One bombed

[TheLobster]

Tell me why this wouldn't help (and wouldn't be easy to implement):

Given the inaccurate way in which Lit counts "reads" — which are really just views of the first page — relying on any kind of ratio between rating # and view # would disproportionately hurt longer stories. This alone is reason enough not to implement it.

 

[Adam_Sephenson]

was just on the receiving end of at least 5 one bombing attack. The second chapter of my second story was sitting comfortably at a 4.86 (out of 102 ratings) the past month. when it dropped down to a 4.73 (out of 107 ratings) within a 24 hour period.

What's the best way to go about this? I tried to find a side topic via "help" but nothing regarding rating bombing.
I find it disheartening that there are a group of people who would go and purposefully down vote a story that people found enjoyable.
I could understand if it went down over a long period of time. but for it to drop that suddenly and rapidly in a day makes me think that there is some dirty work at play.

 

[BeechLeaf]

Like many things, it's difficult to find in the FAQ/help, but under Publishing there's a choice 'The voting on my story or a story I’ve read seems suspicious to me. What should I do?'

 

[Adam_Sephenson]

Like many things, it's difficult to find in the FAQ/help, but under Publishing there's a choice 'The voting on my story or a story I’ve read seems suspicious to me. What should I do?'

thank you very much for this! I didn't realise you could report and do it like that. guess I didn't look hard enough =)

 

[Dearelliot]

Lit should allow anyone 1 bombed, a one time to wipe it away! One time, per story, if it is that bad, others will recognize it. I think there is a nut or two on board who, for whatever reason, get their kicks out of one bombing

 

[Adam_Sephenson]

Lit should allow anyone 1 bombed, a one time to wipe it away! One time, per story, if it is that bad, others will recognize it. I think there is a nut or two on board who, for whatever reason, get their kicks out of one bombing

Or at least treat the rating system like they do with commenting. You click your rating and you’re met with a moderation check before the rating goes live

 

[alohadave]

To implement what you state would require a database of every single vote ever cast by every voter in every genre.

I'm fairly certain that they do exactly this.

If you go back to any story you've ever voted on, it'll show what you voted. It has to know how you voted to be able to show you after the fact.

It would have to be tracked by something other than a user name since it's relatively easy have multiple user names including the infamous "Anonymous".

The display name is "Anonymous", but there is very likely a user id or identifier associated with each one. You may get a different one each time, or you may not depending on if cookies are used.

Currently, there are 500,000+ stories published on Literotica. If the average number of votes per story is only 100, that's 15 million data entries (user name or other identifier, vote, genre) and a lot of older stories have over 1000 votes. I don't know how anything but a huge, dedicated server with some pretty powerful computing massaging the votes could ever keep up.

That's not really a large database. Stock MySQL or Postgres can easily handle that.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

It's a fair question, but without trying to throw water on this discussion:

One-bombing is a constantly-recurring topic in AH. Some think it's trivial, some are incensed and the dance begins...

Changes to the voting system have been proposed for a long, long time. The site has made changes in other areas, but let this ride. Feel free to discuss it, but I wouldn't put much hope in seeing major changes.

If you think you've been bombed, you can either wait until a site sweep comes along (there's almost always one near the end of each contest) or you can report it (see @BeechLeaf 's post above). Sweeps erase votes felt by the site to be fishy - both 1s and 5s. We are not told how sweeps work and are very much discouraged from asking or discussing that lest it help the trolls and would-be trolls.

Complaining about being bombed is a good way to get superbombed. The bombing trolls are like toddlers spouting potty words. When somebody flinches, it tells them they've found a good target. Report it, live with it or discuss it privately via DM, but beware whinging about it in public.

The bottom line is that one-bombing is like ants at a picnic. In other words, enjoy the site, learn to tolerate the ants.

 

[Adam_Sephenson]

hmmm my stories have disappeared from my list. I take it this is a good sign that they're being looked at for potential rating bombs?

 

[ADirtyPerv]

hmmm my stories have disappeared from my list. I take it this is a good sign that they're being looked at for potential rating bombs?

View attachment 2601141

Just a glitch, I think. Mine are in and out.

 

[BeechLeaf]

There seems to have been a temporary outage. A couple of recent comments have said they're getting errors, and I got a couple of 500 errors looking at my own stuff - it may be gone by now.

 

[SmilingLez]

That's not really a large database. Stock MySQL or Postgres can easily handle that.

Remember literotica's database and CMS is over 25 years old.

 

[SmilingLez]

There seems to have been a temporary outage. A couple of recent comments have said they're getting errors, and I got a couple of 500 errors looking at my own stuff - it may be gone by now.

I have also been getting random error pages trying to access different parts in the control panel.

 

[ElectricBlue]

hmmm my stories have disappeared from my list. I take it this is a good sign that they're being looked at for potential rating bombs?

Possibly coincidental. The site is a little twitchy right now.

Your scores may have changed anyway - seems a sweep went through (at least for some people) in the last 24 hours, and if your run of low scores were trolling votes, they might have been removed.

Possibly, five people gave you 2s, or one person gave you a 5, another a 2, and you got 3 x 1s. Or 2 x 3, 2 x 2, and a 1. There are several possibilities, not all of which are malicious. Definitely some low scores in the mix, though.

 

[Adam_Sephenson]

Possibly coincidental. The site is a little twitchy right now.

Your scores may have changed anyway - seems a sweep went through (at least for some people) in the last 24 hours, and if your run of low scores were trolling votes, they might have been removed.

Possibly, five people gave you 2s, or one person gave you a 5, another a 2, and you got 3 x 1s. Or 2 x 3, 2 x 2, and a 1. There are several possibilities, not all of which are malicious. Definitely some low scores in the mix, though.

haha I would've hoped that it would be the case, but it seems that it's continuing on a free fall. another 2 votes bumped it down even more. I may have missed the more recent cut off when it comes to checking for rating fraud (either that or people are annoyed I haven't posted a chapter in 2 months. these things take time to write XD)

and yeah, the stories came back up, seems to be a small hiccup, as my other activity feed went down for a while after that as well.

 

[WhenPreNut]

literotica's database and CMS is over 25 years old.

There is definately some bit-rot detectable.

As an author here for only a few months I've seen what I didn't see as a browser for 2 decades, and it's a bit of a shock. There are technical and cultural topics that deserve effort.

I wonder how resilient the platform is, and how reliable. I've had a story published for several days and it still doesn't show on my profile. People must find it somehow cos it's getting read.

C'est la vie

At least the sun is shining in Scotland today

 

[RejectReality]

There is definately some bit-rot detectable.

As an author here for only a few months I've seen what I didn't see as a browser for 2 decades, and it's a bit of a shock. There are technical and cultural topics that deserve effort.

I wonder how resilient the platform is, and how reliable. I've had a story published for several days and it still doesn't show on my profile. People must find it somehow cos it's getting read.

C'est la vie

At least the sun is shining in Scotland today

It showed up on the new story lists. People were reading it from there.

Change the order displayed on your public profile from newest ( which I believe is the default ) to alphabetical and see if it shows up. There have been enough reports coming in to indicate the newest tab is bugged and takes a few days to show new releases, while the alphabetical seems to catch them all.

 

[RejectReality]

Given the inaccurate way in which Lit counts "reads" — which are really just views of the first page — relying on any kind of ratio between rating # and view # would disproportionately hurt longer stories. This alone is reason enough not to implement it.

One small correction: It's not the first page only. If your session changes, any page of the story will generate a view. So if someone is reading your 21 page epic and comes back the next day to page 10 they bookmarked, you'll get a view from it.

 

[BeechLeaf]

I've had a story published for several days and it still doesn't show on my profile. People must find it somehow cos it's getting read.

Most people who are regular here put a link to their stories or profile in their signature. As that might still not show a new story for a couple of days, I also put in an explicit link to a new story for the days after it comes out.

 

[alohadave]

I've had a story published for several days and it still doesn't show on my profile. People must find it somehow cos it's getting read.

That is a fairly recent glitch. You can get to the story if you have the link, and on some profiles, if you sort stories alphabetically, they'll show.

Being on the new list and category lists probably explains how people are able to get them without them being visible on profile pages.

 

[SkyBubble]

Looks like a few of us are running into the same 1-bomber issues.

Many.

 

[lovecraft68]

One fix that no one wants to hear, and I understand why but would still consider it is to eliminate anonymous ability to vote and comment. You can read but to do anything beyond that you have to have a user ID. It would cut down on bombs and definitely the nasty comments because even though we're still not using real names with a handle, the trolls need that extra layer of protection. Imagine how that would clean up the toxicity of LW

But yes, there are a lot of good anon votes and comments and we'd lose those but there's always the hope that some decent anon folks would take the plunge and sign up.

Going further if lit required a handle to get into the site even just to read that would further push people to create an account or they lose the biggest and best source of free stories on the net.

It will never happen, but neither will any other suggestion here so just putting it out there.

 

[RejectReality]

We're lucky if 1 in 100 people will make the effort to click stars with no barriers in place. That will be 1 in 1000 if you force them to sign up for a porn site on top of it. All you do is exponentially increase the power of the trolls, who are on a mission and are far more likely to sign up than Joey Jerkoff. Even if the site spends all its time policing these new "easily tracked troll accounts" the only result is going to be hyperinflated scores, which then means that a troll can drop a 4 on you and permanently eliminate any hope of visibility. Good luck arguing that a single 4 out of 5 is malicious. You also relegate tens of thousands of stories to the dustbin of history because 4.84 is a score you would assume was written by a chimpanzee with a learning disability considering what's highlighted with perfect 5s.

Welcome to a land where social cliques of authors absolutely own the place as well, since they can trade votes and it will actually matter with 20 people representing half the votes most stories will get.

I've been there. I watched this happen. It's the ultimate sensitive author FAFO.

 

[lovecraft68]

Welcome to a land where social cliques of authors absolutely own the place as well, since they can trade votes and it will actually matter with 20 people representing half the votes most stories will get.

I've been there. I watched this happen. It's the ultimate sensitive author FAFO.

Only one way to find out, but we're never finding out so may as well just toss things out there. I'm also not a sensitive author and we could do with less of them around here.

As for social cliques we've had them in the past and we have them now and I think its part of the reasons some fives have been vanishing. A couple of people post here they have a new story you can hear the Scooby Doo feet sound effect as they rush to five it whether its a good story or not.

In the end we can only be sure of one thing: They are not going to change the system so we're just spinning wheels.

 

[WhenPreNut]

Change the order displayed on your public profile from newest

Hi
Thanks
Which screen has the option?
I looked at "My profile" and "My options". Couldn't see anything

On "Works/My Stories" and public profile as I view it there is an AZ. Isn't that just what I can see so while it's confirmation for me it's not visibility for others?