Voting Shifts

[Guest]

I'm curious about something. I've noticed that every now and then my story numbers jump around weirdly, and I'm not sure if it makes sense.

If I have a story with a hundred votes and a rating of 4.90, and then I get one more vote and the rating jumps down to 4.87, what just happened? Somebody slimed me with a big fat Zero?

Also, let's say I have a story with 70 votes, a rating of 4.78, and it's like that for a week. The next time I look, I still have the same 70 votes, but a rating of 4.85. All I can say is: ??????

 

[drksideofthemoon]

I'm curious about something. I've noticed that every now and then my story numbers jump around weirdly, and I'm not sure if it makes sense.

If I have a story with a hundred votes and a rating of 4.90, and then I get one more vote and the rating jumps down to 4.87, what just happened? Somebody slimed me with a big fat Zero?

Also, let's say I have a story with 70 votes, a rating of 4.78, and it's like that for a week. The next time I look, I still have the same 70 votes, but a rating of 4.85. All I can say is: ??????

Thats one of the quirks of Lit. The voting. Going from a 4.9 to 4.87, it would depend on the total number of votes.

More than likely in your other story, a 1 vote got swept and it was replaced with a new 5 vote.

The ratings are near meaningless, I tend to ignore them.

 

[Agnol]

I could be wrong, but arent the votes scanned periodically for duplicates from the same ip address on a semi-regular basis?

 

[drksideofthemoon]

I could be wrong, but arent the votes scanned periodically for duplicates from the same ip address on a semi-regular basis?

Yes, known as sweeps, the problem is that multiple voters can come from the same domain, and those will be swept as well.

 

[Guest]

Voting shifts

So some people deliberately vote more than once - and if the story suddenly bumps up significantly, it means that someone was poisoning the ratings?

 

[drksideofthemoon]

So some people deliberately vote more than once - and if the story suddenly bumps up significantly, it means that someone was poisoning the ratings?

I think there is more downward multiple voting going on, trying to push a story lower than it deserves.

But, yes, some voting 5's could artificially inflate the score as well.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Two things work against the vote/scores.

1) Trolls see a story in the "NEW" listing with an "H" and they just can't resist giving it at 1.

2) If someone votes for a story then leaves a comment on the story, you will get a duplicate vote.

3) Both the troll votes and duplicates get swept away periodically.

Welcum the to wonderful world of Lit voting. Most of the time it doesn't seem to make much sense.

 

[_Lynn_]

So some people deliberately vote more than once - and if the story suddenly bumps up significantly, it means that someone was poisoning the ratings?

Like Jenny said if they vote then leave a comment too it's a duplicate vote. There are some people that just don't realize that.
When you have multiple users from one computer, they don't think always of it coming from the same comp and being tracked.

So it isn't always deliberate either.

 

[cloudy]

Like Jenny said if they vote then leave a comment too it's a duplicate vote.

No, it isn't. I don't know why people think that it is, but it seems to be a common misconception.

Try it on one of your own stories and see what happens. It isn't a duplicate.

 

[Agnol]

Two things work against the vote/scores.

1) Trolls see a story in the "NEW" listing with an "H" and they just can't resist giving it at 1.

2) If someone votes for a story then leaves a comment on the story, you will get a duplicate vote.

3) Both the troll votes and duplicates get swept away periodically.

Welcum the to wonderful world of Lit voting. Most of the time it doesn't seem to make much sense.

How does the system know to get rid of a troll vote? Unless they vote a 1 more than once I'd think you'd just be stuck with it.

 

[Guest]

Troll votes

Has anyone ever diagnosed the motivations behind trollism? Would trolls tend to be angry readers, envious writers, the Undead with too much time on their hands or what?

 

[drksideofthemoon]

Has anyone ever diagnosed the motivations behind trollism? Would trolls tend to be angry readers, envious writers, the Undead with too much time on their hands or what?

Small minded, unhappy people with nothing better to do.

 

[Agnol]

I smoke cigarettes. Around the place where I work they have 'smokers outpost' ash trays. These are canisters designed with very small openings so you can just slip a cigarette butt into them and not much else, as many of the more conventional ash trays become small trash cans. I watched a coworker, who does not smoke, stuff paper into one of these outposts and when I asked her why she said "So that when someone puts out their cigarrette it will catch on fire. That will make them quit smoking."

Completely unbelievable. People read stories they know they don't like just to give them lower scores in some deluded hope that the author will see the 'error' of their way and stop writing this 'smut'.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Reminds me of the guy who claimed to only read stories when he was jacking off. If he came, he gave it a 5. He didn't say what he gave if he didn't come (cum?). However, I suspect it would likely look something resembling a "1".

 

[Guest]

Dear fellow readers -

I fully sympathise. Althought my style has its detractors (who are perfectly entitled to their opinions) seeing a bit fat 1.00 as the first vote is not especially encouraging, particuarly when we are talking about a 6 Literotica pages piece.

Now two things occur to me:

1) Either, and this is perfectly conceivable, the story is rubbish. Which is fine, but this is contingent on two things a) actually reading the story and b) having, as a consequence, a good idea as to why the story deservs a 1/5.

or

2) The person does not read the story and merely chooses to give it a 1/5.

In case 1, an explanation (since I ALWAYS allow public comments) would be nice: something to the effect - dear CrimsonLotus, your story was rubbish because:.... If my writing is rubbish and you don't tell me why, it follows that I will keep posting rubbish which helps no one, least of all the person who is complaining that I write rubbish in the first place.

In case 2, well...in this case the vote is simply unjustified.

Whatever the case may be, this is not a rant. I am not especially interested in voting and, from what I understand from the other posts, voting is by and large considered redundant by experienced Literotica readers/writers.

Nevertheless, when one - and I think all you writers out there can sympathise with this - spends a substantial amount of time and effort in writing something for a free website to please her/his readers, the least readers can do is be polite about it: that is, if the story is good, compliment it, if it is bad, quash it BUT tell the author why.

I understand this website to be something like those old-fashioned 19th century literary circles where you could come together and discuss issues related to writing and mutually improve one another's fiction.