Stories I Suspect Have Been 1 Bombed

[BonnevilleFlats]

We have been discussing the rating system on lit and the practice of "1" bombing. Now, let me get this clear from the get go. Every reader has a right to give a story whatever score he or she wants to. A reader can use any criteria for his or her vote. If a reader gives a story 1 star because he or she had a flame war with the author on the discussion board I have no problem with it.

"I bombing", however, is a different phenomenon. That is when a reader uses cache clearing or alts to vote on a story more than once. The purpose of 1 bombing is to lower the score of a given story to deprive it of a red H or a good score.

Not every low scoring story is a victim of 1 bombing. Badly written stories get low scores on their own. There is no need for them to be 1 bombed.

I only became aware of this practice a couple of weeks ago. Since then I have come across a number of stories I suspect have been 1 bombed. There are several things I look for. One indicator is ten or more "favorites" on a recently posted story that is struggling to stay above a 4.00. Another indicator is an author who has a long track record -- several years -- of decent scores and Red H's who, in the past several months, is now averaging in the low 4's.

I decided to create this thread not to bitch about scores so much but to bring attention to good stories that I suspect have been 1 bombed. In the end, the 1 bombers and 5 bumpers are hurting themselves (I suspect writers are doing this more often than readers) because their own scores eventually become meaningless.

Anyhow, here is a recently submitted story by Momstheboss that I suspect has been 1 bombed. Over the years, Momstheboss typically scores above a 4.30 and often gets a red H. However, his 2013 oedipal submissions are now scoring in the low 4's. I do not think the following story is his best. But it is a whole lot better than the score indicates.

http://www.literotica.com/s/a-mothers-seduction-or-love

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Most of the time I get 7-8 ONES as soon as my story goes live. Categories with lotsa readers redeem the average but low traffic categories, like NON-EROTIC, suffer forever. FIVES or ONES is the story of my life here.

I did find a cure for it, tho.

 

[sr71plt]

I don't agree with you on what 1 bombing means here, Bonnie. To me it's a 1 vote just to run the story or author down, not related to the story itself. I would agree that a story might deserve and be given a 1 vote (although why not just trot off from it and to on to something you want to read? Do you want to convey your superiority that much as to leave anything on the story?), but that's not the same to me as a 1 bomb. I see the purposes of a 1 bomb being totally different, not really addressing the story itself, and completely malicious.

Also, I've never heard that bit about clearing caches and then being able to get subsequent votes to hold through sweeps. If true, thanks loads for helping malicious voters figure it out.

 

[sr71plt]

Most of the time I get 7-8 ONES as soon as my story goes live. Categories with lotsa readers redeem the average but low traffic categories, like NON-EROTIC, suffer forever. FIVES or ONES is the story of my life here.

I did find a cure for it, tho.

And those I would say were 1 bombs, not legitimate 1 votes. I've read one of your stories. Your writing is not capable of truly deserving a 1 vote. Those bombs were for you personally for reasons unrelated to your story writing.

And this is my point to Bonnie's post.

 

[AMoveableBeast]

I would also add that, in my experience, a significant amount of 1 star ratings seem to come due to subject matter. The Loving Wives category is a testament to this. Regardless of how a story involving infidelity is resolved in that category, it will tick off one indignant sect or another, whose members will then viciously bomb the author for being some undesirable mutation of what their given gender should properly be, with no accounting of writing ability or skill. While this is of course a matter of prerogative and well within the individual's rights, it is the equivalent of trashing Dega because you think ballerinas encourage an unrealistic body image for young women.

While I'm sure a great deal of specified, malicious author assassination goes on, I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of ones are actually knee-jerk reactions to offensive subject material and unpopular moral decisions.

 

[KlaytonFrost]

It could simply be a glut of readers who didn't like the story, or who didn't read past a certain point before slapping a one on it and moving on. It's hard to say, ultimately, whether a story has been bombed or not, but I think a thread drawing attention to stories with a lower rating that you think they deserve is well worth the effort, no?

 

[autoplot]

Can you actually see a breakdown in your individual ratings, beyond just the average?

 

[sr71plt]

Can you actually see a breakdown in your individual ratings, beyond just the average?

Not that I know of. If you check frequently, though, you can usually tell when you've been bombed.

With me, it's usually day two for any story suddenly showing hot.

 

[RileyGirl]

Yes, like autoplot says, JAMESBJOHNSON seem to insinuate there is a source to see the number of each 1,2,3,4 or 5 voting you get, kind of like amazon. That was the impression I got from the post. Kind of like Amazon I think with their bar graphs. FAQs didn't have anything on that, just where to see the average. Or was the post just an extrapolation from seeing 10 views and a 1 rating?

 

[Darkniciad]

As long as your story doesn't pick up more than say 100 votes on day one, and you watch it every few minutes, you can come pretty close to what each vote or small block of votes represented.

When you're looking at something like a LW or Incest story, it just isn't going to happen most of the time. If you can compute the votes as they come in, it isn't doing very well *laugh* Most of the time, every time you hit the refresh button, it will have gone up two or three votes. By the time you do the math on that and hit refresh again, it will have gone up 10 votes and the spread is too wide to come up with anything accurate.

After the initial burst of voting has ended, you can calculate those spaced out new votes with some reasonable degree of accuracy. It all depends on watching them somewhere between regularly to obsessively. The moment you get more than a handul of votes since the last time you looked, you're not going to get more than a vague notion of what each of those votes were.

If you have a "following" on the forum, and you're expecting them to come on by and give you "what you deserve", you can usually see that happening as well. Often, you see them appear on the forum, then you check your newest story, and wa-la! It's dropped a fair amount on one/few votes.

Coincidence? Maybe. If it happens regularly, then probably not.

Lit doesn't provide the actual breakdown, although the individual votes are maintained forever, as near as I can tell, so they probably could.

A breakdown would be nice. It would probably be fairly easy to implement, and considering that your scores update in real time, it's probably calculating the score from individual votes every time you load the page anyway, so it wouldn't really eat up much more in the way of resources to display that breakdown.

When something is cached and only updated every so often, you see that. For instance, your views. Those update every fifteen minutes or so on your private author page. Watching it on day one of a story release will demonstrate that. During the same period, you'll see your listed number of votes and comments change regularly, then the views leapfrog every quarter hour.

Do I think there's any chance of a breakdown happening? Hell no *laugh*

 

[BonnevilleFlats]

Also, I've never heard that bit about clearing caches and then being able to get subsequent votes to hold through sweeps. If true, thanks loads for helping malicious voters figure it out.

I have a story due out tomorrow or Monday and have made myself a fat target. But who knows, they may five bomb me instead.

I don't think my stories have been one bombed. They scored about what I expected -- though I was surprised that the second chapter of my last story scored about fifteen points lower than the first. I didn't think the boner killers were that severe. But I am trying for something a little bit different with my stories and never expected them to be embraced by the majority of readers. However, there aren't many sites that will post fiction with an incest theme.

My concern over the 1 bombing is that in the long run it renders the scoring meaningless. It actually hurts the readers more than the writers because they are the ones who rely on the scoring to select stories they like. Maybe things have to get really out of hand before something is done about it.

 

[Darkniciad]

The sweeps actually mitigate it pretty well -- if slowly.

Between contest sweeps, regular everyday sweeps, and requested sweeps ( You can ask Laurel to look into issues with your story, someone else's, the toplists, etc. ) most of the malicious stuff from your average butthead goes away.

What it's not going to get are those professional and personal trolls who have figured out how to circumvent the controls in place. They make it a life quest to figure out how to lower your score, and usually have it down to an art.

Nothing short of forcing a sign-up to vote is going to mitigate that much. Even that would only make them work a little bit harder.

I post on numerous story sites, and I'll tell you this: No scoring system is really worth a damn for readers to use as a guide *laugh*

About all any of them do is separate the really bad from everything else ( barring personal trolls, which can put your scores into that really bad category )

Beyond that, they're too easy to manipulate, and always skewed toward the top end of the scale. Your average Joe/Jane either doesn't vote because he or she is here for a quick wank, or doesn't vote on things they don't like. It's only the people who liked the story who usually make it to the end and vote.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Yes, like autoplot says, JAMESBJOHNSON seem to insinuate there is a source to see the number of each 1,2,3,4 or 5 voting you get, kind of like amazon. That was the impression I got from the post. Kind of like Amazon I think with their bar graphs. FAQs didn't have anything on that, just where to see the average. Or was the post just an extrapolation from seeing 10 views and a 1 rating?

I don't know of any way to view the vote breakdown, but refreshing the count frequently gives me a pretty good idea when somebody's dropped a '1'.

It also confirms that those '1's almost always vanish a few days down the track when the sweeps hit.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Yes, like autoplot says, JAMESBJOHNSON seem to insinuate there is a source to see the number of each 1,2,3,4 or 5 voting you get, kind of like amazon. That was the impression I got from the post. Kind of like Amazon I think with their bar graphs. FAQs didn't have anything on that, just where to see the average. Or was the post just an extrapolation from seeing 10 views and a 1 rating?

5a+4b+3c+2d+e= score

a+b+c+d+e= votes

You always know how many votes you got, and you always know your score (average times votes), so you solve for the unknowns. Now! Votes come in slowly unless your LIT friends are ONE BOMBING you. I recently got 8 ONE BOMBS within a few minutes.

My way of extracting votes will produce all the possible combinations of votes unless I have a few knowns to plug in.

 

[BonnevilleFlats]

5a+4b+3c+2d+e= score

a+b+c+d+e= votes

You always know how many votes you got, and you always know your score (average times votes), so you solve for the unknowns. Now! Votes come in slowly unless your LIT friends are ONE BOMBING you. I recently got 8 ONE BOMBS within a few minutes.

My way of extracting votes will produce all the possible combinations of votes unless I have a few knowns to plug in.

My high school math teacher always told me what I learned in algebra II would come in handy. Thirty plus years later, for the first time, I am using it!

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

My high school math teacher always told me what I learned in algebra II would come in handy. Thirty plus years later, for the first time, I am using it!

If you collect a few scores upfront its easier to find the others.

 

[MatthewVett]

My high school math teacher always told me what I learned in algebra II would come in handy. Thirty plus years later, for the first time, I am using it!

Yeah, but you need to be able to keep track of each individual vote. And after a while, new votes won't change the score, so you lose all ability to keep track. If you just know your votes and score, you can't determine anything, because there are five variables and two equations. As for me, I don't worry too much about it. I can't stop one bombing, and as my story passes from their attention, it'll slowly collect accurate votes from honest readers, and slowly its score will make its way to where it should be.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Yeah, but you need to be able to keep track of each individual vote. And after a while, new votes won't change the score, so you lose all ability to keep track. If you just know your votes and score, you can't determine anything, because there are five variables and two equations. As for me, I don't worry too much about it. I can't stop one bombing, and as my story passes from their attention, it'll slowly collect accurate votes from honest readers, and slowly its score will make its way to where it should be.

Yes, youre right in that my way gives you all the possible combinations, which isn't helpful unless you know some of your scores already. If youre blessed with 8 onebombs early on it does make it easier to extract the others.

 

[Darkniciad]

Yeah, but you need to be able to keep track of each individual vote. And after a while, new votes won't change the score, so you lose all ability to keep track. If you just know your votes and score, you can't determine anything, because there are five variables and two equations. As for me, I don't worry too much about it. I can't stop one bombing, and as my story passes from their attention, it'll slowly collect accurate votes from honest readers, and slowly its score will make its way to where it should be.

Actually, until you get up to a large number of votes, the score will almost always change with every single vote.

4.96 * 100 votes + a new vote of 4 drops your average to 4.95 ( depending upon what the rounding is on that 4.96 )

You still can't perfectly figure out what each vote is, but you can get a reasonable idea until the vote totals get up above 100, and a lot of stories are never going to break that barrier. 1s and 2s will have an obvious effect on stories with even larger vote totals.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

A while back I submitted a story to an alt account, to get an idea of how much of my score is legitimate criticism, and how much is evil perpetrated by my poster pals here.

I usually get a dozen or so ONE BOMBS with my JAMESBJOHNSON account but haven't gotten one with the other. The 5's are about the same, as are the other numbers. But no ONES.

My thinking is, real scores are normally distributed unless 1) someone has his thumb on the scale, or 2) the story is so superlative or rotten its merits aren't disputed. I've read 1000s of stories, and maybe a dozen are really really top-shelf. The rest are more like tasty cheese-burgers but not prime USDA steak.

I'm reminded of the battle tween Clay Aiken and Reuben a while back. Reuben won the vote but Clay was the better singer, and Reuben went away after he won his plastic trophy. The folks who voted for him wouldn't buy his music.

 

[Ironiclaconic]

A while back I submitted a story to an alt account, to get an idea of how much of my score is legitimate criticism, and how much is evil perpetrated by my poster pals here.

I usually get a dozen or so ONE BOMBS with my JAMESBJOHNSON account but haven't gotten one with the other. The 5's are about the same, as are the other numbers. But no ONES.

My thinking is, real scores are normally distributed unless 1) someone has his thumb on the scale, or 2) the story is so superlative or rotten its merits aren't disputed. I've read 1000s of stories, and maybe a dozen are really really top-shelf. The rest are more like tasty cheese-burgers but not prime USDA steak.

I'm reminded of the battle tween Clay Aiken and Reuben a while back. Reuben won the vote but Clay was the better singer, and Reuben went away after he won his plastic trophy. The folks who voted for him wouldn't buy his music.

Some stories are just polarizing. By hitting refresh a lot, I could tell that my most recent story was drawing 10% ones, something that hasn't happened to my other stories. I think the reason was that it was different (most of the story is single-word sentences). A lot of people loved it, which I could tell from other votes and comments, but I can't deny that a decent share of readers really and truly hated it.

One-bombing to me is when people aren't voting, but trying to lower your score for another reason. It's pretty common on contests or if your story is on the toplists.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Some stories are just polarizing. By hitting refresh a lot, I could tell that my most recent story was drawing 10% ones, something that hasn't happened to my other stories. I think the reason was that it was different (most of the story is single-word sentences). A lot of people loved it, which I could tell from other votes and comments, but I can't deny that a decent share of readers really and truly hated it.

One-bombing to me is when people aren't voting, but trying to lower your score for another reason. It's pretty common on contests or if your story is on the toplists.

Sure. Whackjobs and fanatics oughta run 2% (4% combined) of our total score; 2s & 4s oughta run about 33% combined, and 3s oughta run 67%, if the voting is kosher. That's a normal or bell-curve distribution.

 

[Ironiclaconic]

Sure. Whackjobs and fanatics oughta run 2% (4% combined) of our total score; 2s & 4s oughta run about 33% combined, and 3s oughta run 67%, if the voting is kosher. That's a normal or bell-curve distribution.

It's a normal distribution but there is no reason to expect a normal distribution. You can't vote until the bottom of the last page, which makes voting inconvenient for any readers who gave up on your story. Plus the people reading your story are self-selected, either they like your other work, like the genre, or thought the title and blurb looked interesting. As such, distribution is skewed positive.

 

[astuffedshirt_perv]

I've noticed it upon submittals, a couple of 1s early. Then a long, slow grind to a respectable score. My most recent story:
Votes score voting
1-4 4.50 5,4,5,4 (morning of release)
5-7 3.57 5,1,1 or 4.2.1 or 3.2.2 (evening of release)
8 3.75 5
9 3.79 4
10 3.80 4

then all 5s and 4s, now rated around 4.4. Except for votes 5 to 7, all votes have either been a 4 or 5. What I can't figure out is how do some stories get out of the blocks with an H?

 

[Darkniciad]

If you mean, how do they post right from the start with an H? A reasonable author following who show up and vote early ( usually 5s )

If you mean, how do they start at that level and maintain it, then see above, first off.

Second -- as with everything -- the category matters. Sci-Fi, Romance, Non-Human... Those categories tend to score higher, and the worst kind of trolls don't seem interested most of the time.

That is quite naturally factors completely divorced from the actual quality and appeal of the story, which can overcome your average no-real-reason-other-than-I'm-a-jerk low voters or "competing" author boosters voting you down.

I've noticed it upon submittals, a couple of 1s early. Then a long, slow grind to a respectable score. My most recent story:
Votes score voting
1-4 4.50 5,4,5,4 (morning of release)
5-7 3.57 5,1,1 or 4.2.1 or 3.2.2 (evening of release)
8 3.75 5
9 3.79 4
10 3.80 4

then all 5s and 4s, now rated around 4.4. Except for votes 5 to 7, all votes have either been a 4 or 5. What I can't figure out is how do some stories get out of the blocks with an H?