-bombers that flat out said they were going to follow me around and one bomb me - even if they just saw my name on a story.

They are out there - ask for a sweep and just chalk it up to some knuckle dragging cum guzzler looking for attention while living on red bull and cheetoes in mommy's basement.

-V

 

[sr71plt]

I wasn't aware that anyone here didn't believe the votes are being manipulated by the voters.

 

[FantasyXY]

The more votes, the smaller the drop. The one and only story not to drop has almost 2,000 votes, but I expect it to drop by at least a point or two soon.

Of course the stories with more votes bomb slower. Do the math. Watch some baseball. Check out batting averages. It's all the same.

This might also tell you why stories with fewer votes seem to be "under attack", when actually they probably just received a small number of low votes.

 

[StrangeLife]

Actually I love the fact that the scores can be manipulated.

Because this means that I probably don't suck as a writer - rather my scores have been manipulated by trolls envious of my mad skillz.

 

[Over_Red]

The voting system is vulnerable, but that's how it is on every website that uses such methods. I feel that user-generated ratings are valuable enough and effective enough to make it worth the drawback of being exposed.

On the topic of voting, I'd prefer a greater nuance than integers from 1 to 5.

I try to vote honestly. There are a lot of stories that I'd rather give a 4.5, or a 4.75, even. I feel like a 5 should be saved for those rare stories that stick with you long after you read them. But I don't want to hurt them with a 4, so I just throw a 5 at them.

Similarly, there are stories I think are worth more like a 4.25 - and I don't want to be dishonest in rounding up all the way to 5, so I end up just going with 4.

Maybe quarter-points are too nitpicky, but half-points would be nice.

 

[lovecraft68]

Actually I love the fact that the scores can be manipulated.

Because this means that I probably don't suck as a writer - rather my scores have been manipulated by trolls envious of my mad skillz.

Now here's a guy who can make a negative into a positive! You should meet my wife, she's still trying to do that with me

 

[lovecraft68]

The voting system is vulnerable, but that's how it is on every website that uses such methods. I feel that user-generated ratings are valuable enough and effective enough to make it worth the drawback of being exposed.

On the topic of voting, I'd prefer a greater nuance than integers from 1 to 5.

I try to vote honestly. There are a lot of stories that I'd rather give a 4.5, or a 4.75, even. I feel like a 5 should be saved for those rare stories that stick with you long after you read them. But I don't want to hurt them with a 4, so I just throw a 5 at them.

Similarly, there are stories I think are worth more like a 4.25 - and I don't want to be dishonest in rounding up all the way to 5, so I end up just going with 4.

Maybe quarter-points are too nitpicky, but half-points would be nice.

Any voting system is vulnerable because its people voting and people suck. There are trolls who bomb everything in one category. Personal trolls who do not like an authors posts here, or style in general and trolls who vote down stories on top lists that might over take their favorite story or author.

As for what is worth what? That is just entirely subjective I have read a lot of top list stories in the 4.8's that have left me wondering about the high score, then read stories in the 3's that I have enjoyed.

I never let a score decide if I am going to read a story, I go simply by title and tag line, if it sounds interesting I will give it a read.

 

[Devilius]

But the ones that can mask their ip address can go and go and go, so you probably have a garden variety "hater" that targets you

May I point out that it's not even necessary to mask your I.P. add to manipulate votes?

 

[Devilius]

It happens too often. Once again, every single story I have except one, has dropped a minimum of 3 points in the last two weeks and one story has dropped 8 points. This after they've held steady for months. The difference seems to be in direct correlation to how many votes a particular story has. The more votes, the smaller the drop. The one and only story not to drop has almost 2,000 votes, but I expect it to drop by at least a point or two soon.

I assume that you write in LW?

 

[Sammael Bard]

May I point out that it's not even necessary to mask your I.P. add to manipulate votes?

Mighty assumption you've got there.

 

[TxRad]

Mighty assumption you've got there.

Now you know why the sweeps are kept secret. What's in them anyway.

 

[Devilius]

Mighty assumption you've got there.

Lol.

Manipulation of any system is easy when you have the knowledge of how it works.

I admit that sweeps can take out most of the troll votes, but it can't eliminate all of them.

Now, if you want me to prove my point, you are free to become my lab rat.

 

[Sammael Bard]

Now, if you want me to prove my point, you are free to become my lab rat.

So, do I take it that you're threatening me with 1 bombs?

 

[Serafina1210]

There's an easy solution to the problem of the 1-bomb

The solution that people usually suggest to the problem of the 1-bomb is to eliminate anonymous voting. Whether or not that would accomplish the goal is more than I can say, but I'm guessing that it wouldn't be easy to implement. It would involve rewriting a fair amount of code. And Laurel and Manu clearly don't favor it, so what's the point?

But there is an easy solution, that would involve rewriting just a little code. And that is (TA DA): redo the way the site calculates averages! Right now the site uses a simple mean, and that is vulnerable to votes that are outliers. Everyone knows the joke about how when Bill Gates walks into a bar the average income of the patrons is suddenly in the millions. It's like that.

Here are the early-morning votes on my last story's first day:

4 5 5 5 5 5 5
Rounded average: 4.86

Then the 1-bomber hit (I always have at least one 1-bomb):

1 4 5 5 5 5 5 5
Rounded average: 4.38

Making the early response look much less enthusiastic than it was. 1-bombing is common here because the method of calculating the average gives the statistical outlier an enormous amount of weight.

But it's very simple, and very commonly done in statistics, to ELIMINATE THE OUTLIERS before calculating the mean. I'm about as far from being a mathematician as you can get, but I Googled up the method in about five minutes.

1. Calculate the median (not the mean) for the series: in this case 5.

2. Calculate the Q3 (the median for the numbers above the median): 5

3. Calculate the Q1 (the median for the numbers below the median): 4.5

4. Subtract Q1 from Q3: 0.5 (this is the interquartile range, IQR)

5. Survey the series of numbers and eliminate any that is less than Q1 - (IQR * 1.5)--in this case 3.75--or more than Q3 + (IQR * 1.5)--or 5.75, which is impossible, so no high numbers get eliminated. Here just the 1-bomb gets discarded

6. Calculate the mean of the remaining numbers in the series: 4.86

Now that sounds like a lot of steps (a real mathematician might offer some corrections if I've misunderstood anything), but it would be very easy to do in JS or PHP. And simple to implement, because there are probably just a few lines of code on the server that do the work of calculating the averages, and you'd just replace those few lines with another few lines that did it differently (and more fairly).

And what happens then if a number of people come along, hate the story, and vote honest 1s and 2s? Then the 1-bomber is no longer an outlier, and his or her 1-vote gets averaged in along with the others. (And in fact, later voting, on my stories at least, is usually less enthusiastic than early voting, so that could happen.)

There you go, Laurel and Manu. My solution to the problem of the 1-bomb. I present it to you with love.

 

[Sammael Bard]

That thing just went waaaaaaaay over my head the first time. It's a nice idea though.

 

[Serafina1210]

That thing just went waaaaaaaay over my head the first time. It's a nice idea though.

It's over my head too, really. But the idea of the statistical outlier is easy to grasp, we all understand that the 1-bomb introduces a statistical outlier into the voting--and isn't it nice to know that there's an easy method out there, approved by statisticians, that takes care of the problem?

 

[laptopwriter]

Wow!

The solution that people usually suggest to the problem of the 1-bomb is to eliminate anonymous voting. Whether or not that would accomplish the goal is more than I can say, but I'm guessing that it wouldn't be easy to implement. It would involve rewriting a fair amount of code. And Laurel and Manu clearly don't favor it, so what's the point?

But there is an easy solution, that would involve rewriting just a little code. And that is (TA DA): redo the way the site calculates averages! Right now the site uses a simple mean, and that is vulnerable to votes that are outliers. Everyone knows the joke about how when Bill Gates walks into a bar the average income of the patrons is suddenly in the millions. It's like that.

Here are the early-morning votes on my last story's first day:

4 5 5 5 5 5 5
Rounded average: 4.86

Then the 1-bomber hit (I always have at least one 1-bomb):

1 4 5 5 5 5 5 5
Rounded average: 4.38

Making the early response look much less enthusiastic than it was. 1-bombing is common here because the method of calculating the average gives the the statistical outlier an enormous amount of weight.

But it's very simple, and very commonly done in statistics, to ELIMINATE THE OUTLIERS before calculating the mean. I'm about as far from being a mathematician as you can get, but I Googled up the method in about five minutes.

1. Calculate the median (not the mean) for the series: in this case 5.

2. Calculate the Q3 (the median for the numbers above the median): 5

3. Calculate the Q1 (the median for the numbers below the median): 4.5

4. Subtract Q1 from Q3: 0.5 (this is the interquartile range, IQR)

5. Survey the series of numbers and eliminate any that is less than Q1 - (IQR * 1.5)--in this case 3.75--or more than Q3 + (IQR * 1.5)--or 5.75, which is impossible, so no high numbers get eliminated. Here just the 1-bomb gets discarded

6. Calculate the mean of the remaining numbers in the series: 4.86

Now that sounds like a lot of steps (a real mathematician might offer some corrections if I've misunderstood anything), but it would be very easy to do in JS or PHP. And simple to implement, because there are probably just a few lines of code on the server that do the work of calculating the averages, and you'd just replace those few lines with another few lines that did it differently (and more fairly).

And what happens then if a number of people come along, hate the story, and vote honest 1s and 2s? Then the 1-bomber is no longer an outlier, and his or her 1-vote gets averaged in along with the others. (And in fact, later voting, on my stories at least, is usually less enthusiastic than early voting, so that could happen.)

There you go, Laurel and Manu. My solution to the problem of the 1-bomb. I present it to you with love.

This sounds like the best idea I've seen here in a long time!
Laurel, I hope you're listening!

 

[Serafina1210]

This sounds like the best idea I've seen here in a long time!
Laurel, I hope you're listening!

Thank you, Laptopwriter! Maybe I'll PM her a link to this thread.

Now in the case of Laptopwriter, it sounds as if there's someone with a real grudge, and that person is highly motivated to drive down LTW's scores. My idea won't deter the highly motivated person, who'll just leave multiple 1 votes to drive down the Q1 figure in the calculation.

But:

1. The cost in time and effort of manipulating the voting has just gotten much higher. It's no longer enough to leave a single 1-bomb: you've got to do it multiple times.

2. There's still the script(s) that Laurel and Manu run occasionally and on request to detect fraudulent votes. (I suspect that these scripts are rather more clever than they admit to us--but that's another story.)

 

[squirrelzo]

Do you honestly expect any of us authors to follow this? I mean, seriously. Please repost in plain English, beginning with point 1. Assume we know how to add and subtract, and try again.

Thanks

The solution that people usually suggest to the problem of the 1-bomb is to eliminate anonymous voting. Whether or not that would accomplish the goal is more than I can say, but I'm guessing that it wouldn't be easy to implement. It would involve rewriting a fair amount of code. And Laurel and Manu clearly don't favor it, so what's the point?

But there is an easy solution, that would involve rewriting just a little code. And that is (TA DA): redo the way the site calculates averages! Right now the site uses a simple mean, and that is vulnerable to votes that are outliers. Everyone knows the joke about how when Bill Gates walks into a bar the average income of the patrons is suddenly in the millions. It's like that.

Here are the early-morning votes on my last story's first day:

4 5 5 5 5 5 5
Rounded average: 4.86

Then the 1-bomber hit (I always have at least one 1-bomb):

1 4 5 5 5 5 5 5
Rounded average: 4.38

Making the early response look much less enthusiastic than it was. 1-bombing is common here because the method of calculating the average gives the the statistical outlier an enormous amount of weight.

But it's very simple, and very commonly done in statistics, to ELIMINATE THE OUTLIERS before calculating the mean. I'm about as far from being a mathematician as you can get, but I Googled up the method in about five minutes.

1. Calculate the median (not the mean) for the series: in this case 5.

2. Calculate the Q3 (the median for the numbers above the median): 5

3. Calculate the Q1 (the median for the numbers below the median): 4.5

4. Subtract Q1 from Q3: 0.5 (this is the interquartile range, IQR)

5. Survey the series of numbers and eliminate any that is less than Q1 - (IQR * 1.5)--in this case 3.75--or more than Q3 + (IQR * 1.5)--or 5.75, which is impossible, so no high numbers get eliminated. Here just the 1-bomb gets discarded

6. Calculate the mean of the remaining numbers in the series: 4.86

Now that sounds like a lot of steps (a real mathematician might offer some corrections if I've misunderstood anything), but it would be very easy to do in JS or PHP. And simple to implement, because there are probably just a few lines of code on the server that do the work of calculating the averages, and you'd just replace those few lines with another few lines that did it differently (and more fairly).

And what happens then if a number of people come along, hate the story, and vote honest 1s and 2s? Then the 1-bomber is no longer an outlier, and his or her 1-vote gets averaged in along with the others. (And in fact, later voting, on my stories at least, is usually less enthusiastic than early voting, so that could happen.)

There you go, Laurel and Manu. My solution to the problem of the 1-bomb. I present it to you with love.

 

[sr71plt]

There you go, Laurel and Manu. My solution to the problem of the 1-bomb. I present it to you with love.

Oh, I'm sure that's coming "soon."

Yes, being able to turn off anonymous voting would be very useful.