Thank you 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

[RejectReality]

No joke, no one here has more knowledge in these matters than @RejectReality and not just the sweeps, trolls etc, but just about all things Lit and how it works to the point there were some here who thought he was a 'mole' who worked for Lit and spied on us peasants.

*More general knowledge gleaned with time, persistence, and paying attention to folks who genuinely knew things. I can and have been wrong in the past.

WeirdHarold was the one who knew bloody everything. I really miss him. LOL

 

[lovecraft68]

*More general knowledge gleaned with time, persistence, and paying attention to folks who genuinely knew things. I can and have been wrong in the past.

WeirdHarold was the one who knew bloody everything. I really miss him. LOL

Wow, I haven't thought of him in a long time. You're right, he was a damn Lit legend. Wrote some great How to essays

But you have a good point on paying attention over time and gaining tribal knowledge on how things work.

In sports they have the 'coaching' tree and I think that applies here as well. I've picked up a lot from you, and TX Rad taught me a lot both here and in the publishing market. I've passed some of those things on to others and they'll do the same.

Pay it forward is an important thing to do.

 

[liftmykilt]

I just assumed that the 1 star review people were just part of the Literotica experience. I see it happening, but figured there was nothing I could do but hope the legit reviews outweighed them. So, should I go on Bluesky and try to message these people? I find it hard to believe anyone would care, but it's worth a try. It's very discouraging when a small group of users have that much ability to keep you down.

 

[EmilyMiller]

So, should I go on Bluesky and try to message these people?

I messaged the site on BlueSky at @MelissaBaby’s suggestion.

The idea that any of the trolls have BlueSky accounts is going to make me smile all day .

 

[StillStunned]

Now that I do find funny, especially when I learned that said crush is actually a British guy in their 50s who's very chatable.

Is this supposed to be a reference to me?

 

[Comshaw]

People,

There is a very easy solution to your Emily-related discombobulation. Put me on ignore.

No more threads that disturb your inner peace. No more posts that elevate your blood pressure. It’s the obvious thing to do and will make your Authors’ Hangout experience so much more serene.

Why anyone would chose not to do this is beyond me. Unless of course they get some sort of twisted gratification out of being constantly outraged. Unless they get off on hate-posting. Unless they care very deeply about what I think of them and really want to share.

But I’m sure no one here is that warped, right?

I’ll miss you terribly, but use the ignore button. It’s what it’s for.

Peace!

Aw my dear, it feels good to be right, huh? You can use that to needle all those you dislike for a while like the above comments. Congratulations.

I will add that I am happy for you that Laurel found and removed the troll votes she did. The data you had in that other thread did not indicate the depth of the problem. 164 was it? Damn! Someone wanted you on a skewer. No one who posts stories here should ever have crap like that happen to them.

Personally, I'll never understand anyone who would do something like that from the shadows. If I'm going to (virtually speaking, well sometimes anyway) bite someone on the ass, I'm going to make sure they know who did it and why.

I will not say I was wrong in my argument over yonder. I wasn't. I always argued that dismissing all other options (and there were a few) while insisting only one was correct was a flawed conclusion, even if in the end it proved to be correct. Based only on the data you shared, it could have been several other things.

Be that as it may, again, congratulations on getting the troll votes removed.


Comshaw

 

[unadulterable]

The problems I have been experiencing with industrial carpet bombing on my latest works have been resolved (at least for now, I’m not that naive!)

Since some time yesterday afternoon, I’ve had 160 - one hundred and sixty FFS - malicious votes removed from my most recent seven stories. As best I can figure (and I can figure pretty well): 143 x 1️ and 17 x 2️. That’s 21% of the votes previously cast.

ONE IN FIVE VOTES WAS MALICIOUS!

That’s even higher than I thought.

I had contacted the site and - with her permission - copied @MelissaBaby. Maybe she was my lucky charm as this note led to very extensive action.

I’d like to thank Melissa, I’d like to thank @Cacatua_Galerita who came up with a data visualization that seemed to explain my issue really well. I’d even like to thank my troll for making their activities so blatantly obvious in the last two days (17 malicious votes FFS).

But I’d mostly like to thank @Laurel and @Manu for acknowledging this problem and acting.

I have spoken to some authors who saw mild changes in their portfolio as well. Perhaps that is total coincidence, but my hope is the that site was trialling a more robust approach to sweeps; one that may catch more of the modern trolling. I hope so.

But anyway, I’m really pleased (understatement) to have had this response. Putting a year of effort into something - and pouring your soul into it - only to see it trashed is an appalling feeling. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

Happy girl today .

Really great news, and thoroughly deserved! Congratulations on your success after such sustained effort!

It would be good to see a more structured and nuanced voting system that allowed recognition, or valid criticism, of the many dimensions of a story; quality of writing, character development, originality, wit, spelling and grammar (for those who demand it), eroticism, and of course whether you actually liked it.

A special category of "I hate this author and I want ia to know it" could be used by the honest trolls (oxymoron?), and an AI could readily be trained to populate that field from observing voting pattern.

 

[unadulterable]

Keep trying. Illegitimi non carborundum!

I think that would need to be noli illegitimis carborundari - imperative, with ablative and passive infinitive - but I'll stand corrected if someone knows better.

 

[Voboy]

It would be good to see a more structured and nuanced voting system that allowed recognition, or valid criticism, of the many dimensions of a story; quality of writing, character development, originality, wit, spelling and grammar (for those who demand it), eroticism, and of course whether you actually liked it.

Increasing the complexity of voting strikes me as a wonderful way to depress voting numbers. I don't think anybody wants that.

 

[unadulterable]

Increasing the complexity of voting strikes me as a wonderful way to depress voting numbers. I don't think anybody wants that.

Actually, those who take the time to write lengthy comments might welcome it. It could sit alongside the simple star rating to help elaborate it if desired. For competitions, the more detailed voting might be mandated.

 

[lovecraft68]

Increasing the complexity of voting strikes me as a wonderful way to depress voting numbers. I don't think anybody wants that.

The system is fine, the people abusing it are the problem and no matter what you come up with, they will find a way because the sad thing about this is it proves trolls are far more willing to make an effort to be hurtful than people are to be positive.

On that note we always lament how few people vote compared to views (and far less comment) and taking a second to click a star is as easy as it gets. Make it harder and like you said it will reduce people voting even more.

 

[RejectReality]

Increasing the complexity of voting strikes me as a wonderful way to depress voting numbers. I don't think anybody wants that.

People also likely wouldn't use it as intended. SOL ran a several years long experiment with nuanced voting. Plot, Technical Quality, and Appeal is how I remember the divisions. Few people used it, and most who did gave straight scores across the board, so it was little more than a normal vote with extra steps.

They kept normal overall score voting in place while running this experiment, so it didn't depress vote totals, but it was eventually abandoned as a waste of time, page space, and storage space with the appeal rating ( which was what was used for the average score anyway ) converted to the singular vote upon its removal.

 

[Rob_Royale]

 

[Voboy]

Actually, those who take the time to write lengthy comments might welcome it. It could sit alongside the simple star rating to help elaborate it if desired. For competitions, the more detailed voting might be mandated.

Check out comment numbers vs vote numbers vs view numbers.

"Those who take the time to write lengthy comments" are a vanishingly small minority of our readers. If that's what a reader needed to do to cast votes, we'd be lucky to get more than twenty on any given story. No thank you.

You'd find that the eligibility threshold for contest wins would need to be dropped from 25 to about... five. And no rating based on so few votes is anything but a joke.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Really great news, and thoroughly deserved! Congratulations on your success after such sustained effort!

It would be good to see a more structured and nuanced voting system that allowed recognition, or valid criticism, of the many dimensions of a story; quality of writing, character development, originality, wit, spelling and grammar (for those who demand it), eroticism, and of course whether you actually liked it.

A special category of "I hate this author and I want ia to know it" could be used by the honest trolls (oxymoron?), and an AI could readily be trained to populate that field from observing voting pattern.

It's like pulling teeth to get readers to click on a star, I don't think they're going to fill out a questionnaire.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Actually, those who take the time to write lengthy comments might welcome it. It could sit alongside the simple star rating to help elaborate it if desired. For competitions, the more detailed voting might be mandated.

In my experience, readers who write lengthy comments tend to mostly want to tell you how they would have written it better.

 

[Djmac1031]

In my experience, readers who write lengthy comments tend to mostly want to tell you how they would have written it better.

"This was a really good story. Except let me tell you how it should have gone..."

 

[lovecraft68]

In my experience, readers who write lengthy comments tend to mostly want to tell you how they would have written it better.

There is a lot of that in LW. I got one the other day where after a couple of paragraphs of talking about the story they then 'wrote a letter' to one of the characters and I stopped after a few sentences, dumped it in word and say it was 1600 words. I suppose that could be flattering to get that reaction, but I see it more as them just using the story to go into a personal sermon.

 

[lovecraft68]

People also likely wouldn't use it as intended. SOL ran a several years long experiment with nuanced voting. Plot, Technical Quality, and Appeal is how I remember the divisions. Few people used it, and most who did gave straight scores across the board, so it was little more than a normal vote with extra steps.

They kept normal overall score voting in place while running this experiment, so it didn't depress vote totals, but it was eventually abandoned as a waste of time, page space, and storage space with the appeal rating ( which was what was used for the average score anyway ) converted to the singular vote upon its removal.

Basically it would be like E-bay which gives you four things to rate a seller on and like you said I usually just click the same for all of them unless there was some kind of actual issue

 

[Voboy]

There is a lot of that in LW. I got one the other day where after a couple of paragraphs of talking about the story they then 'wrote a letter' to one of the characters and I stopped after a few sentences, dumped it in word and say it was 1600 words. I suppose that could be flattering to get that reaction, but I see it more as them just using the story to go into a personal sermon.

Those are some of the few comments I delete.

You want to write your own piece? Type it up and submit it like everyone else. Don't piggyback on my comments section.

 

[RejectReality]

Basically it would be like E-bay which gives you four things to rate a seller on and like you said I usually just click the same for all of them unless there was some kind of actual issue

Jayzus, it's been a long time since I used Ebay. Last time I used it, it was just a single rating and a comment including A++++ LOL

 

[lovecraft68]

Those are some of the few comments I delete.

You want to write your own piece? Type it up and submit it like everyone else. Don't piggyback on my comments section.

I never delete a comment for reasons I've mentioned here, but I'm not going to lie, those are the ones that test me the most. I'd rather have someone just tell me I'm a shit writer and to fuck off and die. Its less annoying.

 

[lovecraft68]

Mentioning that LW comment just now reminded me of this and goes back to one of my prior posts here about how what you do and say here will earn you some hate.

This comment proves that as well as proves that there are trolls who don't post but do plenty of ghosting.

My one word reply to this is....guilty. I have a hate on for a certain type of reader and writer there and never been shy about saying it. I can't sit here and complain about this comment because its simply throwing shade at my throwing shade. Fair enough.

Although I will add that at least I do it under my name so people can hammer my stories and drop comments about it rather than hide behind anon.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Lol. You needn't call someone an asshole to post an ad hominem.

Those occur when you ignore the substance of an argument, and instead indict the person making it. This is the internet; that happens all the time, and I'm not likely to stop it. But it gets tiresome here from the same posters, and when I'm sick of it, surely I'm within my rights to call it out.

You're within your rights to call it out, but when you are rather selective about WHO you call out for doing it... well... it doesn't come across as very sincere.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Now who's the one sounding self important?

You need to let it go, but you cant and you won't. Because your ego won't let you.

I've sat quietly on this just shaking my head and laughing at how you and several others go on and on and fucking ON with your petty vendetta and complain over and over and OVER again about how tired you are of seeing these particular threads.

And yet none of you can just SHUT THE FUCK UP about it. Nor be adults and walk away.

Just know - the rest of us see how petty and vindictive you all sound.

Maybe they are all neurodivergent? They have a really strong sense of justice, and how dare you criticize.
That was the logic used by OP in the last thread. Doesn't it apply to everyone, or are we being selective again?