Yes, the Toplists are Broken

[Cagivagurl]

Agreed.



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.



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



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.

Maybe if we wrote for money. I'd agree with you. The thing is, it's supposed to be a fun distraction.
For me that's why I do it... Fun, a creative outlet. I'm not expecting to make anything from it. I write for my own pleasure. I post them to see if others enjoy them as well, and yes, it's an ego boost if others enjoy them...
BUT... I don't see it as a competition, or some promotional thing...
I'm not fighting for a spot in the hall of fame. Just enjoying myself...
My preference would be to eliminate the voting system altogether...
Votes are the source of most dissatisfaction here in the forums...
No voting...
No griping....

Just my thoughts...

 

[RocketGrunt]

The notion of only counting fives in the toplists won't change anything either. The people currently down-voting stories will switch to cheerleading 5s. Those don't do much now, because it takes too many of them to move the decimal place. Trolling the opposition down has a much stronger effect than boosting your darling. Once you eliminate every other vote from the equation, every 5 cast moves the bar. If the sweeps aren't getting the 1s, they're not going to get the 5s either. So the bad actors will just overwhelm you and push you out of the spotlight that way.

Cheerleading on the scale that the curation trolling is currently at would have a negligible impact. The number of negative votes used to push even the most massive stories off their pedestals is on the order of two dozen. The trolls have been able to put the toplists in an iron grip based on their ability to generate what is in most cases a number of fake targeted votes that you could count on one hand's fingers.

The difference in number of votes between the current 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place Romance stories in the big crush at 4.84 is eight thousand, four hundred and fifty; and then twenty-three thousand, three hundred and eighty. The gulf is literally a thousand times what the troll teams have so far shown themselves capable of.

Would they be able to do it? Mybe, maybe not. I like to think that if they upped their game to produce a thousand times as many fake votes as they are making now, that they'd be caught. They've been able to hide from oversight by making only one or two fake votes per day on each targeted story. If they needed to come up with hundreds or thousands of votes to push a story one place, they wouldn't be able to control the lists.

Even for the 30-day or 7-day toplists, the addition of one fake vote a day wouldn't even be rounding error on the difference between first and second place on any but the lowest traffic boards.

Basically, while you are correct that the bad actors will try to find a way to ruin things for everyone, the tactics they are currently using to bring the entire site to its knees would not work in the positive vote counting model. And wouldn't work if they switched them to making fake positive votes instead of fake negative votes.

 

[TheLobster]

The people currently down-voting stories will switch to cheerleading 5s. (…) If the sweeps aren't getting the 1s, they're not going to get the 5s either.

To the contrary. Sweeping fraudulent 5’s in this system would be akin to fighting spam, and the sheer volume of legitimate 5’s makes it much easier to infer statistical patterns that allow for reliably purging the illegitimate ones.

This is wholly in contrast to sweeping 1’s, whose legitimate count is low (stories aren’t generally completely terrible) and the illegitimate count is also low (no need to overdo one-bombs when they are so impactful).

Right now, the site is trying to pick out this handful of malicious 1-votes out of slightly larger handful of heartfelt 1-votes and it’s failing because low sample size makes it difficult to make the distinction. Switching to ranking by 5’s would essentially turn it into a spam/DoS problem, which is much more tractable than the idiosyncratic abuse issue Lit has created with its current ranking system.

 

[Bazzle]

In all honesty I rarely pay any attention to the Top Lists.

When @Bazzle brought this idea to my attention, I didn’t really think much of it until I noticed that my story, which had been sitting comfortably at around 4.83, dropped down to a 4.78.

Then bounced back up to 4.8 only to immediately drop again to 4.79.

So is someone, or several someones, down voting my story to keep it under 4.8?

I suppose its possible. But even if thats the case there's not much I can do about it, so...

You are currently still, just, in the top 250 stories!

 

[lovecraft68]

ears ago the lists froze, leaving the same stories on top for a long time while stories that qualified never made it. Went on for months and was a far bigger issue than this because it screwed a lot of people and benefitted others and it was discussed here, but with nowhere near the hysterical tone we're seeing now.

This is across the board, and I will hold that it's a reset that you people can't admit to because of your egos and that's all it comes down to. The up and down isn't a group of sitewide trolls (seriously put your tin foil back in the box) it seems like a massive sweep. As I've been saying careful what you wish for, because you may not like the results.

I think this thread is hilarious.

Welcome to the AH the place to bitch, whine, cry, think way to highly of your work, think everyone is out to get your stories because you think everyone is as jealous as you are, and pretty much prove what really matters to most of you, and its not the actual story.

 

[RocketGrunt]

ears ago the lists froze, leaving the same stories on top for a long time while stories that qualified never made it. Went on for months and was a far bigger issue than this because it screwed a lot of people and benefitted others and it was discussed here, but with nowhere near the hysterical tone we're seeing now.

This is across the board, and I will hold that it's a reset that you people can't admit to because of your egos and that's all it comes down to. The up and down isn't a group of sitewide trolls (seriously put your tin foil back in the box) it seems like a massive sweep. As I've been saying careful what you wish for, because you may not like the results.

I think this thread is hilarious.

Welcome to the AH the place to bitch, whine, cry, think way to highly of your work, think everyone is out to get your stories because you think everyone is as jealous as you are, and pretty much prove what really matters to most of you, and its not the actual story.

I really don't want to hear from you about this issue at all. We get it, you have a 14 year old story that has sat at 4.84 for a decade and has fifteen thousand votes on the Mature board. Without hundreds of stories being troll bombed, your story would never see the toplist with a telescope. Hundreds of stories have been vandalized to push your story up to #2 on the Mature toplist by default.

Hearing you lecture people about how it's actually good and normal for other people to be systematically sabotaged for your success is honestly sickening. When you benefit from injustice being performed on other people you should at least pretend to be embarrassed.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

ears ago the lists froze, leaving the same stories on top for a long time while stories that qualified never made it. Went on for months and was a far bigger issue than this because it screwed a lot of people and benefitted others and it was discussed here, but with nowhere near the hysterical tone we're seeing now.

This is across the board, and I will hold that it's a reset that you people can't admit to because of your egos and that's all it comes down to. The up and down isn't a group of sitewide trolls (seriously put your tin foil back in the box) it seems like a massive sweep. As I've been saying careful what you wish for, because you may not like the results.

I think this thread is hilarious.

Welcome to the AH the place to bitch, whine, cry, think way to highly of your work, think everyone is out to get your stories because you think everyone is as jealous as you are, and pretty much prove what really matters to most of you, and its not the actual story.

I believe you are spot on.

This whole thread originated with the OP ignoring cause and effect.

There was a system-wide adjustment to scores at all levels. That caused some to rise and some to drop. None that I saw were all that significant in either direction.

The effect was that lists based upon those scores also saw changes.

The lists weren't the focus, just one of the effects.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

the tactics they are currently using to bring the entire site to its knees

The entire site! Uhh, no. Just no. The entire site hardly revolves around the toplists.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I really don't want to hear from you about this issue at all. We get it, you have a 14 year old story that has sat at 4.84 for a decade and has fifteen thousand votes on the Mature board. Without hundreds of stories being troll bombed, your story would never see the toplist with a telescope. Hundreds of stories have been vandalized to push your story up to #2 on the Mature toplist by default.

LC isn't the one claiming that his story deserves to be there.

 

[RocketGrunt]

Pink Silk: You've already established that you can't even be bothered to compare two numbers to see which one is bigger. No one cares what you have to say. For fuck's sake, stop spamming this thread.

 

[Voboy]

Pink Silk: You've already established that you can't even be bothered to compare two numbers to see which one is bigger. No one cares what you have to say. For fuck's sake, stop spamming this thread.

Again, not how the internet works, man.

 

[Dodola]

When I was just a reader, I automatically assumed the scores were a referral system for other readers. I had no idea, and no way of knowing, that there was such fierce competition between writers over the scores, until I started coming to AH.

Even if you have a fan base, unless they have some way to know about this behind the scenes rivalry, and decide they're going to act out against other writers for your benefit, then there's probably not organized groups of random readers ganging up to hurt individuals.

I suspect that score bombing was initiated by overly-competetive writers with unethical motives, who don't care if their achievements are based on merit.

Maybe it's hard for some here to remember what it's like to be a reader who enjoys stories from a multitude of writers, with absolutely no motive to help one defeat another, when you have no clue that there's any conflict or competition between them?

 

[RocketGrunt]

When I was just a reader, I automatically assumed the scores were a referral system for other readers. I had no idea, and no way of knowing, that there was such fierce competition between writers over the scores, until I started coming to AH.

Even if you have a fan base, unless they have some way to know about this behind the scenes rivalry, and decide they're going to act out against other writers for your benefit, then there's probably not organized groups of random readers ganging up to hurt individuals.

I suspect that score bombing was initiated by overly-competetive writers with unethical motives, who don't care if their achievements are based on merit.

Maybe it's hard for some here to remember what it's like to be a reader who enjoys stories from a multitude of writers, with absolutely no motive to help one defeat another, when you have no clue that there's any conflict or competition between them?

The number of literal votes that are used to hammer down every toplist every day is small in the absolute sense, much more condensed in time than makes sense to be a disparate group, and too many for one person to be doing every day. It's almost certainly a script, which means it's probably literally one person.

What their motive is doesn't even really matter. It could be someone doing a proof of concept, gloating that their python script is stronger than thousands of fans.

It's important to note that the daily toplist hammerings are not the only source of 1*s, just the only source of 1*s that is organized enough to flatten all the toplists down. There are individual readers who 1* stories for not catering to their fetishes or because they have weird vendettas against certain authors. And of course every contest brings out a bunch of people who 1* all the stories they don't want to win - and those ones usually get swept.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Pink Silk: You've already established that you can't even be bothered to compare two numbers to see which one is bigger. No one cares what you have to say. For fuck's sake, stop spamming this thread.

What are you afraid of?

 

[ThatNewGuy]

There was a system-wide adjustment to scores at all levels.

I don't understand this thinking. That's not a criticism. Just an honest expression of confusion.

All the stories on the all-time top list in Novels and Novellas except six are at 4.84. All the stories on the all-time top list in Lesbian Sex except five are at 4.84.

How likely is it that a system-wide adjustment would create that distribution?

Even if it were due to an adjustment, wouldn't the votes that continue to come in after the adjustment almost immediately blow up that uniform distribution (i.e., raising some 4.84 scores and lowering others)? Why hasn't that happened?

 

[RejectReality]

The number of literal votes that are used to hammer down every toplist every day is small in the absolute sense, much more condensed in time than makes sense to be a disparate group, and too many for one person to be doing every day. It's almost certainly a script, which means it's probably literally one person.

What their motive is doesn't even really matter. It could be someone doing a proof of concept, gloating that their python script is stronger than thousands of fans.

It's important to note that the daily toplist hammerings are not the only source of 1*s, just the only source of 1*s that is organized enough to flatten all the toplists down. There are individual readers who 1* stories for not catering to their fetishes or because they have weird vendettas against certain authors. And of course every contest brings out a bunch of people who 1* all the stories they don't want to win - and those ones usually get swept.

The problem is you're basing all your theories on such a short ( in the grand scheme of things ) period of observation. The slow downward march has been happening for years. It looks far more dramatic when you don't have a long-term reference.

It's not some grand conspiracy. It's literally hundreds of people acting independently as "white knights" for their favorite author/story, and the bulwark that used to keep them in check ( monthly sweeps ) hasn't been happening.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I don't understand this thinking. That's not a criticism. Just an honest expression of confusion.

All the stories on the all-time top list in Novels and Novellas except six are at 4.84. All the stories on the all-time top list in Lesbian Sex except five are at 4.84.

How likely is it that a system-wide adjustment would create that distribution?

Even if it were due to an adjustment, wouldn't the votes that continue to come in after the adjustment almost immediately blow up that uniform distribution (i.e., raising some 4.84 scores and lowering others)? Why hasn't that happened?

Why don't you go rate my story a five and I'll let you know if I see any change with it on the top list?

 

[MelissaBaby]

Why don't you go rate my story a five and I'll let you know if I see any change with it on the top list?

You probably won't notice any difference. All the stories that have 'tied" scores are ranked by number of votes.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

Hearing you lecture people about how it's actually good and normal for other people to be systematically sabotaged for your success is honestly sickening. When you benefit from injustice being performed on other people you should at least pretend to be embarrassed

LC isn't saying it's good and normal for people to be sabatoged. He's saying he doesn't believe it's sabotage.

Earlier in the thread you implied another writer was taking a position contrary to yours because he had benefitted from the top list flattening.

You do your argument no favors when you attack the people you are trying to persuade. I think your suggestion about using raw five votes to counter the flattening is really interesting, but your aggressive approach to anyone who disagrees with you isn't going to have people flocking to your side.

 

[SugarStorm]

We keep talking about the top lists, but I don't think that's where the problem lies. I think the top lists are, well, not broken at least. Not perfect though, that's for sure. But yeah, it's easy to spot the issue(s) there because the data is public in a way it isn't on the rest of the site.

I see votes being added to three of my stories in such a way that it's difficult to justify it. I'm no prolific writer. My stories aren't literotica famous. I'm not on any top list. Yet a few of them are getting hit with votes at a pace that far outdoes my more popular stories, and by using math, it's clear they are being 1-bombed.

These are stories you'd struggle to find (not on top lists combined with a poor use of tags), and those who do find them, I'd say, are hard pressed to vote 1s and 2s because, well, they are kind of niche. They are long and sapphic with HEAs. I mean. Yeah, maybe someone does read 13 Lit pages and then go blergh - fuck this story, but almost 50 votes in three weeks for a story that's not easily found... and the view count to vote ratio is off too (compared to my other stories in same category).

Evidence is obviously anecdotal since I can only rely on the control panel but I think there's more to this than just random ups and downs, as some of you have alluded to.

I think someone's gambling the system. Trolls or admins, I don't know, but there's so much odd happening, and with no rhyme or reason to it.

 

[RocketGrunt]

LC isn't saying it's good and normal for people to be sabatoged. He's saying he doesn't believe it's sabotage.

Earlier in the thread you implied another writer was taking a position contrary to yours because he had benefitted from the top list flattening.

You do your argument no favors when you attack the people you are trying to persuade. I think your suggestion about using raw five votes to counter the flattening is really interesting, but your aggressive approach to anyone who disagrees with you isn't going to have people flocking to your side.

LoveCraft68 is not "convincible" in any meaningful way. He trots out the same arguments over and over again about cheerleaders, about reversion to the mean, about story ratings getting "corrected," about 5* ratings being removed, blah blah blah. He has been shown with math that his stories don't make sense. He has been shown specific data that are in no way compatible with his stories. And people have made accurate forward looking predictions about the actions of the troll bombers that he claims to not believe in. And people have made forward looking predictions about how the numbers would change differently if anything he was saying was true.

And his response to all of this has just been to sink down for a bit and then spew the same refuted garbage later on. He knows that his stories aren't true. He doesn't believe the stories he's telling. He is gaslighting you because he wants you to believe them. That's it.

The current system of troll hammer list flattening is actually quite beneficial to him personally, and the fact that his position has infinite elasticity on any point as long as he refuses to concede that there is a problem that anyone should do anything about is very telling. I'm done treating LoveCraft68 as someone who is having a good faith discussion. He is not. He has been refuted with math, and he knows this. And he brings up the same refuted arguments as soon as he thinks other people have forgotten that they have been refuted.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

It's literally hundreds of people acting independently as "white knights" for their favorite author/story, and the bulwark that used to keep them in check ( monthly sweeps ) hasn't been happening.

I think it's unlikely that hundreds of people acting independently would produce such a uniform vote distribution on the top lists. We know something is off, but we don't know who is causing it or why.

As long as we're speculating, though, my favorite theory is that it's a single actor in the mold of Syndrome from The Incredibles. "When everyone's special... no one will be."

Maybe this is someone who is fed up with what they see as the pretentious and self-aggrandizing attitude of writers crowing about their scores or places on various lists. Wouldn't it be fun, they think, to see how those writers react if their precious scores are taken away from them? How would they feel if no one was special?

I'm probably a thousand miles off, but it's a fun theory.

 

[onehitwanda]

Wouldn't it be fun, they think, to see how those writers react if their precious scores are taken away from them? How would they feel if no one was special?

Joke's on them. Removal of the scores doesn't stop the voices

 

[Dodola]

We keep talking about the top lists, but I don't think that's where the problem lies. I think the top lists are, well, not broken at least. Not perfect though, that's for sure. But yeah, it's easy to spot the issue(s) there because the data is public in a way it isn't on the rest of the site.

I see votes being added to three of my stories in such a way that it's difficult to justify it. I'm no prolific writer. My stories aren't literotica famous. I'm not on any top list. Yet a few of them are getting hit with votes at a pace that far outdoes my more popular stories, and by using math, it's clear they are being 1-bombed.

These are stories you'd struggle to find (not on top lists combined with a poor use of tags), and those who do find them, I'd say, are hard pressed to vote 1s and 2s because, well, they are kind of niche. They are long and sapphic with HEAs. I mean. Yeah, maybe someone does read 13 Lit pages and then go blergh - fuck this story, but almost 50 votes in three weeks for a story that's not easily found... and the view count to vote ratio is off too (compared to my other stories in same category).

Evidence is obviously anecdotal since I can only rely on the control panel but I think there's more to this than just random ups and downs, as some of you have alluded to.

I think someone's gambling the system. Trolls or admins, I don't know, but there's so much odd happening, and with no rhyme or reason to it.

One only needs to glance at your works list and those of several of the other top LS writers in AH, to see that none of their stories rate above 4.84, with the exception of one 4.85.

I just feel like it's other writers, more so than random readers, on a large scale.

Common sense tells me that vendettas aren't usually born from simply reading a story that one didn't like.

Edit, by "top" LS writers, I meant higher quality writers in my opinion, not those at the top of any lists.

 

[FrancesScott]

I’ve suffered from the top lists effect as I mention above. Something does indeed appear to be happening. I’ve not been here long enough to opine as to whether or not it is new. But it seems that active vote manipulation goes on.

What might be helpful is a dispassionate discussion about this as opposed to a pissing match with those involved getting ever more angry, and thus having others ever more likely to tune out.

I get that this is an emotive issue, but way too much aggression and way too little faith in the good intentions of others.