The Official Authors' Hangout Halloween 2023 Contest Support Thread

[pink_silk_glove]

I believe at the start all three were 4.93?

Does anyone know what the tie breaker ends up being? Favorites? Number of Votes?

All three will probably see drops in score in the next few days because people are petty as fuck.

It's probably 4.9311729 > 4.9305045 > 4.9298947.

 

[MillieDynamite]

No, for some reason, they don't put what the scores were at the time of winning.

I believe at the start all three were 4.93?

Does anyone know what the tie breaker ends up being? Favorites? Number of Votes?

All three will probably see drops in score in the next few days because people are petty as fuck.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Or, as I like to say, "Way to close to make a real difference."

It's probably 4.9311729 > 4.9305045 > 4.9298947.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Yeah, they shifted as I posted their current scores. I had to go backadd and one point, after the fact, back to Altissimus's score. He almost tied with her in a matter of a minute.

When I checked after you posted the announcement, all three opened on 4.93 then all three dropped about a minute later, lol.

 

[Rustyoznail]

I think in the event of a tie, most votes win. I'm sure I read that somewhere.

 

[SimonDoom]

I believe at the start all three were 4.93?

I happened to catch the announcement right after it happened, and at that time all three stories were at 4.93.

Not long after the announcement my score immediately dropped to 4.86. Someone gave me a 3, confirming my view that the best way to drive one's scores down is to win a contest. Not that I'm complaining.

The score subsequently climbed back to 4.88. It's still by far my highest score, so, as I say, I'm not complaining.

 

[MillieDynamite]

My highest score on this site is 4.8. When I published on Lush, I had several stories that maintained a five rank the whole time. I quit the site largely because five seemed to be the default vote on all stories. Every so often, Lush asks me to come back. I won't. If I ever had a score of five here, I'd assume either the ones who voted on it weren't honest or someone turned off my votes to maintain that score. Nothing is every perfect—least of all my writing.

I happened to catch the announcement right after it happened, and at that time all three stories were at 4.93.

Not long after the announcement my score immediately dropped to 4.86. Someone gave me a 3, confirming my view that the best way to drive one's scores down is to win a contest. Not that I'm complaining.

The score subsequently climbed back to 4.88. It's still by far my highest score, so, as I say, I'm not complaining.

 

[lovecraft68]

Congrats to the winners!

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I know that this is largely unrelated but I think you will find it interesting. This is my 1-bomb story.

So back in spring 2020 I posted my first submission here on lit. After 6 months it was at 4.6x with about 15 votes. I hadn't bothered checking it in a while and until this year it was still my only submission (work/life/priorities you all understand that). A couple of years ago I was in chat and was harassed by someone. Now normally I don't care, I just ignore, or possibly seize the opportunity to have some fun with witty sarcasm, no big deal, but this particular chatter started spamming me on multiple accounts - like literally 20 different user names, one after the other. So I reported all the names and they all got banned - from chat. The thing is that getting banned from chat does not get you banned from lit.

Then a week or so later someone messaged me in chat out of the blue. They said something like "hey, I read your story and liked it, shame about the score." I thought 'huh?' and went to check it out. The score was 1.8 with like 35 votes! It took me about 3 seconds to realize who did it. Well, joke was on them because they bombed the one person who literally does not care about the score. The irony of that was worth it.

Fast forward about a month and a sweep wiped about a dozen votes and brought the score up to 2.2. I figured that in addition to the bombing I must have had some legit 2s and 3s. Whatever. Well, now the story is over 3 1/2 years old and it has 50 votes and is 2.9. This means that since the sweep it has been getting 4s and some 5s. But before the bombing it was a solid 4.6, so it was getting 4s and 5s. Now it's pretty safe to say that if a story is say ... 3.7 after the first six months, it will almost certainly never stray outside of 3.5 to 3.9 ever - at least would be very rare if it did. After 6 months and 15 votes you have a fairly solid score. So how did it get from 4.6 to 2.9 when all the votes before the bombing were 4s and 5s and pretty much all the votes after the sweep have been 4s and 5s? It means that all (or effectively all) of the 2s and 3s that drag it down to 2.9 happened during the bombing. They had to.

The sweep didn't get them all. It's the only answer. Remember, I lost about a dozen votes, but the bomber spammed with at least 20 accounts. That adds up. roughly 4.6 at 15 votes, to 1.8 at roughly 35 votes, to 2.2 at roughly 23 votes. It's pretty clear what happened. Now of course I'm not complaining for a second about my score or that the sweep didn't work. That's not important to me. But it is very very interesting insight into just how the sweeps might work. We have a story that was legitimately bombed - hard! - and went through a heavy sweeping, yet still did not recover. I just thought I'd share because such data would be very valuable to many, or least certainly interesting.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

It's a Samhain miracle.

 

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

Congrats to the winner, regards to all contributors, and thanks to the readers.

And to the site folks...this contest was never linked on the Categories page, during the run of the contest.

 

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

winners

 

[EmilyMiller]

winners

You can edit posts.

Em

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Congratulations to all the winners! Lily was so sweet. Now off to read the other stories.

 

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

You can edit posts.

Em

This was quick, and it expressed my annoyance with myself for not proofing sufficiently before posting. But enough about me.

 

[Ian_Snow]

Congrats to the winners! A good crop of stories all around this year.

 

[yowser]

Strangest thing. Votes keep going down, score keeps going up...

 

[SimonDoom]

Strangest thing. Votes keep going down, score keeps going up...

Oh boy, not me! My contest placement gave the story a huge boost in terms of views and votes, and I had nearly the same number of views in the first 16 hours after the announcement as I did in the five days prior to that. At the time I placed I had 28 votes, and now I have 47, not quite 24 hours later. But the score took a dive. It's down to 4.81 now, from 4.93. I don't care that much, because the score still is high enough to get it a lot of attention and people are going to read it, and that's what I care about. But still, it's hard not to draw the conclusion that contest placements are bad for the score.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

Oh boy, not me! My contest placement gave the story a huge boost in terms of views and votes, and I had nearly the same number of views in the first 16 hours after the announcement as I did in the five days prior to that. At the time I placed I had 28 votes, and now I have 47, not quite 24 hours later. But the score took a dive. It's down to 4.81 now, from 4.93. I don't care that much, because the score still is high enough to get it a lot of attention and people are going to read it, and that's what I care about. But still, it's hard not to draw the conclusion that contest placements are bad for the score.

May the Fives be with you.

 

[SimonDoom]

May the Fives be with you.

I guess my way of thinking is that the Force probably doesn't care what my score is.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

I guess my way of thinking is that the Force probably doesn't care what my score is.

Did I say force? I said the Fives. Yes, it's a play on May the Fifth be with you, but it is my sincere hope that your scores continues to rock.

 

[SimonDoom]

Did I say force? I said the Fives. Yes, it's a play on May the Fifth be with you, but it is my sincere hope that your scores continues to rock.

OK, I didn't get that reference. But it's "May the FORTH be with you" not the "FIFTH." Star Wars debuted on May 4, 1977. I saw it that weekend. Damn, those were long lines. You couldn't buy tickets online in those days.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

OK, I didn't get that reference. But it's "May the FORTH be with you" not the "FIFTH." Star Wars debuted on May 4, 1977. I saw it that weekend. Damn, those were long lines. You couldn't buy tickets online in those days.

Yes, I had the day wrong, but the sentiment remains the same. Again, may the fives be with you.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I'm a little bit late to the party, but congratulations to the very well deserving winners, and kudos to all who participated.

 

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

Oh boy, not me! My contest placement gave the story a huge boost in terms of views and votes, and I had nearly the same number of views in the first 16 hours after the announcement as I did in the five days prior to that. At the time I placed I had 28 votes, and now I have 47, not quite 24 hours later. But the score took a dive. It's down to 4.81 now, from 4.93. I don't care that much, because the score still is high enough to get it a lot of attention and people are going to read it, and that's what I care about. But still, it's hard not to draw the conclusion that contest placements are bad for the score.

Math tells me that, after the contest closed, to get from 4.93 to 4.81, the new 19 votes averaged 4.63. You could see that as a dive, but I see it as a reasonable result of people checking out a story that placed in a contest. It's still a really good score, for what might be thought of as regression to the mean.