Actually, I have one like that. After the first week, the rating was about 4.55, Fair, and I had assumed it didn't get much interest. Now, a month later, it's at 4.82. Go figure.
Is that possible? I myself go back and reread some of my stories, but I've never seen the empty stars asking for a vote.
I only have if I'm not logged in.
I'm not sure how long it takes, but I've seen it. The most common time I notice it is when somebody writes an alternate ending to a really old story and I have to reread the original to refresh my memory. I don't remember every story that I've ever voted on, but I remember some.
Sweeps are a thing of the past. And even if they weren't, they do the job poorly. I'm saying this from a standpoint of someone who tested casting multiple votes on the same story and then observed the effect of the sweep (back when there were still sweeps, as rare as that was)
I'll give you two personal examples.
The same thing is happening in Lesbian and has been since Oct 2024. I had four stories in the top ten at 4.92 for 5 months from June 2024 to October 2024. Right now, in the top 250, there is one story at 4.87, one at 4.86 and 248 at 4.85. I kind of sigh a little when my older stories move up to 4.86 - which they do occasionally - as they immediately get knocked back down to 4.82 or something.
What I meant was that they aren't working the way they used to. Sure, Laurel still does some limited sweeping during contests, and sometimes it even affects non-contest stories. But their impact isn't even a tenth of what it used to be.
True!
Once a vote is registered from a device, I'm pretty sure it sticks forever. I'll often find a story seems familiar, to find I've voted for it already.
EB... *shakes head*
It's like seeing an old friend, waving hi, then realising it's me!
Say more?
Is it based on device, though? Or your login? Have you been testing anonymous voting?
How long does that take, and what other conditons are necessary for a vote to disappear? When/why would they not stick forever? I believe that non-anonymous votes are permanent. I imagine you're talking about anonymous ones? Why wouldn't they also be permanent and what evidence is there that they might not be?
What I mean by that is that... Toplist skepticism -- I think the behavior of the all-time toplists in multiple categories suggests that stories that break through the logjam tend to get lots of downvotes when they do, and only authors with big fanbases can overcome that (which is why there are zero stories on the Romance toplist above 4.85 with fewer than 1000 ratings). I think those downvotes are more likely to be the result of a small number of people casting several votes each than it is a coordinated effort by lots of voters -- that's the conspiracy I referred to. If you believe that the behavior of stories rising, hitting high places on the toplist at 100 ratings and then collapsing is a normal exposure effect, then yeah, no conspiracy, just a bad rating system and perverse incentives.
If you take that example, the average rating of the first 100 was 4.92; the average rating of the next 26 was 3.17. It breaks down almost exactly to 14 5-star ratings and 12 1-star ratings (or 14, 11 and 1 two-star, depending on how rounding works in the back end). I kind of think it's more likely that that's one person casting twelve votes than it is twelve people each casting a single vote.
There's an AHer who rarely posts here, with whom I've discussed these things extensively. We both did plenty of testing. Lit handles the votes in a simple way, and it's easy to abuse. I can tell you that I managed to cast close to twenty votes on a single story before I decided to end the testing. It was back when the sweeps were still happening, and I wanted to observe the effect of sweeps on such votes.
I don't think you're implying it, but I want to be clear anyway.
I'm not entirely sure that's the case, considering the amount of dicks and assholes that serve as presidents anf prime ministers all over the world. I'm pretty sure that at least those votes in Anal do count.
