Vote Removal

[KeithD]

The point is that they do and they bring it to the board and we try to be helpful to each other here.

 

[SimonDoom]

Latest update. I've lost a few more net votes across all stories over the last two days, but the removal has slowed down a lot.

Since it started, around mid-July, my average story score has increased .011. Nothing to get excited about, but nothing to get worried about, either. Deletion of fraudulent votes, mostly for old stories, has slightly helped and not hurt at all.

No cause for alarm, as far as I can tell.

 

[RejectReality]

The last two days are the most sweep activity I've seen while I've been doing these tracks. RR lost votes on 28 stories for a total of 112. Most were single digits, but there was a 25, 13, and 11 in there.

The one that lost 25 also went up by .08 With over 800 votes, that's a lot of bombing removed off that one. All score changes were up.

Les lost votes on 5 stories for a total of 17. One double digit of 10, and that one went up by .03 on over 400 votes. All score changes were up.

Dark lost votes on 3 stories for a total of 5. One score change down .02.

The bombs I noticed in the previous track were removed

 

[LexxRuthless]

Latest update. I've lost a few more net votes across all stories over the last two days, but the removal has slowed down a lot.

Since it started, around mid-July, my average story score has increased .011. Nothing to get excited about, but nothing to get worried about, either. Deletion of fraudulent votes, mostly for old stories, has slightly helped and not hurt at all.

No cause for alarm, as far as I can tell.

I don't know how you can reach those conclusions. For five weeks now, it appears that every story on the site has lost votes, daily, seemingly at random and with no explanation. This behavior is completely unprecedented, and we have no idea why it is happening. There is no evidence that the votes being removed are "fraudulent" and it seems highly unlikely that is the case. Many of the votes that are being stripped from older stories on the site were originally made years ago. You're telling me the site somehow keeps track of the IP address of every single one of those votes? Unlikely at best.

If the votes being removed were fraudulent, then the average scores of stories would be expected to show more gains or losses than they have. If this was "bombing" then you would expect lots of scores to rise dramatically. If it was "fans" padding the numbers of their favorite authors, scores would drop. All we are seeing consistently is a drop in the vote count of stories site-wide.

I think that is cause for alarm.

 

[NotWise]

I think that is cause for alarm.

Be alarmed if you want to be alarmed. I don't really like what I've seen, but I'm pretty sure the site is doing it with intent.

I posted a couple days ago that I've lost quite a few votes, but the ratings haven't really changed. That makes me wonder what justifies the effort. Then (Saturday, I think) several of my scores bumped up, which more than offset the one or two that dropped.

It is what it is. I'm not going to get alarmed.

 

[TxRad]

I don't know how you can reach those conclusions. For five weeks now, it appears that every story on the site has lost votes, daily, seemingly at random and with no explanation. This behavior is completely unprecedented, and we have no idea why it is happening. There is no evidence that the votes being removed are "fraudulent" and it seems highly unlikely that is the case. Many of the votes that are being stripped from older stories on the site were originally made years ago. You're telling me the site somehow keeps track of the IP address of every single one of those votes? Unlikely at best.

If the votes being removed were fraudulent, then the average scores of stories would be expected to show more gains or losses than they have. If this was "bombing" then you would expect lots of scores to rise dramatically. If it was "fans" padding the numbers of their favorite authors, scores would drop. All we are seeing consistently is a drop in the vote count of stories site-wide.

I think that is cause for alarm.

I'm going to say this one more time and maybe now a few people will listen.

First off, this has happened before, several times since I've been here.

Second of all, there has been someone making up fake user names for more than five or six years and using them to game the favorites list first off and to screw with authors as a whole. There is no need to vote 5's or 1's to screw with people. 2, 3, and 4's will do the same job with a large number of names to vote with.

I've watched it going on. I've showed this to a number of people including the site.

Something is finally being done about it.

 

[RejectReality]

I'm going to say this one more time and maybe now a few people will listen.

First off, this has happened before, several times since I've been here.

Second of all, there has been someone making up fake user names for more than five or six years and using them to game the favorites list first off and to screw with authors as a whole. There is no need to vote 5's or 1's to screw with people. 2, 3, and 4's will do the same job with a large number of names to vote with.

I've watched it going on. I've showed this to a number of people including the site.

Something is finally being done about it.

I keep trying to get a couple of particular stories to come up on the random stories section of the I/T hub to see where they are. I caught one of them at about the time this started and noted where it was. Now I'm trying 15 or 20 "spins" here and there when I have nothing better to do in order to try to see where it stands now.

Seeing one of those losing thousands of votes would pretty much clinch the source.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I'm going to say this one more time and maybe now a few people will listen.

First off, this has happened before, several times since I've been here.

Second of all, there has been someone making up fake user names for more than five or six years and using them to game the favorites list first off and to screw with authors as a whole. There is no need to vote 5's or 1's to screw with people. 2, 3, and 4's will do the same job with a large number of names to vote with.

I've watched it going on. I've showed this to a number of people including the site.

Something is finally being done about it.

Yay!!

 

[lovecraft68]

I'm going to say this one more time and maybe now a few people will listen.

First off, this has happened before, several times since I've been here.

Second of all, there has been someone making up fake user names for more than five or six years and using them to game the favorites list first off and to screw with authors as a whole. There is no need to vote 5's or 1's to screw with people. 2, 3, and 4's will do the same job with a large number of names to vote with.

I've watched it going on. I've showed this to a number of people including the site.

Something is finally being done about it.

First you say nothing is wrong, now its happened before.

You say the site is 'finally; doing something about it...which contradicts its happened before.

You and RR have been blaming everything strange when it comes to votes or scores on one person since I've been here. A person who hasn't been here in years, but we're supposed to think comes here just to play with lists.

Going further, as we-and others-have discussed behind the scenes, its very possible that person was part of the site. Meaning any gaming is done by that person...right? Or we going to say No, no, he only used that name to fool around(part of said fooling around doing horrific things to a couple of women here)) they wouldn't do that.

So you have a lot of contradictions here, which is what happens when you get caught up in attempting to tell people what's right in front of their faces isn't happening, then try to spin why.

You're right it has happened before, just like every glitch has happened before, and will get straightened out at some point, then cycle back down the line.

You and RR have been pretty much saying no author who writes in I/T has earned anything here, the votes are fake, the scores are fake, the top lists are fake...let's see its the most widely read category...which means it makes sense the authors there would see the biggest numbers...but no, not in spin doctor world.

All my favs. comments. votes, the private feedback I get, the three people from lit I've met in person(androids, spies paid by scouries?) who read my stories here don't exist.

Voting is one thing to fav a story or an author you need a user ID which means an e-mail address for each ID...for years we're told a person who has thousands of user ID's is playing the fav author list....someone created thousands of e-mail address...to...game a top list on a free site...please.

We here...look this name has every top list taboo author as a fav! Conspiracy! Because in no real world would someone who likes I/T stories fav I/T authors.

Silkstocking Lover Heyall, Myself, the other taboo authors up and down the top list, nope, none of it is legit, one person has uploaded hundreds of thousands of votes and created thousands of fake id'sThat's far more believable than yert another glitch on site that's always glitching somewhere.

Or maybe...I/T is not the biggest category here, maybe those millions of views are from one person! Yes, that must be it.

I guess the thousands of Taboo e-books I've sold-and other authors have sold-must be fake people too, trying to get that category to the top of Smashwords top lists, they're spending money to game that list. because none of those people buy books they want to read its about making it seem more popular than it is.

I guess the fact taboo is one of the #1 porn searches on all porn sites...that must be him too, when he's tired of manipulating the entire lit site, he must go allover the net to upvote tens of thousands of porn vids.

But know what incest story is legit? The one you wrote to prove to scouries you could do better than him, and that one did very well....so of course yours is legit, only one from what you keep saying. Amazing you could write that unicorn.

I know there's cheerleading and trolling, but that level and th time and work it takes on a daily basis is ludicrous, and again I'll come back to if it was that person and he's who it seems he is? That person could manipulate to any level could't they? Wouldn't need an ID to just pump up favs, right? So for me, its glitch or its being done by that person....what would that mean? We know what it means.

The fact these days you spend 95% of the time in your club house thread, but come running anytime someone thinks something the site is screwing up to defend it adds a lot more to my side than yours.

But I see no purpose for that, so its a glitch. Get the tinfoil off TX its too hot for that, its frying your common sense.

On the plus side Fox and MSNBC are hiring

 

[lovecraft68]

I keep trying to get a couple of particular stories to come up on the random stories section of the I/T hub to see where they are. I caught one of them at about the time this started and noted where it was. Now I'm trying 15 or 20 "spins" here and there when I have nothing better to do in order to try to see where it stands now.

Seeing one of those losing thousands of votes would pretty much clinch the source.

Another nothing is wrong, but wait, now there is, but its cool, its the site righting wrongs!

I will be far from the first to say you know a little too much about this site, and how to pull-and spin-numbers from it.

 

[lovecraft68]

Yay!!

You have no idea what you're 'yaying' about.

 

[lovecraft68]

Latest update. I've lost a few more net votes across all stories over the last two days, but the removal has slowed down a lot.

Since it started, around mid-July, my average story score has increased .011. Nothing to get excited about, but nothing to get worried about, either. Deletion of fraudulent votes, mostly for old stories, has slightly helped and not hurt at all.

No cause for alarm, as far as I can tell.

If your stories crept up, and some are I/T stories that defeats the point of who we're now supposed to think is the reason all this is happening or they'd all drop.

The only story I'm watching -as its new, I have no idea where my others were at the start-is still going up and down a couple of votes, but the only score change was to bump up from a 4.76 to a 4.78 so again if the theory is they're getting rid of a category cheerleader it disproves it.

 

[SimonDoom]

If the votes being removed were fraudulent, then the average scores of stories would be expected to show more gains or losses than they have. If this was "bombing" then you would expect lots of scores to rise dramatically. If it was "fans" padding the numbers of their favorite authors, scores would drop. All we are seeing consistently is a drop in the vote count of stories site-wide.

I think that is cause for alarm.

I cannot speak for others, but I have no particular theory either for what sort of behavior the Site is trying to fix, or for what sort of fix is being applied. I lack the technical expertise to have an informed opinion about that.

I don't have the sense, if this is what Lovecraft is implying, that the Site is trying to remedy the action of a single person. The sweeps I'm seeing appear too frequent, and sweep too broadly in terms of time covered and range of stories covered for that to make sense to me.

It appears to me that the Site has implemented a new and very broad-ranging sweep mechanism designed to eliminate votes suspected of being fraudulent. As far as what criteria are being used to determine whether they are fraudulent, I have no idea whatsoever, and I'm sure the Site owners won't tell us, for good reasons. My sense is that whatever mechanism the Site has adopted, it sweeps very broadly, but also, for whatever reason, has to be applied multiple times. It does not, to me, appear to be targeted at one particular alleged fraudulent source, but, again, I don't know enough to have a strong judgment about that.

But I still don't understand the cause for alarm. It seems to me that if you and/or Lovecraft are alarmed, you should have, and should state, exactly what your theory is for being alarmed, and you haven't done that. What do you think is happening?

I've lost perhaps a bit over 2% of all of my votes in the last four weeks, but the pace of removal recently has nearly stopped. My scores have change just a tiny bit here and there. There's no obvious pattern. I imagine the same thing has happened to nearly everyone, and it's most noticeable to those who (a) have a lot of votes, and (b) follow their votes fairly often. So far, it's no harm, no foul. After all, who cares how many votes you have? It's a random meaningless number. Its ONLY significance to an author is if a story's vote totals drop so far that one stops qualifying for a list of some kind. But with total losses of 2-3% or so that's not going to happen to many people.

As for why we are not seeing scores either drop or rise significantly according to a particular pattern as a result of the sweep, while I don't know, I suspect it's because a) a 2% drop isn't enough to change a score significantly, and b) the identification of "fraudulent" votes is broad enough that it is sweeping both very low and very high scores. Alternatively, the mechanism may be so broad that it is sweeping some legitimate votes as well, i.e., it's targeting fraudulent votes, but it's an overinclusive sweep.

Unless the process has caused harm, or is being done for bad purposes (whatever those might be) I don't understand why anyone would be alarmed. I would imagine that you in particular would be relatively immune to any significant harm because your vote totals are so high that it makes your stories relatively immune to significant score changes or to loss of votes below qualifying list thresholds.

Postscript: I should add that I did have ONE story jump in score quite a bit, from 2017. It was my most popular exhibitionist story (in terms of views, not score), and after over three years it finally got its red H. But other than that, almost no movement.

 

[bushyTrail]

Come on, calm down.

Anyhow, I've lost again some votes, but it seems that the sweep has almost stopped.

To be honest, it doesn't seem likely that all of this is because a single person made fake accounts and somehow decided to change randomly the rating of every single Literotica story (it seems we have all been extensively affected) because... I don't know, trolling. It's an extraordinary effort for something so stupid. If it was to game the Halls of Fame lists, I would understand, but this is really about the vast majority of submissions in this website, even those with no chances to rise there.

 

[JGittes]

I've been replacing the weatherboarding on my 15th century timber frame home in SE UK so haven't had much time to check in on the boards. I return and find this thread.

Don't know why it hasn't been noticed yet, but there was the Guardian article published on 6 July. I've seen mentioned in this thread that the sweeps started being noticed on 15 July, and that correlates with a look through my sketchy record keeping.

My suspicion is a large influx of new site viewers who didn't find their way to the site in the way that's been done these past nearly two decades, but by exposure in a completely mainstream publication. Among the newbies are highly proficient hacker types who find nothing more interesting than trying to game a site. Not that they've inserted a worm (although, why not?) but that they know how to mess with the voting system in ways that even our most IT knowledgeable authors do not know.

The site administrators have always done well by me so I don't want to make this next part sound like a criticism. Two decades ago I was fairly proficient at SQL, but if somehow I started a database website that continued to grow and all my time was absorbed by administrative fixes and upgrades, I know I wouldn't be able to keep up the latest site security protocols I might desperately need these past couple of years.

Anyway, something to consider.

I'll contribute my personal data analysis. I have more detailed data, but will just summarize here. I have one story in IT posted a few months ago with over 800 votes, a second story in mature that was submitted for the 750 word challenge with under 100 votes, and a five part story in E&V in 2017 the highest votes being a little over 100. It IT story has dropped 30 reported votes, cumulatively, and risen .01 in avg score. The mature story dropped two votes and raised .02, cumulatively, and the E&V series is unchanged.

 

[RejectReality]

Another nothing is wrong, but wait, now there is, but its cool, its the site righting wrongs!

I will be far from the first to say you know a little too much about this site, and how to pull-and spin-numbers from it.

*sigh* So we're back to this again? What I think is happening is in black and white throughout this thread for anyone to see. I'm not convinced it's related to scouries, though I'm looking and would dearly love to see the vote totals on his two favorite stories plunging by thousands.

I'm almost positive that I've mentioned the alternate theory I've had about scouries' numbers to you in the past — that it may not be all him, but rather he may have some overzealous fan(s) pumping up his numbers and attacking his enemies.

The only thing that's certain is his numbers defy any rational explanation.

Look back through all those old threads and see what the last time I posted to them was. I'm fairly certain it was around 2012. I've barely mentioned him since, other than the odd throwaway joke.

What I know about any website comes from running and coding them for going on three decades now.

I have no idea where you're getting the impression that either of us have even hinted that incest authors don't earn their numbers. I'd seriously like to know what posts are giving you that impression.

I personally see evidence on mine that I may have a cheerleader multi-voting in that category because it's the only place I've seen more than the odd score drop, but that's right here in the thread as well. My plan is to put more stress on the "one reader, one vote" end note that I put on almost all of my stories for anything I release there for a while. Any time I see score drops, my immediate reaction is to assume it's my fanbase going rogue, and my reaction is to tell them to cut it out.

 

[SimonDoom]

Don't know why it hasn't been noticed yet, but there was the Guardian article published on 6 July. I've seen mentioned in this thread that the sweeps started being noticed on 15 July, and that correlates with a look through my sketchy record keeping.

My suspicion is a large influx of new site viewers who didn't find their way to the site in the way that's been done these past nearly two decades, but by exposure in a completely mainstream publication. Among the newbies are highly proficient hacker types who find nothing more interesting than trying to game a site. Not that they've inserted a worm (although, why not?) but that they know how to mess with the voting system in ways that even our most IT knowledgeable authors do not know.

.

Taking into account that everything I say on this subject comes with the caveat "I have no expertise about this," this doesn't strike me as right. If this were right then I would have seen a jump in views or votes or something after July 6, and I don't remember seeing that. Plus it seems clear from the numbers I'm seeing that the votes being deleted are primarily votes that are several years old -- in particular, votes for stories from 2017. I haven't gotten enough votes from those stories this summer to account for all the losses.

 

[SimonDoom]

If your stories crept up, and some are I/T stories that defeats the point of who we're now supposed to think is the reason all this is happening or they'd all drop.

I think you are making some inferences about people's theories that may not be true. They're not true in my case. I've heard of scouries but he was before my time. I didn't know anything about anything he did other than the amusing self-promotion lists that I saw from time to time. I never thought of him for a moment when I saw this activity happening.

Like I said, the story of mine that was most affected was an Exhibitionist story. The incest stories lost votes but their scores barely budged. It seems logical to me that whatever fraudulent activity is being targeted, it's not by one person. They're probably targeting vote patterns they regard as "likely to be fraudulent." I suspect the sweep method ends up eliminating fraudulent down votes, fraudulent up votes, and possibly non-fraudulent votes as a result of being overinclusive.

 

[eroticstoryspinner]

Late to the party I don't have nearly as many stories as some of you but i have noticed a couple of my stories lost some votes. At one point I had 9 out of 10 stories at 4.5 or better. Then two of the older stories,Penal Slavery 1 and 3, dropped to like 4.49. Penal Slavery 2 went up, go figure.

Personally, I don't see the fuss. Its not like its affecting our royalties or anything.

 

[KeithD]

I looked at this issue in my story file in the limited way that's possible and what little I was able to discern is that, if there's been unusual sweeping, it's improved my story scores and put a whole lot more of them into the red--including quite old stories. So, other than this being another example of the Web site's "let them eat cake" or rely on apologists stance toward its authors, whatever is happening looks fine to me.

 

[LexxRuthless]

I looked at this issue in my story file in the limited way that's possible and what little I was able to discern is that, if there's been unusual sweeping, it's improved my story scores and put a whole lot more of them into the red--including quite old stories. So, other than this being another example of the Web site's "let them eat cake" or rely on apologists stance toward its authors, whatever is happening looks fine to me.

My problem is that it's just so weird. Not to sound all "prophet of doom" here, but it's been going on every day now for forty days and forty nights! Older stories are losing lots of votes, which is something you almost never see with sweeps. It is the long-term effects that worry me. Sure, it's "only" four thousand or so votes my stories have lost at this point, but if it keeps going on like this it's going to get really ugly.

All we are losing at this point is volume of votes. The longer it goes on, the more impact future down-votes will have on our stories. If it just stops happening, I'll be the first to breathe a sigh of relief.

 

[KeithD]

My problem is that it's just so weird. Not to sound all "prophet of doom" here, but it's been going on every day now for forty days and forty nights! Older stories are losing lots of votes, which is something you almost never see with sweeps. It is the long-term effects that worry me. Sure, it's "only" four thousand or so votes my stories have lost at this point, but if it keeps going on like this it's going to get really ugly.

All we are losing at this point is volume of votes. The longer it goes on, the more impact future down-votes will have on our stories. If it just stops happening, I'll be the first to breathe a sigh of relief.

Yes, it's weird. Yes, it would be nice to hear from the Web site what/why, within some limits, it's happening to the product the users are providing to the Web site for its profit at least to the extent of knowing the Web site is aware of it and is either driving it itself or working to remedy it. But that isn't how it's done at Literotica. They let endless speculation go on and on and rely on "friends of management" to try to paper over it.

If you just "oh well" votes/comments/views as a reason to post your works here, though . . .

I'm just happy that whatever is happening is making my file look redder than it did before.