Yes, the Toplists are Broken

[ronde]

Has anyone written a story yet about the Secret Cabal of Lit Trolls?

I assume they meet in shadowy basements, their locations undisclosed until hours before to avoid leaks.

And they chant incantations and do blood rites and read the entrails to determine which objectively brilliant stories they're going to target, and they cackle maniacally over their cigars when they successfully bring them down a couple hundredths of a point.

I have it on good authority that the problem is much more technologically advanced than simple witchcraft.

According to my source, the individual(s) (my source isn't yet positive about the number) live in an abandoned missile silo where they've installed an older CRAY computer. The software they have written can generate an infinite number of Literotica member names and is programmed to keep the number of top stories in each genre at a set maximum by systematically adding enough "1" votes to automatically drop each top story to just under the minimum required to appear on the top story list. Those "1" votes are added in the dead of night in the time zone where Lit's servers are located in order to confuse those who track their scores every day. The software also has a feature that allows it to track and lower the ratings on any story by any author specified. They communicate with Literotica through multiple, chained VPNs to avoid detection, and the chain sequence is changed every five minutes.

 

[SouthernCrossfire]

RocketGrunt has a point on at least part of the initial statement.

One of my stories, approximately six years old with over 800 votes has been rated between 4.84 and 4.85 for years after being 4.87 during the initial contest and reaching the top 20 at the time. After a recent sweep, it climbed appreciably and was in the all-time top 20 again, but within a day or two it was knocked down and is now down to 4.75. Sadly, I didn't check then number of votes to try to track the voting pattern but there was clearly some hanky-panky to do this. I'm not going to ask for a sweep (and I didn't ask for the last one) since it would just happen again.

 

[ronde]

Ten years ago the Top Lists were dominated by stories from the first ten years of Lit, against which nothing can compete. Over time, the age effect of older stories perpetuates this, so they're meaningless.

I don't understand why people care more so much about these lists. If they cause so much angst, why don't you just ignore them?

It's been going on longer than ten years. With the "old" system, there were stories on the top list published from the earliest days of Literotica. They were so old few people read them and fewer voted. They also had accumulated a lot of votes, so any attempt to "knock them off the list" was pretty much futile.

It is probably disheartening to a beginning author to see their story not make the top list and stay there, but it's no worse than seeing the top story list filled with "Sucking My Brother Chapter 1" through "Sucking My Brother Chapter 78" all by the same author which used to happen as well.

 

[TheLobster]

As long as we're talking trash about toplists, I feel I have to mention that it would definitely help if, at some point in the near future, they switched away from the kind of web design that's more appropriate for the era of Gopher and BBS.

 

[NotWise]

The systematic trolling that targets every story has been going on since Nov 2024. I have the data to back this up. I reported it back in Dec 2024, but...

The systematic down-voting on the Romance top list started as early as 10/19/2024, and possibly earlier. It's come in episodes since, but the current episode has been continuous for a couple months now. The site controlled the trolling and reversed the effects at least once, but they aren't doing that or can't do that now.

The score on my top list story dropped from 4.9 to 4.82. It's been on and off the top list since 10/19/2024. But you know what? When I graph the changes in the score, it looks trivial to me on the overall scale of things. It took sweeps to put my story on the top list, so maybe a troll taking it off the top list is the other side of the same coin.

If I care that much about having a story up there, then I should write a new one.

 

[ronde]

That means that a story that is only read by people who like it is destined for a higher rating than something that is read by a lot of people.

That's pretty much how the world works, isn't it? People "vote" for things they really like by buying that thing instead of what the majority of people buy instead because of cost, appearance, etc. The other sticky wicket in this argument is that people who like a particular author or story genre are much more likely to leave a vote than a reader who just reads the story and then goes on to something else.

 

[TheArsonist]

But let's keep some perspective here. It will get fixed or it won't. It doesn't matter to all but a few readers, it doesn't matter to most writers. It doesn't even matter that much to some of us whose ratings have declined.

To the extent that anything on LitErotica matters, I'd argue that this matters more than most. As has been pointed out, the top lists are a major entry point for readers. Therefore, the stories they find there have a major influence on their LE experience, and the site should try to optimize the reader appeal of the stories listed there. Score manipulation that prevents popular stories from reaching the higher echelons of the lists clearly interferes with that. That's bad for readers, for (honest) authors, and for the site.

Back in the day, Netflix offered a $1M prize to the team that could provide the best improvement to its score prediction/recommendation algorithm, because the ability to surface stuff people wanted to watch was (before enshittification) one of its main drivers of customer value.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

The systematic trolling that targets every story has been going on since Nov 2024. I have the data to back this up. I reported it back in Dec 2024, but...

...and the sky really is falling.

I can appreciate frustration when a writer suspects that their story(ies) is/are being targeted, but I dispute the claim that there is a systemic issue, or "trolls" targeting every story as stated. The facts simply don't bear that out. If you want to state that every one of your stories has been targeted in some fashion, that is an objective claim that I will not dispute, especially if the facts that you have substantiate it.

I could point to my own stories and the lack of drastic variations in their ratings over more than a decade of publishing here, but there are also thousands of legacy (and newer stories) that don't experience the targeting that some have said that they have seen.

Are some authors targeted for down-voting over others? Possibly, but if so, why?

Are some categories more likely to attract assailants than others? Maybe, but again, why?

Are new lists popular targets for down-voting? It's possible, just like contest entries are, although I have never experienced this myself and sweeps typically resolve most abusive behaviors.

I don't want to minimize your angst, but you should also try not to maximize it.

 

[RocketGrunt]

...and the sky really is falling.

I can appreciate frustration when a writer suspects that their story(ies) is/are being targeted, but I dispute the claim that there is a systemic issue, or "trolls" targeting every story as stated. The facts simply don't bear that out. If you want to state that every one of your stories has been targeted in some fashion, that is an objective claim that I will not dispute, especially if the facts that you have substantiate it.

I could point to my own stories and the lack of drastic variations in their ratings over more than a decade of publishing here, but there are also thousands of legacy (and newer stories) that don't experience the targeting that some have said that they have seen.

Are some authors targeted for down-voting over others? Possibly, but if so, why?

Are some categories more likely to attract assailants than others? Maybe, but again, why?

Are new lists popular targets for down-voting? It's possible, just like contest entries are, although I have never experienced this myself and sweeps typically resolve most abusive behaviors.

I don't want to minimize your angst, but you should also try not to maximize it.

It hits every story that places on the toplist above the big crush every day. Your highest rated story is 4.84, which means that you benefit from the fact that TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY FOUR STORIES OUT OF TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY on the Novels/novellas have been hammered into the plateau at... 4.84.

Literally hundreds of stories have been troll hammered so that you can have the number 14 spot on the toplist.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

I dispute the claim that there is a systemic issue, or "trolls" targeting every story as stated. The facts simply don't bear that out.

The "Regression to the Mean" thread has a good statistical discussion of how the flattening of the top lists is caused by manipulation. Check out @Bramblethorn's post on page 6 (about five down from the top).

The example he gives is from Novels and Novellas, which may be of interest to you because you have a story on the top list in that category. The top 50 stories in July 2024 were all 4.89 or higher, with a natural variation in scores. Today, almost all 250 stories in the N&N top list are at 4.84 except for six.

The flattening issue definitely seems to be impacting top list stories across the board.

 

[THBGato]

I can appreciate frustration when a writer suspects that their story(ies) is/are being targeted, but I dispute the claim that there is a systemic issue, or "trolls" targeting every story as stated. The facts simply don't bear that out. If you want to state that every one of your stories has been targeted in some fashion, that is an objective claim that I will not dispute, especially if the facts that you have substantiate it.

Sorry, should have been clearer: every story on the top lists.

 

[Cagivagurl]

So a few hours ago, I made a prediction:



So both of those works have been pushed down to 4.83 or 4.84, off the toplist entirely. It's as reliable as clockwork, because someone presumably has a python script that is literally set to the clock.

The thing is that a rating of 4.87 or so is simply a normal rating for a later chapter from a popular series to have. There's almost no reason for people who don't like a series to read chapter 25 or chapter 55 of a series. As long as a popular series maintains quality and doesn't make any sharp turns that offend a section of the fanbase, getting hundreds of votes where 7/8ths or 9/10ths of the ratings are 5* is simply the expected result. And that's why we get new works passing the 100 vote threshold at 4.87 or 4.88 almost every day.

And yet, the reality is that every piece that sprints up that hill is going to be smashed down again. Because the trolls have complete control. Nothing can stay above whatever arbitrary rating they choose to set their whack-a-mole script to. The way math works, it takes a trivially small number of people to hold an average rating below an arbitrary target, even in the face of hundreds or thousands of fans voting something up. The trolls have a system where they can't actually be stopped, and the result is that ratings on the entire site have been lowered substantially to make sure everyone limbos in under whatever entries they are protecting.

We know this is happening because we've all watched it happen to our own stuff. We know it's happening because even a casual look at the toplists shows the unmistakable fingerprints of an unnatural voting by the massive plateaus at arbitrary rating values. And we know it is happening because we can predict when it will happen next and to which stories with great accuracy.

The average ratings cannot be protected with sweeps. The trolls have won. Completely. The toplists are broken in a way so fundamental that they cannot be based on average ratings and continue to have any meaning.

Nobody can say exactly what transpired. Guessing, and offering an opinion is all any of us can do. My advice, forget about it, who cares....
It's a voting system that doesn't work...
It only affects you if you let it...
Restating the obvious fixes nothing...
worry about the things you can fix... writing... The quality, the editing, the story telling... Concentrate on the good stuff...

Just another opinion...

 

[BobbyBrandt]

The "Regression to the Mean" thread has a good statistical discussion of how the flattening of the top lists is caused by manipulation. Check out @Bramblethorn's post on page 6 (about five down from the top).

The example he gives is from Novels and Novellas, which may be of interest to you because you have a story on the top list in that category. The top 50 stories in July 2024 were all 4.89 or higher, with a natural variation in scores. Today, almost all 250 stories in the N&N top list are at 4.84 except for six.

The flattening issue definitely seems to be impacting top list stories across the board.

I've seen that but gave it little thought since it affects every story equally as far as I can tell. I know that almost all of my published stories saw adjustments to their ratings, some rose and some dropped, but none were significantly impacted.

I also see the changes impacting the ratings of stories and that is what influences their position on any top lists. The lists themselves are not the focus of the changes, but where some members are paying their attention.

Using my story you mentioned as an example, it is .02 lower than this same time last year, but moved up three positions on that top list. The rating on that story has never varied by more than .03 and has always been in the top 25 since it was published in 2014.

I don't see "manipulation" as described, but system "tweaks" that aren't what I would consider nefarious or ill-intentioned.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

It's a voting system that doesn't work...

Agreed.

It only affects you if you let it...

I get what you're saying, but I respectfully disagree. Having a story on the top list means greater visibility for your work. Getting a story bumped off the top list via vote manipulation means less visibility. That affects your reader engagement whether you let it or not.

Restating the obvious fixes nothing...

The OP is doing more than restating the obvious. They proposed a fix in the form of an alternative way to sort top lists.

worry about the things you can fix... writing... The quality, the editing, the story telling... Concentrate on the good stuff...

I don't think it's an either/or scenario (i.e., spend energy focusing on your writing vs. spend energy fixing a problem). It's possible to do both.

 

[millamomud]

by the way, the german toplist is being held steady at a nice 4,61, for bdsm at least. everything beyond that is brought down fast.

 

[Actingup]

Just incidentally, the Valentine's Day comp results are announced on Friday the 13th (yes, really!), so for those who are interested it might be worth tracking to see how scores on any of the top lists move this week. Some stories might have a brief moment back in the sun between when sweeps happen and the murky fog closes back in.

 

[Rob_Royale]

It's unfair, but so what? The top lists are such a minor part of the writing experience. None of the scores of any stories reflect quality, so it's no surprise that the top lists don't either.

Is it nice to be on a Top List? Sure! Is it frustrating to be bombed off it? Of course. Can we do anything about it? Will Lit do anything about it? No.

So might as well shrug and move on. Keep writing the stories you want to write, to the best of your abilities. And remind yourself that "fair" has no power at Lit.

I'll admit it took me a while to get to this mindset. At first I was very hurt. It felt real good to have a top five story.

Now I get my warm and fuzzy on the fact that every time my story is attacked, it spends the next six months rising back up the list.

I'll take my little victories where I can get'em.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

I've seen that but gave it little thought since it affects every story equally as far as I can tell.

But it doesn't affect every story equally. If you accept the premise that the only way for 244 stories on a top list to have an identical score of 4.84 is through vote manipulation, then those stories have been treated unequally.

It takes a lot of vote manipulation to drop a hypothetical 4.92 story with 4,000 ratings down to the 4.84 threshold. It takes much less vote manipulation to drop a 4.85 story with 400 ratings to the 4.84 threshold. And once that 4.85 story is dropped to the threshold, it may fall off the top list altogether because there are so many other 4.84 stories with more votes.

I'm glad that you, personally, haven't seen much of an impact to your story from the flattening of the top list. I haven't either. But that doesn't mean it isn't intentional and that it isn't affecting others.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I know as a reader that I found several stories I wouldn't have otherwise by browsing the lesbian top list. Maybe you don't, but other readers do. So if your story gets voted down by the bot/troll, then that hurts your visibility. This is especially true when every story has basically the same score, as the top list ranks stories by number of votes - so older stories will always win out, gain more viewers, more votes, etc. So the trolling harms new stories more.

There are how many thousands of thousands of thousands of stories published on lit. Of those, 10 or 50 or 250 make a top list, and half of those are chapters of the same freaking vanity saga. It's a tiny fraction of stories that get this limelight. Certainly that limelight significantly increases traffic on a story.

But no one is entitled to that limelight. The voting is mostly a crapshoot anyway. We have these writers bitching and moaning. I was on the toplist for three days and then I got bumped down. I deserve to be there dammit! Fix this! Well, you only deserve to be there as much as the other 1000 stories that are rotating in and getting bumped down and rotating back in when others are bumped down. You got that spot in the first place because someone else was bumped down.

1000 stories rotating in and out of a toplist. Only 250 'deserve' to be there. Ever stop to think that just maybe your story deserves to be in the 75% outside of that toplist? If you made a toplist for any amount of time whatsoever, consider yourself lucky because that's what you are.

 

[old_prof]

Just incidentally, the Valentine's Day comp results are announced on Friday the 13th (yes, really!), so for those who are interested it might be worth tracking to see how scores on any of the top lists move this week. Some stories might have a brief moment back in the sun between when sweeps happen and the murky fog closes back in.

I don't think any of the 1-bombs I have gotten when in the top five have ever been swept. Nor has any of the bombing that took place on my Nude Day story when it got a W.

I don't know if that is because there are more sophisticated trolls or something in the sweeps that allows them, intentionally or not.

I'm looking forward to these sweeps because my Valentine's Day entry has gotten hammered in the last week dropping .16 despite having over 200 votes. I think 8 1-bombs over that stretch out of 14 total votes.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

But it doesn't affect every story equally. If you accept the premise that the only way for 244 stories on a top list to have an identical score of 4.84 is through vote manipulation, then those stories have been treated unequally.

It takes a lot of vote manipulation to drop a hypothetical 4.92 story with 4,000 ratings down to the 4.84 threshold. It takes much less vote manipulation to drop a 4.85 story with 400 ratings to the 4.84 threshold. And once that 4.85 story is dropped to the threshold, it may fall off the top list altogether because there are so many other 4.84 stories with more votes.

I'm glad that you, personally, haven't seen much of an impact to your story from the flattening of the top list. I haven't either. But that doesn't mean it isn't intentional and that it isn't affecting others.

My position is that it has been the scores that got changed, regardless of whether they were in a top list or not.

It was these score changes that affected some stories on the top lists, not a manipulation of the lists themselves.

 

[old_prof]

My position is that it has been the scores that got changed, regardless of whether they were in a top list or not.

It was these score changes that affected some stories on the top lists, not a manipulation of the lists themselves.

I have come to realize that if a story reaches 100 votes with a 4.84 or 4.83 it will end up with a better score than one that enters with a score higher than that. I have seen that pattern repeatedly in my own stories, at least and it makes sense in general, given the patterns of the top lists. If your story emerges from the crowd, it gets beated down for its arrogance.

The ratings above 4.75 are mostly meaningless (even more than how meaningless any of the ratings are).

On the other hand, this is the way it is and it's not the end of the world. Really good stories are punished and some good ones are briefly rewarded.
It does no good to grouse about it.
It also does no good to stick one's head in the sand and deny there's a problem.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

The top lists just are what they are, a very ambiguous list of meaningless numbers that a lot of us take way too seriously.
Sure, I watch my numbers, too, but I don't lose sleep over some rando bombing my stories, I expect it.

Why do you write? What's your goal, your takeaway? Is it the rating, or is it the telling of the story?

If you want to watch numbers, I'd suggest watching the views. How many eyes saw your work, let your characters into their lives if only for a moment?

Are you getting comments? Good or bad, are they filled with emotion, did you touch someone? Are they raging because you let X happen to Y? It may make you want to reach through the screen and throttle anonymous, but it means your words moved someone to action. That's powerful stuff.

Don't those thing mean more that a number that we all know is bogus, anyway?

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Why do you write? What's your goal, your takeaway? Is it the rating, or is it the telling of the story?

For a lot of folks it is obviously the rating. But if you suggest that, they will spit acidic fire at you.

 

[old_prof]

If you want to watch numbers, I'd suggest watching the views. How many eyes saw your work, let your characters into their lives if only for a moment?

Are you getting comments? Good or bad, are they filled with emotion, did you touch someone? Are they raging because you let X happen to Y? It may make you want to reach through the screen and throttle anonymous, but it means your words moved someone to action. That's powerful stuff.

I largely agree with you, although I have trouble living up to this. But the views (and correspondingly largely, the comments, are boosted significantly by being on the first page of the top list. That is a big incentive for many, if not most, writers here.