Yes, the Toplists are Broken

[BobbyBrandt]

Because he wants to control who is or who isn't on top. Simple.

Understandable, but how is leveling everything and setting this threshold in every category accomplishing that? The person couldn't score higher, so why do it?

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Understandable, but how is leveling everything and setting this threshold in every category accomplishing that? The person couldn't score higher, so why do it?

The troll(s) hit all of the stories that aren't the ones that he wants near the top. Dead simple.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

But the issue as I see it is when people deny that anything is happening. Of course the site is not going to lift a finger. But telling authors who have been clearly impacted that they are imagining it is not cool. What happened to a bit of empathy and solidarity?

I see few people denying the problem.

I do see some, such as myself, not getting hysterical and postulating about boogie men being the most likely cause for the noted effects.

My stories have been affected by this, so I know it exists, but I simply do not see evil around every corner.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

The troll(s) hit all of the stories that aren't the ones that he wants near the top. Dead simple.

Not so simple. Other stories not near the top, or even on a top list are also affected. Why?

As I have shown in previous comments, I have eight stories stuck at 4.84, seven of which are not anywhere near the higher stories on a top list. Also, why target every single category? Are we to assume that this person or persons has stories in each that they want to promote over others in every one of them?

I don't see the logic in the reasoning.

 

[RoyalAuthor]

I mostly let it go and live with the 4.84 ceiling on my stories. I know I'd have higher ratings, but so would a lot of authors, so it evens out to some extent.

However, the last one of mine that crossed the threshold, about a month ago, received 30 straight 1 or 2 star votes that lowered it from 4.88 to 4.45 over the course of a few weeks, always 2 or 3 a night, between 2-6am. Site wouldn't do anything about it and it only stopped because I froze the voting for a week. That's a big hit, especially with the loss of the red H, which is literally a prerequisite for some readers to even open a story. I don't need to top the lists, but the fact that a troll can very obviously push a story down that far and the site doesn't do anything about it isn't alright and hurts viewership.

I learned to live with the one-off, seemingly automatic 2 or 3 vote knock-down a while ago. That long term one is sticking with me and the site's complete inaction leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

 

[RocketGrunt]

Understandable, but how is leveling everything and setting this threshold in every category accomplishing that? The person couldn't score higher, so why do it?

Hint: It's not EVERY story that gets hammered down. There are a small number of stories on almost all of the boards that just sit there day after day with a rating of 4.85 and no troll vote movement. I don't name them because the chances that the authors of any of the particular stories are involved with this are incredibly low and I don't want to get them spammed with hate mail.

But yes, if you look at the lists daily, you'll see that every new story that enters or rises above the 4.84 target gets one or two pairs of immediate downvotes. But you'll also see a few familiar names that just... don't. The top of the Sci-Fi Fantasy board has over nine thousand votes, so maybe that one is hard to budge from 4.85, but there are a few more longtermers that I guaranty they could troll hammer as easily as any of the other ones that get procedurally targeted after being on the toplist for an entire commercial break.

It's more than one passover stories on most of the boards, so my guess is that there's some they are actively protecting because they want those at the top, and a few more that they leave alone to make it harder to identify which story they are protecting. But like... there are some boards where there's only one protected story and some boards where there are NO protected stories.

Now, you may ask why anyone would bother hammering toplists where no story is being protected? There are two reasonable answers to that:

1. The intended story to protect actually is at 4.84, meaning that it keeps its top whatever rating only by hammering down everything at 4.85 or above and coasting in on vote totals.
2. It's being done by a script, so having it troll hammer an entire board's toplist that the controller doesn't care about is legit easier than giving it instructions to leave that board alone.

And of course, it could be both, since 1. and 2. are not in any way incompatible.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Hint: It's not EVERY story that gets hammered down. There are a small number of stories on almost all of the boards that just sit there day after day with a rating of 4.85 and no troll vote movement. I don't name them because the chances that the authors of any of the particular stories are involved with this are incredibly low and I don't want to get them spammed with hate mail.

But yes, if you look at the lists daily, you'll see that every new story that enters or rises above the 4.84 target gets one or two pairs of immediate downvotes. But you'll also see a few familiar names that just... don't. The top of the Sci-Fi Fantasy board has over nine thousand votes, so maybe that one is hard to budge from 4.85, but there are a few more longtermers that I guaranty they could troll hammer as easily as any of the other ones that get procedurally targeted after being on the toplist for an entire commercial break.

It's more than one passover stories on most of the boards, so my guess is that there's some they are actively protecting because they want those at the top, and a few more that they leave alone to make it harder to identify which story they are protecting. But like... there are some boards where there's only one protected story and some boards where there are NO protected stories.

Now, you may ask why anyone would bother hammering toplists where no story is being protected? There are two reasonable answers to that:

1. The intended story to protect actually is at 4.84, meaning that it keeps its top whatever rating only by hammering down everything at 4.85 or above and coasting in on vote totals.
2. It's being done by a script, so having it troll hammer an entire board's toplist that the controller doesn't care about is legit easier than giving it instructions to leave that board alone.

And of course, it could be both, since 1. and 2. are not in any way incompatible.

So, you asking us to believe that some bad actor has stories in every category which they are endeavoring to keep at the top of each category list, and picked the score of 4.84 as the threshold for which all other stories will be restricted?

Ingenious!

Your premise has too many holes in it, including the affect that this is having on stories not in any top lists. You continue to ignore that reality.

 

[lovecraft68]

The troll(s) hit all of the stories that aren't the ones that he wants near the top. Dead simple.

Not like this, this is site wide across all the lists at once and other stories as well.

This is a sweep, not some super troll.

In the end, the site has decided to flatten the curve and this time remove all the fake fives rather than focus on one bombs that no one here ever thinks they deserve.

 

[lovecraft68]

So, you asking us to believe that some bad actor has stories in every category which they are endeavoring to keep at the top of each category list, and picked the score of 4.84 as the threshold for which all other stories will be restricted?

Ingenious!

Your premise has too many holes in it, including the affect that this is having on stories not in any top lists. You continue to ignore that reality.

What this angry person refuses to acknowledge is that many of these stories in the 4.84 or so range have been consistently around that score for years which means no one is upvoting them or playing games and they weren't getting bombed because a 4.84 isn't usually a threat to a number one story score. So, naturally the site sees this and isn't bothering with these stories while sweeping the ones that have benefitted from some serious cheerleading and helping some that have been bombed down to help the same story.

I'm getting tired of the poorly veiled accusations from this fool that its other authors behind what's going on right now.

 

[Voboy]

But telling authors who have been clearly impacted that they are imagining it is not cool. What happened to a bit of empathy and solidarity?

Personally, my feeling is that you (not “you,” but the generic you) are going to be disappointed almost every time you expect kindness rather than vitriol on the internet.

Low expectations help relieve all sorts of stress in life. Especially online life.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Personally, my feeling is that you (not “you,” but the generic you) are going to be disappointed almost every time you expect kindness rather than vitriol on the internet.

Low expectations help relieve all sorts of stress in life. Especially online life.

Yeah - but like Fox Mulder - I want to believe

 

[lovecraft68]

Personally, my feeling is that you (not “you,” but the generic you) are going to be disappointed almost every time you expect kindness rather than vitriol on the internet.

Low expectations help relieve all sorts of stress in life. Especially online life.

No one is saying people are imagining it, the debate is one person accusing other authors-or fans-of suddenly wreaking havoc across all the top lists and story files or is the site running the type of sitewide sweep they used to do fairly regularly back in the past, and decided to do it again.

 

[RejectReality]

Update:

One Whore's Town Ch, 03 got one more vote (presumably 5*) and appeared briefly at the top of the toplist with a 4.91 rating. It then departed the toplist a few hours later and has a rating of 4.77.

I can't see the exact vote tally, but that is consistent with having been zapped by four 1* ratings within hours of being exposed to the toplist. Probably within minutes.

A story published in 2024 sat comfortably at 4.91 with 99 ratings for however many months, and exposure to the toplist gave it four 1* ratings from people who obviously did not read or rate any other chapter in the series. This does match the predictions of the people who say there's a downvote bot scripted to target unprotected stories that come onto the toplist above 4.84. It matches that exactly. It is completely incompatible with any of the other explanations that have been put forward.

Except the idea that there are multiple trolls who are doing it manually by collectively downvoting things consistently enough that their actions are indistinguishable from a python script. That obviously cannot be discounted, since it is by definition indistinguishable from an automated trolling process.

Did you actually see it on the toplist? Because I didn't.

 

[Voboy]

No one is saying people are imagining it, the debate is one person accusing other authors-or fans-of suddenly wreaking havoc across all the top lists and story files or is the site running the type of sitewide sweep they used to do fairly regularly back in the past, and decided to do it again.

I'd tell you what I tell them:

Quit stressing about things you can't change. They're accusing people of whatever they're accusing people of; you're not going to stop them, because they're certainly not listening to you. So why do you care?

 

[Voboy]

Yeah - but like Fox Mulder - I want to believe

Mulder would never have gotten anywhere near Lit. Lol.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Well, we have some stat crunchers in this forum. Why don't we crunch some numbers.

Chart a graph of scores for all stories on the server with 50 votes or more. Then chart a graph of all stories on the server with 100 votes or more. Let's see if the graph curve on the 100s has a bump at 4.84 that the 50s curve doesn't. (shrug)

 

[RocketGrunt]

Did you actually see it on the toplist? Because I didn't.

I did. It said 4.91 (100) yesterday. So it popped on literally exactly when it clicked over from 99 to 100 ratings. It's not like I check the toplist twenty-four hours a day, but I did definitely see it there in the morning (PST). It was off again late afternoon, which is earlier than I thought the vultures came in. I thought they came in middle of the night, but it occurs to me that I could be wrong about that because of how infrequently the toplist updates.

And the author list updates even more slowly, because it was still telling me it was scoring 4.91 while it wasn't on the toplist until this morning, when it updated to 4.77. I was beginning to wonder if it hadn't been trollhammered, and had instead gone back to 99 votes with a sweep or retraction or something. But no, sometimes it's who you most suspect.

I only have two data points from yesterday, so I don't know how physically long it was on the toplist. Also, I didn't see the updates to the rating totals or rating averages in anything like real time. So I don't know how long it took between the chapter hitting the toplist and the attack starting. It could have literally been minutes or seconds between the toplist update and the attack - it wouldn't be reported as off the toplist until the next toplist update several hours later no matter what.

But obviously if the attack comes in seconds later, that would be a pretty big piece of evidence that it's an automated script rather than a bunch of organic basement trolls downvoting for dopamine hits.

 

[MelissaBaby]

It's 2026 and people are saying "Nobody would do that because it doesn't make sense."

 

[RoyalAuthor]

The drop in votes isn't a sweep of fake 5-star ratings. It's a sudden increase of negative ratings. The site isn't sweeping every story that hits the top lists immediately, and even if it was, that would result in reduced votes. I've been present to watch the vote count rise and the rating drop. It's very obviously a troll, and the clear threshold is 4.84 on most top lists.

Is it worth being upset over? In most cases, not really, because there's nothing we can do about it. But it's definitely happening - I've witnessed it on my own stories more than a dozen times, possibly more than two dozen. Sometimes to the same story twice, getting bombed immediately after a sweep pushes it up the list.

I accept it, and I've given up expecting a change, but there's no reason to deny it happening. I don't remember the last time it didn't happen to one of my stories, standalone or series chapters.

 

[RocketGrunt]

Well, we have some stat crunchers in this forum. Why don't we crunch some numbers.

Chart a graph of scores for all stories on the server with 50 votes or more. Then chart a graph of all stories on the server with 100 votes or more. Let's see if the graph curve on the 100s has a bump at 4.84 that the 50s curve doesn't. (shrug)

The site already does that for you. You don't need to crunch any numbers. Go to literally any of the story categories, and scroll down past the new stories to the Popular (Category) Stories.

Nonconsent: Ratings 4.9-4.95
Romance: Ratings 4.91-5.0
Mind Control: Ratings: 4.92-5.0
Science Fiction/Fantasy: Ratings 5.0-5.0 (seriously)
Lesbian Sex: Ratings 4.92-4.95
Novels: Ratings 5.0-5.0 (yes, really)
Exhibition&Voyeur: Ratings 4.92-4.95
Taboo/Incest: Ratings 4.84-4.85
Loving Wives: Ratings 4.84-4.84
Erotic Couplings: Ratings 4.93-4.95
Mature: Ratings 4.84-4.88 (both 4.88s are from this week)
BDSM: Ratings 4.95-4.96
Interracial Love: Ratings 4.85-4.88
Gay Male: Ratings 5.0-5.0 (again, for reals)
Nonhuman: Ratings 4.96-5.0
Group: Ratings 4.89-4.92
Fetish: Rating 5.0-5.0 (the heart wants what the heart wants)

Yes, the Taboo/Incest, Mature, and Loving Wives boards are pro-actively trollhammer curated, and the other boards are not curated until stories hit the toplist with 100 ratings. On the Incest, Mature, or Loving Wives board specifically the stories in the 30-days or 7-days or all-time popular list are all subject to the score curation attacks. Everywhere else gets to have natural looking numbers in the 50-99 vote range and only hits the big crunch at exactly 100 votes.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

The site already does that for you. You don't need to crunch any numbers. Go to literally any of the story categories, and scroll down past the new stories to the Popular (Category) Stories.

Those aren't distro curves. You obviously don't understand statistics.

 

[lovecraft68]

The drop in votes isn't a sweep of fake 5-star ratings. It's a sudden increase of negative ratings. The site isn't sweeping every story that hits the top lists immediately, and even if it was, that would result in reduced votes. I've been present to watch the vote count rise and the rating drop. It's very obviously a troll, and the clear threshold is 4.84 on most top lists.

Is it worth being upset over? In most cases, not really, because there's nothing we can do about it. But it's definitely happening - I've witnessed it on my own stories more than a dozen times, possibly more than two dozen. Sometimes to the same story twice, getting bombed immediately after a sweep pushes it up the list.

I accept it, and I've given up expecting a change, but there's no reason to deny it happening. I don't remember the last time it didn't happen to one of my stories, standalone or series chapters.

So the troll has a specific threshold?

At this point-considering everything else we've seen the last year or so I'd consider the site glitching-which could explain how fast this is happening because its hard to believe someone has 24/7 to hover over the site, but like I said early on her, we'll never know because the site never says anything about anything.

As for it happening often, the trick is to not hover over it. After the first couple of days of a new story I don't bother looking to see what it does. If it wasn't for Captain Outrage (The Op) I wouldn't have looked at the mature top list I'm being accused of gaming because I haven't checked it in years (literally)

Seeing this thread is all about numbers, here's one. This thread is at 300ish posts and going strong.

Name an actual writing related thread that's gone this far and with people being this involved over it.

 

[RoyalAuthor]

The site already does that for you. You don't need to crunch any numbers. Go to literally any of the story categories, and scroll down past the new stories to the Popular (Category) Stories.

Nonconsent: Ratings 4.9-4.95
Romance: Ratings 4.91-5.0
Mind Control: Ratings: 4.92-5.0
Science Fiction/Fantasy: Ratings 5.0-5.0 (seriously)
Lesbian Sex: Ratings 4.92-4.95
Novels: Ratings 5.0-5.0 (yes, really)
Exhibition&Voyeur: Ratings 4.92-4.95
Taboo/Incest: Ratings 4.84-4.85
Loving Wives: Ratings 4.84-4.84
Erotic Couplings: Ratings 4.93-4.95
Mature: Ratings 4.84-4.88 (both 4.88s are from this week)
BDSM: Ratings 4.95-4.96
Interracial Love: Ratings 4.85-4.88
Gay Male: Ratings 5.0-5.0 (again, for reals)
Nonhuman: Ratings 4.96-5.0
Group: Ratings 4.89-4.92
Fetish: Rating 5.0-5.0 (the heart wants what the heart wants)

Yes, the Taboo/Incest, Mature, and Loving Wives boards are pro-actively trollhammer curated, and the other boards are not curated until stories hit the toplist with 100 ratings. On the Incest, Mature, or Loving Wives board specifically the stories in the 30-days or 7-days or all-time popular list are all subject to the score curation attacks. Everywhere else gets to have natural looking numbers in the 50-99 vote range and only hits the big crunch at exactly 100 votes.

I mean, just looking at the 12-month top lists shows a bunch of stories with less than 100 votes higher than the All Time toplists. I sat on the group sex 12 month list with my latest entry (still visible as of this moment, hasn't updated yet, 4.88 with 101 votes). I also sat as #1 on the all time top list at that moment last night. I've already been thrown off the all time list which updated already, because I only got a total of 4 stars from the next three votes after that.

So many stories remain on the 12 month list with higher scores, but the moment you hit the 100 vote threshold, you've got a few hours at most before you drop. It could not be more obvious.

 

[RoyalAuthor]

So the troll has a specific threshold?

I don't know why, but yeah. I've noticed month old stories of mine ticking up over time. The moment I see one hit 4.85, I tell myself it was fun while it lasted, and sure enough when I log back in the next time I've gotten 2 or 3 votes (on a story that's gotten a vote every few days at most) and I'm down to 4.8 or lower. At this point, I don't know why I wouldn't expect it, it happens literally every time - I predicted it in this thread yesterday at 99 votes for a new story and checked in today to confirm it. It's more predictable than the sun rising at this point.

 

[SimonDoom]

I’m with you. My choice was to stop publishing here. It’s either that or find a way to put up with things. There is no third way.

But the issue as I see it is when people deny that anything is happening. Of course the site is not going to lift a finger. But telling authors who have been clearly impacted that they are imagining it is not cool. What happened to a bit of empathy and solidarity?

I don't deny that something is happening. It may be.

I have empathy for people and real problems. People who experience loss, or illness, or injustice, or disability.

I don't feel much empathy for people who are upset because their stories are downvoted, for whatever reason. It just doesn't matter. My goodness, assholes made your story's score drop from 4.91 to 4.82 and now it's no longer at the top of a list? It has happened to me. It's not something to get worked up about. It's not something worth spending a moment of your life being upset about. It's part of the landscape of this site and its laissez-faire attitude toward the ability of readers to vote however they want to. It may not be want you want it to be, but it's defensible and understandable, and the bottom line is that it does not in any way prevent you from writing and publishing stories and having fun doing so. There's a huge readership here, and the opportunity is lying out there for all of us to connect with it, regardless of the voting system and its quirks.

I don't get the degree of fretting about it that we see here.