The Official Valentine’s Day Contest Support Thread 2026

[MelissaBaby]

Hmm. Sweeps are still continuing.

They usually come in phases, not all at once. I have not had a sweep yet. But then again, for the Halloween contest, I did not get any votes swept.

 

[RoyalAuthor]

None for me yet. I'm probably out of contention anyway, coming in below 4.8 right now anyway, but the numbers nerd in me keeps checking to see how the sweep goes and I haven't seen anything swept off my story. A couple last minute bombs though.

 

[Voboy]

They usually come in phases, not all at once. I have not had a sweep yet. But then again, for the Halloween contest, I did not get any votes swept.

One of my stories is getting the deep sweep, the other a very shallow whisking. It’s very interesting to see in real time. It normally happens while I’m asleep.

 

[WittyUserName]

Two votes were removed from my story.

 

[old_prof]

Much more significant sweeping in the last few minutes. My entry here has lost 23 votes and gone up from 4.42 to 4.82.
My much maligned Pink Orchid has moved from it's original low at 2.8 up to 4.52

Several other stories are starting to improve.

At least my troll appears not to be a sophisticated one.

 

[StrentWriter]

Nothing yet for me still. Bracing - can I really lose eight votes out of 33 though…?

 

[StillStunned]

I've seen a single vote swept so far, that one on my Pink Orchid story. Given that I got literally dozens of 1's across a half doze series in the last 72 hours, I'm sure hoping for a lot more than this.

This was what made me give up on the contests: not just my contest story being bombed, but most of my others too. Nowadays the sweeps barely affect any of my scores.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Also did not have anything swept.

 

[Trionyx]

I had two votes a few weeks ago which mathematically had to be ones on a Halloween story from 2025. They have not been touched. In the past my experience was that sweeps picked up outliers everywhere. Does not appear to be the case, at least so far.

 

[Actingup]

My story has been swept well today (it's not in contention but at least that gives it the red H), reinforcing my impression that it got obviously bombed at the start. 3 other stories have had a light shave of votes. It's an interesting thing. "It Just Ain't Going to Happen", posted in LW in November, lost 2 of its 2387 votes, and was only lightly affected by sweeps in the winter comp - my feeling is that the LW voters tend to be harsh but not obviously manipulative, and don't give a fig about competitions. "Diplomatic Relations", my competition entry in Romance, lost 11 of its 130 votes. We talk about LW trolls from Mordor a lot, but the competition trolls from Mirkwood are worse.

 

[caleb35]

Apparently my story got swept -- I had three 2-star ratings wiped out went from a 4.04 to a 4.11

 

[old_prof]

It seems like no more sweeping happened while I was teach my class, so I'm guessing it's already finished.

My entry here already got another 1-bomb in the last hour.

I expected to see some relief on two of my non-contest stories that have been abused recently. One, which has very few votes, so is very vulnerable, had its obligatory birthmark 1 but had been clean until it got three 1's around midnight two nights ago. None of that was swept. Another story in the same series got seven 1's the same night. It lost two 1's in the sweep, don't know whether it was those or earlier bombs. So they are both still more than a half point below where they were 48 hours ago.

 

[RoyalAuthor]

Yep, still nothing for me. I know for a fact that one of the first votes my story received was a one-bomb, and there are at least two more in there (sci-fi/fantasy is a slow category, log in a few times a day and you can see every vote), but nothing yet.

As I said before, I'm not in contention, and I already have the red H, so it doesn't matter to me, but if anyone else isn't seeing a sweep yet, know that you're not alone.

 

[Voboy]

I expected to see some relief on two of my non-contest stories that have been abused recently.

Conventional wisdom says that the sweeps go through the whole catalog. I think that might have been the case at one time, but I’ve long been doubtful about whether that’s still the way it works. I tend to keep quiet about it because I’m not smart enough to figure out the math, but I’ve always seen a great deal of unevenness in the contest sweeps.

Just another way to keep Lit exciting!

 

[EmilyMiller]

It seems that the sweeps (so far) have been patchy. Some big changes for one set of authors, nothing for others. And even the same author seeing discrepancies in how different stories are treated.

Of the people I spoke to yesterday, one has seen a single vote swept, but the run of other low votes that surrounded it have been left intact so far. The others I’ve spoken to today have seen nothing.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, sweeps are a BandAid - they are neither magic nor exhaustive, not by a long way. They clean out the most naive of one bombs thrown by the unsophisticated. They don’t do anything to vandalism caused by the more knowledgeable who also have skin in the game.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Conventional wisdom says that the sweeps go through the whole catalog. I think that might have been the case at one time, but I’ve long been doubtful about whether that’s still the way it works.

I’ve not seen a change in my back catalog due to a sweep happening for a very long time. And I get suspicious voting across all my stories. I think - anecdotally - the breadth (and depth) of sweeps has reduced. And it still feels like the intern is running them without a user manual.

My last comp story (and my last Literotica story) is currently at 3.86, my lowest vote ever for a regular story (one 750 word story and my attempt at a lesbian LW story are lower, but I don’t really count them). It’s not had a single vote swept. Which is because the individual who bombed it to death over many days of back-to-back pairs of one bombs knows how sweeps work and how to avoid them.

It seems such knowledge is spreading.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I’ve not seen a change in my back catalog due to a sweep happening for a very long time. And I get suspicious voting across all my stories. I think - anecdotally - the breadth (and depth) of sweeps has reduced. And it still feels like the intern is running them without a user manual.

My last comp story (and my last Literotica story) is currently at 3.86, my lowest vote ever for a regular story (one 750 word story and my attempt at a lesbian LW story are lower, but I don’t really count them). It’s not had a single vote swept. Which is because the individual who bombed it to death over many days of back-to-back pairs of one bombs knows how sweeps work and how to avoid them.

It seems such knowledge is spreading.

Someone said recently that they thought that the site did some sort of statistical analysis as part of the sweeps. I nearly choked on my mint tea. A high school kid with one stats class under her belt could find blatant vote rigging that the sweeps ignore. It would take her like ten minutes.

With how trolls have evolved, the site (and by extension authors) are now pretty much defenseless against their machinations.

 

[IdahoExec]

No evidence of any “sweeping” of my Valentine entry. Vote count and rating show no change. Somewhere a troll cavorts in jubilation, rubbing his filthy hands together over his grimy keyboard. He will celebrate with a mug of Ovaltine when his aging mother calls him up from the basement for breakfast.

 

[EmilyMiller]

No evidence of any “sweeping” of my Valentine entry. Vote count and rating show no change. Somewhere a troll cavorts in jubilation, rubbing his filthy hands together over his grimy keyboard. He will celebrate with a mug of Ovaltine when his aging mother calls him up from the basement for breakfast.

Rather than some faceless basement dweller, the troll (singular) is most likely another author. Just think, cui bono?

And I really don’t buy the enthusiastic fan clubs. Reader engagement here is very low. The readers don’t care, only authors do. Fan clubs are a fantasy people cling to in order to avoid the ugly reality. Again, cui bono?

 

[IdahoExec]

Rather than some faceless basement dweller, the troll (singular) is most likely another author. Just think, cui bono?

And I really don’t buy the enthusiastic fan clubs. Reader engagement here is very low. The readers don’t care, only authors do. Fan clubs are a fantasy people cling to in order to avoid the ugly reality. Again, cui bono?

Oh that's just sad -- and entirely believable. Motivated by immeasurably small personal gain, an author down-voting another's submission? Yes, I can see that. And I completely agree about the elusive "fan club" following. Of the 6,300+ apparent readers of my Valentine submission, fewer than 1/10th of 1% voted. And barely 17/100 of 1% left a comment. No fanbase whatever is to be found there. That doesn't make me less appreciative of the handful of thoughtful comments. I appreciate each one -- even the oddly anonymous ones. But only a daily dopesmoker would see a fanbase hiding in those statistics.

 

[Actingup]

Rather than some faceless basement dweller, the troll (singular) is most likely another author. Just think, cui bono?

The two are not necessarily incompatible, judging by some of the stories. Personally, I'd be looking for anybody writing in 1st person with an eight inch dick (real size= 6x6/claimed size).

 

[Voboy]

And I completely agree about the elusive "fan club" following. Of the 6,300+ apparent readers of my Valentine submission, fewer than 1/10th of 1% voted. And barely 17/100 of 1% left a comment. No fanbase whatever is to be found there.

Yes, those numbers are entirely normal here.

I have learned that “having a couple thousand followers” doesn’t help me a whit in terms of initial votes on any of my stories. It’s commonly said here that one’s followers are automatic 5* votes, but that is very far from the case in my experience.

 

[AbyssalAvatar]

How do you tell between a sweep and a genuine vote that brought your score down?

A few days ago I dropped from 4.82 to 4.80, which would have taken me out of the top ten (last 30 days) in my category, but then I went back up to 4.81

How is possible to tell what’s a sweep? Is it only by looking at all contest stories from a bird’s eye view to see a trend in the vote pattern? For me alone, it looks like and probably is just regular score fluctuation as people read.

 

[old_prof]

How do you tell between a sweep and a genuine vote that brought your score down?

If you watch your votes carefully, you will notice a drop in the number of votes. I think there are a few other oddball cases were votes disappear, but that is the tell tale sign of a sweep. In my experience, most of the time, it's a handful of votes, but if your story has suffered undue abuse it can be very notable. I lost 23 votes around 8:30AM (US east coast) on one story. Its rating also went up 0.4. It of course got a 1-bomb around 9:30. I haven't looked recently to see how many have been gifted to me since.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Yes, those numbers are entirely normal here.

I have learned that “having a couple thousand followers” doesn’t help me a whit in terms of initial votes on any of my stories. It’s commonly said here that one’s followers are automatic 5* votes, but that is very far from the case in my experience.

My experience also