Malicious voting

[Voboy]

Well, in that context, and knowing all I know now about this place, I'd say that was probably the smartest move. I assume that the asshole isn't around anymore?

I've not seen him in some time.

Hang him out to dry and create a new account for you future stories...

Nah. It's moot now. He appears to be gone.

Our more recent interactions were never cordial, but he ceased being an asshole to me right afterward. It felt like hazing.

 

[THBGato]

This is still going on. Somebody is really determined. There used to be about 15 stories ranked 4.93 in the Lesbian Top List, now there are none.

But it's so pointless and futile - it's still the same authors in the top list as before. Whoever, the troll is, they must have put in so much effort just to move scores 0.01. Seriously, what's the point? I don't really understand some people...

 

[Rob_Royale]

This is still going on. Somebody is really determined. There used to be about 15 stories ranked 4.93 in the Lesbian Top List, now there are none.

But it's so pointless and futile - it's still the same authors in the top list as before. Whoever, the troll is, they must have put in so much effort just to move scores 0.01. Seriously, what's the point? I don't really understand some people...

Yeah, it's going on in other categories too. How many alt accounts would you have to make? What a colossal waste of time.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Yeah, it's going on in other categories too. How many alt accounts would you have to make?

Zero.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Zero.

Then you've lost me. Each account can only zote for a story once. Right?

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Then you've lost me. Each account can only zote for a story once. Right?

Yes, but you don't need an account to vote on a story. When voting anonymously the system is easy to game and one person can vote many times on any story.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Yes, but you don't need an account to vote on a story. When voting anonymously the system is easy to game and one person can vote many times on any story.

Oh. Wow. That's ... broken then isn't it?

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Oh. Wow. That's ... broken then isn't it?

Oh yeah.

 

[RejectReality]

Oh. Wow. That's ... broken then isn't it?

Granted, they need at least a little knowledge to do it. There are controls in place that will stop the completely uninitiated. Anyone with a little gumption could figure out how to get around it in a few minutes with a fairly generic Google search, though. Then it's a matter of how motivated they are.

Surviving the sweeps is a whole different ball of wax. That requires real effort if they aren't already well-versed in the way standard internet controls and metadata work.

 

[lovecraft68]

And by "overzealous fans" you mean "the writer's alts", right? The readers here on Lit don't get tribal like sports fans.

You're dead wrong.
Some readers are very protective of their favorite authors and stories.
To the point where they think they're doing their fav a favor by multi voting 5's on the story not realizing the sweep will catch those and do more harm than good.

 

[Cagivagurl]

Perhaps if the effects are being felt over various categories. It might not be malicious activity but the site implementing some changes to the voting system, or trying to clear out what they see as doctored voting. Either positive or negative???
For the voting to affect the top stories, which have literally thousands of votes. It would take a mammoth effort to up, or down vote them...
Somebody in the thread suggested a simple thumbs up or down as the voting tools. I think that would be much better than graduated voting.

Cagivagurl

 

[lovecraft68]

Perhaps if the effects are being felt over various categories. It might not be malicious activity but the site implementing some changes to the voting system, or trying to clear out what they see as doctored voting. Either positive or negative???
For the voting to affect the top stories, which have literally thousands of votes. It would take a mammoth effort to up, or down vote them...
Somebody in the thread suggested a simple thumbs up or down as the voting tools. I think that would be much better than graduated voting.

Cagivagurl

I've been here a long time and since day one a clique here, rapidly dwindling, has insisted that one or two people are responsible for bumping up some authors, pushing down others and controlling and manipulating every top list, which when you think on it, is saying no one at the top of a list is anything but a cheat or benefit of cheating, and all by the same two people. Neither of whom have been seen here in some time, 10 years or so for one of them.

To the last time I spoke with him TX Rad insisted one person came here every day-every single day- to up vote and down vote along the fav story and fav authors lists. Every day, for years on end.

RR continues to push that theory, yet will deny there are ever any shady placings in contests. Someone can manipulate every single top list, but not a contest.

End of the day, the more someone says "Look over there" the better off you are looking in the other direction where you'll most likely see where the real sketchy shit is.

Because as time went on I began to seriously doubt who the real 'villains' were here. Maybe there was never much in the way of cheating by certain people, just the jealousy of others.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I've been here a long time and since day one a clique here, rapidly dwindling, has insisted that one or two people are responsible for bumping up some authors, pushing down others and controlling and manipulating every top list, which when you think on it, is saying no one at the top of a list is anything but a cheat or benefit of cheating, and all by the same two people. Neither of whom have been seen here in some time, 10 years or so for one of them.

To the last time I spoke with him TX Rad insisted one person came here every day-every single day- to up vote and down vote along the fav story and fav authors lists. Every day, for years on end.

RR continues to push that theory, yet will deny there are ever any shady placings in contests. Someone can manipulate every single top list, but not a contest.

End of the day, the more someone says "Look over there" the better off you are looking in the other direction where you'll most likely see where the real sketchy shit is.

Because as time went on I began to seriously doubt who the real 'villains' were here. Maybe there was never much in the way of cheating by certain people, just the jealousy of others.

A lot of people don’t understand the power of a 4, either. If you have a story at 4.9/50 and get a single 4, it will drop to 4.88/51. It takes 7 5 votes to get that 4.9 back and it’s really only a 4.89655

BTW, I did the math on my phone calculator, so cut me some slack. Point is, it doesn’t take a one bomb to do damage to a high score.

 

[Cagivagurl]

A lot of people don’t understand the power of a 4, either. If you have a story at 4.9/50 and get a single 4, it will drop to 4.88/51. It takes 7 5 votes to get that 4.9 back and it’s really only a 4.89655

BTW, I did the math on my phone calculator, so cut me some slack. Point is, it doesn’t take a one bomb to do damage to a high score.

I think that probably depends on the number of votes.
If a story has a low number of votes, a high or low vote will make an impact.
If there are 2,000 votes, then one in either direction is going to make very little difference."
To impact the most popular stories in the HOF... There would have to be a serious number of votes to move them...
I haven't done any math on it, just my opinion.
For every category to be affected, made me think it is more likely the site owners rather than individuals.... Again, just my opinion.

Cagivagurl

 

[ruddygore]

Speaking of which, how should you interpret a 2 anyway? Is that like, "This story completely sucked,  almost." I fail to see the point.

Good idea, horrible execution. You had a good idea for a story and completely botched it.

 

[THBGato]

Perhaps if the effects are being felt over various categories. It might not be malicious activity but the site implementing some changes to the voting system, or trying to clear out what they see as doctored voting.

I wondered about that, but the number of votes my stories have has inceeased, not decreased. So it's trolling. With my story Eve & Lucy, only those chapters that were on 4.9+ (chapters 2, 4 & 5) have received extra votes since Saturday. Chapters 1 & 3 have received no extra votes. This isn't people reading the story and voting 3 or 4; this is people targetting only the high scoring sections.

 

[Cagivagurl]

I wondered about that, but the number of votes my stories have has inceeased, not decreased. So it's trolling. With my story Eve & Lucy, only those chapters that were on 4.9+ (chapters 2, 4 & 5) have received extra votes since Saturday. Chapters 1 & 3 have received no extra votes. This isn't people reading the story and voting 3 or 4; this is people targetting only the high scoring sections.

Sad....
There are some very petty people in lit...
Surely there are better things to do with life than spend that much energy on spite...
You can't make your candle shine brighter by blowing somebody else's out...How many negative votes would they have to place to affect the top stories??? 20... 30??? A hundred.

Cagivagurl

 

[RejectReality]

I've been here a long time and since day one a clique here, rapidly dwindling, has insisted that one or two people are responsible for bumping up some authors, pushing down others and controlling and manipulating every top list, which when you think on it, is saying no one at the top of a list is anything but a cheat or benefit of cheating, and all by the same two people. Neither of whom have been seen here in some time, 10 years or so for one of them.

To the last time I spoke with him TX Rad insisted one person came here every day-every single day- to up vote and down vote along the fav story and fav authors lists. Every day, for years on end.

RR continues to push that theory, yet will deny there are ever any shady placings in contests. Someone can manipulate every single top list, but not a contest.

End of the day, the more someone says "Look over there" the better off you are looking in the other direction where you'll most likely see where the real sketchy shit is.

Because as time went on I began to seriously doubt who the real 'villains' were here. Maybe there was never much in the way of cheating by certain people, just the jealousy of others.

What I've always said is that I never saw a story place in a contest that didn't deserve to be there. Not the same thing. Whether it's the best is completely subjective. Not once have I ever said that there wasn't shady shit going on in contests. LOL Quite the opposite. Almost any time I talk about the shenanigans in toplists, I'm talking about the same in contests.

I've always maintained that certain categories have an uphill battle from the get-go, while others have a distinct advantage. Categories with high vote totals but lower average scores will always struggle ( LW, Incest, etc. ) while categories with lower vote totals but higher average scores have an advantage ( Sci-Fi, Romance, etc. ) Lower vote totals also benefit from the camouflage effect that happens from bombing in contests. One bomb can take them off the radar, and then that one bomb getting swept jumps them up to the top of the rankings, where they were prior to the bomb. Meanwhile, submissions with more votes stay higher longer because they're more difficult to cut down. They end up going back up to more or less where they were with the sweeps as well, but this low vote story "comes out of nowhere" because nobody noticed it due to the bomb dropping it off everybody's radar.

The more votes from more sources there are, the more likely it is that someone more knowledgeable did the bombing, and that the sweeps will miss a couple. So the one that's been bombed 20 times to drop it .10 has a disadvantage over the one that got bombed once and dropped .45. Trolls aren't going to keep working on something that's already in the middle of the pack when there's a dozen stories still above their "darling".

Just because a story got a raw deal from demographics or Hoover limitations doesn't mean the story that did place doesn't deserve its honors. That's what I've always said.

I was never as gung-ho on He Who Shall Not Be Named's prowess of manipulation as TXRad was. LOL There was shit he was pulling when he was active, but what's left is the legacy of his manipulation of two of them that's garnering genuine activity based upon the two early quotation mark stories that he boosted through manipulation. ( which if you read his later stories, don't even read like the same author. Any creativity and skill he had seemed to have been put into those two. They were good enough to merit attention on their own, but his manipulation boosted them far above where they would have landed on their own merits — and a big part of that was exploiting the way Lit was designed rather than anything technical or particularly nefarious. He figured out that if a quotation mark was the first thing in his title, it would be the first thing anyone saw when viewing the category at the time. He had a year or more of top billing in the biggest category on the site. The high placement of those two on certain lists from those early shenanigans and genuine readability still generates activity even long after he's faded away. The ones he was manipulating later have vanished off the face of the earth after he left, because they stink on ice. LOL )

I don't recall saying anything about him lurking in the shadows manipulating anything since he slunk off with his tail between his legs. He'd quit writing long before he ever left the forum. TX refused to believe he could be garnering any genuine activity without manipulation. I never disagreed with TX in public, but I didn't believe it. I honestly think those two stories and causing chaos here were all HWSNBN had left in life at that point. If I had any inkling that he was still lurking around, I certainly wouldn't give him any credit for genuine talent with those two stories. LOL What the hell he did with it after finishing those two is a question that will likely never be answered. There's enough of his "voice" in those two that I believe he wrote them, but they were far better executed than the rest of his drivel.

 

[RejectReality]

Sad....
There are some very petty people in lit...
Surely there are better things to do with life than spend that much energy on spite...
You can't make your candle shine brighter by blowing somebody else's out...How many negative votes would they have to place to affect the top stories??? 20... 30??? A hundred.

Cagivagurl

Depends on the category. The Sci-Fi & Fantasy toplist is a constant churn, because a handful of bombs can really shake up the rankings. Meanwhile, Incest requires some serious time and dedication due to the sheer weight of the vote totals. Lesbian Sex ( I think that's the one in question ) is middle of the pack. One person willing to put in a modicum of effort could mess with that toplist. A handful of same could churn it pretty well.

It's mostly the fanbases in my opinion. I don't discount authors pulling it, but they're vastly outnumbered by their fans — some of whom are as invested in the authors' position as the authors themselves. It's not one spiteful person so much as it is a bunch of cheeky little devils giggling as they boost their favorite and bomb everybody else. It's the weight of their numbers that does the damage, and the bulk of them probably don't even think they're doing anything particularly bad. They probably fume as much about trolls when their darling's score goes down as everybody else, because they don't see themselves as trolls.

 

[lovecraft68]

A lot of people don’t understand the power of a 4, either. If you have a story at 4.9/50 and get a single 4, it will drop to 4.88/51. It takes 7 5 votes to get that 4.9 back and it’s really only a 4.89655

BTW, I did the math on my phone calculator, so cut me some slack. Point is, it doesn’t take a one bomb to do damage to a high score.

The 4 is the sign of a clever troll, especially during a contest.
The smarter ones click on the story and sit there for a couple minutes before going to the next page and do this to the end, and at that point it will show as a legit vote.

 

[lovecraft68]

What I've always said is that I never saw a story place in a contest that didn't deserve to be there. Not the same thing. Whether it's the best is completely subjective. Not once have I ever said that there wasn't shady shit going on in contests. LOL Quite the opposite. Almost any time I talk about the shenanigans in toplists, I'm talking about the same in contests.

I've always maintained that certain categories have an uphill battle from the get-go, while others have a distinct advantage. Categories with high vote totals but lower average scores will always struggle ( LW, Incest, etc. ) while categories with lower vote totals but higher average scores have an advantage ( Sci-Fi, Romance, etc. ) Lower vote totals also benefit from the camouflage effect that happens from bombing in contests. One bomb can take them off the radar, and then that one bomb getting swept jumps them up to the top of the rankings, where they were prior to the bomb. Meanwhile, submissions with more votes stay higher longer because they're more difficult to cut down. They end up going back up to more or less where they were with the sweeps as well, but this low vote story "comes out of nowhere" because nobody noticed it due to the bomb dropping it off everybody's radar.

The more votes from more sources there are, the more likely it is that someone more knowledgeable did the bombing, and that the sweeps will miss a couple. So the one that's been bombed 20 times to drop it .10 has a disadvantage over the one that got bombed once and dropped .45. Trolls aren't going to keep working on something that's already in the middle of the pack when there's a dozen stories still above their "darling".

Just because a story got a raw deal from demographics or Hoover limitations doesn't mean the story that did place doesn't deserve its honors. That's what I've always said.

I was never as gung-ho on He Who Shall Not Be Named's prowess of manipulation as TXRad was. LOL There was shit he was pulling when he was active, but what's left is the legacy of his manipulation of two of them that's garnering genuine activity based upon the two early quotation mark stories that he boosted through manipulation. ( which if you read his later stories, don't even read like the same author. Any creativity and skill he had seemed to have been put into those two. They were good enough to merit attention on their own, but his manipulation boosted them far above where they would have landed on their own merits — and a big part of that was exploiting the way Lit was designed rather than anything technical or particularly nefarious. He figured out that if a quotation mark was the first thing in his title, it would be the first thing anyone saw when viewing the category at the time. He had a year or more of top billing in the biggest category on the site. The high placement of those two on certain lists from those early shenanigans and genuine readability still generates activity even long after he's faded away. The ones he was manipulating later have vanished off the face of the earth after he left, because they stink on ice. LOL )

I don't recall saying anything about him lurking in the shadows manipulating anything since he slunk off with his tail between his legs. He'd quit writing long before he ever left the forum. TX refused to believe he could be garnering any genuine activity without manipulation. I never disagreed with TX in public, but I didn't believe it. I honestly think those two stories and causing chaos here were all HWSNBN had left in life at that point. If I had any inkling that he was still lurking around, I certainly wouldn't give him any credit for genuine talent with those two stories. LOL What the hell he did with it after finishing those two is a question that will likely never be answered. There's enough of his "voice" in those two that I believe he wrote them, but they were far better executed than the rest of his drivel.

Silk used/uses the quote trick here and there, never gets heat for it, which is what I meant when I said if its someone's friend its fine.

My comment wasn't as directed at you as you may think

Keeping it 'safe' for the board I became convinced that Scouries was who some others here think he was-and I know you've at least considered that theory-but I am sure of it. Meaning....beyond the score games used to distract and divide everyone, they were the ones behind the driving off of Kitt and Daniellekitten, and the reasons were obvious. I think Freddie got caught up in that and ended up on the wrong side of history, but is still a prolific writer here and always has been.

I received a long interesting e-mail from them after my screw job in a contest back in 2012. I've never cared for them but I'd be lying if I said what they said and told me to look for wasn't spot on in just about every way.

The contests are easily played whether you agree or not.

There are 'winners' who talk about getting swept repeatedly while others see hardly any change.

These are the things "scouries' and people who chased him around the boards didn't want people to see.

 

[Plathfan]

The 4 is the sign of a clever troll, especially during a contest.
The smarter ones click on the story and sit there for a couple minutes before going to the next page and do this to the end, and at that point it will show as a legit vote.

You're giving the sweeping algorithm far more credit than it deserves.

 

[Plathfan]

Watching scores change is like watching paint dry—I’ll never get the obsession. Getting into serious statistical debates about voting preferences seems absurd.

I rarely vote, and when I do, it’s only 5s to offset what I see as an unfairly low score. When I first came here, I instinctively gave 5s to any story that made me feel good. But I soon realized that reaction was just a dopamine hit—a satisfying ending masking the flaws and dull moments along the way.

I get the desire for compliments and positive feedback; it’s only human. Who wouldn’t want to hear their baby is adorable (a testament to great genes)? But what if it doesn’t happen? Would that change how you feel? Stop you from loving it? Make you regret bringing it into the world?

People forget that only a fraction of readers finish a story, and even fewer vote. Most start reading and, for whatever reason, move on to something else. If they explained why they stopped, we’d have a much fuller picture...

 

[Vintage_DM]

My, you are a virgin.

Yes, malicious downvotes were invented approximately seven nanoseconds after the first story was published on lit and are a rampant thing. You will undoubtedly see multiple replies to this thread, stating "(yawn) another 1-bomb thread".

So, short answer, yup, they happen. Lots. Fucking lots. Constantly. In fact if you never get any you're probably doing something wrong. : P

Why do they happen?

1 ~ Someone hates the themes in your story on principle (ie: "you didn't write this the way that I wanted you to and I'm pissed!!).

2 ~ You write a controversial topic, half the folks will love it and half will hate it on principle (again ie: nothing to do with your actual writing).

3 ~ You have a very high score (especially in a contest) and through either competitiveness or sheer jealousy they vote it down (at 4.9 this is likely what happened to yours in this particular case).

4 ~ You piss people off in the forums or chat.

5 ~ Who knows what other stupid reasons drive people to be spiteful? (and who the fuck cares?)

If I've missed any reasons, anyone else please feel free to add.

What to do about it?

1 ~ Wait for a site sweep to remove suspicious votes (it works but not perfectly).

2 ~ Request the admin for a specific sweep of your story.

3 ~ Shake it off. Get over it.

Oh, and welcome to lit.

There is a solution to 'downvotes.' It's simple, yet at the same time, the solution sticks in my throat. Don't allow comments or voting on a story. To me, this is an excise in the 'kiss principle.' But I'll be doing this going forward.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

There is a solution to 'downvotes.' It's simple, yet at the same time, the solution sticks in my throat. Don't allow comments or voting on a story. To me, this is an excise in the 'kiss principle.' But I'll be doing this going forward.

That works for some, but for me, the feedback is more important than any writer's ego I may have.