Sweep starting?

[ShelbyDawn57]

I feel safe giving specifics now as the bombing has commenced. I woke up this morning with my latest story, Loopers, at the top spot in the Transgender category all time with 112 votes and a score of 4.91. Since then I have received 12 more votes and dropped to a 4.76. The math shows that those votes were most likely six fives, two fours and four ones. The math says I shouldn't worry as it will only take fifty to sixty five votes to get back to 4.91. LOL

This is obviously malicious(jealousy or personal) and is the specific kind of thing that has several authors a little miffed(okay, downright livid) at the voting process. I contend that if they have the algorithm to do a sweep, they should look at doing it proactively and prevent votes that the sweep would catch from being posted.

 

[RejectReality]

I feel safe giving specifics now as the bombing has commenced. I woke up this morning with my latest story, Loopers, at the top spot in the Transgender category all time with 112 votes and a score of 4.91. Since then I have received 12 more votes and dropped to a 4.76. The math shows that those votes were most likely six fives, two fours and four ones. The math says I shouldn't worry as it will only take fifty to sixty five votes to get back to 4.91. LOL

This is obviously malicious(jealousy or personal) and is the specific kind of thing that has several authors a little miffed(okay, downright livid) at the voting process. I contend that if they have the algorithm to do a sweep, they should look at doing it proactively and prevent votes that the sweep would catch from being posted.

It's standard toplist bombing. You get swept, appear on the toplist, and immediately get nuked by the competing fanbases and plain jackasses who just want to watch the world burn. I've got at least 15 submissions as Dark that do it constantly. Pop to the toplist, bombed down, lather, rinse, repeat.

You can't use this algorithm proactively. There's insufficient data to determine whether a vote is invalid. That requires the votes to be cast and patterns to develop. The one thing you could potentially do would be keep a flag on already known bad actors and stop their votes from registering, but unless they're stupid enough to do it from a logged-in account, it's fraught with the potential of blocking other people's legitimate votes while the troll keeps on keeping on.

Every barrier you throw up has a far greater effect on the average person ( The few who will bother to vote anyway ) than the trolls. Joe Schmoe finds a speedbump, shrugs, and moves on without going through the hassle to vote. Assmuch McTrollsalot will make that effort, and their vote then has even more effect, because of the legitimate votes lost to the barriers meant to stop them.

The way you counter the trolling is to keep publishing, building your following, and making the trolls' job harder. The more bombs they have to drop on you to move your score down to where they want it, the more likely they're going to make a mistake that will get detected and result in their whole slate of recent malicious votes getting wiped out.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

It's standard toplist bombing. You get swept, appear on the toplist, and immediately get nuked by the competing fanbases and plain jackasses who just want to watch the world burn. I've got at least 15 submissions as Dark that do it constantly. Pop to the toplist, bombed down, lather, rinse, repeat.

You can't use this algorithm proactively. There's insufficient data to determine whether a vote is invalid. That requires the votes to be cast and patterns to develop. The one thing you could potentially do would be keep a flag on already known bad actors and stop their votes from registering, but unless they're stupid enough to do it from a logged-in account, it's fraught with the potential of blocking other people's legitimate votes while the troll keeps on keeping on.

Every barrier you throw up has a far greater effect on the average person ( The few who will bother to vote anyway ) than the trolls. Joe Schmoe finds a speedbump, shrugs, and moves on without going through the hassle to vote. Assmuch McTrollsalot will make that effort, and their vote then has even more effect, because of the legitimate votes lost to the barriers meant to stop them.

The way you counter the trolling is to keep publishing, building your following, and making the trolls' job harder. The more bombs they have to drop on you to move your score down to where they want it, the more likely they're going to make a mistake that will get detected and result in their whole slate of recent malicious votes getting wiped out.

Trust me, I know. It’s been happening to my stories for about three years. What I find most odd is that the all time top 114 stories in the transgender category all sit at either 4.84 or 4.83. WTF is up with that? That almost feels systemic.

 

[RejectReality]

Trust me, I know. It’s been happening to my stories for about three years. What I find most odd is that the all time top 114 stories in the transgender category all sit at either 4.84 or 4.83. WTF is up with that? That almost feels systemic.

It's a function of a large enough group of stories with those scores sitewide having too many votes to whittle down quickly.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

It's a function of a large enough group of stories with those scores sitewide having too many votes to whittle down quickly.

Nope. About three years ago the top 20 or so were all in the 4.9+ range with a pretty standard distribution down from there with 4.83 showing up at 75 or so. It took about six months for the curve to flatten. Public reaction to transgender content, an insidious commie plot, one guy in his moms basement writing bots to deal with his personal fear of the way she saw herself in the stories, who knows, but I seriously doubt it was organic.

 

[FrancesScott]

Nope. About three years ago the top 20 or so were all in the 4.9+ range with a pretty standard distribution down from there with 4.83 showing up at 75 or so. It took about six months for the curve to flatten. Public reaction to transgender content, an insidious commie plot, one guy in his moms basement writing bots to deal with his personal fear of the way she saw herself in the stories, who knows, but I seriously doubt it was organic.

Particularly as exactly the same phenomenon is seen in other categories; notably Lesbian. Even a newbie like me can figure out that something different is going on. There is no real debate here. These scores would not occur naturally. Most authors who have highly rated work have seen the same thing. Those who have been here for a while tell me it is relatively new to see this.

 

[Not2Pervy]

And just to add extra injury the newer stories that dare to rise above the new 4.84 ceiling are doubly penalized because, having fewer overall votes, they fall faster and farther when bombed.

 

[RoyalAuthor]

Yep. I currently have 6ish stories sitting at 4.84, watching them daily in case I need to turn off voting the moment they jump up to 4.85. I've managed to prevent the drops on a couple of recent bombing runs by immediately shutting down voting for a couple of weeks, so instead of dropping down half a point, I lose maybe .02 or .03 and then stay there.

 

[Annabelle1990]

It looks like they are working on a sweep. Or something.

Many of the stories in my original series suddenly jumped in rating overnight. Not every story. I do regularly download stats (I know just let itbee, but I can't completely), so I can compare.

These are all stories published between mid march and mid may. And every change looks to be the drop of losing one or two 1's. And I now have four stories in the series rated over 4.9 -- my previous high was 4.88, so it is notable to me. They are all relatively low vote total stories, so dropping something can make a big difference. I think nine of the last seventeen stories changed scores.

But nothing more recent has been touched, including my Nude Day entry, which got hammered by five bombs in a few hours just over a week ago. Not sure if they are moving forward in time looking at dubious votes or what. But something happened.

I only have one story (and now one in pending). What is a sweep?

 

[EmilyMiller]

I only have one story (and now one in pending). What is a sweep?

Periodically (it used to be monthly when the monthly prizes were a thing, it’s now just before the end of competition voting) the site runs one or more scripts on the story database and deletes what it deems to be suspicious votes (regardless of whether they are a 1️, 5️, or any star). The method they use to determine that a vote is suspicious has not been made public. You can deduce aspects of it by observation and experimentation, but the site doesn’t like us commenting on this matter for fear of making it easier for trolls to avoid being detected.

The sweeps are not foolproof and it’s relatively easy to evade them with a little thought and a little effort. But they at least get rid of some naive malicious voting, while leaving more sophisticated malicious votes undisturbed.

 

[Annabelle1990]

Periodically (it used to be monthly when the monthly prizes were a thing, it’s now just before the end of competition voting) the site runs one or more scripts on the story database and deletes what it deems to be suspicious votes (regardless of whether they are a 1️, 5️, or any star). The method they use to determine that a vote is suspicious has not been made public. You can deduce aspects of it by observation and experimentation, but the site doesn’t like us commenting on this matter for fear of making it easier for trolls to avoid being detected.

The sweeps are not foolproof and it’s relatively easy to evade them with a little thought and a little effort. But they at least get rid of some naive malicious voting, while leaving more sophisticated malicious votes undisturbed.

That's really smart.

 

[RejectReality]

Nope. About three years ago the top 20 or so were all in the 4.9+ range with a pretty standard distribution down from there with 4.83 showing up at 75 or so. It took about six months for the curve to flatten. Public reaction to transgender content, an insidious commie plot, one guy in his moms basement writing bots to deal with his personal fear of the way she saw herself in the stories, who knows, but I seriously doubt it was organic.

Right when the monthly contest sweeps went defunct. Those were the bulwark that kept the trolling in check. Every time there's been a long delay in those, the decline in every toplist starts.

Until we've got regular, contest-level, large sample sweeps like those that happened for the montly contests, the scores on the toplists will continue to decline. Daily/requested/toplist/themed contest sweeps simply do not examine a large enough data set deeply enough to suss out the more sophisticated trolling.

 

[Bamagan]

Keep in mind that removing a single 'happy-troll' who gives out 5s will have the same effect as removing seven unobombers. We know the sweeps remove some 5s from contest entries.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Nope. About three years ago the top 20 or so were all in the 4.9+ range with a pretty standard distribution down from there with 4.83 showing up at 75 or so. It took about six months for the curve to flatten. Public reaction to transgender content, an insidious commie plot, one guy in his moms basement writing bots to deal with his personal fear of the way she saw herself in the stories, who knows, but I seriously doubt it was organic.

The 4:84 threshold looks odd (systemic) to me. I've got a bunch of stories with higher scores, but their vote counts are too low to be in a Hall of Fame. Then I've got ten stories with higher votes, all either 4.84 or 4.83. It's either a meaningless coincidence, but it certainly looks strange in a top down sort of stories. Elsewhere in my list there's a randomness that looks "normal", but that threshold, it's a curious cat kind of thing.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

The 4:84 threshold looks odd (systemic) to me. I've got a bunch of stories with higher scores, but their vote counts are too low to be in a Hall of Fame. Then I've got ten stories with higher votes, all either 4.84 or 4.83. It's either a meaningless coincidence, but it certainly looks strange in a top down sort of stories. Elsewhere in my list there's a randomness that looks "normal", but that threshold, it's a curious cat kind of thing.

My first thought when it started happening was that Lit started culling fives as well as ones and that leveled everything. Subsequent research, following specific stories on a daily proved me wrong.

 

[old_prof]

Keep in mind that removing a single 'happy-troll' who gives out 5s will have the same effect as removing seven unobombers. We know the sweeps remove some 5s from contest entries.

No. That's not the way the math works. If you have a score of 4.8 otherwise, removing a single 1 would be offset by removing thirty-nine 5's.

 

[old_prof]

The 4:84 threshold looks odd (systemic) to me. I've got a bunch of stories with higher scores, but their vote counts are too low to be in a Hall of Fame. Then I've got ten stories with higher votes, all either 4.84 or 4.83. It's either a meaningless coincidence, but it certainly looks strange in a top down sort of stories. Elsewhere in my list there's a randomness that looks "normal", but that threshold, it's a curious cat kind of thing.

Someone is clearly artificially suppressing scores for any story that reaches category all time lists, which are all shifting to 4.83-ish.

It is not a random distribution.

That someone could be internal or external to the site. Either is clearly feasible. I have a strong belief about where it is, but I don't want to re-start that argument.
It is apparently triggered by making the top list. In my personal experience, it starts within a few hours of the list being updated. The damage appears to be immune from the sweeps.

This is separate from what appears to be occasional personally driven attacks, which can also be immune to the sweeps.

 

[EmilyMiller]

The damage appears to be immune from the sweeps.

Yea it is. This suppression is not caught by the sweeps. In this respect at least, it’s exactly the same as what was done to my stories. Doesn’t mean it’s the same person / people, but maybe it’s easy to create some code if you understand how sweeps work (which is not - let’s face it - difficult).

 

[FrancesScott]

I can confirm the existence of sweep-proof votes, ones which don’t get picked up by the routines they run before winners are announced. These have to be manually deleted by the site when credible evidence is provided to them (at least sometimes).

I have had precisely the experience of breaching the magic 4.85 barrier in Lesbian and immediately being down voted. It’s happened on more than one story. Those downvotes have never been swept. Some were manually deleted when I asked for them to be, but they just came back and - again - weren’t picked up by the next sweep.

The next time I asked, nothing happened. I’m not sure why there was a different response from the site at different times to essentially the same issue. Perhaps how busy TPTB were at the time.

All of the authors who rate highly in Lesbian have had the same experience.

It’s clear in my mind that normal sweeps are being routinely evaded. It’s equally clear that the site needs new tools to counter new antisocial behavior.

 

[RejectReality]

There's no such thing as sweep-proof trolling. There's only whether you were in the data sample, or the beneficiary because you share your troll with someone else who was. There are ways to disguise malicious voting, but it requires a lot of vigilance that even your average dedicated troll is going to slip up on — at least if you're doing enough of it to do more than tank 1 or 2 submission scores.

I've got the same stories getting swept to hit 4.85+, getting bombed down to 4.7something, and then getting swept back up to 4.85 again in a never-ending cycle. It's often a long tail — sometimes months — but they're old enough ( decades ) and in slow enough categories, ( SF/F ) and middle chapters, from a rarely active pen name, so it's obvious when any actual reading and voting is happening, and easy to calculate when sweeps or bombs happen.

The whole notion of some automated boogeyman that just wants to burn the whole world down to the magical 4.84 is absurd. Why? What possible motivation could convince someone to code something that does that to every single toplist on the site? To go through the effort to successfully spoof identifiers so they come across as legitimate, unconnected, and not repeating? All this for what?

And the idea that the site is doing it on purpose is even more absurd. Why in the fuck would you want to REDUCE scores in a place that is well known as a primary selection location, and homogenize every frikkin' list so it's the same stories every day that have too many votes to bomb down quickly. High scores attract clicks. New stuff attracts clicks. Reducing both is completely counter-productive.

OR, it's exactly what's been happening for 20 frikkin' years and it's the white knight fanbases cheekily bombing everyone else to boost their favorites — except there's no monthly contest sweeps keeping them in check any longer. I'm sure there are authors engaged in scumbaggery, but the readers outnumber them by orders of magnitude, and the number of them that are willing to go "tee hee" and click a 1 to better their favorite author's position on the toplist is way larger than most people seem to assume.