Story score percentiles - LW versus the rest

Removing unregistered voting/commenting would decimate the feedback here. We all love the traffic we get here but the feedback is roughly 1 vote per 100 hits and 1 comment per 1000 hits. If we disallow unregistered voting, the traffic hits might stay the same but the votes and comments would probably at least cut in half and so many of us live and die with scores and comments.

So ask yourself, do want as much feedback as possible or do you want the comments to trickle so long as you protect the score from a few 1-bombs? That is the tradeoff. You can't have both.
 
I don't think that Lit cares about any of this, especially not due to the reasons of fairness and rankings. As with every other issue on the website, it's likely they don't want to be bothered about it, or they simply don't want to take anything away from unregistered users.
I've tried to point out at other times in these AH threads that the LitE website provides us with their FREE service to post our shitty porn stories.

Nothing is FREE, someone is always paying for the resources we take for granted! And in any website like this, it's the advertisers we see along the page borders who pay for it. The website calculates their price for those ads based on the number of "clicks" they have viewing their pages.

Sooo... anything which might discourage anyone from clicking on their web pages is a bad thing for the website admins, and ultimately for all of us, since the website will not have the resources paid for by those ads!

EDIT: The narcissists focused on their "5s" would tear it all down for all of us with their demands to exclude the trolls.
 
Some time ago I pushed for the option to disallow anonymous voting, and what I meant was disallowing unregistered voting. Unregistered voting is one of the principal causes of voting manipulation on Lit.
The only thing 'registered' voting or assigning a name to an account is that it slows people down from stacking votes. Now they can use their name or anonymous on the same device. The author has no idea if I vote 1 or 5 unless I tell them in the comments.
In some genres, the number of votes makes a big difference just by the numbers involved. in LW where the readership and numbers of votes cast are so large, it makes far less difference.
Be that as it may, I use the score when selecting stories to read. Sometimes I see a decent description with a poor rating and read it (or begin). More often than not, I tend to agree that the low score was a decent indicator I should have stayed away.
And of course, a view is not an indicator of people who read the story. They could have just opened the story for a few seconds to glance over comments or whatever.
 
When anonymous voting was allowed on Lush, authors were allowed to disallow it on their stories. Wouldja believe it? They all had perfect 5 scores on nearly everything they posted! ( And 1/5 the votes of anyone who didn't use the setting ) Then they added the ability to force anyone casting a vote to leave a comment as well. Even more perfect 5s and even fewer votes for those delicate flowers!

Every time someone complained about something "unfair", they "fixed it" and two days later, somebody else was complaining about something else for them to fix. It reached the point where a good quarter to half of the toplist in every category was perfect 5s, and every 4 was a deathblow that caused even more screeching than all the previous screeches they'd "fixed".

And once you eliminate anonymous voting ( especially on a site that's had it for 25 years ) and the vote totals drop off a cliff, it only takes a couple of accounts that can easily be set up to be completely disassociated from each other with a VPN and have the same impact as tossing a dozen anonymous 1s at a story. As the scores inflate, ( which they will ) it takes even less effort, and the value of a "bomb" increases to the point where you no longer need to use a 1. Then no need for a 2. 3... It becomes harder and harder to determine what's a malicious vote, simply empowering the trolls, and labeling anyone ( even more than it already is ) who doesn't cast a 5 every time as a troll.

I'm not speculating. I literally watched this stupidity unfold elsewhere. The more barriers you throw in front of regular people, the less effort they'll put into trying. Trolls on the other hand have a goal, and will do whatever it takes to achieve it, which fortunately for them isn't much once you radically tilt the math in their favor.
I feel it's somewhat unfair that Simon has taken the name "Doom." It would favor you better in my opinion as you always bring these catastrophic stories about SOL and Lush experiences when someone proposes some new idea for Literotica. I could throw many counterarguments your way but we kinda had this discussion already, more than once, and no real engagement happened either time, so I have no reason to think that this time it would be any different.

I'll just point out that there are vast differences between Lit, Lush, and SOL. SOL allows only registered users to vote and I see no catastrophe there. On my own stories on SOL, I received only like 10-15% fewer votes than here on Lit. That's no catastrophe in my book.
 
Removing unregistered voting/commenting would decimate the feedback here. We all love the traffic we get here but the feedback is roughly 1 vote per 100 hits and 1 comment per 1000 hits. If we disallow unregistered voting, the traffic hits might stay the same but the votes and comments would probably at least cut in half and so many of us live and die with scores and comments.

So ask yourself, do want as much feedback as possible or do you want the comments to trickle so long as you protect the score from a few 1-bombs? That is the tradeoff. You can't have both.
You are talking apples and oranges. There is no reason whatsoever why voting and commenting should be tied together. I am all for letting every reader comment, registered or not. But not to vote. Those are two separate things.
Right now, you can disallow anonymous commenting on your stories but you can't disallow anonymous voting. To be honest, I don't understand why would anyone disallow anonymous comments, especially since every author can delete those with one click.
 
How bad a problem is this, really, other than as something that subjectively bothers the relatively small handful of authors who complain about it in this forum? I think we're speculating.
This is a good question. Considering I was a target of bombing for months, I can vouch for the frustration it causes. At the time, it was a major thing because Laurel had to deal with it every day. Several authors, maybe even dozens, were being continuously hit with the bombings and Laurel had to act daily to try to reduce the effects. This I know for sure and I have Laurel's PMs to prove it. And we even know who was doing it then, but all Laurel did was sweep or manually reset the votes every day for multiple authors, her only plan being - to use her own words - "waiting for the bombers to get tired of doing it."
So this is no speculation. This all happened and as I said, I can prove it. And I know about this only because I was one of the targets. I have no trouble imagining how often things like this happen as there are tens of thousands of authors on Lit, and likely at least as many trolls, especially in certain categories and kinks.
 
I feel it's somewhat unfair that Simon has taken the name "Doom." It would favor you better in my opinion as you always bring these catastrophic stories about SOL and Lush experiences when someone proposes some new idea for Literotica. I could throw many counterarguments your way but we kinda had this discussion already, more than once, and no real engagement happened either time, so I have no reason to think that this time it would be any different.

I'll just point out that there are vast differences between Lit, Lush, and SOL. SOL allows only registered users to vote and I see no catastrophe there. On my own stories, I received only like 10-15% fewer votes than here on Lit. That's no catastrophe in my book.
If you think your experience with primarily Sci-Fi & Fantasy is in any way representative of the real difference between how many votes you get there vs. here, you're sadly mistaken. There are a couple of genres that do indeed perform nearly as well as on here ( and some that do even better ) but the majority are woefully distant.

Using Les since I have a mix of fantasy and other stuff in that pen name, and I release everything near simultaneously ( # of votes with Lit first )

Mom's Stocking Stuffer 4953 vs. 498 Incest
Mom's Second Chance 4726 vs. 554 Incest
Inhertitance 1616 vs. 234 Mature
Center Piece 547 vs. 143 Group
Finding Karen 1112 vs. 535 Romance

Now, some fantasy:

Steward of the Wood 586 vs. 664
Secret of the Wood 725 vs. 368
Heart of the Wood 526 vs. 346
Little Fuckers 297 vs. 286
Serpentine Destiny 338 vs. 295
 
If you think your experience with primarily Sci-Fi & Fantasy is in any way representative of the real difference between how many votes you get there vs. here, you're sadly mistaken. There are a couple of genres that do indeed perform nearly as well as on here ( and some that do even better ) but the majority are woefully distant.

Using Les since I have a mix of fantasy and other stuff in that pen name, and I release everything near simultaneously ( # of votes with Lit first )

Mom's Stocking Stuffer 4953 vs. 498 Incest
Mom's Second Chance 4726 vs. 554 Incest
Inhertitance 1616 vs. 234 Mature
Center Piece 547 vs. 143 Group
Finding Karen 1112 vs. 535 Romance

Now, some fantasy:

Steward of the Wood 586 vs. 664
Secret of the Wood 725 vs. 368
Heart of the Wood 526 vs. 346
Little Fuckers 297 vs. 286
Serpentine Destiny 338 vs. 295
That's some interesting data so thank you for showing that.
I am sure you know the difference in traffic between Lit and SOL. So if we truly want to be fair and analytical, how can we properly make a comparison? Simon just said that Lit has 10 times the traffic that SOL has. So can you honestly claim that the considerably lower amount of votes that you get on SOL is due to the fact that unregistered users can't vote on SOL and not due to the fact that SOL has so much less traffic? It's apples and oranges and you know it.

To be fair, my own example was apples and oranges too, but at least it made sense as I showed that on a more restrictive website with far less traffic, I still get almost the same number of votes as on Lit. Maybe it is as you say, maybe the SF category is special in this sense, I don't know. But I know we are comparing apples and oranges the whole time here.
 
This is a good question. Considering I was a target of bombing for months, I can vouch for the frustration it causes. At the time, it was a major thing because Laurel had to deal with it every day. Several authors, maybe even dozens, were being continuously hit with the bombings and Laurel had to act daily to try to reduce the effects. This I know for sure and I have Laurel's PMs to prove it. And we even know who was doing it then, but all Laurel did was sweep or manually reset the votes every day for multiple authors, her only plan being - to use her own words - "waiting for the bombers to get tired of doing it."
So this is no speculation. This all happened and as I said, I can prove it. And I know about this only because I was one of the targets. I have no trouble imagining how often things like this happen as there are tens of thousands of authors on Lit, and likely at least as many trolls, especially in certain categories and kinks.

But I still have to ask, sincerely, how is any of this a problem? Take you as an example. You have very highly-rated stories. Your average story score is significantly higher than my average story score. A reader scanning your stories would say, "This person's stories get high ratings!" I don't see the cause for complaint. From the standpoint of the prospective reader -- which is the only thing that REALLY matters, nor our feelings -- the system seems to be working, regardless of how many bombs you think you are getting. We are all subject to this. I know I get bombed sometimes.

My advice to authors who are bothered by this is: stop caring so much. It happens to all of us. Some of those who complain the most seem to be those with the highest average scores, and that, to me, seems odd. Concentrate on writing stories often, acquiring followers, and enjoying the good feedback you get. In your case, you get plenty of positive comments. I think you have a tough case to prove that there is any real "problem" to solve.
 
But I still have to ask, sincerely, how is any of this a problem?
While maybe not a huge problem, it's still a problem in my opinion. Readers use scores to sift through the stories so they matter whether we like it or not. Bombings and other lower scale voting manipulations affect scores, top-list spots, etc. As shown by dozens of threads here in AH, authors fret about scores because they recognize the impact scores have on readers' choices.

Take you as an example. You have very highly-rated stories. Your average story score is significantly higher than my average story score. A reader scanning your stories would say, "This person's stories get high ratings!" I don't see the cause for complaint.
If you wanted to make that particular point you didn't choose a good example. My scores, as high as you find them (in part courtesy of the SF category) are considerably lower than what they used to be prior to the bombings. Three of my chapters were at one time or another in the top three in the all-time Top List. One of the chapters held the #1 spot in that same all-time list for a week or so. I have the screenshots if I need to prove that. Before the bombings, I always had at least one chapter in the top 10 or 20. Now my scores are high but not that high for SF and they are nowhere near of even entering the top 500 list, let alone the top 10 list.
 
That's some interesting data so thank you for showing that.
I am sure you know the difference in traffic between Lit and SOL. So if we truly want to be fair and analytical, how can we properly make a comparison? Simon just said that Lit has 10 times the traffic that SOL has. So can you honestly claim that the considerably lower amount of votes that you get on SOL is due to the fact that unregistered users can't vote on SOL and not due to the fact that SOL has so much less traffic? It's apples and oranges and you know it.

To be fair, my own example was apples and oranges too, but at least it made sense as I showed that on a more restrictive website with far less traffic, I still get almost the same number of votes as on Lit. Maybe it is as you say, maybe the SF category is special in this sense, I don't know. But I know we are comparing apples and oranges the whole time here.
Of course the amount of traffic has bearing on it. That example was exclusively to demonstrate to you that you're coming from an outlier perspective. Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Westerns, and a few other things defy the traffic differences. SOL has always been members-only voting, and a sign-up is required to even view full stories. That's a critical point. You can't see more than a preview without an account. The only people who are reading there are those willing to sign up, and it always has been.

You're telling me that if you forced people to sign up here, that you think you'd still be getting about the same number of votes in both places? Come on now. Think about how lazy the average person is, then realize half of them are lazier than that. Look at how few votes per view we get now. Do you really think throwing a required sign-up to a porn site in front of that is going to be a wash? That people aren't going to just shrug, toss away their cum-rag and go to sleep instead when they get a prompt to sign up?

And again, I watched it happen on Lush. With all the people who had anonymous turned off getting a fraction of the votes I was getting. When they blocked anonymous voting all-together. The vote totals fell off a cliff.

Let's throw another statistic block out there. Lush lets you read without an account as much as you want. ( You have to earn reads on a free account at SOL ) Their traffic rating is very similar to SOLs, and was once even higher before they made a phenomenal blunder by banishing the incest category and all its stories with no warning and being snarky/threatening to anyone who complained. They then followed it up with going to freemium and putting a bunch of features behind a paywall because traffic and revenue fell off a cliff. I've been there only a few years less than I've been here. About 5 or 7 I think. This is going to be a little wonky, because I was forced to split into multiple parts because of a max 10k word per submission limit, but here's the vote totals for those same stories.

Mom's Stocking Stuffer 105
Mom's Second Chance 111
Inhertitance 107 & 68
Center Piece 30
Finding Karen 19

Steward of the Wood 12
Secret of the Wood 4 & 7
Heart of the Wood 6 & 7
Little Fuckers 27
Serpentine Destiny 17

That's nearly equal traffic, with the difference being they went from wide open to steadily more restricted. Inhertitance is a good data point here, because it came out on all three sites at the same time long after the turmoil had settled. Really wish I had the old totals from before the anonymous votes were banished.
 
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You are talking apples and oranges. There is no reason whatsoever why voting and commenting should be tied together. I am all for letting every reader comment, registered or not. But not to vote. Those are two separate things.
Right now, you can disallow anonymous commenting on your stories but you can't disallow anonymous voting. To be honest, I don't understand why would anyone disallow anonymous comments, especially since every author can delete those with one click.

Are you kidding? There is a definite correlation between voting and comments. How many commenters tell you how they voted?

Loved it. 5 stars!

had a good premise but lost me with the meandering plot and weak ending. I can only give this a 3.


etc.

If you disallow anonymous voting, you have to disallow it across the board, unless you bar stories that choose non-anon votes from leader boards and contests. You obviously haven't thought this through.
 
Are you kidding? There is a definite correlation between voting and comments. How many commenters tell you how they voted?

Loved it. 5 stars!

had a good premise but lost me with the meandering plot and weak ending. I can only give this a 3.


etc.

If you disallow anonymous voting, you have to disallow it across the board, unless you bar stories that choose non-anon votes from leader boards and contests. You obviously haven't thought this through.
I've no idea what you wanted to say here? Is your point that, since those who comment are likely to have voted as well, if I disallow anonymous voting, I also won't be getting those anonymous comments? While it's possible that there would be such cases, I don't see why anonymous readers would act like that on a larger scale. Also, I don't know about you, but as far as I can remember, I get most of the comments from registered users.

As for your second claim, I don't see how letting both stories with and without anonymous voting into contests and top lists would be any more unfair than what we have now. The ease with which one person can cast multiple votes now trumps every other fairness factor in my view.
 
As for your second claim, I don't see how letting both stories with and without anonymous voting into contests and top lists would be any more unfair than what we have now. The ease with which one person can cast multiple votes now trumps every other fairness factor in my view.

I don't understand this point. Let's stipulate for the moment that a system that allows one person to cast multiple votes is unfair. OK. I agree with that, but that's a risk of unfairness that all of us as authors face.

Your argument appears to be based on the assumption that allowing unregistered voters will entail a lot more multiple voting, and multiple NEGATIVE voting, the result of which will be lower scores overall than a system in which only registered readers can vote. Let's assume that's true.

If that's true, then allowing some authors to disable anonymous voting while others allow it completely breaks the system. The system is worthless and unfair. Authors who disable anonymous voting will have higher scores than authors who allow it. But readers won't know who allows what. They will face a scoring system where the scoring is completely different for some groups of stories than for others, and they'll have NO IDEA which are which!

That cannot be defended. A system in which we all face the same risk of multiple voting in equal measure obviously is more fair than a system where some authors are scored on one scale and others on another but READERS HAVE NO IDEA WHO IS WHO.

You say in your case you've had stories that were at the tops of toplists but because of downvoting the scores dropped. So what? If we all face that, so what? I've had that happen too. In 2023 I had a story place in a contest with a score of 4.92 and after the placement went public it immediately got downvoted. Now it's nowhere near the top. So? You are still doing really, really well compared to others. People read your stories, and they comment favorably on your stories, and they give them high scores. You've been done an injustice because your story isn't number 2 on some toplist anymore? Seriously? I don't see an objective cause for complaint.
 
As for your second claim, I don't see how letting both stories with and without anonymous voting into contests and top lists would be any more unfair than what we have now. The ease with which one person can cast multiple votes now trumps every other fairness factor in my view.

On one hand YOU are the one claiming that unregistered voters are dragging your scores down and knocking you off the toplists.

On the other hand you claim that stories with unregistered votes disallowed won't get a boost in score compared to stories which allow them.

So how does this work? Disallowing unregistered votes will keep your scores up yet at the same time will still allow even footing with stories which allow? One of these statements has to be false. I'll let you pick which one. Either way, I repeat, you haven't thought this through.
 
As I said, I'm very happy to have improvements to my method proposed. Although I'm probably not going to repeat the process as there was some manual labour involved!
That's a shame because it would be interesting to find out which category was most generous with the scoring... not that I would take advantage of that knowledge
like hell I wouldn't...
 
I've no idea what you wanted to say here? Is your point that, since those who comment are likely to have voted as well, if I disallow anonymous voting, I also won't be getting those anonymous comments?

Absolutely, yes.

I'm not sure what it's like waaay up there in your lovely tower of high traffic and toplists, but down here in the unworthy manure pile where I am my stories usually go weeks between votes. I always know when the sweeps come through because my vote totals drop. I don't even watch my scores that closely. That's how easy it is for me to spot. I will tell you that 90% of the time when I get a new comment (which is super fucking rare) my vote total goes up by 1. It makes perfect sense. Voting takes an effort, but it's nothing compared to commenting. If someone goes to the lengths to actually get off their ass and leave a comment, they will almost certainly click a star on the way out the door.[/u]
 
I don't understand this point. Let's stipulate for the moment that a system that allows one person to cast multiple votes is unfair. OK. I agree with that, but that's a risk of unfairness that all of us as authors face.

Your argument appears to be based on the assumption that allowing unregistered voters will entail a lot more multiple voting, and multiple NEGATIVE voting, the result of which will be lower scores overall than a system in which only registered readers can vote. Let's assume that's true.

If that's true, then allowing some authors to disable anonymous voting while others allow it completely breaks the system. The system is worthless and unfair. Authors who disable anonymous voting will have higher scores than authors who allow it. But readers won't know who allows what. They will face a scoring system where the scoring is completely different for some groups of stories than for others, and they'll have NO IDEA which are which!

That cannot be defended. A system in which we all face the same risk of multiple voting in equal measure obviously is more fair than a system where some authors are scored on one scale and others on another but READERS HAVE NO IDEA WHO IS WHO.

You say in your case you've had stories that were at the tops of toplists but because of downvoting the scores dropped. So what? If we all face that, so what? I've had that happen too. In 2023 I had a story place in a contest with a score of 4.92 and after the placement went public it immediately got downvoted. Now it's nowhere near the top. So? You are still doing really, really well compared to others. People read your stories, and they comment favorably on your stories, and they give them high scores. You've been done an injustice because your story isn't number 2 on some toplist anymore? Seriously? I don't see an objective cause for complaint.
Right. First of all, my stories weren't simply being downvoted, they were bombed, continuously. My scores would go from 4.94 to under 4.00 during one day, even if the 4.94 score was supported by about 400 votes at the time. Laurel would then reset the score, and the same thing would happen the next day, and the next day, and the next day.... and so on, until I decided to take the stories down. So don't tell me how everyone gets the same. That's pure bullshit. This was done by one person (and maybe their group of buddies), a group who thought they could rule this place and decide which author gets which score and who gets which position on the top lists. And I ended up being the target because I stood up to them, unlike most of the people here.

Putting all those events aside, please tell me something. I do see that maybe stories with and without anonymous voting wouldn't be in the same situation when it comes to contests and top lists. There are ways to solve that by, for example, not letting stories with anonymous voting off to participate in contests. Or something like that.

But there is one glaring inconsistency in your position. At first, you are making a big deal because of the fact that not all stories would be in the same situation for contests and top lists. That's fair. But near the end of your post, you claim that me losing my spots in the top lists and even falling completely off the list as a consequence of malicious voting, is not an injustice or an objective cause for complaint?

Is this a personal thing about me or something? How is it that it would be a big deal for all those authors and their stories competing unequally if I had my way, but it isn't a big deal for myself and similar authors who were pushed off top lists and maybe lost in contests as a result of voting manipulation in the present system? And don't tell me how everyone gets the same amount of trolling, now that's pure bullshit. if all authors suffer the same amount of bombing as I did, why are there so many 4.9+ stories in SF?

To prove my point, these were my stable scores before the bombings started. They were stable for months.


1737922534376.png

Look at the dates. The bombing began at some point in August 2023.
 
On one hand YOU are the one claiming that unregistered voters are dragging your scores down and knocking you off the toplists.

On the other hand you claim that stories with unregistered votes disallowed won't get a boost in score compared to stories which allow them.

So how does this work? Disallowing unregistered votes will keep your scores up yet at the same time will still allow even footing with stories which allow? One of these statements has to be false. I'll let you pick which one. Either way, I repeat, you haven't thought this through.
With my idea, everyone can choose to disallow anonymous voting and thus protect themselves from trolls if that is important to them? That's the part that makes a difference. As an author, you can choose. But I can't choose not to get bombed right now, no matter what I do. I do get your point and I am not claiming it's a perfect solution. But I do claim that it's a solution that is more fair than what we have now, and that it's one that gives us a choice.

Also, all of this is based on the assumption of Lit letting us choose whether to allow or disallow anonymous voting. But if Lit made that choice for everyone by disallowing anonymous voting globally (not commenting though), then we would all be in the same boat.
 
But there is one glaring inconsistency in your position. At first, you are making a big deal because of the fact that not all stories would be in the same situation for contests and top lists. That's fair. But near the end of your post, you claim that me losing my spots in the top lists and even falling completely off the list as a consequence of malicious voting, is not an injustice or an objective cause for complaint?

That's not what he said. He argued that it's the same for everyone - at least everyone who is on a toplist. How many threads did we have in the AH last December posted by people who had stories bombed down the toplists during the Xmas contest? Everyone across the board in pretty much every category was getting bombed down the list. So as far as toplists go, fair is pretty much fair.

And I will tell you that you don't have to be on a toplist to get bombed. All that you have to do is piss off the wrong person either with something that you wrote in a story, or something that you posted on the forum, or something that you said in chat. I know when my entire catalog gets a single 1-vote across the board 10 mins after I post something on the forum exactly what happened. I have 11 stories and right now combined they have less than 400 votes. I've probably had at least 100 votes swept off of my account over the years. That's 25% of my votes and I'm a nobody, so yes it happens to everyone.
 
And I will tell you that you don't have to be on a toplist to get bombed. All that you have to do is piss off the wrong person either with something that you wrote in a story, or something that you posted on the forum, or something that you said in chat.
:):):)

See that is exactly what I am claiming too. I got targeted precisely because of my forum involvement and for calling out that cabal of commenters at the time. Before that, I suffered only regular downvoting, top-list sniping, etc, same as everyone else.
So it's not the same for everyone. It was the same for me as for everyone else for more than a year, until I stood up for something on the forum. Knowing your personality and the nature of your posts it's not hard to see that you set off trolls too, and since you have so few votes, it reflects in your scores more easily. I am pretty sure even that I said something along those lines as a comment on one of your stories. Also, some people likely suffer more trolling due to the kinks they write.
Not everyone gets the same amount of trolling and malicious voting so it's not the same for everyone in the present system. That's the bullshit I am trying to disprove here.
 
The Sci-Fi & Fantasy topist has always been one of the more volatile ones due to the lower vote totals, and thus easier manipulation. There actually aren't very many 4.9s any more. ( at least on the all-time toplist ) where it indeed used to be pretty much the whole first 50.

I'm not saying you didn't pick up a personal troll, because that's hardly outside the realm of probability, but you also have to realize that unless the trolls are doing a little research, they don't see the effects of their bombing on the actual toplist for 24 hours. Also, if you have 1 troll each from several different fandoms, each is starting from the toplist, even if they do go to a page that updates more often to see the results of their evil deeds. So, they don't know that fandom one has already bombed you. Neither do fandom three or four, so on and so forth. They all drop their 1s, and then when things update, it's into the cellar with you.

The normal course of toplist manipulation by rabid fans can have the same effect as a personal troll when you're up in that top quarter of the toplist first page.

If you do ask for a sweep on a story that's been bombed from the toplist, you're better off asking for a sweep of the toplist — especially if you see obvious evidence that you're not the only one taking damage. That will pick up more data points than simply sweeping your story, and you help out other people who've been bombed as well.

In the end, the trolls are still going to come back. You just have to keep plugging away, getting new followers, and building up that cushion of votes to make it harder to bomb you down the next time. Once you have enough votes, you'll fall less from the trolling, and they'll quit as soon as you're below their darling, but you'll still be positioned to pick up new readers, rather than dropped into the hinterlands, out of sight, out of mind.
 
Right. First of all, my stories weren't simply being downvoted, they were bombed, continuously. My scores would go from 4.94 to under 4.00 during one day, even if the 4.94 score was supported by about 400 votes at the time. Laurel would then reset the score, and the same thing would happen the next day, and the next day, and the next day.... and so on, until I decided to take the stories down. So don't tell me how everyone gets the same. That's pure bullshit. This was done by one person (and maybe their group of buddies), a group who thought they could rule this place and decide which author gets which score and who gets which position on the top lists. And I ended up being the target because I stood up to them, unlike most of the people here.

Putting all those events aside, please tell me something. I do see that maybe stories with and without anonymous voting wouldn't be in the same situation when it comes to contests and top lists. There are ways to solve that by, for example, not letting stories with anonymous voting off to participate in contests. Or something like that.

But there is one glaring inconsistency in your position. At first, you are making a big deal because of the fact that not all stories would be in the same situation for contests and top lists. That's fair. But near the end of your post, you claim that me losing my spots in the top lists and even falling completely off the list as a consequence of malicious voting, is not an injustice or an objective cause for complaint?

Is this a personal thing about me or something? How is it that it would be a big deal for all those authors and their stories competing unequally if I had my way, but it isn't a big deal for myself and similar authors who were pushed off top lists and maybe lost in contests as a result of voting manipulation in the present system? And don't tell me how everyone gets the same amount of trolling, now that's pure bullshit. if all authors suffer the same amount of bombing as I did, why are there so many 4.9+ stories in SF?

To prove my point, these were my stable scores before the bombings started. They were stable for months.


View attachment 2478079

Look at the dates. The bombing began at some point in August 2023.

First of all, there's nothing personal thing about you, at all. This isn't personal at all.

If you had a story go from 4.94 to 4.00 in one day, when it had about 400 votes, that's an extreme situation. I've had some downvoting, but nothing like that. But I don't understand your numbers. My typical view:vote ratio is around 90:1. Even if you cut that in half, if you had 400 votes that should be at least 20,000 views. Apparently you withdrew and then resubmitted the stories starting in Dec. 2023, and chapter 1 currently has 13,500 views, and a score of 4.65. In the list you provided above, it had a score of 4.8. Your others averaged 4.93. That is an extraordinarily high score. The average for chapters 2-4 now is 4.75, with average views of around 5500. Based on my experience, that would translate to a maximum number of votes of around 100. That's low enough that there's still a reasonably high degree of natural variability.

If you truly got bombed to that degree, then I can understand your complaint. I have not faced anything quite like that. It would be frustrating, I'm sure. You have a personal cause for complaint, but that's not the same thing as saying it's a good reason to change the rule for everyone. There's a compelling reason to make sure ALL stories are scored via the same system, and not just for contest reasons. Scores exist for readers. The system should be the same for everybody to communicate the best and most accurate information for everyone. That's not to say that injustice may not happen to some authors.

I'm curious: you obviously resubmitted the stories starting in Dec. 2023, and those four stories have scores of 4.65, 4.75, 4.74, and 4.76. Those scores aren't astronomical, but they're very good. Have you observed damaging downvoting with them since the resubmission? I appreciate that it's frustrating to see that level of downvoting, but my overall story score average is around 4.53 and the scores have never impeded my ability to get views and favorites, so I continue to have trouble seeing what the "injustice" is in the bigger sense. You seem to be doing fine in terms of views and scores and favorites, and comments, too.
 
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