Troll Bombing

[R. Richard]

I have submitted my story "Go Naked In The Software" for the Nude Day Story Contest. As usual, I am being troll bombed. Mind you, this is not just your usual drive-by troll bombing. The troll(s) (possibly read and) bomb each chapter; this last is the tired old joke, "The food is inedible and the portions are way too small!" After Laurel and/or Manu remove the troll bombs, the troll bomber(s) come back and strike again. ("The food is inedible and the portions are way too small and they are trying to deny us seconds and thirds!")

I am posting this thread to [vainly, I realize] ask that the troll(s) step forward and tell me what it/they have against me. I work hard to create stories for Literotica and I do not need this.

If the troll(s) fail to respond, may it/they drown attempting to swim across a small sewage settling pond while their mothers run barking along the shore!

 

[Guest]

If the troll(s) fail to respond, may it/they drown attempting to swim across a small sewage settling pond while their mothers run barking along the shore!

Perhaps they just need a better education than punishment.

 

[mack_the_knife]

I Suggest

I suggest that they simply keep a running tally of the 'points' voted to a story, not the silly averaging thing. Colly has a story with well over a hundred votes in the sci-fi/fantasy category. Does it make sense that a story is rated higher simply because some story has .01 better average on 12 votes? Its pretty damn silly.

The Advantages to simply reporting the total points voted:
1) The ONLY thing trolls could do is not vote, which is what we want them to do anyways. Even a one-bomb would help you, though only slightly.
2) It lets stories that have truly been read and loved by a LOT of people to show their highly-placed value by not being out-pointed by newcomers that have tiny dedicated audiences.
3) People might actually vote what a story is truly worth. A good story with some grammatical errors would be a 3 or 4, you wouldn't have to give the author a 5 just to keep him from being screwed. You could reserve the coveted 5 for truly awesome stories.
4) Any vote is doing the author good, so even if he only rated a '1' you didn't screw him out of anything.
5) End-of-month friend assistance and/or bombing would become a thing of the past, for the most part, driving up or down a stories average would become pointless, if you cannot muster the total points needed to get to the top of that month's story releases votes.

The only downsides I can see:
1) New stories would take a while to appear on the toplist, as they would have to first accumulate enough points to appear on the listing.
2) Stories that have been around a long time would have a natural advantage on the overall points, having had more time to accumulate them.
3) Coveted 'H's would be harder to quantify.

Fix for the Downsides:
1) Simply have a "Recent releases toplist" for each category that tracks only stories that were released in the last 30 days.
2) Issue an 'H' Only when a story reaches a total number of points, say 200. (meaning 40 people or more voted on it). This would be spiffy, because a mediocre story that has a huge readership for some odd reason (clever name or some such) might take 60+ voters to reach 'H' status, where a really great story that gets only 40 '5's would be in. If you really wanted the 'H' to take on higher value, simply make it dependant upon time as well: The story would be required to reach the needed 200 points within its first 30 or 60 days or release, else it doesn't get one.

The downsides are far outweighed by the upsides this would have upon the overall 'friendliness' of the point total voting system. Again, it becomes not a matter of screwing or helping the author, but perhaps then a subjective rating that you wish to give based upon factors that only you can fathom in the first place.

Does anyone see a reason this wouldn't work? And please don't say 'Because they've always done it that way.' They used to burn witches, marry off 12 year old girls, hang thieves, and allow one man to own another, too.

The system doesn't require any esoteric 'averaging' system, nor 'discarding' any votes, nor running any bizarre programs that 'hunt' for odd voting patterns. It would simply report how many total points the story has received. I suppose people could 'stack' votes, but I'd bet they're doing that already, so that's no change.

 

[maggot420]

I suggest that they simply keep a running tally of the 'points' voted to a story, not the silly averaging thing. Colly has a story with well over a hundred votes in the sci-fi/fantasy category. Does it make sense that a story is rated higher simply because some story has .01 better average on 12 votes? Its pretty damn silly.

The Advantages to simply reporting the total points voted:
1) The ONLY thing trolls could do is not vote, which is what we want them to do anyways. Even a one-bomb would help you, though only slightly.
2) It lets stories that have truly been read and loved by a LOT of people to show their highly-placed value by not being out-pointed by newcomers that have tiny dedicated audiences.
3) People might actually vote what a story is truly worth. A good story with some grammatical errors would be a 3 or 4, you wouldn't have to give the author a 5 just to keep him from being screwed. You could reserve the coveted 5 for truly awesome stories.
4) Any vote is doing the author good, so even if he only rated a '1' you didn't screw him out of anything.
5) End-of-month friend assistance and/or bombing would become a thing of the past, for the most part, driving up or down a stories average would become pointless, if you cannot muster the total points needed to get to the top of that month's story releases votes.

The only downsides I can see:
1) New stories would take a while to appear on the toplist, as they would have to first accumulate enough points to appear on the listing.
2) Stories that have been around a long time would have a natural advantage on the overall points, having had more time to accumulate them.
3) Coveted 'H's would be harder to quantify.

Fix for the Downsides:
1) Simply have a "Recent releases toplist" for each category that tracks only stories that were released in the last 30 days.
2) Issue an 'H' Only when a story reaches a total number of points, say 200. (meaning 40 people or more voted on it). This would be spiffy, because a mediocre story that has a huge readership for some odd reason (clever name or some such) might take 60+ voters to reach 'H' status, where a really great story that gets only 40 '5's would be in. If you really wanted the 'H' to take on higher value, simply make it dependant upon time as well: The story would be required to reach the needed 200 points within its first 30 or 60 days or release, else it doesn't get one.

The downsides are far outweighed by the upsides this would have upon the overall 'friendliness' of the point total voting system. Again, it becomes not a matter of screwing or helping the author, but perhaps then a subjective rating that you wish to give based upon factors that only you can fathom in the first place.

Does anyone see a reason this wouldn't work? And please don't say 'Because they've always done it that way.' They used to burn witches, marry off 12 year old girls, hang thieves, and allow one man to own another, too.

The system doesn't require any esoteric 'averaging' system, nor 'discarding' any votes, nor running any bizarre programs that 'hunt' for odd voting patterns. It would simply report how many total points the story has received. I suppose people could 'stack' votes, but I'd bet they're doing that already, so that's no change.

thats actually the best troll fixing idea ive heard yet.

 

[LadyJeanne]

Does anyone see a reason this wouldn't work?

Well, some of us don't get 40 votes on our stories, though they're rated highly, simply because of the size of the readership in that category. The top lists and H's would go to the butt sex and incest categories, while those of us in Erotic Couplings would languish.

 

[AppleBiter]

Well, some of us don't get 40 votes on our stories, though they're rated highly, simply because of the size of the readership in that category. The top lists and H's would go to the butt sex and incest categories, while those of us in Erotic Couplings would languish.

Well, and let's not forget the all but overlooked poetry section.

 

[LadyJeanne]

Well, and let's not forget the all but overlooked poetry section.

Ah, poetry...

I've gone out to the most read Poetry Top List in the past, the one that counts the views. How in the world did any poem get over a 100,000 views? Or 10,000 views, for that matter? Did Lit used to attract a huge poetry readership? Where did they go?

 

[cantdog]

There is another downside: category behavior patterns. Some readers vote, and some say fuck it. We don't know which ones or why, of course, although it is fun to speculate; what we do know is, there is a particular breakdown by category.

Incest readers vote. Novels and novella readers do not rack up vote totals. Anal readers vote more than Erotic Couplings readers. And so on. There are many threads here discussing and contrasting the sheer activity in the various cats.

The system you outline would require a "category tweak factor" or an adjustment to bring the voting into line with some standard, Incest for instance. This would be the Incest-Standard Fudge Factor. If you follow me. double, or multiply by 1.85, or whatever, if the story were a Novels and Novellas story, to give it an equal shot against an Incest story. Triple vote-values for poems, since nobody fucking ever seems to vote there. Or, again, 2.85, or whatever the figure is derived to be.

 

[mack_the_knife]

Simple fix

Simply give each category a 'sliding scale' to achieve an "H" then, based upon how much heavier readership the category gets. If Anal gets 5x the Readership that Couplings, then it would take 100 points to get an "H" in Couplings, and 500 in Anal. They are not competing with one another directly, anyway, being in separate categories. The category my stories are in, Sci-Fi/Fantasy aren't exactly the most heavily read, either. Though I'm doing my damndest to change that!

The needed points could easily be extrapolated from the number of voters that hit a certain category each month. Tally up how many people voted period in that category and modify the needs for an 'H' accordingly. Using a number like 200 for the category with the middling number of votes and modifying it around that. It would only have to be done once, then reevaluated each year, just to make sure it stays salient.

As it stands now, they're fiddling with the point averages and totals almost constantly, trying to de-troll the numbers, its all an attempt to enforce a decenct behavior on anonymous twits who have nothing better to do than vote '1's on people to watch their literature tank, for whatever odd reasons they have. Removing the annoyance of that, alone, is worth the change.

 

[cantdog]

thats actually the best troll fixing idea ive heard yet.

Maggot may be on the money here.

 

[AppleBiter]

Ah, poetry...

I've gone out to the most read Poetry Top List in the past, the one that counts the views. How in the world did any poem get over a 100,000 views? Or 10,000 views, for that matter? Did Lit used to attract a huge poetry readership? Where did they go?

I've often wondered that, myself! I can't seem to get over 400 views on any of my poetry!

 

[maggot420]

I've often wondered that, myself! I can't seem to get over 400 views on any of my poetry!

i only have three poems and the first 2 have a couple hundred views.
the third one got 1800 all of a sudden. i have no idea how that could happen.

 

[AppleBiter]

i only have three poems and the first 2 have a couple hundred views.
the third one got 1800 all of a sudden. i have no idea how that could happen.

Me neither.

 

[cloudy]

I've often wondered that, myself! I can't seem to get over 400 views on any of my poetry!

My one and only poem has a little over 500 views in six weeks, which surprised the hell out of me.

I think if your not one of the chosen over on the poetry board, your poems languish, usually.

 

[davidwatts]

The numerical voting scoring should not be made public knowledge during contests as well as until after the monthly category contest scoring is closed. I think that if people don't know what the exact scoring is on the top lists until after the 15th or after the voting on contests is closed, you'd find a lot less last minute bombings of stories near the top for that month.

I've had it happen to me twice this year already. After the last time, I don't even bother looking anymore to see where a story is because I've figured out what will happen around the 15th.

Write for your own gratification R. Richard. You write well and no amount of selfish or jealous nonsense trolling can take that away from you or anyone else here that takes pride in their work.

 

[AppleBiter]

My one an only poem has a little over 500 views in six weeks, which surprised the hell out of me.

I think if your not one of the chosen over on the poetry board, your poems languish, usually.

Ah, that might explain it. Politics. I hate politics.

 

[mack_the_knife]

Nothing against poetry, but

Note how many books of poetry sell versus other books in B. Daltons.

Poetry is a fine thing, but has a limited appeal to the masses, I've scribbled a few myself, but little expect them to be read.

Hehe, I do trick people on ocassion, though and work them into my stories, as part of the storyline that MUST be read to understand what the hell is going on, though that is reserved, so far, for out of Erotica stories I've penned.

As far as the end or month contests, competing between the categories would be 'biased' just like the 'H's. The story with the highest point total, with their 'handicap' by category wins.

Not having access to all the data behind the scenes, I wouldn't know what those 'handicaps' would be, but the powers-that-be would.

 

[mack_the_knife]

Write for your own gratification R. Richard. You write well and no amount of selfish or jealous nonsense trolling can take that away from you or anyone else here that takes pride in their work.

An important part of any author's pleasure in his craft is the accolades and acceptance (and ocassional critique and lambasting) by their fellow authors and the general readership. If I only wrote to please myself, I would not be posting it up for public perusal.

I'm proposing doing away with the trolling totally, the only thing trolls can do in any way under a point total system is not vote. Now they can actively hurt your standing, then they simply CANNOT hurt anyone. An impotent troll is a joy to behold, or even simply think about.

Right now, I do not vote much, unless I feel comfortable giving an author a '5' for his work, as anything else buggers them and their 'H' which I don't want to be responsible for bolluxing.

Also, I feel I'm putting my ratings at risk right now, simply by posting in the forums, since it may draw the eye of a troll (they could be anyone, you know?), who will rush off and 'unobomb' me with a certain joyous gleam in his beady little eyes.

 

[Guest]

 

[R. Richard]

I made the folowing reply to a personal message from Mack-the-knife.
========================================================
I like the general idea of a vote total. Perhaps the modification of a category adjusted vote total would be a slight improvement (each category would have a divisor, the more votes an average story in the category receives the higher the divisor).

There is currently some sort of scan of the existing votes. If such a scan did not exist, anyone could vote multiple times. What I would like to see added is a "troll list." The scan that is done before a vote is accepted would also include the troll list. People who are caught voting a 1 or 2 without any justification ("I do not like the story" is NOT a justification) would be put on the troll list and their votes would not count.

Something needs to be done.
========================================================

Let me explain my specific problem with troll voting. I would like to win a monthly/special contest, who wouldn't? I don't need the prize money, I have a day job [however, I would use the prize money!]. I would like the chance to see that my stories are appreciated or not appreciated. If my stories are appreciated, I am on the right track here at Literotica. If my stories are not appreciated, either I am writing poorly or I should find a new audience.

What I do want is for people to read my stories and give me such feedback as they wish. When I look for stories to read, I look for "H" rated stories. I have to think that a number of other people do the same. My resident trolls pretty much ensure that I will not achieve too many "H" ratings. This last cuts down on my readership. This is where the troll votes hurt.

Some of the feedback I receive is very useful, other feedback is not. I used to have one guy who wanted "a big doberman" in almost every story I wrote [Sorry, Literotica rules here]. I also have asome who comment that I am a terrible/terrific write. I prefer terrrific, but both evaluations are equally useless on a stand alone basis. I do get feedback that criticizes certain specific aspects of my stories. Some of the specific feedback I agree with, some not. However specific feedback at least has the possibility of being useful.