That's strange

[ElectricBlue]

I've got about 90 stories/chapters posted, and every now then I sort them by ranking, just to see which ones have been best received over time.

For a long time, the top twenty or so were mostly the same, and their order was pretty much fixed; followed by another band of what I call mid to high ranked stories. Just recently though, and it seems like only in the last couple of weeks but might be longer, the top two bands seem to have swapped about, and my top list is now a different cluster of stories. It's strange, odd enough that I thought, "Something's going on here." The bottom half - no real change, a few more Red Hs, maybe, but the bottom order seems to be carved in stone.

I'm wondering if there's been a more subtle sweep gone through with tighter scrutiny (I had a 3 vote removed last week, which I've not seen before), or whether it's just folk wandering through my whole catalogue and finding new favourites.

Anyone else noticed anything strange, like this?

 

[ElectricBlue]

Any relationship with the time of submitting those stories?

Recently, the 2019 January Category Nominees and Readers' Choice Awards have been selected (just after selecting the May 2017 nominees and award winners; the one-and-half years in between seem to have been ignored). I have the experience that those selections are accompanied by very thorough sweeps; I wonder if those sweeps are mainly focused on the particular months.

The older higher ranked stories were mostly 2 - 3 years old. They've pretty much held their scores, while the older second tier stories are more from the last eighteen months - they've strengthened their scores. I don't keep detailed history sheets so I'm going on memory as to where they used to sit - but they're definitely moving around some. So yes, maybe it's something to do with those recent selections.

 

[MelissaBaby]

It looks like I had a sweep that lowered the scores on a few of my stories, but not by any substantial amount.

 

[SimonDoom]

I monitor my story scores regularly and haven't noticed anything strange. Scores for stories more than a a few months old have been quite stable for a long time.

Anything that suddenly increases the number of reads and votes can change a story score unexpectedly. A contest nomination can do that.

 

[JGittes]

I posted six stories a little over two years ago (working on more to be posted, soonish I hope). Votes and scores had stabilized about a year ago. Each would receive a new vote every few months that wouldn't change the overall score. Two or three weeks ago, end of November I believe, I noticed that at least one and as many as three votes were removed from each of stories. I hadn't kept written track of the exact scores for quite some time, so I can't be sure how much (if at all) the actual scores changed, but I do remember the amount of votes (not very many, easy to remember).

The first year after posting I kept written track of everything. I saw sweeps happening nearly every month that resulted in one or two votes being removed from each story. I assumed that the lack of sweeps activity this past year reflected the age of the stories and their no longer being subject to trolling. However, another explanation may exist.

 

[Kojak01]

Anyone else noticed anything strange, like this?

I'm not keeping a close eye on the scores once the initial voting has gone through as results don't move much anymore after a couple hundred votes have been cast but if I remember the ratings correctly from the last time I checked, they seem to have generally moved up by 0.01 points.
That doesn't seem out of the ordinary for me, especially as my memory of the ratings could easily be wrong...

 

[RejectReality]

That's probably what it is. The stories that came out in whatever month is being tallied are where the primary hit is. ( In this case, Jan. '19 and May '17, which are both within the last month ) Those sweeps are at least as deep as a themed contest sweep.

Same as a themed contest sweep, the effects aren't limited to only the targeted stories.

There have been three major contest sweeps in the last month, so it's not surprising that some reshuffling might be going on.

Kinda sucks if Dec. '17 never gets tallied, because I'm pretty sure I had the Incest/Taboo category for that month. Oh well. LOL

I just finished an annual track earlier in the month, before the Jan. '18 and Winter Holidays contest sweeps, and I didn't notice anything in particular.

http://darkniciad.com/hotlink_pics/all_3_names_12_19.htm

Maybe I'll run a quick check here soon and see if anything has reshuffled after the two recent sweeps.

Any relationship with the time of submitting those stories?

Recently, the 2019 January Category Nominees and Readers' Choice Awards have been selected (just after selecting the May 2017 nominees and award winners; the one-and-half years in between seem to have been ignored). I have the experience that those selections are accompanied by very thorough sweeps; I wonder if those sweeps are mainly focused on the particular months.

 

[NotWise]

Have any of your recent stories been particularly popular? Spinoff votes from a popular story can be significant, and they're usually positive. Conceivably, spinoff votes could boost some newer, lower-vote stories enough to shuffle the order.

 

[KeithD]

I have periodic waves of a user favoriting twenty-five/thirty stories in one go. It's happened four times since fall. I'm sure that's shaking something up in the list stats, but these are mostly stories from a long time ago on a very long story list, so I don't see any point in looking into it.

 

[Blind_Justice]

I've had a few scores go up quite dramatically. Maybe some redundant 1-bombs have been taken care of.

 

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

Last week I saw a rating change that worked out to the removal of a 1*. That vote must have dated from about two months ago. This would not have been connected to months for which awards were determined (I haven't been posting here that long), and would have been missed in at least one (presumed) contest-related sweep. So maybe there is a finer-toothed comb being used.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Have any of your recent stories been particularly popular? Spinoff votes from a popular story can be significant, and they're usually positive. Conceivably, spinoff votes could boost some newer, lower-vote stories enough to shuffle the order.

It's been a mix - three of my Madelyn series have climbed, two have dropped. Same for my Arthurian myth thing, some chapters have climbed, others have fallen. Two of my Floating World chapters with gay content have fallen, but they've always been yo-yos, upsetting the homophobes (even though one of them is in GM). There's no logical pattern, which is why it's strange. I think the sweep criteria has dug differently this time, removing some "not so helpful fives" as well as the usual one-bomb behaviour. It's been a shuffle in both directions, hence my curiosity.

I'll get used to the new order, until it changes next time.

 

[ChloeTzang]

I think there must have been sone kind of sweep, one of my stories that was submitted a while ago really jumped. Not sure when it happened tho.

 

[RejectReality]

If you're seeing a lot of scores dropping in sweeps, it's time to appeal to the fanbase to stop trying to "help you out". Somebody is multi-voting, down-voting the competition, or otherwise engaged in shenanigans.

My experience is that it works when done on a regular basis. The number of votes swept off my stuff has declined, and I pretty much never see a drop in score, where large losses and yo-yo scores were commonplace prior to launching the campaign.

When told that you don't want them monkeying around, they seem to respect your wishes.

It's been a mix - three of my Madelyn series have climbed, two have dropped. Same for my Arthurian myth thing, some chapters have climbed, others have fallen. Two of my Floating World chapters with gay content have fallen, but they've always been yo-yos, upsetting the homophobes (even though one of them is in GM). There's no logical pattern, which is why it's strange. I think the sweep criteria has dug differently this time, removing some "not so helpful fives" as well as the usual one-bomb behaviour. It's been a shuffle in both directions, hence my curiosity.

I'll get used to the new order, until it changes next time.