Story not found in “Top 30 days” and “Top 12 months”

[lovemegood]

The 4th chapter of my story posted on 6th of October has a voting of 4.82 with 30+ votes. But it is nowhere to be found in top lists “30 days” and “12 monts”.

While my 5th chapter with around the same voting is there on the list. What is happening?
I had turned the voting off Ch4 for a week but had turned it on again last week.

I have sent a personal message to laurel a few days ago but haven’t heard back from yet.

 

[NotWise]

The 4th chapter of my story posted on 6th of October has a voting of 4.82 with 30+ votes. But it is nowhere to be found in top lists “30 days” and “12 monts”.

While my 5th chapter with around the same voting is there on the list. What is happening?
I had turned the voting off Ch4 for a week but had turned it on again last week.

I have sent an email to laurel a few days ago but haven’t heard back from yet.

Laurel is unlikely to respond to email. You should use Personal Messaging.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The 4th chapter of my story posted on 6th of October has a voting of 4.82 with 30+ votes. But it is nowhere to be found in top lists “30 days” and “12 monts”.

While my 5th chapter with around the same voting is there on the list. What is happening?
I had turned the voting off Ch4 for a week but had turned it on again last week.

I have sent an email to laurel a few days ago but haven’t heard back from yet.

Disabling voting on a story even temporarily makes it ineligible for contests. Maybe the same goes for top lists?

 

[oggbashan]

I could be wrong, but I think disabling voting on a story makes it permanently ineligible for top lists?

It does.

But the top lists have had past delays in updating which could have been the issue here. But disabling voting throws the story out of all contentions for any Top list or competition status.

You cannot 'fix' your rating and expect the story to count for anything.

Edited for PS:

I, and many other authors, have seen a story reach the minimum 10 votes at which the rating becomes generally visible, with a perfect 5,00 score. If we had stopped voting at that point, we would top all the lists. After people see a rating of 5.00 the downvotes (and 1-bombs) start.

 

[BiscuitHammer]

I, and many other authors, have seen a story reach the minimum 10 votes at which the rating becomes generally visible, with a perfect 5,00 score. If we had stopped voting at that point, we would top all the lists. After people see a rating of 5.00 the downvotes (and 1-bombs) start.

https://tenor.com/view/testify-bart-simpson-gif-19052564

 

[lovemegood]

It does.

But the top lists have had past delays in updating which could have been the issue here. But disabling voting throws the story out of all contentions for any Top list or competition status.

Oh that sucks.. Wish I knew it before. I was indeed getting 1bombed by trolls and decided to turn the off for a week after a personal sweep to get them off my dick lol

So there is no way to fix this problem?

 

[lovemegood]

Laurel is unlikely to respond to email. You should use Personal Messaging.

Yeah I meant personal message, my bad.

 

[jaF0]

Oh that sucks.. Wish I knew it before. I was indeed getting 1bombed by trolls and decided to turn the off for a week after a personal sweep to get them off my dick lol

So there is no way to fix this problem?

What problem?

I don't see a problem.




Not having enough food to eat is a problem.

 

[MadeleineSinha]

I didn't know about this feature.
Just found one of my stories at number 4 in the past 12 months.
See that?
That's my dead chuffed face.

 

[SimonDoom]

Oh that sucks.. Wish I knew it before. I was indeed getting 1bombed by trolls and decided to turn the off for a week after a personal sweep to get them off my dick lol

So there is no way to fix this problem?

If you think about it, it wouldn't be fair for your story, which had its early 1-bombs deleted by what you did, to be included on toplists with stories whose authors did not do the same thing. There is no "problem" to fix.

I rely upon Laurel and her sweeps to get rid of some of the 1-bombs. As for the rest, I figure I'm in the same boat as everyone else.

 

[KeithD]

Don't you have to have a minimum of 50 votes to qualify in the top listings?

 

[oggbashan]

Don't you have to have a minimum of 50 votes to qualify in the top listings?

I think so. You have to have 50 for the monthly contest, but only 25 for the themed contest like Halloween.

But turning off voting disqualifies your story from everything because otherwise, you could wait until you have a high rating and try to fix the rating at that point.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Don't you have to have a minimum of 50 votes to qualify in the top listings?

Not for the 12-month/30-day lists, as far as I know. For instance, I can see a story around #98 on the Lesbian 12-month list with just 24 votes.

For the all-time lists there's usually a requirement of 100 votes, but that is lowered in some small categories where there wouldn't be enough stories to fill out the list.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Oh that sucks.. Wish I knew it before. I was indeed getting 1bombed by trolls and decided to turn the off for a week after a personal sweep to get them off my dick lol

So there is no way to fix this problem?

"Chalk it up to experience and write another story" is the solution to a lot of problems.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Top lists? Where are they kept??

 

[jaF0]

In the top drawer. The one marked Top Secret.

 

[TxRad]

I quit looking at the top 30 lists when it showed 28 of them chapters by the same author.

 

[jsmiam]

Definitely some multi day delays in refreshing/updating the EV list.

And it certainly seems as if some partial and not entirely consistent “just one from a series” is taking place, on at least one top list (anal) but not the “popular “ list when drilling into the category. (There’s some chance that minimum vote count plays a role in some series entries not showing, but it’s hard to say for sure. Plus anal being a middle to lower trafficked category?). Even there though, one example of multiple stories from a series pops in. And other categories remain that list multiple stories from series.

I suppose it’s a hobby of all of us, trying to discern what lit does. It looks like not everything is fully automated, if it were everything would update at least within a day’s time.

I like the one-story-per-series idea. I also like giving credit where it’s due. My version of fairness would list only the one highest rated story, and to add a dash of acknowledgement, could add something like “a 77 part series”). But there I go again, dreaming.

 

[jsmiam]

Definitely some multi day delays in refreshing/updating the EV list....

On a separate topic to the op, this one just about outdated top lists. It’s been 8 days and counting, the top stories page is nowhere close to correct . I expect a day or two, that’s standard stuff. I did send a pm at the 8 day mark, just for fun.

At times the story has four different scores. One in control panel, which I believe is the most correct and up to date one. I think this almost always matches the score seen in search results, and/or when browsing through the stories list, including it it happens to fall within new and popular lists, while viewing the category. (And not via the top list.). So I’ll only count that score once.

One at the top of the page while reading, which looks like the most out of date (based on the number of reads.)

Then when viewing the actual top lists, where there’s a choice of all-time, past 12 months, and past 30 days. Most of the time it’s the same score, but not always. So the past 12 month score is occasionally different to the past 30 day score. The vote counts will also differ, sometimes even higher (indicating the top list has some differences in how sweeps logic applies. ). I don’t have data on whether the all time list sometimes has a fifth score. It wouldn’t surprise me.

It’s time for some of us to offer some free consulting on database, systems architecture, performance tuning, and other types of advice to Laurel and Manu. I do see one of the problems they face. They probably have Zero chances at hiring a typical consultant from a normal company. I’ve been with consulting firms, and they’d all have avoided dabbling in the adult site business. Maybe a group of us who know how to do crazy things, like write SQL queries, administer phpbb (although the forum side is more or less ok, since it’s a popular software product, not written by lit), write scripts, hell, make a ‘hello world’ program, should offer some advice. I’d (and probably several others) probably do it for free, but they could pay us in anonymous Amazon cards or something. A board of directors, providing advice on how to fix things, even if laurel and Manu don’t provide access, and attempt do the work themselves.

I do appreciate the lack of pop ups and dishing out of spyware and other common features of the internet’s underbelly. Maybe if there was more talent, these things would have been implemented by now. Maybe it’s impossible to hire the known adult site catering firms without some of that coming to the picture. There’s an older fashioned charm to lit where you’re less scared about your computers safety here than most adult sites. That hopefully won’t change. But there is room and need for improvement.

Again with the dreaming, I know.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Definitely some multi day delays in refreshing/updating the EV list.

And it certainly seems as if some partial and not entirely consistent “just one from a series” is taking place, on at least one top list (anal) but not the “popular “ list when drilling into the category. (There’s some chance that minimum vote count plays a role in some series entries not showing, but it’s hard to say for sure. Plus anal being a middle to lower trafficked category?). Even there though, one example of multiple stories from a series pops in. And other categories remain that list multiple stories from series.

I suppose it’s a hobby of all of us, trying to discern what lit does. It looks like not everything is fully automated, if it were everything would update at least within a day’s time.

I like the one-story-per-series idea. I also like giving credit where it’s due. My version of fairness would list only the one highest rated story, and to add a dash of acknowledgement, could add something like “a 77 part series”). But there I go again, dreaming.

So, if I bust my butt writing a 77 part series, and the readers give every chapter a high rating, only one of them should be on the top list. But if someone else writes 77 cookie cutter stories about a guy sitting on his mother lap's while she jerks him off, only changing the characters name and the color of Mom's dress, all their stories are eligible.

You really think that's fair?

The only fair solution is separate lists for chapters and stand alone stories.

 

[SimonDoom]

So, if I bust my butt writing a 77 part series, and the readers give every chapter a high rating, only one of them should be on the top list. But if someone else writes 77 cookie cutter stories about a guy sitting on his mother lap's while she jerks him off, only changing the characters name and the color of Mom's dress, all their stories are eligible.

You really think that's fair?

.

But this never happens. Never. There are no examples of this ever happening. Cookie-cutter stories about moms on laps get high views, but they don't win contests and get high scores, so they will never, ever crowd the toplists.

So yes, it's fair.

Remember, the whole point of a toplist is not to make you happy and tickle your ego. It's to help readers find stories. Once they find one chapter of your 77 chapter story with a 4.92, that's all they need to ID your story and decide whether they want to read it. The job is done. There's no purpose served, from the reader's point of view, in having 67 of your chapters crowd a toplist. It disserves the reader because it crowds off other potential stories for them to read.

 

[jsmiam]

So, if I bust my butt writing a 77 part series, and the readers give every chapter a high rating, only one of them should be on the top list. But if someone else writes 77 cookie cutter stories about a guy sitting on his mother lap's while she jerks him off, only changing the characters name and the color of Mom's dress, all their stories are eligible.

You really think that's fair?

The only fair solution is separate lists for chapters and stand alone stories.

Real separate lists would be a dream come true for me personally , as a noted series hater. But, it might be bad for noted series authors, I bet it would cause more harm than good. You would still get the core audience who loves the series, but maybe less eyes overall.

If (subtopic) the list got fancier and made the series take up more room via a paragraph listing the chapter number of each qualifier, but still took just one spot on the list, that would be nice too. But beyond the programming expertise here. (Listagg/group_concat, btw). Edit—> I forgot my favorite wishlist. An expand/collapse button, maybe even a plus/minus by each entry, so the same list could could automatically converted to show all, or collapse series down to one entry. Heck, save the preference too. But there I go again.

But fair play should account for higher scores that series get too.

There are also the stealth series too, not titled and thereby numbered to look like series, but still almost series like in the eyes of readers who discover them. Those would be hard or impossible to monitor.

 

[Fervid]

. . . the whole point of a toplist is not to make you happy and tickle your ego. It's to help readers find stories.

Well, I do like having my ego tickled, among other things . . .

But I agree. Laurel should want readers to be able to find good stories. Fortunately, the two interests are aligned.

On the other hand, since a sweep often takes weeks, I suspect that the site may have competing interests that lead it to tolerate trolling, up to a point. My guess is that they don't mind some turnover in the top lists to keep them fresh and increase reader engagement, which is, after all, the holy grail of social media sites.

So maybe it's a difficult balance between reducing the engagement of authors and increasing it for readers. Otherwise, I would think it would be easy to automate constant sweeps of the very best stories to catch the very worst trolling (a "1" on a 4.85+ story, say) and wear the trolls down.

 

[lovecraft68]

Not for the 12-month/30-day lists, as far as I know. For instance, I can see a story around #98 on the Lesbian 12-month list with just 24 votes.

For the all-time lists there's usually a requirement of 100 votes, but that is lowered in some small categories where there wouldn't be enough stories to fill out the list.

Yes, this is correct. On the top lists for categories that aren't widely read there are stories in the 30/12 month that have only a handful of votes. Some take a long time to get the 100 to make them eligible for all time.

 

[lovecraft68]

So, if I bust my butt writing a 77 part series, and the readers give every chapter a high rating, only one of them should be on the top list. But if someone else writes 77 cookie cutter stories about a guy sitting on his mother lap's while she jerks him off, only changing the characters name and the color of Mom's dress, all their stories are eligible.

You really think that's fair?

The only fair solution is separate lists for chapters and stand alone stories.

Its more fair because they are individual stories. However, in that case if the same author repeatedly using the same story I would imagine the readers would take them to task in the votes, and also not continue to read them.

There was someone in the paid market who would write a story-mom son-then swap the names and pronouns to bro sis dad daughter etc, he ended up getting banned on the platforms because he was getting a lot of chargebacks by readers realizing what he was doing.

That stuff gets sorted out.