Usavoury voting practices?

[Guest]

Dear Lit authors.

I'm taking this unusual step of addressing you as unregistered in order that you could help me solve a problem.

Very recently I published a story in one of the categories. I was lucky, and people seemed to like it. After a few hours it had a hundred votes, and was 13 or 14 points ahead of the previous top story.

Then the problem started, over a few hours it attracted a few very low scores. Then some stability again, and then some more very low scores. This all stopped when the 13 or 14 points was reduced to -1 point. ie second place! Throughout this time, it continued with the high votes and currently has a few hundred votes.

I don't want to be any more precise, I'd be happy for the problem to go away, and leave me convinced that the stories are truly placed on merit alone.

Has anyone got any advice.

 

[its Leslie]

Welcome to Lit where the voting process is as realistic as the US voting process.

Where being a good writer is possible and attracting enemies is also possible (that will vote a 1 just to be a prick).

This matter has been addressed in numerous threads, and currently, the over all response is, nothing is going to be changed.

Some say the malicious 1s are balanced by the biased friend votes (5s).

Two other factors, some will look at your story and not like it and then leave part way through the read (without voting), some will look at it and not generally like it, but politely not vote as a poor vote will hurt your score (and some will do this out of percieved generosity).

Have hundreds or even thousands of views, only indicates, that you picked a very good title. It won't mean that they will vote though.

So allowing voting is only going to deliver what it delivers, you have the choice to leave it on or off, but don't assume the votes are going to be emperical in accuracy.

 

[Weird Harold]

This all stopped when the 13 or 14 points was reduced to -1 point. ie second place!

If your story is (or was) elgible for the monthly contest when this happened, PM Laurel with the details and tell her you suspect manipulation of your scores beause you were in contention for the monthly award.

What you've experienced is however, the normal pattern ofvotes for a high scoring story -- especially when it first appears on the top stories list. Every top story goes through a period of people voting it down because they don't think it's good enough to be rated number one.

Laurel does check for fraudulent votes -- especially in the contenders for the monthly awards -- and your vote totals and score may be corrected at some point in the future.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Harold, I didn't know that. I guess that that helps quite a lot.

I decided to ask as unregistered, so that I wouldn't affect the voting on either story. As I said before, I regard the other story as very good.

I'll put it down to experience and forget it.

You've been a big help.