StillStunned
Mr Sticky
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2023
- Posts
- 9,941
Just before the contest winners are announced, the site "sweeps" any votes that it considers to be made in bad faith. This covers all the stories, not just the contest entries or even the writers who entered the contest.
What you might see is that the number of votes on a story will go down. The average score generally also changed: either up or down, depending on whether the site thought it was low or high votes that were illegitimate.
The sweeps don't catch all the bad votes, but they make a difference, and quite often a story will come out of nowhere to win the contest.
As for who votes in bad faith? Well, some say it's other authors who are desperate to harm the competition in what's essentially a popularity contest, and boost their own chances. Others say it's readers trying to help out their favourite author. Which makes total sense, of course, seeing as how we're always waxing lyrical about reader engagement on Lit. Clearly they truly care.
