Seemingly widespread ratings manipulation

[ThatNewGuy]

Within Lesbian Sex, the goalposts already seem to be moving.

About a week ago (maybe two) there was a noticeable shift where a large batch of stories dropped from 4.84 to 4.83.

True. I've noticed the same thing in Loving Wives.

 

[consistentlyrepudiated]

When you stop and think about it, it's all about asking the right questions, and the answer will present itself.

What are the right questions?


Who has the motive to do this? Who gains from this?

Why 4.84?

Who has the means to do it?


We've often speculated here that it's a person or a group of persons influencing the scores in order to push their favorite authors to the top. But does that really make sense?

Each of you can ask yourself: Do you really care that much to do something on this scale?
More than that, even if you are that kind of a fanatic, I don't know anyone here who cares about ALL the categories on Lit. I'd maybe buy this theory if only a couple of categories were affected. But it's every single category, and they are all being flattened to the SAME arbitrary value. There is no Lit zealot who cares about all the kinks and categories.

When we get to the last question, that's when things become truly clear, in my opinion. For an ordinary user to achieve something on this scale, excellent technical skills are required and a dedicated machine and software. Basically, the software would need to access the score page of all these stories, cast votes, and then keep changing the IP through a VPN and do it all over again, and again, and again, ad infinitum.

There are stories with thousands of votes, even tens of thousands of votes, and to affect them, an immense number of votes is needed. On top of that, such a large-scale undertaking would easily get detected by the website admins. The same IP casting thousands of votes in a short amount of time? Yeah right.

Wait, maybe it's some competitor doing this to harm Lit? But how exactly are they harming Lit with this huge endeavour? How does reducing top scores from, say, 4.93 to 4.85 harm Lit in any way? This one makes the least sense to me.


And finally, we get to the most obvious culprit - Literotica itself.

They obviously have the means to do this. Instead of needing a massive undertaking to cast votes and to change IPs, they can do all of this with a single database query.

Clearly, they've done this with many small-scale queries instead, as scores haven't dropped instantly. They have been dropping slowly for a while, and it's possible that they will continue to drop. Lit admins are the ONLY ones who could achieve this without using considerable time and resources.

The tricky part, of course, is why? Why would Lit do this?

My best guess is that they did it to let other, newer stories a chance to get to the top. Some stories have been sitting up there for years, and due to the number of votes, they were often unassailable, especially when you take into account those zealous readers who love influencing vulnerable top list entries that have a few hundred votes only.

Most of you will remember that on the category page, when you get to the POPULAR STORIES for that category, the window used to display stories from the all-time top list, which means stories with a hundred votes minimum. Now it shows top-scoring stories from that category regardless of the number of votes.

That change was clearly done out of the desire to shuffle the stories more often and to give a chance to other authors to get exposure. It's a change that hints at what happened to the all-time top lists.


It's not easy to speculate about these things, of course, but when you put two and two together, the answer does present itself. It's not a perfect one, but in comparison to all the other theories, it makes the most sense by far.

Pshh, I'm impressed. You finally figured it out. You almost nailed the how (allowing it to happen is as if they did it themselves), but not quite the why. Looking for a silver lining in everything is adorable, but naive. "Good guys" can't understand the way certain minds work, the dark thrill they get from absolute control; the depraved satisfaction of toyed-with victims squealing, protesting, and ultimately begging.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Within Lesbian Sex, the goalposts already seem to be moving.

About a week ago (maybe two) there was a noticeable shift where a large batch of stories dropped from 4.84 to 4.83. These were stories with thousands of votes that had been sitting comfortably at 4.84 for quite some time.

I believe this proves my theory. They are continuously dropping the scores over a longer period of time to prevent an angry outcry that would have come in the case of a sharp reduction. I suspect they will simply stop at a sufficiently low point.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Pshh, I'm impressed. You finally figured it out. You almost nailed the how (allowing it to happen is as if they did it themselves), but not quite the why. Looking for a silver lining in everything is adorable, but naive. "Good guys" can't understand the way certain minds work, the dark thrill they get from absolute control; the depraved satisfaction of toyed-with victims squealing, protesting, and ultimately begging.

Bruckner!

 

[StillStunned]

Not a sus premise at all…

Some time ago, when one of my stories surged to near the top of the E&V hall of fame and was immediately bombed, I complained about it on Bluesky. The bombs were swept. They reappeared, I mentioned it again, they were swept, etc. After the fourth time I stopped complaining.

If doesn't make sense for Lit to both be the bomber and the sweeper. Since we know that Lit's the sweeper, it clearly isn't the bomber.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

I believe this proves my theory. They are continuously dropping the scores over a longer period of time to prevent an angry outcry

I said this in the other thread, but I do not believe Laurel and Manu would act so unethically. You're suggesting that they are intentionally downvoting and suppressing the scores of stories simply to achieve greater variety in the all-time top list? I think that's extraordinarily unlikely.

@Laurel and @Manu : any insight into the cause of the mass flattening across the all-time top lists that we've been seeing?

I don't believe anyone tagged them or asked them directly in the last thread. I certainly don't expect a response, but it's worth a shot.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

Dunning & Kruger strike again!

Anyone who thinks that like 96 of the all time top lesbian stories sharing the same rating is a natural occurrence, one resulting from a stochastic process, really needs to read a basic text book.

And… very tellingly, it didn’t use to be that way.

Before the manipulation, you had to go to the second page of the lesbian top list to find a score below 4.9 ...

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I said this in the other thread, but I do not believe Laurel and Manu would act so unethically. You're suggesting that they are intentionally downvoting and suppressing the scores of stories simply to achieve greater variety in the all-time top list? I think that's extraordinarily unlikely.

We have very different impressions of them, it seems. To me, this looks exactly like something they would do. They showed time and again that they don't care about how their choices and actions affect us, authors.

I suspect they are simply being practical from their standpoint. They are doing what they want to do without caring about how this large-scale engineering of scores affects any individual author. And I know from experience that they don't care much about being fair.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Some time ago, when one of my stories surged to near the top of the E&V hall of fame and was immediately bombed, I complained about it on Bluesky. The bombs were swept. They reappeared, I mentioned it again, they were swept, etc. After the fourth time I stopped complaining.

If doesn't make sense for Lit to both be the bomber and the sweeper. Since we know that Lit's the sweeper, it clearly isn't the bomber.

This

Which chimes with my experience. I think the tinfoil hat accusations are based on looking in the mirror.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I believe this proves my theory.

Try running that past the reviewers of a peer reviewed journal . Proof? Really?

 

[EmilyMiller]

We have very different impressions of them, it seems. To me, this looks exactly like something they would do. They showed time and again that they don't care about how their choices and actions affect us, authors.

Beautiful framing for your theory .

 

[EmilyMiller]

OK - nothing to see here folks. Let’s get back to discussing reality

 

[EmilyMiller]

Before the manipulation, you had to go to the second page of the lesbian top list to find a score below 4.9 ...

Yup - and they weren’t all the same, which is what the output of a stochastic process looks like.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Beautiful framing for your theory .

I don't understand why you're getting so agitated at my theory. It obviously wasn't meant to present Laurel or Manu in a positive light. Maybe quite the contrary. This thing they are doing is a manipulation, an artificial engineering of scores. And it tracks with what I've seen so far on Lit.

And again, I know as well as anyone here that there are individuals who bomb stories, who target specific authors, who punish certain opinions, and finally, who try to influence top lists themselves. This theory doesn't negate their existence. But their actions are several orders of magnitude smaller in scale, and they are always targeted and specific.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

If doesn't make sense for Lit to both be the bomber and the sweeper. Since we know that Lit's the sweeper, it clearly isn't the bomber.

If all that anyone looks at is the flattening of the scores, they miss the bigger picture.


This is only one of several oddities that we can point to involving the top lists alone.

How would "bombing" or any other manipulation by outside parties create a gap if 1,485 votes between these stories? How would it affect stories getting stuck in pending or any of the other unexplained system-wide issues that most of us have seen to some degree since last summer?

Statistical records on my own stories shows that this top list issue all started back in August but people noticed it at different times depending on how it affected them personally. I don't know, and won't speculate on what or why the system started having these issues, but find it hard to believe that Manu wouldn't shut down an exterior cause if it was the culprit.

It is not in the site's interest to ignore it unless it is something of their own doing and part of a process not yet complete for whatever reason.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

This thing they are doing is a manipulation, an artificial engineering of scores. And it tracks with what I've seen so far on Lit.

I think it's more likely that they are aware of the issue and lack the time, resources, and/or expertise to address it than it is that they are intentionally sabotaging the scores of stories. Occam's razor and all.

Setting aside ethics, sabotage wouldn't be in their self interest. If it came to light, it would alienate the authors upon whom they rely for content. Who is going to submit to a site where the admins themselves one-bomb your stories? Too big a risk for too little benefit.

 

[consistentlyrepudiated]

I think it's more likely that they are aware of the issue and lack the time, resources, and/or expertise to address it than it is that they are intentionally sabotaging the scores of stories. Occam's razor and all.

Setting aside ethics, sabotage wouldn't be in their self interest. If it came to light, it would alienate the authors upon whom they rely for content. Who is going to submit to a site where the admins themselves one-bomb your stories? Too big a risk for too little benefit.

God, you are the epitome of a "good guy." ThatGoodGuy hehe. From the old woman's perspective, the oven is never to rest; there are always new Gretels and Hansels wandering in to feed the fire.

 

[TheLobster]

You don't have to add deliberate one-bombs to cause a general flattening of scored on the top lists. You can also sweep the five "bombs" more diligently, which would be the opposite of sabotaging the site.

And given how fragile the very highest scores are, by the very nature of, well, arithmetic mean, it doesn't take a lot of lost fives to knock them.

 

[EmilyMiller]

If all that anyone looks at is the flattening of the scores, they miss the bigger picture.

View attachment 2617018
This is only one of several oddities that we can point to involving the top lists alone.

How would "bombing" or any other manipulation by outside parties create a gap if 1,485 votes between these stories? How would it affect stories getting stuck in pending or any of the other unexplained system-wide issues that most of us have seen to some degree since last summer?

Statistical records on my own stories shows that this top list issue all started back in August but people noticed it at different times depending on how it affected them personally. I don't know, and won't speculate on what or why the system started having these issues, but find it hard to believe that Manu wouldn't shut down an exterior cause if it was the culprit.

It is not in the site's interest to ignore it unless it is something of their own doing and part of a process not yet complete for whatever reason.

Can you explain the point you are making with the votes? It’s not at all clear to me what it is.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I don't understand why you're getting so agitated

So funny, maybe add ‘hysterical’ next time. I disagree with much of what you say, which seems baseless. If you want to call that being agitated, then that’s OK .

 

[ThatNewGuy]

You don't have to add deliberate one-bombs to cause a general flattening of scored on the top lists. You can also sweep the five "bombs" more diligently, which would be the opposite of sabotaging the site.

That's an entirely fair point. Although, it seems unlikely to me that a good-faith sweep of fraudulent five bombs would result in such a uniform score distribution among the top lists (4.83 to 4.84). I think that uniformity is more likely to be caused by a troll who developed a script to add lower votes to top list stories until they reach an arbitrary threshold.

I concede that this is just pure speculation, though.

 

[THBGato]

You can also sweep the five "bombs" more diligently, which would be the opposite of sabotaging the site.

I wonder if that's happened? I've re-read a few stories lately (and I know I've read them before because there's a comment from me on them) and discovered I was able to vote on them again. Had my first vote been 'swept'?

 

[THBGato]

this top list issue all started back in August but people noticed it at different times depending on how it affected them personally.

It started in Oct 2024. I got to watch the 4 stories I had in the Lesbian Sex top 20 drop, along with all the others around them. As it was at precisely the time of the Valencian floods, I have a very clear frame of reference.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Can you explain the point you are making with the votes? It’s not at all clear to me what it is.

I am illustrating that beyond the flattening of scores in the top lists, there are other issues with it that people are ignoring.

If you look at the example with the votes, you will see that the story at the #11 position has a score of 4.84 with 2,093 votes. The story in the #12 position has a score of 4.84 with 685 votes.

I know for a fact that there are stories in this same category with scores of 4.84 and vote counts between these two because two of mine fit there until last week, yet they were not listed.

This "gap" of 1,485 votes cannot be explained simply by someone manipulating scores. If you look at other categories, you will see similar large gaps between stories (look at #6 & #7 or #13 & #14 in Lesbian Sex) with the same score. This only started happening when the flattening began, so there must be some correlation.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

God, you are the epitome of a "good guy." ThatGoodGuy hehe.

Off topic, but I hope you're still writing and posting somewhere. I remember your excellent loss of innocence story with the boab tree.