Voting

[ElectricBlue]

Just to prove, I guess, that coincidence still rules the multiverse, Wednesday, the day after this was posted, I got up, made a coffee and fired up the 386 to check my stats.

Wait. What? A 386, TarnishedPenny? Goodness me, it's no wonder your avatar is a penny-farthing bicycle. There's folk here won't have a clue what you're on about.

Shall I wind the pornogram for Madame?

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Well, I had a 286, but figured it was time for an upgrade.

 

[Liethra]

In addition to trolls going after specific writers, there also seem to be some basement-dwellers who routinely one-bomb all new stories, apparently just because. The psychology of it would make a fascinating post-grad thesis.

It does get corrected in the routine sweeps. Actually, if it gets too bad, report the story (little triangle icon near the scoring stars) and ask for a sweep. Takes a couple of days for the site to respond, but it's pretty effective.

Who knows with some people... Didn't know about the reporting though, might give it a whirl if it gets worse. At least it seems to garner views for the start of the series anyway.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

My most recent story hung on to a 5 for longer than any other story I've posted. I knew it wasn't going to last, but it gave me a little thrill each time I checked. Then day before yesterday it started creeping down, but not unreasonably. Between about 10PM last night and an hour ago (5PM) it lost 0.15 points. I don't know how many votes it gained because I can't remember the total from yesterday, but that's more than a few 1* bombs, I'd think...

It's just weird and kind of frustrating to see happen. I know, it happens to everyone and if they're trollish votes they'll go away at some point. I haven't quite reached the stage to be sanguine about it yet. I was excited that I was holding such a high score for so long.

Oh well. Thanks for letting me vent...

 

[NotWise]

My most recent story hung on to a 5 for longer than any other story I've posted. I knew it wasn't going to last, but it gave me a little thrill each time I checked. Then day before yesterday it started creeping down, but not unreasonably. Between about 10PM last night and an hour ago (5PM) it lost 0.15 points. I don't know how many votes it gained because I can't remember the total from yesterday, but that's more than a few 1* bombs, I'd think...

It's just weird and kind of frustrating to see happen. I know, it happens to everyone and if they're trollish votes they'll go away at some point. I haven't quite reached the stage to be sanguine about it yet. I was excited that I was holding such a high score for so long.

Oh well. Thanks for letting me vent...

The EC top list doesn't update frequently. It shows your story at 4.92 with 24 votes. Your profile shows the story at 4.77, but I don't know how many votes went into making that change.

It would take only one 3* vote to drop your score from 5.0 to 4.92. Depending on how many votes were cast, then it could also be due to a combination of 3*, 4* and 5* votes. There may not have been any votes under 3*.

To get from 4.92 to something less than or equal to 4.77 would take 5 4* votes, 2 3* votes or 2 2* votes. Even one 1* votes would have dropped the score to 4.76, so you may not have gotten any 1* votes. Of course, combinations of different votes are more likely than having all the votes the same.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

The EC top list doesn't update frequently. It shows your story at 4.92 with 24 votes. Your profile shows the story at 4.77, but I don't know how many votes went into making that change.

It would take only one 3* vote to drop your score from 5.0 to 4.92. Depending on how many votes were cast, then it could also be due to a combination of 3*, 4* and 5* votes. There may not have been any votes under 3*.

To get from 4.92 to something less than or equal to 4.77 would take 5 4* votes, 2 3* votes or 2 2* votes. Even one 1* votes would have dropped the score to 4.76, so you may not have gotten any 1* votes. Of course, combinations of different votes are more likely than having all the votes the same.

Thanks for working the math out for me. That does make me feel a little better. It just seems like such a big swing in such a short period of time. The one comment I got in that time span indicated the person had left a 5* rating.

I have learned from the contest stories (which I track more closely than my other submissions) that one vote when there aren't that many, can make a big difference. But I'd thought 30 votes was getting to the point that single votes wouldn't cause THAT much of a decline.

According to my profile page, there are now 30 votes.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I have learned from the contest stories (which I track more closely than my other submissions) that one vote when there aren't that many, can make a big difference. But I'd thought 30 votes was getting to the point that single votes wouldn't cause THAT much of a decline.

You were spoilt. It's rare for a run of fives to go that long. I figure you need around thirty votes to give you a realistic indication of where a story sits, so your story is now in that "starting to stabilise" zone. It's deservedly got a good score ("decline" being a relative term - it's not as if it's plummeted below four).

 

[NotWise]

According to my profile page, there are now 30 votes.

Dropping your story from 4.92 @ 24 votes to 4.77 @30 votes is an average vote of 4.17. The votes are probably a mixture of 3's, 4's and 5's. When your score is very high and your vote count is low, then it doesn't take much at all to change the score.

Thirty votes is nowhere near what it takes to stabilize the score, and a concerted troll attack can pull a story down even when it has 1000 votes.

 

[Voboy]

I lack the brains and drive to figure out the math, but plainly the setting of the Red H threshold at 4.5 rather than 4 causes a lot of this. A reader might legitimately vote 4, thinking it’s a fine score, and unwittingly do a bit of damage to the story red-H-wise.

I remind myself that when I was purely a reader here, I kind of knew that Red H stories were “better,” but I hadn’t the foggiest clue what a red H was nor how it worked. I’d be very surprised if more than a handful of readers really get it now. There are many reasons why the voting here is a shot in the dark, and sure there are trolls here and there, but I’ll bet most voters mean well and just aren’t any better at math than I am.

I quit worrying early in my time here as a writer, when I blithely posted a pretty good story (or at least not much worse than my others) to LW without reading here first. Since then, I’ve accepted that the Red H is a good thing, but that it’s way out of my control.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Thirty votes is nowhere near what it takes to stabilize the score, and a concerted troll attack can pull a story down even when it has 1000 votes.

In my portfolio the score at the 30 - 40 vote mark is usually around(ish) where it will be several years later, regardless of the total number of votes. The tendency over time is to strengthen slightly, but not dramatically. I had the oddity a month or so back, where my top and second quartile rankings swapped around a bit, but other than that, I don't see a huge volatility. That's over eighty plus stories/chapters, over five years.

I wouldn't know about a thousand votes, not even close. I tend to fly under the radar, I think - other than the predictable contest nonsense (and I generally avoid contests anyway), the routine sweeps tidy up the occasional silliness. Perhaps the trolling increases more than proportionally, the higher your view count goes, I dunno.

 

[NotWise]

In my portfolio the score at the 30 - 40 vote mark is usually around(ish) where it will be several years later, regardless of the total number of votes.

Not my experience at all. I went back through my records, and the score after 30 votes doesn't seem like much of an indicator of where the story goes after that.

Of course, if the story doesn't even get 30 votes, or doesn't go much past 50, then maybe it's an indicator.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

Not my experience at all. I went back through my records, and the score after 30 votes doesn't seem like much of an indicator of where the story goes after that.

Of course, if the story doesn't even get 30 votes, or doesn't go much past 50, then maybe it's an indicator.

30 votes probably isn't a bad indicator for me. Most of my stories have 100 or fewer votes. I'm sure it's a function of not publishing in the truly popular categories.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Not my experience at all. I went back through my records, and the score after 30 votes doesn't seem like much of an indicator of where the story goes after that.

Of course, if the story doesn't even get 30 votes, or doesn't go much past 50, then maybe it's an indicator.

Given that my highest vote counts are 324 and 320, I think our scales are slightly different - and I did say, in my portfolio .

 

[JamesMiehoff]

I've written about this in several other threads. If the publishers of this site would allow author's to see their actual raw scores, it might alleviate a lot of this angst.

Twenty 5* and five 1* votes would let the author know much better than a score of 4.2 with 25 votes which could also be achieved with ten 5*, ten 4* and five 3*.

A highly polarized score represented by the first range might indicate a much better story than the second which received a much more common distribution.

But at the end of the day, regardless of how much we bitch about it, allowing anonymous voting will never result in a "fair" score. Unless we can motivate the anti-trolls to start anonymously 5* bombing good stories.

James

 

[KeithD]

I've written about this in several other threads. If the publishers of this site would allow author's to see their actual raw scores, it might alleviate a lot of this angst.

I think it would be good for the readers to see a raw score chart too. If the story is being intentionally bombed down by use of a few 1s, it would be good for this to be shown.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I think it would be good for the readers to see a raw score chart too. If the story is being intentionally bombed down by use of a few 1s, it would be good for this to be shown.

It'd be useful outside bombing too. I suspect some stories are going to be more polarising than others, and it'd be interesting to see that in the voting patterns. One that's collecting all 3s and 4s is very different to one that's collecting 2s and 5s.

Being able to see votes in order would also be nice, as a way to help distinguish between "well a bunch of people just really disliked this one and used the 1 for its legitimate purpose" and "one guy repeatedly 1-bombing".

 

[RejectReality]

I don't think you necessarily need a complete break down. A bar graph for 1-5 would demonstrate that easily enough.

From elsewhere, a story that really didn't do particularly well because it was sex light, while still having my lightweight setup that I use in this name. ( around .28 off my average )

Compared to one that took a hit late to put it about .12 off my average after holding above my average for quite some time.

The low votes have a really disproportionate effect, and it's fairly obvious that they're outliers when seen in a graph this way.

A complete breakdown would be ridiculous on some stories. Peppermint Patty and Holly Jolley Christmas have over 4k votes. Can you imagine what that would look like? It would be a wall of unreadable numbers. Anything over a couple hundred votes would be, really.

It'd be useful outside bombing too. I suspect some stories are going to be more polarising than others, and it'd be interesting to see that in the voting patterns. One that's collecting all 3s and 4s is very different to one that's collecting 2s and 5s.

Being able to see votes in order would also be nice, as a way to help distinguish between "well a bunch of people just really disliked this one and used the 1 for its legitimate purpose" and "one guy repeatedly 1-bombing".

 

[ElectricBlue]

I've written about this in several other threads. If the publishers of this site would allow author's to see their actual raw scores, it might alleviate a lot of this angst.

Agree this. I think many of us, to lesser or greater degrees, keep some kind of a score watch and deconstruct scoring patterns in many different ways; and given that the site knows every score in order to do the maths - then there's data that could be made available. We know from sweeps that the individual score history is held, so it should be possible to give us a download option.