Votes Disappearing

[Darkniciad]

They're the ones that matter if the only thing you care about is who wins. If you're really looking to see whether things are being applied equally, you have to look at everything.

When you do that, the data simply doesn't support any kind of bias in the way the sweeps operate.

 

[Carnal_Flower]

All good points. Whaddo I know....

I assume you are referring to robcub32 who practically owned the top 25 in the GM HOGar two years ago. His fans did tend to be uber rabid to the point he had to tell everyone to "stop 'helping' him." This current change in rankings has simply benefited him from what looks like was a pretty intense sweep of the category.

Whatever went on with the "Speech and Debate" story is most likely more an finally settling-in situation than anything nefarious. It is a great story, but to think it was going to maintain 4.90 and 4.92 ratings was a bit overly-optimistic considering the rest of the top ten were all at 4.88 and had been for quite some time.

4.90 and 100 votes does get you the #1 slot usually, but as I learned last year, you enjoy it for the couple days to couple of weeks it stays at that score and get a screenshot of the page, because it WILL be changing.

I'll agree that the top 50 in GM fluctuates like a game of hopscotch on meth, but if you really examine the entire list of 250 in the All Time HOF, many of them have thousands of votes, hundreds of thousands of views, and respectable age on them which says they have withstood the test of time. I think it is actually one of the most calm...voting and ranking wise...categories on Lit.

 

[coochiebarber]

Let me add one thing, this story in incest section, the first vote someone gave it 1 star. I saw it and went to read that story, it appeared a good read. Now that story stands at more than 4.6. Go figure.

ops, I posted one line response so to let every one know whats happening with new stories, but looking at this debate, it seems the things runs deeper than I thought.

 

[AZMotherLover]

I had a story that was up to 600 votes two months ago, now it has 583 votes.

Huh?

Now that story is down to 577 votes. How am I gonna make it onto Scouries "Most Votes" list if I keep going backward?

 

[lowphat]

Now that story is down to 577 votes. How am I gonna make it onto Scouries "Most Votes" list if I keep going backward?

The sweeps make no sense.

I get hit by the sweeps and my vote total drops by ten. I get six more votes and sweeps drop it by eight. That's not even possible, because that means the first sweep missed it by two? Once a sweep is done, you should never drop below that number of votes, but I have two stories it's happening to right now.

 

[AZMotherLover]

The sweeps make no sense.

I get hit by the sweeps and my vote total drops by ten. I get six more votes and sweeps drop it by eight. That's not even possible, because that means the first sweep missed it by two? Once a sweep is done, you should never drop below that number of votes, but I have two stories it's happening to right now.

Exactly.

The funny thing is, my score hasn't changed at all. It was 4.14 with 600 votes, and it's still 4.14 with 577 votes.

 

[Darkniciad]

While nobody knows exactly what's happening, watching how the sweeps operate leads me to the conclusion that they build "blacklists" while running.

Your story gets swept during a contest, toplist cleanup, requested sweep, etc. Votes detected as fraudulent are removed. Along the way, some IPs/IDs are identified as being bad actors. These users are blackballed and their votes wiped out wholesale throughout the database.

Later, a sweep is run for something else, quite possibly not directly touching your story. During this time, other IPs/IDs are detected as misbehaving. These votes may have been on your story during the first sweep, but the activity of the person hadn't yet reached the "bad actor" threshold, or their activity on the stories swept earlier was benign. Since that time, they've slipped up and their shenanigans now apparent. The votes get wiped out across the board, including those that survived the earlier sweep of your story.

And that's good and bad votes. Maybe someone liked your story and voted 5, but also spends a lot of time 1-bombing "wimpy cuck" stories in LW. Because they can't behave, the 5 they gave you goes down the drain along with all the 1s they dumped on the LW stories.

Speculation, but long-term watching what happens when they run indicates this is likely.

The sweeps can be heartbreaking, but the only alternative is giving anyone with the time the ability to determine exactly what your score is going to be by repeatedly voting on it.

Most of the ways you can cast multiple votes are easy, and can be executed by a chimp with some trial and error. They can even be done by accident. Every control you try to put in place to prevent the votes from ever being cast in the first place has a chance of keeping average users from interacting with the site in good faith.

The ratio of average users inconvenienced vs. asshats inconvenienced almost never comes close to balance. Average users give up when something doesn't work. Scumbags keep plugging away until they find a way around the controls.

 

[sr71plt]

but the only alternative is giving anyone with the time the ability to determine exactly what your score is going to be by repeatedly voting on it.

I think there are many alternatives. It's just that most of them wouldn't be favored by the majority of the authors here. Perhaps the most stringent would be to require votes to be only by registered accounts, with a comment indexed to the rating given being required with each vote. Coupled with this would be dropping the H rating to 4.00 in keeping with how the explanations of the ratings was changed some time ago. Very stringent at one end, but making the H more realistic (and harder to zap) at the other end. I wouldn't mind it.

Lots more alternatives, though, I think.

 

[Everyday_Man]

Hello Fellow writers and readers!

So I checked my stories today, the Speech and Debate series in the gay male category and all of a sudden there were 586 votes just vanished. Most stories lost somewhere between 18-25 votes, but the most recent ones, those posted in March lost 255 and 154 votes!

I emailed info and feedback and was told there is a "script" for catching fraudulent votes. But how can over 2/3 of votes on a story be captured are "fraud?" Does that seem normal? I went from 384 votes on one to 132?

And then the most recent story, the one I posted just last week now has more votes (over 150 more) than the two stories that came before it!!

Something hinky is going on. Any ideas?

yeah, you're being fucked ... because Lit cares about what the gay males think of you specifically .... get over it man ... the true proof of your writing is in the comments.

 

[Darkniciad]

One of the sites where I post allows you to select a setting that requires a comment to be left with every vote. Anyone I've seen turn it on loses 75% of their average votes because most people hate being forced to leave a comment. They won't even leave a one word "Good" or "Nice". They hit the back button and don't vote or comment at all.

The same site used to allow anonymous voting. ( though not commenting ) After a continuous assault of down-voting from tenacious anonymous users who were sometimes banned multiple times per day, they disallowed it rather than cleaning up after it as the sweeps do here. The average vote totals on everything dropped by half.

You were allowed to block anonymous voting on your own stories before the change. You can also block individual users. Every vote is recorded as being cast on a timeline. It doesn't display the numeric vote, but it's not hard to figure out when a blockbuster is anything over 40 votes, most of which are 5s. If you really want to, you can virtually eliminate any votes that don't come from people who always give you a 5.

It's a thin-skinned author's paradise. For anyone else, you end up with disappointing vote totals and scores even more homogenized and inflated than they are here.

To me, the trade-off isn't worth it. All my settings are still on "wide-open" in case they ever allow anonymous voting again.

 

[sr71plt]

I'd be good with it. The votes don't mean all that much to me, but it would be fun to be able to track the work of Hatecraft and friends.

 

[Darkniciad]

The forward momentum of traffic stalled and then went into a slow decline at the same time as anonymous voting was disabled, too. Erotica readers tend to shy away from anything that places restrictions on them unless they "identify" themselves.

No way of knowing whether that trend would have continued, because not long after, they banned incest and removed all existing incest stories. The slow decline immediately turned into a nosedive.

 

[sr71plt]

No way of knowing whether that trend would have continued, because not long after, they banned incest and removed all existing incest stories.

Ah, another beneficial result.

 

[Darkniciad]

Ah, another beneficial result.

Yeah, not so fast, though. The rules for the taboo section ( always separate from the deleted incest section ) have steadily relaxed to the point where any story that was previously there as incest can be posted again by simply adding "step" to every occurrence of a blood relative term

The dive from an Alexa rank in the 4k range to hovering around 8k had something to do with that, I'm sure.

Whether anybody likes it or not, incest is a "necessary evil" to the survival of an erotica site, unless it's nothing more than a personal hobby never even meant to pay for itself, let alone make a profit.

 

[sr71plt]

That would probably be OK with me too. I consider incest to be a lot more limited than Amazon and the others do. Blood relatives for direct incest. Indirect incest only for those who have been in close family attachment for some time.

 

[robertreams]

fuhgedaboudit!

 

[lovecraft68]

I'd be good with it. The votes don't mean all that much to me, but it would be fun to be able to track the work of Hatecraft and friends.

I agree, I'd love to see that because as far as I go you would be eating a lot of crow. I can't speak for others, but I don't one bomb or post any anon comments.

And its a good thing the votes mean nothing to you because....you don't get very many.

 

[lowphat]

I agree, I'd love to see that because as far as I go you would be eating a lot of crow. I can't speak for others, but I don't one bomb or post any anon comments.

And its a good thing the votes mean nothing to you because....you don't get very many.

Okay, be nice. You know as well as I do that Gay Male is the bread and butter here at Literotica. Hardly anyone reads Incest

 

[Bramblethorn]

Yeah, not so fast, though. The rules for the taboo section ( always separate from the deleted incest section ) have steadily relaxed to the point where any story that was previously there as incest can be posted again by simply adding "step" to every occurrence of a blood relative term

Now I'm trying to figure out how a step-twin would work.

 

[coochiebarber]

Okay, be nice. You know as well as I do that Gay Male is the bread and butter here at Literotica. Hardly anyone reads Incest

I think not, Incest get a lot more readers than gay category for sure

 

[sr71plt]

I think that Hatecraft, who both loves and loves to manipulate his comparison rates and has been outed as a member of a rate ours up/rate theirs down voting block, is just upset that I posted more incest stories to Lit. last year than he did. I'll leave it to him to create the numbers he likes to crunch and play his "I'm better than you" game here.

 

[Carnal_Flower]

Its not robcub, its adjoaq (sp?). Im going out on a limb and saying I think she's got "fans" shall we say. Ive literally seen bombs dropped up and down, er...except hers stay where they were.

I assume you are referring to robcub32 who practically owned the top 25 in the GM HOF two years ago. His fans did tend to be uber rabid to the point he had to tell everyone to "stop 'helping' him." This current change in rankings has simply benefited him from what looks like was a pretty intense sweep of the category.

Whatever went on with the "Speech and Debate" story is most likely more an finally settling-in situation than anything nefarious. It is a great story, but to think it was going to maintain 4.90 and 4.92 ratings was a bit overly-optimistic considering the rest of the top ten were all at 4.88 and had been for quite some time.

4.90 and 100 votes does get you the #1 slot usually, but as I learned last year, you enjoy it for the couple days to couple of weeks it stays at that score and get a screenshot of the page, because it WILL be changing.

I'll agree that the top 50 in GM fluctuates like a game of hopscotch on meth, but if you really examine the entire list of 250 in the All Time HOF, many of them have thousands of votes, hundreds of thousands of views, and respectable age on them which says they have withstood the test of time. I think it is actually one of the most calm...voting and ranking wise...categories on Lit.

 

[lovecraft68]

Now I'm trying to figure out how a step-twin would work.

You joke, but....

I converted a lot of my incest stuff to step for amazon, but there was one story I didn't bother with "Anniversary to Remember" because it was about Twins.

A friend asked why I didn't do it and I told them the reason, they looked at me totally serious and said, "make them step twins" I said, "You're kidding, right" answer, "No, why? You did it to the other stories."

Now I sometimes wonder if I did it would anyone care

 

[lovecraft68]

I think that Hatecraft, who both loves and loves to manipulate his comparison rates and has been outed as a member of a rate ours up/rate theirs down voting block, is just upset that I posted more incest stories to Lit. last year than he did. I'll leave it to him to create the numbers he likes to crunch and play his "I'm better than you" game here.

Just saw this.

Okay...post your story numbers....votes/views/comments number of favs. We'll leave out score so you can't cry troll.

I have no clue how many you posted, but will go on record as saying that my last three incest stories of last year will total more than all of yours.

Look I'll even go first.

Mom Will Do Anything! Ch. 01 Desperate mother agrees to a porn shoot; with her son.
4.71 2034 275469 Incest/Taboo (English) 10/30/14 approved
Public Comments: 42 391 favorites

Mom Will Do Anything! Ch. 02 Vicky reveals the porn shoot wasn't just about the money.
4.84 2216 226727 Incest/Taboo (English) 11/05/14 approved
Public Comments: 62 301 favorites

Mom Loves To Suck Sean's girlfriend won't do it, but his mother will!
4.79 2663 235631 Incest/Taboo (English) 12/10/14 approved
Public Comments: 51 340 favorites

Start tallying.

And remember you're the one that went charging into that category like a hypocrite after years of mocking it and its readership and something tells me your numbers will show the readers picked up on your disingenuous flat boring stories.

Meanwhile as you were obsessed with acting like you were 'invading' a category you perceive as "Mine" I enjoyed success in other categories.