Vote Removal

[KeithD]

Also arguing against it is the fact that the site owners have been notified, and they're basically saying, "nothing to see here."

Umm, well, no. Answering with general boiler plate on sweeps is not really saying anything about what they were notified of/asked about.

 

[RejectReality]

The simple explanation is that fraudulent activity that has been going on for a while has been discovered. The sweeps are now removing those fraudulent votes, but because there is a lot to deal with, it's being run on a schedule, taking care of a limited set of the data at a time. You do this to avoid interfering with or slowing down other daily tasks, or the site as a whole. Therefore, the work is spreading out over an extended period of time.

That's the situation that fits the observations.

Some bad actors who have escaped notice for quite some time are now seeing their work be systematically wiped clean, and whatever method they were using to mask their activity is now exposed, and useless.

They're back to square 1, and probably wailing in anguish as they punch holes in the drywall of their mother's basement.

 

[Ginlover]

A sweep would remove the votes from that story.
Why is a sweep thursday missing problem votes on Friday so more votes have to be removed?
Sweeps are normally just as a competition closes or once a month, not daily.

I had 277 votes on my covid story at close of the competition. Since then I've had 500 extra views on a story. I've noticed about 5-10 extra votes but almost daily I lose 1 or 2 votes. Now votes stand at 271.

Why did the first sweep not pick up all the problem votes?
Why is the story being swept daily?
In that time I will assume I got a 1 bomb as the score dropped 0.04 with one
extra vote over night. This 1 bomb has not been removed despite daily sweeps apparently being run on this story and the removal of 1 or 2 votes a day.

The maths does not fit
The it's a sweep explanation does not fit

My money is on an over excited auto sweep programme being used the site and accidentally latching on to a story and sweeping it daily.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

Umm, well, no. Answering with general boiler plate on sweeps is not really saying anything about what they were notified of/asked about.

You misunderstand. The site owners were notified by Lexx and by NotWise, at a minimum. Lexx and NotWise indicated what they were notifying them about. The boilerplate response has nothing to do with the content of the notification. But if you are curious, I suggest asking Lexx and NotWise specifically what they asked/said.

 

[KeithD]

I think I'm clear on the questions asked and the nonresponsive boilerplate response to what they weren't asking that they got. Doesn't matter to me. I don't watch voting that closely.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

A sweep would remove the votes from that story.
Why is a sweep thursday missing problem votes on Friday so more votes have to be removed?
Sweeps are normally just as a competition closes or once a month, not daily.

I had 277 votes on my covid story at close of the competition. Since then I've had 500 extra views on a story. I've noticed about 5-10 extra votes but almost daily I lose 1 or 2 votes. Now votes stand at 271.

Why did the first sweep not pick up all the problem votes?
Why is the story being swept daily?
In that time I will assume I got a 1 bomb as the score dropped 0.04 with one
extra vote over night. This 1 bomb has not been removed despite daily sweeps apparently being run on this story and the removal of 1 or 2 votes a day.

The maths does not fit
The it's a sweep explanation does not fit

My money is on an over excited auto sweep programme being used the site and accidentally latching on to a story and sweeping it daily.

I think the mistake is viewing it as multiple sweeps.

It makes sense as a single sweep if you think about the sequence of how it would work. Assume to begin with that the site doesn't normally sweep things from all dates because it would take too long. Next, assume that this time, because of whatever was discovered or whatever new software they have, they are sweeping from all dates. Therefore, it's going to have to take place over a period of time because it has to happen during periods of low site activity.

Now, think about how a sweep is going to organize itself. It's not going to do it by author or by story. It's going to do it by ISP or by pattern, or by whatever method it's using to identify the fraudulent votes. Let's just assume it's doing it by ISP. The program is going down the list and eliminating all votes from one ISP after another. Those ISP's votes may be spread out between different stories, or not. But that perfectly explains why it is ongoing. If this explanation is accurate, it will eventually run through all ISPs and the sweep will end.

 

[LexxRuthless]

The simple explanation is that fraudulent activity that has been going on for a while has been discovered. The sweeps are now removing those fraudulent votes, but because there is a lot to deal with, it's being run on a schedule, taking care of a limited set of the data at a time. You do this to avoid interfering with or slowing down other daily tasks, or the site as a whole. Therefore, the work is spreading out over an extended period of time.

That's the situation that fits the observations.

Some bad actors who have escaped notice for quite some time are now seeing their work be systematically wiped clean, and whatever method they were using to mask their activity is now exposed, and useless.

They're back to square 1, and probably wailing in anguish as they punch holes in the drywall of their mother's basement.

The problem with that theory is that the scores have only moved on stories that have very few votes. If fraudulent votes were being removed from older stories, there should be some movement in the scores one way or the other as those votes are purged.

I think the mistake is viewing it as multiple sweeps.

It makes sense as a single sweep if you think about the sequence of how it would work. Assume to begin with that the site doesn't normally sweep things from all dates because it would take too long. Next, assume that this time, because of whatever was discovered or whatever new software they have, they are sweeping from all dates. Therefore, it's going to have to take place over a period of time because it has to happen during periods of low site activity.

Now, think about how a sweep is going to organize itself. It's not going to do it by author or by story. It's going to do it by ISP or by pattern, or by whatever method it's using to identify the fraudulent votes. Let's just assume it's doing it by ISP. The program is going down the list and eliminating all votes from one ISP after another. Those ISP's votes may be spread out between different stories, or not. But that perfectly explains why it is ongoing. If this explanation is accurate, it will eventually run through all ISPs and the sweep will end.

That shouldn't take an entire month, though! And this vote removal is occurring far too often and regularly, and it looks like every story on the site is losing votes. What's the target? How about the entire site. That's my concern.

 

[RejectReality]

There's no real way to explain this without providing breadcrumbs for malefactors, but that's not how queries ( sweeps ) work. There's no way for them to get "caught" on a story and just remove random votes. Queries need to find specific criteria to act.

As to the 1, it could be a knowledgeable troll who will eventually get caught, or it could be someone who genuinely hated the story. If there's nothing else in their voting record to trigger the sweeps, because it's just their genuine opinion on that particular story, that 1 will stay. ( If it's even a 1. Without minute by minute tracking, it's easy enough to mistake a couple of 3s for a 1 )

People with a certain amount of knowledge of how things work can concoct ways to evade notice. Or, someone can be new to the asshat game, and they haven't yet left enough of a digital trail to flag them. Until there's a pattern — criteria to target the query on — it's just one of probably billions of votes in the database. That's how the sweeps can miss things, and then find them later. A new pattern emerges, exposing the fraudulent activity that previously escaped notice.

A sweep would remove the votes from that story.
Why is a sweep thursday missing problem votes on Friday so more votes have to be removed?
Sweeps are normally just as a competition closes or once a month, not daily.

I had 277 votes on my covid story at close of the competition. Since then I've had 500 extra views on a story. I've noticed about 5-10 extra votes but almost daily I lose 1 or 2 votes. Now votes stand at 271.

Why did the first sweep not pick up all the problem votes?
Why is the story being swept daily?
In that time I will assume I got a 1 bomb as the score dropped 0.04 with one
extra vote over night. This 1 bomb has not been removed despite daily sweeps apparently being run on this story and the removal of 1 or 2 votes a day.

The maths does not fit
The it's a sweep explanation does not fit

My money is on an over excited auto sweep programme being used the site and accidentally latching on to a story and sweeping it daily.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

That shouldn't take an entire month, though! And this vote removal is occurring far too often and regularly, and it looks like every story on the site is losing votes. What's the target? How about the entire site. That's my concern.

I can see why you'd say that, but you might think differently if you'd ever seen how freaking slow these things can be when they've got so much data to go through. I don't know if you've ever had to deal with a company's server, but even at that small a scale, a full system backup can take all night. I don't know a whole lot about why, but I know the closer a system gets to its limits, the slower it runs.

The site's also having to back itself up while all this is going on. I don't know how much "slow time" they have to work with, but I don't really find it odd that it would take so long when you think about how many votes there are. There must be millions, right? Whether the computer's looking at it by vote or by whatever criteria it's using for fraudulent votes, it's got to match one to the other. Every one of the millions of votes has to be compared to every definition in the sweep's parameters, or vice versa. That's a lot.

And think about how often the site bogs down all the time anyway!

 

[RejectReality]

The problem with that theory is that the scores have only moved on stories that have very few votes. If fraudulent votes were being removed from older stories, there should be some movement in the scores one way or the other as those votes are purged.

That's math. The more votes there are, the more votes have to be added or removed to change the score. Keep in mind that the visible scores have two places, but the data stored most certainly is of a higher level of precision. It takes more to move a 4.599 than a 4.950.

It also doesn't happen in a vacuum. New votes are coming in. Other votes are being removed. There are nearly infinite scenarios where the vote number can change and the visible score won't. The score remaining the same on a story with hundreds or thousands of votes is the norm, rather than the exception.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

There's no real way to explain this without providing breadcrumbs for malefactors, but that's not how queries ( sweeps ) work. There's no way for them to get "caught" on a story and just remove random votes. Queries need to find specific criteria to act.

This is why I think the secrecy is counter-productive. If there was just an announcement, saying basically what you've already said in generic terms, it could put the issue to rest for most people. There would always be people convinced that something else was going on, no matter what.

But because of how it's been handled, it's remained an open question and I've thought about it enough to come up with two different ways people might fraudulently mess with the scoring, one of which is very, very low risk and very inexpensive. It's entirely possible my ideas wouldn't work and I have no intention of trying them, but the point is that I wouldn't have been wondering about this at all if the questions had been put to rest by simply telling people what's going on in general terms. If I, who am not particularly interested in either tech or stats, have come up with ideas as a result of leaving this question open, I know other people have. That's not a good thing for anyone. I just don't get it.

 

[RejectReality]

History has demonstrated time and time again that of the people making queries, the majority of them will not accept the explanation, no matter how often it's reiterated or how much detail is provided. Doing so simply wastes time that could be better spent resolving the situation and eliminating the source of the panicked speculation.

At its heart, this is math, and math is sorcery to many people.

This is why I think the secrecy is counter-productive. If there was just an announcement, saying basically what you've already said in generic terms, it could put the issue to rest for most people. There would always be people convinced that something else was going on, no matter what.

 

[LexxRuthless]

Please let me clarify one thing here: I don't actually think this is the work of some clever troll. I said it was just the first hypothesis that popped into my mind. What I have seen is a trend I cannot explain. The closer I have looked at it, the less sense it makes. All of my stories have been losing votes, seemingly at random, but over the course of a full month those numbers are pretty consistent. The actual vote loss seems to be occurring every hour of every day, just a little bit at a time and spread out in such a way that it isn't obvious.

I've seen "big" sweeps before, but those didn't impact older stories on the site the way this has. I've never seen the site perform any operations like this before. My stories have never lost votes overall across the board. I'm not really worried about my stories yet. I'm worried about the health of the site, because this seems to be hitting everyone.

I wasn't worried about it until I took a bunch of snapshots of my works and then tracked the numbers closely. I would suggest you do the same for a couple of days and then perhaps you will understand why I am concerned and why I am telling you that your explanations don't match what I'm seeing.

 

[JamesMiehoff]

[Disclaimer]
I don't watch my scores that closely, so any statements about scores increasing or decreasing should be taken with some skepticism.
[/Disclaimer]

The above not withstanding, I have noticed that some of my stories do appear to be trending slightly higher. One of the trilogies had one Hot the last time I remember looking at them. The other two were fairly close but not quite across the line. Today, all three have the little red hot marker.

I probably wouldn't notice if a few hundred votes disappeared, but having stories cross into hot territory would probably get my attention.

James

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

History has demonstrated time and time again that of the people making queries, the majority of them will not accept the explanation, no matter how often it's reiterated or how much detail is provided. Doing so simply wastes time that could be better spent resolving the situation and eliminating the source of the panicked speculation.

At its heart, this is math, and math is sorcery to many people.

It would take five minutes to put an announcement up, ten minutes tops, if you include drafting it, right? Why wouldn't someone do that? Ten minutes doesn't seem like much of an investment. I'm sure you're right that it wouldn't be 100 percent effective, but I don't think it has to be 100 percent effective to be worth while.

Math and I are not even on speaking terms, but I'd accept the explanation. It's true that I ended up coming to that conclusion anyway, but had there been such an announcement, I would have just read it and realized it made sense, and that would be the end of it unless later information promoted a reassessment.

I'm not bent out of shape over it or anything. I just don't get what seems like unnecessary mystery. Maybe there's some other downside I'm not seeing.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I wasn't worried about it until I took a bunch of snapshots of my works and then tracked the numbers closely. I would suggest you do the same for a couple of days and then perhaps you will understand why I am concerned and why I am telling you that your explanations don't match what I'm seeing.

My story file doesn't have anywhere near the vote counts you're mentioning, and like James, my trend over time is generally up. Some stories at the bottom of my list have had the same scores/votes for years and never move, and there are one or two that constantly seem to move up and down in the middle. There's always a slow cycling in the order of the top 20% or so, as if they each get their time in the sun. It's evidence to me that my back catalogue gets read - there's always noticeable movement on the back of every new story. I'm regularly surprised when an old story gets faved or commented upon. As Mae West said, it's always better to be looked over than overlooked .

 

[SimonDoom]

The most obvious explanation -- that a new and fairly aggressive sweep system is being implemented -- is the one that best fits the data.

What's happening to you is happening to me. When I factor in, based on past recent history, the rate at which I was gaining votes over time, I calculate I've lost about 2.3% of my votes across all stories since July 15. There is no obvious pattern to it. The effect is most obvious for old stories that had high vote totals but that are not gaining many votes on a regular basis now. For stories that regularly gain votes the effect is less obvious because the gains offset the losses in some cases.

There is no evidence of it being concentrated on certain stories, or certain categories. I've recalculated vote totals 6 times since July 15 (24 days ago), and, again, there's no obvious pattern to it, except that the vote removal seems to be happening across all stories and at a fairly steady week to week pace.

There's been no impact that I can see on my story scores. My scores have held pretty steady, with a few very minor changes to a few stories.

If this was deliberate it seems likely there would be a discernible pattern, or that some types of stories would be affected more than others, or that my scores would change. Instead, what I'm seeing is consistent with a random sweep system of some kind.

There's nothing worrisome about a system that sweeps 2% of votes across the board, or even more than that. If there's any impact on people, it will be random. The only people who will be adversely affected are those who have stories whose vote totals are so low that they are right on the threshold of qualifying for a toplist of some kind, and face being dropped off if they lose votes. But if the votes are fraudulent it's not something anyone has a cause to complain about.

I have no idea how this works, but the probable explanation is it's a system I don't understand rather than that it's deliberate or bad.

 

[RejectReality]

It's been six hours since I last looked. I've lost one vote on RR. ( out of 88k ) I've lost two votes on Les. ( out of 29k ) And once again, I've lost zero votes from Dark, (out of 23k ) which hasn't posted a new story since 2017. That at least mildly suggests that whatever fruad has been exposed happened in the last 2-3 years — the period during which you've been submitting.

( ETA Upon reading through that, I realized it could be interpreted as you having something to do with it, which was not the intent. I meant that you might be seeing a heavier hit because all of your work is in that 2-3 year period, while my pen name that hasn't posted anything in that period is seeing no activity at all so far )

I've said that this has happened before. TxRad did as well. It's not some strange, new, sinister phenomenon. It's an infrequent, but known circumstance where large scale fraud has been exposed, and is being removed.

Please let me clarify one thing here: I don't actually think this is the work of some clever troll. I said it was just the first hypothesis that popped into my mind. What I have seen is a trend I cannot explain. The closer I have looked at it, the less sense it makes. All of my stories have been losing votes, seemingly at random, but over the course of a full month those numbers are pretty consistent. The actual vote loss seems to be occurring every hour of every day, just a little bit at a time and spread out in such a way that it isn't obvious.

I've seen "big" sweeps before, but those didn't impact older stories on the site the way this has. I've never seen the site perform any operations like this before. My stories have never lost votes overall across the board. I'm not really worried about my stories yet. I'm worried about the health of the site, because this seems to be hitting everyone.

I wasn't worried about it until I took a bunch of snapshots of my works and then tracked the numbers closely. I would suggest you do the same for a couple of days and then perhaps you will understand why I am concerned and why I am telling you that your explanations don't match what I'm seeing.

 

[SimonDoom]

I just re-checked, and I've lost 37 votes across all my stories in the last 12 hours.

Interesting: almost all of those lost votes are concentrated in 6 of my 32 stories.

My Loving Wives story from January 2017 lost 7 votes. But the score didn't change.

The first 5 chapters of my 8 chapter incest series lost votes. But the last three chapters lost none. The first five were all published close together, and a period of about 5 months lapsed until the 6th one.

None of them saw a change in score.

So maybe the sweep pattern has something to do with publication date, or maybe sweeps are targeted at suspected fraudulent votes that happened within particular time periods. The latter makes sense to me.

I don't see anything, however, in the data that looks like a deliberate effort to cause harm.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I don't see anything, however, in the data that looks like a deliberate effort to cause harm.

And presumably it's happening to us all equally and proportionally. It's hardly the basis for conspiracy theories - probably long overdue housekeeping.

 

[KeithD]

But certainly nothing we should be told about, right? Or explained when queried. We're just providing the product that pays for this place.

 

[jaF0]

Are any of you getting paid per 'vote'? Are you being charged if a 'vote' vanishes?


If no, why does it matter?

 

[NotWise]

But certainly nothing we should be told about, right? Or explained when queried. We're just providing the product that pays for this place.

The response I got from Laurel was the boilerplate that you'd get if you asked about sweeps and/or what to do about trolling.

My take was that whatever is going on is something that Laurel and Manu are well-aware of, and probably just a version of the normal sweeps. Sweeps are an automated process, but I think Laurel had to trigger it. Maybe now it runs automatically at some set interval.

Running regularly might be all that's needed to make it "feel" like something different.

 

[SimonDoom]

But certainly nothing we should be told about, right? Or explained when queried. We're just providing the product that pays for this place.

Clear messaging isn't one of this Site's strengths, but this might be one instance where less messaging is better, if it otherwise would tip off would be fraud voters how to beat the system.

 

[SimonDoom]

Are any of you getting paid per 'vote'? Are you being charged if a 'vote' vanishes?


If no, why does it matter?

No, no, and no, it doesn't.

Good point.