Losing votes/ratings/traffic

[thanagar]

Yeah, I'm having the same problem. I have four chapters in my Little Packages story, and they've all been affected

Little Packages Ch. 1 has lost about 400 votes, although the average is holding the same.

Little Packages Ch.2 and 3 and both down about .03 and have each dropped about 40 votes

Ch. 4 is down about 50 votes and has dropped .14 since Friday morning.

Also, all viewer numbers are at a crawl. Ch. 4 was published on Tuesday. On Thursday I was still getting 500+ views for the story. Since Friday I've had 22. Similar with the other three stories, although they're older and obviously don't get as much traffic.

Anything you can do to help address the issue would be great.

 

[soulhouse]

My story Celtic Mist Ch. 04 last night had 43 votes, rating 4.72. This morning it has 29 votes, rating 4.59. 14 votes disappeared...apparently 5 star votes.

Similar for me. My story Fucked Stupid Pt. 03 in the last hour has dropped from 37 to 30 votes, with the rating dropping from 4.65 to 4.57. That's 7 x 5 star votes removed.

 

[LexxRuthless]

Each time I take an Excel "snapshot" of my story stats, I copy the D, E & F columns (Rate, Views & Votes) from the previous snapshot and paste them into the new spreadsheet. Then I insert columns between them so I can calculate the change for each of those stats for each story.

Since early July of last year, there has only been a single day that I did not see a drop in votes on at least one of my stories. Usually, five or more of them show a net loss. During July and August of last year, my stories lost a ton of votes but the scores remained about the same. This latest round of severe vote loss has resulted in dropping scores almost across the board.

Somehow, 4 of my submissions showed a net of zero votes. Everything else lost votes. Here is the net votes on all of my stories in the order they appear on my author page:
-8, -144, -70, -99, -117, -75, -67, -104, -102, -99, -101, -93, -92, -79, -55, -67, -76, -91, -71, -91, -86, -136, -64, -58, -85, -65, -92, -52, -21, -65, -165, -107, 0, -107, -108, -89, -121, 0, -131, -54, -73, -58, -61, -50, -138, -56, -52, -160, -108, -87, -81, -95, -87, -74, -88, -77, -89, -77, -127, -54, 0, 0, -143, -86, -185.

Total vote loss (and this is ONLY from 4:49am March 19 to 11:16pm March 20):
-5413

18 stories have had their scores drop. Most severely impacted are my four most recent entries, which have dropped .03 to .10.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Scrubs lost 153 votes last night, Love Long Gone lost 86 and Buy the Ticket lost 51. All told, 17 stories had votes taken away.

As of two days ago, total daily views dropped from triple digits to double digits.

I've been working in the new version for months.

Manu - I understand that you guys want to keep tech details close to your chests; I support that. If this is a major sweep, all you need do is say so. If it's a glitch, some reassurance would be appreciated.

 

[soulhouse]

Similar for me. My story Fucked Stupid Pt. 03 in the last hour has dropped from 37 to 30 votes, with the rating dropping from 4.65 to 4.57. That's 7 x 5 star votes removed.

Now, a few hours later, the same story has a rating of 4.43 for the same 30 votes! So it has gone from a consistent 4.65 since its publication to 4.43 overnight. It's been getting about 1 vote a week recently, so how can it possibly have dropped 0.22 in the last few hours for the same number of votes. Something very odd is going on.

 

[LexxRuthless]

Now, a few hours later, the same story has a rating of 4.43 for the same 30 votes! So it has gone from a consistent 4.65 since its publication to 4.43 overnight. It's been getting about 1 vote a week recently, so how can it possibly have dropped 0.22 in the last few hours for the same number of votes. Something very odd is going on.

It's not "the same" 30 votes. Your story lost a 5-star vote, and received a new 1-star vote. Or lost a pair of 5-star votes and then got a pair of 3's, or some combination like that.

Whatever is going on (and I'm not assuming it is the site running "sweeps" until they tell us that's the case), it appears to be removing votes at random from stories all over the site. Since most of the votes are 5-stars, even for lower-rated stories, it means every story on the site becomes increasingly susceptible to down-voting.

 

[soulhouse]

It's not "the same" 30 votes. Your story lost a 5-star vote, and received a new 1-star vote. Or lost a pair of 5-star votes and then got a pair of 3's, or some combination like that.

Whatever is going on (and I'm not assuming it is the site running "sweeps" until they tell us that's the case), it appears to be removing votes at random from stories all over the site. Since most of the votes are 5-stars, even for lower-rated stories, it means every story on the site becomes increasingly susceptible to down-voting.

I'm very familiar by now with the processes by which that can occur, have seen ratings change before for the same number of votes and would normally agree with you, but it's out of character with voting patterns on my stories and feels very fishy this time to me.

 

[PhiroEpsilon]

Thank you for the reports.

Can you let me know a few specific stories (hopefully from different authors) where it looks like votes are disappearing?

We are aware of the read count issue and working on that.

Sorry for the rollout issues, we are working on a bunch of smaller reported bugs as well.

My Story "Der Fetisch-Bauernhof 08" went from 106 votes (the last few were most likely from the German Downvote-Bot) in three bunches of 6..8 down to 79.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Manu, I haven't noticed any of my numbers changing, but I did notice 2 of my stories missing from my dashboard and my author's list.

The two stories are About Last Night and About Last Night Ch. 02

Now the way found the links is I had to search for the specific stories. And how I noticed they were missing is that the csv file from the dashboard listed them, yet the dashboard didn't.

 

[Manu]

Manu, I haven't noticed any of my numbers changing, but I did notice 2 of my stories missing from my dashboard and my author's list.

The two stories are About Last Night and About Last Night Ch. 02

Now the way found the links is I had to search for the specific stories. And how I noticed they were missing is that the csv file from the dashboard listed them, yet the dashboard didn't.

Thank you for the report, this is a totally new issue. In theory it shouldn't be related to the other two known bugs (views/votes), but I can't be sure without doing more research.

Those stories still appear to be published on the site. When you look at your "Works" screen in the user control panel they do not appear at all? Can you try to hold down the shift and reload the Works page and see if they appear when the page reloads?

Thank you again for reporting this and sorry for the problem!

 

[jaF0]

Manu, I haven't noticed any of my numbers changing, but I did notice 2 of my stories missing from my dashboard and my author's list.

The two stories are About Last Night and About Last Night Ch. 02

Now the way found the links is I had to search for the specific stories. And how I noticed they were missing is that the csv file from the dashboard listed them, yet the dashboard didn't.

I see them here:

https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=704709&page=submissions


But I don't see a way to edit our forum profiles.

 

[inafantasy]

No doubt there is a problem.

Glad it is not just me, two days and I have less leads than I get in the first hour or so of a newly published story. Some features are a little slow, but have not noticed any other problems.

 

[Fervid]

Thank you for the reports.

Can you let me know a few specific stories (hopefully from different authors) where it looks like votes are disappearing?

We are aware of the read count issue and working on that.

Sorry for the rollout issues, we are working on a bunch of smaller reported bugs as well.

My “Lifeguard at the Reflecting Pool” just lost 10% of its votes and went under 4.8 for the first time ever.

 

[Fervid]

My “Lifeguard at the Reflecting Pool” just lost 10% of its votes and went under 4.8 for the first time ever.

Sorry, wrong story. “Substitute skipper“ is the one

 

[astushkin]

More examples?

Do you still more examples of votes disappearing and scores being affected? Several more of my stories have been affected since my last post, but I don't know that more examples provide any further help. If you need more, let me know.

 

[scipioparkins]

Thank you for the reports.

Can you let me know a few specific stories (hopefully from different authors) where it looks like votes are disappearing?

We are aware of the read count issue and working on that.

Sorry for the rollout issues, we are working on a bunch of smaller reported bugs as well.

All of my stories stopped showing updated views sometime on Friday, and haven't recorded any since, I lost a few votes, but nothing major. Inheritance Chapters 1 through 8 are all examples.

Thank you in advance

 

[soulhouse]

It's not "the same" 30 votes. Your story lost a 5-star vote, and received a new 1-star vote. Or lost a pair of 5-star votes and then got a pair of 3's, or some combination like that.

The score has just reverted in the space of 15 minutes to the 4.57 from 30 votes it was last night from 4.43 for 30 votes it had become. Given that I've been getting about 1 vote a week on the story, it beggars belief that last night a 5-star vote was swept and someone voted 1 star shortly after, then nothing else happened until a 1-star vote was swept and replaced by someone voting 5 stars in a 15 minute window today. I think it can safely be assumed to relate to the vote bug Manu has acknowledged.

 

[soulhouse]

I think it can safely be assumed to relate to the vote bug Manu has acknowledged.

With the possible exception that someone changed their 5 star to a 1 star vote last night and changed it back today.

 

[scipioparkins]

All of my stories stopped showing updated views sometime on Friday, and haven't recorded any since, I lost a few votes, but nothing major. Inheritance Chapters 1 through 8 are all examples.

Thank you in advance

Spoke too early.
My stories showed that they had been viewed by 1 or 2, sometimes as many as 5 people each this morning but overall most stories had had votes removed (334 across 20 stories) and scores reduced.

 

[jaF0]

So, like I'm genuinely curious .....


Can you buy coffee with these votes?


If you lose a certain number, do the doors of your car fall off?

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Thank you for the report, this is a totally new issue. In theory it shouldn't be related to the other two known bugs (views/votes), but I can't be sure without doing more research.

Those stories still appear to be published on the site. When you look at your "Works" screen in the user control panel they do not appear at all? Can you try to hold down the shift and reload the Works page and see if they appear when the page reloads?

Thank you again for reporting this and sorry for the problem!

Thanks for responding Manu, but it seems they are back... I can now see them in both my DB and AL.

 

[PhiroEpsilon]

So, like I'm genuinely curious .....


Can you buy coffee with these votes?


If you lose a certain number, do the doors of your car fall off?

If your story is below 100 ratings it doesn't show in the "Best-Of" list. When I started reading Literotica I systematically browsed those lists. I perhaps missed a lot of niche stories with less than 100 votes.

 

[NotWise]

We started noticing vote losses last summer (2020), and the usual explanation was that the site had a new sweep method and/or policy. I'm guessing that was when the problem with vote losses started. It was a big problem for some people early on, but it became a bigger problem on 3/19 when the new story page became the default.

I went back through my spreadsheets to see if I could tell when it started. A lot of the stories I had up at the time show sudden vote losses starting in the second half of July. The dates for different stories were: 7/19, 7/20, 7/25, 7/31. The later dates are on older stories that don't get much traffic. In all of those cases, the stories have lost votes on net since that time.

I looked at the thread about the new story page, but I can't tell if anything was changed around or shortly before 7/19/20.

 

[gordo12]

Having stats from Mar 1, Mar 16, Mar 21 & Mar 22, I have had:

1,350 votes disappear. One story in Romantic is now over 300 alone. These are mostly 5* votes as the scores are declining. I find it hard to believe there is a group of slavering trolls out there voting 5's. These are also old stories that have been swept before.

770 views disappear between Mar 16 and today. Plus, whatever the normal view count would have gone up for those five days. (250-300/day)

Views between Mar 1 and 16 rose 4,294. Total Views stats between Mar 16 and Mar 22 declined 770.

 

[SimonDoom]

To follow up on what Notwise said:

I track my stats several times a week, including views, votes, favorites, and score. I've been doing this since 2017.

Around July 15, 2020, I noticed that I was losing votes in large numbers, despite the fact that views continued to go up just as before. This lasted about three weeks, as I recall. I attributed it to a new and more aggressive sweep system, and it didn't bother me.

Starting three days ago and coinciding with the adoption of the new page as the default page, I noticed that I was losing votes in unusually large numbers again, as well as not gaining any views. In the last three days I've gained about 3% as many views per day as I did before.

Favorites and followers have increased at about the same rate as they did before, so I surmise that real views/reads haven't changed at all. It's the Site's ability to record and report new views/votes that has changed.