Malicious Voting?

[Guest]

I've SO stopped looking at my scores... I never thought that day would come, but it's true... (aside from contest entries during a contest... lol) I can't remember the last time I went to my submissions page to look at story scores when there wasn't a contest going on...

Yeah, someone else keeps telling me this same thing...but, I'm weak!

 

[CorsetLvr]

I've SO stopped looking at my scores... I never thought that day would come, but it's true... (aside from contest entries during a contest... lol) I can't remember the last time I went to my submissions page to look at story scores when there wasn't a contest going on...

Perhaps that is a personal goal I will continue to strive towards. Perhaps I will discuss this with my therapist later this week. My need to seek justification from others, yada, yada, yada... J/K.

Excuse me, I need to go check to see if my score changed.

 

[CorsetLvr]

OK, I am officially over it now, especially since I was just trolled again as soon as the score had somewhat recovered. It just went from 4.80 to 4.75. While he was at it, he hit 2 out of the other 3 chapters in the series. Interesting that he missed one. Their scores had also been on the way up as a result of increased views due to the new chapter. Now its sort of a joke. I'll wait for the score to go up and then watch the troll hit it and have it come sliding back down. Of course there is a larger number of votes now, so that the impact of the troll vote is less.

 

[Joesephus]

There is only one escape...

That's to get enough votes that trolls don't matter... Actually they'll always matter. I think a low vote encourages other to also vote low. However, the only real effect is that they reduce readership and that's what upsets me.

On a different site I got the strangest note. A man wrote a very long (full page) note talking about how much he loved my story. He pulled quotes that he especially loved and told me that in the same story he actually had real tears on his face twice. Once from laughter and once for the pain of one of the characters.

This site tracks all votes and also tells you what the vote of the person emailing you is. This wonderful fan gave me the a 7 out of 10! The story had been ranked a 9.67 at the time.

What really hurt was that he told me how much he was looking forward to reading all my other stories. Sigh.

I do understand some of the 1-bombs in LW. There are some folks there who are still hurting, but in the other categories, I frankly think the trolls are writers who think a story with a higher score than theirs needs to be taken down a notch.

On the site I mentioned, any vote lower than a 5 (on a scale of 10) isn't allowed unless there is a comment. I sort of wish that Lit would do the same thing with 1&2-bombs. It at least keeps the trolls from dragging a story down and if the person doing it is for real, then the writer gets to know why.

I've only gotten one of those notes (a 2 out of 10) the voter complained that the story didn't have much sex in it and I hadn't warned him. I wrote back and told him he had a point. I've been very careful to warn ever since and I haven't gotten any more.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

in the other categories, I frankly think the trolls are writers who think a story with a higher score than theirs needs to be taken down a notch.

*nodding* I think a lot of it, too, is monthly contests and toplist competitors... it's a built-in incentive to vote other stories down. *shrug*

 

[rgraham666]

*nodding* I think a lot of it, too, is monthly contests and toplist competitors... it's a built-in incentive to vote other stories down. *shrug*

This is one of those pieces of human behaviour I cannot understand.

I'd no more one bomb a fellow writer's story than I would make heroin addicts out of my own kids.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

This is one of those pieces of human behaviour I cannot understand.

I'd no more one bomb a fellow writer's story than I would make heroin addicts out of my own kids.

there are too many people in the world who would do both...

 

[rgraham666]

there are too many people in the world who would do both...

Sigh. Too true.

I try not to let it get to me.

 

[jeninflorida]

I dont know, my latest story has 18 views, but 36 votes.....

Have any of you noticed this on any of your stories. I had a new story post this AM and was watching the voting to get some idea as to how it was being received. I was pretty happy with how it was going in the early stages until I noticed a sharp drop in the score of the new story. Curious as to how this happened, I did the math and figured out that someone had to have voted a 1 on a tory that was receiving primarily 5's with a few 4's.

Personally, I rarely vote anything less then a 5. If I feel like it deserves less, I simply don't vote. I guess I am letting the rest of the voters do my dirty work.

I'm trying to figure this out and understand the motivation of this person. I'm sure this is something you have discussed here in the past and if you can point me to a previous thread, I would appreciate it. I've seen some threads here that suggest some authors may sabotage a story's score due to some sort of competitive rationale. I only see myself competing against myself. It's sorta like golf. We compare scores, but our score has nothing to do with our competitors. I also couldn't help but ask myself whether the story set off some sort of knee jerk reaction in this voter. I guess you can't please all people all the time.

I know that if there are enough votes then this single voter will probably become statistically insignificant. However, if you look at the ratio of views to votes, it would seem that any such vote can have a major impact. I don't write for a score, it's more of a hobby for me. Like most writers I do have something of an ego and this does seem to strike deep.

Your thoughts and any simlar experiences would be appreciated.

 

[cloudy]

I dont know, my latest story has 18 views, but 36 votes.....

Votes are tallied in real time - as they are placed.

Views, on the other hand, are only updated a couple of times a day. That's why the first day a new story is up, there are often more votes than views.

 

[CorsetLvr]

I dont know, my latest story has 18 views, but 36 votes.....

I'd say you are doing very well if you have 36 votes at that stage in the process, regardless of how accurate the vote count is. I would think that the story would have only been posted for a few hours. Six of those views were probably pre-post views from the admins.

 

[tanyachrs]

I've found that what makes me happiest is to leave the public comment board off but email on and to not go to my submission page very often. I seem to get more feedback without having the public comment board as an option. It doesn't make sense, but it sure seems that way. The emails I get are almost all positive or at least thoughtful. And by not having a public comment board I don't feel obligated to go to my submission page to check for updates.

I've gotten greater satisfaction and more feedback from my most recent submission, which has a very low score, than from my highest rated piece or my most viewed piece. Because the people who took the time to email me were the ones who responded to what I was doing with it. I don't really care about votes or masses; I care about making a connection to a specific person. I just love hearing from guys that they're hard at their desks thanks to my story. That's why I wrote it.

The only reason I ever cared about votes was because I thought that if a story got on the first page of a top list it would continue to get feedback all the time instead of just in the first week, but that doesn't seem to be true. I have one on the first page of a top list (or did, I haven't looked lately) and although it gets views it doesn't get feedback. So the votes mean nothing, even when they put you at the very top.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

. . . I don't really care about votes or masses; I care about making a connection to a specific person. I just love hearing from guys that they're hard at their desks thanks to my story. That's why I wrote it. . . . So the votes mean nothing, even when they put you at the very top.

I like this.

The votes do accomplish one thing, though: They separate the wheat from the chaff for readers, but with a very coarse screen. There is almost always a big difference in the quality of a story that's a 4.5 or a 3.8 vs. one that is a 1.5 or 2.3. These are important cues to readers. To see how important, visit another big site like Nifty, where there is absolutely no way to tell which stories are barely literate scribblings and which are sublime, or at least effectively erotic.

The problem here is that those two digits to the right of the decimal point give a false impression of precision; ideally the scores would be rounded to the nearest whole number, or perhaps 5, 4.5, 4, 3.5, etc. Maybe it would be a good thing to just display them that way, but keep the exact figure hidden for contests and top lists, which seem worthwhile for various reasons.

Given the inherent subjectivity, no system is perfect; the erotic version of Hamlet might lanquish in the low 2's, while some mindless stroke keeps its "H" for years. But on balance, having ratings serves readers much better than not having them.

 

[jomar]

Troll baiting

I started a thread on Author's Hangout on this topic (brand new so no replies yet - see link below for my other related question), but thought one of my questions might fit in this thread too.

Has anybody written a story that was intended to elicit troll anger and their hostile, drunken pc's? I'm getting ready to submit one to Loving Wives and, hopefully, have some fun.

https://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=488964

 

[jomar]

Troll baiting revisted

Actually, I'm rethinking that kind of fun since only_more_so mentioned that troll anger could spill over to my other stories. Hmm, what to do, what to do...

 

[JamesSD]

Not sure if it's been mentioned, but there also are one or two people who just blanket "1-bomb" the new story list.

Basically, don't judge a story's score until after the first month, once the aberrant votes have been purged. Minimally you need to wait for the first week to be over, and then add a small amount (+.02-.1, more if the story has less votes as one low vote is going to drag it down more)

 

[oggbashan]

I am happy when half my stories have an H.

Out of 150 submissions as Og, between a half and one third have an H.

Jeanne D'Artois doesn't do as well as that.

Og

 

[Lee Chambers]

Once again, for those who suffer from trolls, I offer you this.

http://www.cheddarheads.co.uk/nfle/nfle99/whoopcan.gif

 

[starrkers]

My first story is nearly a month old. In its first week it got about a dozen votes, all 4s and 5s except one. Yep, a 1. Made a huge difference to its score.
My other three stories seem to have escaped so far. Fingers crossed.