Yes, the Toplists are Broken

[pink_silk_glove]

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.

This is complete bullshit. Say what you want about LC but if there is one person on this forum who speaks with purpose and believes in what he says, it's LC.

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.

You can't say this about him the way that you're acting, because all that you;re doing in this thread is attacking the shit out of anyone who disagrees with you.

 

[AllenWoody]

I'd like to see either a separate list for one-off stories that aren't part of series, and/or a process that ages off older entries gradually. Think of Reddit, where even the most wildly active threads are supplanted by new activity. I'm not saying I want Lit to be just like Reddit, but I do believe that readers would be better served by seeing what is both hot and fresh, not the same dusty stories that have been hanging there for a decade. And writers would at least get the reward of seeing their hot story showcased for a day.

 

[Gommage]

 

[TheLobster]

Pack it up, @RocketGrunt, you've been memed and therefore lost the argument automatically!

 

[AllenWoody]

Pack it up, @RocketGrunt, you've been memed and therefore lost the argument automatically!

Spell: Meme'd. Delivers ten points of argument damage and may stagger the target, knocking them from the thread entirely.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

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

Kinda my point.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I currently have eight stories ranked at 4.83 or 4.84. Last week there were seven. The week before there were eight. The week before that there were six.

The same ranking changes have continued for all of my stories to some degree over the past few months. Very few have remained completely static.

I don't dispute that there was some change that might have affected the presentation of stories in the top lists, but refute any claims that there is some system-wide conspiracy or outside bad actors manipulating things. Otherwise, why would lower ranking scores also be part of their game plan?

 

[StillStunned]

Pack it up, @RocketGrunt, you've been memed and therefore lost the argument automatically!

Hmm, a first-time poster? Or an alt for someone who doesn't want to attach their regular username to it? If so, the meming loses its power.

 

[TheLobster]

Hmm, a first-time poster? Or an alt for someone who doesn't want to attach their regular username to it? If so, the meming loses its power.

Shush! Don’t burst my bubble. It was clearly my counterspell, so deftly cast, that did the trick here.

 

[RocketGrunt]

There are many levels of truth. There things that I think are true, things which align with my intuition or experience. There are things that I believe are true, having put the weight of emotion and thought behind them. There are even things that I am certain are true, having been shown compelling evidence and weighty argument to that effect.

And then there's math. Things that simply are true. Two plus two is four, on a level that does not merit questions of certainty or belief. It is simply necessarily true.

When I say that an added low rating has a greater effect on an average that is already above the midpoint than a high rating does, that's not a thing I think or believe is true. It is true. It is simply, necessarily true.

When people are confronted by this information, they must accept it. Because it is true. And if they do not accept it, there is no place for them in the civilized discussions of adult humans. They have rejected truth on a much more basic level than if they had claimed an unconventional color of the sky.

When I say that Pink Silk and LoveCraft68 are not honest or honorable people in this discussion, I am saying that they have been shown truth and have refused it. I can't see in their hearts, I do not know if they are liars or fools, and I don't care. Their contribution is less than worthless. They should get off my lawn.

 

[Voboy]

There are many levels of truth. There things that I think are true, things which align with my intuition or experience. There are things that I believe are true, having put the weight of emotion and thought behind them. There are even things that I am certain are true, having been shown compelling evidence and weighty argument to that effect.

And then there's math. Things that simply are true. Two plus two is four, on a level that does not merit questions of certainty or belief. It is simply necessarily true.

When I say that an added low rating has a greater effect on an average that is already above the midpoint than a high rating does, that's not a thing I think or believe is true. It is true. It is simply, necessarily true.

When people are confronted by this information, they must accept it. Because it is true. And if they do not accept it, there is no place for them in the civilized discussions of adult humans. They have rejected truth on a much more basic level than if they had claimed an unconventional color of the sky.

When I say that Pink Silk and LoveCraft68 are not honest or honorable people in this discussion, I am saying that they have been shown truth and have refused it. I can't see in their hearts, I do not know if they are liars or fools, and I don't care. Their contribution is less than worthless. They should get off my lawn.

So… what’s your plan?

Gripe? Leave? Or redefine what you think of as success?

Why’d you post the thread, if everything is so clear and irrefutable? If there’s no point discussing anything?

Exactly what are you looking for here?

 

[pink_silk_glove]

When I say that an added low rating has a greater effect on an average that is already above the midpoint than a high rating does, that's not a thing I think or believe is true. It is true. It is simply, necessarily true.

Sure, but it doesn't prove your point. If someone is scripting downvotes to drag down scores, they can easily script 5s (thousands of them) to keep a score up. Yes, down is easier but it can still be done, not that difficult. With a script (as you claim) voting 1000 times is just as easy as ten times.

When people are confronted by this information, they must accept it. Because it is true. And if they do not accept it, there is no place for them in the civilized discussions of adult humans. They have rejected truth on a much more basic level than if they had claimed an unconventional color of the sky.

No one doubts that there is rampant downvoting. There always has been. Has it ramped up in recent months? Some have debated that. I'm not watching it closely enough to know because I don't care, but I'll take your word for it. I certainly have no reason to doubt.

But your scheme to "fix the toplists" won't fix them. By counting only 5s, you just change the gamesmanship from trolling to padding. Not only that, but 20 year old stories with thousands of 5s have an unfair advantage. Plus any stories that are heavily padded and manage to avoid sweeping will stay padded, forever, and no one will catch them. You will just break the toplists even worse than they are now. You haven't thought out your idea enough. You haven't done all of the math. You've only done enough to satisfy your selfish agenda and stop.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

No one doubts that there is rampant downvoting.

Actually, I do doubt it.

I do not doubt that there are some personalities here who have, through deeds, actions, or category choice, alienated someone who may make an effort to target them with harassing votes or feedback. I don't view these rare instances as "rampant" or wide spread. I view them as dramatic over representations of targeted actions against a few.

This entire thread is a perfect example. The original premise of the OP was that the top lists "are broken" and then implying there is some malicious system modifications or outside bad actors behind it. To the contrary, there is evidence that there has been some adjustments made to scores overall, and these adjustments are reflected in the top lists and elsewhere (cause and effect).

The adjustments have impacted scores at all levels, some positively and some negatively, which logic tells us would not be beneficial to someone merely trying to influence top list positioning. What does raising one of my scores from 4.14 to 4.16 do to influence anything in the system, or having eight of my stories bounce between 4.84 and 4.83 over the past few weeks?

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Actually, I do doubt it.

Okay well you're the only one then.

 

[lovecraft68]

Actually, I do doubt it.

I do not doubt that there are some personalities here who have, through deeds, actions, or category choice, alienated someone who may make an effort to target them with harassing votes or feedback. I don't view these rare instances as "rampant" or wide spread. I view them as dramatic over representations of targeted actions against a few.

This entire thread is a perfect example. The original premise of the OP was that the top lists "are broken" and then implying there is some malicious system modifications or outside bad actors behind it. To the contrary, there is evidence that there has been some adjustments made to scores overall, and these adjustments are reflected in the top lists and elsewhere (cause and effect).

The adjustments have impacted scores at all levels, some positively and some negatively, which logic tells us would not be beneficial to someone merely trying to influence top list positioning. What does raising one of my scores from 4.14 to 4.16 do to influence anything in the system, or having eight of my stories bounce between 4.84 and 4.83 over the past few weeks?

It's a site wide sweep and seems pretty extensive, not a bunch of trolls who are working in concert and attacking every top list at once...sigh.

Why now? We'll never know, like we never know why they do anything.

What I know is if everyone saw their scores going up there would be no complaint.

.

 

[lovecraft68]

Okay well you're the only one then.

I don't doubt it happens but to individuals or at times on a new story list for certain categories, but across the board and all the top lists at the same time?

No, this is something the site is doing.

I think we're seeing some form of reset.

 

[old_prof]

I don't doubt it happens but to individuals or at times on a new story list for certain categories, but across the board and all the top lists at the same time?

No, this is something the site is doing.

I think we're seeing some form of reset.

To be blunt, I don't Manu is competent to pull it off.

But it would not be hard for a determined individual who has the knowledge to build;d a tool or is given a tool to do all the damage shown. There are literally dozens of people on AH with the skills to build the tool, although I do not have any suspicions that any of them did. But I would place a sizable bet that someone has. And someone (or someones), maybe not even including the tool maker, has decided to deploy it on a heavy duty basis.

Of course everyone wants THEIR scores to go up. And yes it is completely hypocritical to complain about one direction and not the other. But that's human nature. In my mind, this is a very frustrating issue for authors and will certainly drive away some percentage of the authors, especially the higher ranked authors, which is and for the site. But otherwise, it's not a real problem from the site's perspective. The ratings are for readers to be able to find reasonable stories from the substantial portion of stories submitted here that are truly awful. Readers want good stories to read, and a 4.75 story vs a 4.9 story generally doesn't matter a great deal to them at the moment as long as they see some very good or great ones in their mix of stories they read.

And what the hell does a 4.75 vs 4.9 even mean. The ratings blur basic writing competence, which all the highly rated stories have, style issues, which can be highly subjective, and how closely any kink in the story matches their own taste. Some things, like a compelling plot or interesting believable characters are somewhat objective, as is writing quality. I will never write as meaningful of real world characters as does @MelissaBaby or as evocative of a scene as does @StillStunned . I accept my weaknesses there, although I'm working hard to get closer to their skills there, even in reaching those heights are almost certainly beyond my realistic hopes.

So some of the upper ratings are real. And some is purely subjective. I think the subjective part matters at least as much for any individual reader, so you either just take your chances or find writers that write stories you will consistently like. So other than our own egos, the ratings up there don't matter a bit. But all of us have egos. Every single one of us.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Okay well you're the only one then.

It wouldn't be the first time and it likely won't be the last.

As long as you still love me, all is good with the world.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I'd like to see either a separate list for one-off stories that aren't part of series, and/or a process that ages off older entries gradually. Think of Reddit, where even the most wildly active threads are supplanted by new activity. I'm not saying I want Lit to be just like Reddit, but I do believe that readers would be better served by seeing what is both hot and fresh, not the same dusty stories that have been hanging there for a decade. And writers would at least get the reward of seeing their hot story showcased for a day.

The issue of ratings manipulation aside, the two reforms I would like to see are dividing Top Lists into separate series chapter and standalone story lists, and creating an archive into which all stories and finished series would be moved after a set period of time, keeping them available to readers but separated from more current submissions.

 

[RocketGrunt]

Actually, I do doubt it.

I do not doubt that there are some personalities here who have, through deeds, actions, or category choice, alienated someone who may make an effort to target them with harassing votes or feedback. I don't view these rare instances as "rampant" or wide spread. I view them as dramatic over representations of targeted actions against a few.

This entire thread is a perfect example. The original premise of the OP was that the top lists "are broken" and then implying there is some malicious system modifications or outside bad actors behind it. To the contrary, there is evidence that there has been some adjustments made to scores overall, and these adjustments are reflected in the top lists and elsewhere (cause and effect).

The adjustments have impacted scores at all levels, some positively and some negatively, which logic tells us would not be beneficial to someone merely trying to influence top list positioning. What does raising one of my scores from 4.14 to 4.16 do to influence anything in the system, or having eight of my stories bounce between 4.84 and 4.83 over the past few weeks?

The thread starts with a confirmed prediction of specific stories that would get 1* bombed at a specific time. The prediction was made because they had bubbled up onto the toplist just hours before and they were both hit with two 1* ratings by the next toplist refresh in the middle of the night, mere hours after the prediction was made.

Since that time, hammers have fallen every day at the same time, and while the SFF board briefly got all the way up to 26 stories with a rating above 4.84, it is now back down to 10.

Stories outside the toplist move in manners that are consistent with random votes. Stories that get onto the toplist move in a manner consistent with scripted, orderly action. A manner which is predictable and has been successfully predicted.

Those stories had around two hundred ratings each. They didn't have any 1* ratings, and they got two each within hours of being exposed onto the toplist. As everyone who has been watching this play out over the last year predicted was going to happen. If it wasn't deliberate activity, we wouldn't be able to predict it so accurately.

 

[Voboy]

I'd be content with seeing nothing but amalgamated series scores appearing on the toplists, which was (IIRC?) something Manu was allegedly working on a bit ago. Meaning, the site was aware it was a Good Idea and had accepted the need to do it.

If you're going to have toplists in a world where you know scores on later chapters in long-running series are routinely inflated, it makes no sense to treat those chapters as individual works.

Apart from that, the toplists appear logical to me. Though, again, I've never thought about them a great deal unless a thread here has reminded me to think about them!

 

[lovecraft68]

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.

Here's some math for you.


I'll toss in the number 16 as well, as in 16 years of building a base that continues to support my old work. You can put me down all you want, truth is? I've earned my place here. All you're earning is the reputation of being a petty hater.

 

[RejectReality]

There's a reason I end all my submissions with a note like this.

One vote per reader, and don't down-vote other people to "help" me either. No stuffing the ballot box.

It's because I had a couple of readers mention off-hand that they were doing stuff like this while corresponding about the stories. I immediately told them to please stop, and started making sure everyone else knew it as well — constantly. This is back when I was averaging about 50 votes per submission in Sci-Fi & Fantasy. Rest assured that if there were two, there were many more. Rest assured that if I had people doing that, then everybody else does too.

I know people heeded it because the number of votes swept off my stories dropped off a cliff, and the jumps in score after sweeps increased. Their unsophisticated bombing and cheerleading was no longer vanishing every time the Hoover came around, because most of them stopped when asked to.

You don't need some sophisticated, organized attack. All you need is a few fans from every author cheekily "helping out" their favorite by boosting them and down-voting everybody else that threatens their darling. Remove the bulwark of the monthly sweeps and simple math wins the day. Everybody slowly descends in score, and the scores flatten out because once someone is no longer a threat to their darling, they move on to someone who is. Anyone who's been bombed off the toplist knows there's a cutoff when it stops. That cutoff is when you're no longer a threat and they can see it because the toplist updated.

And this whole notion of counting only fives has another serious problem. When a story with a 4.80 and 600 votes is ranked above someone with a 4.84 and 500 votes, the 500 vote author's screams of cheating and site bias will startle people out of a dead sleep on the other side of the world. And there would be a butt-ton of those stories from ages long past that suddenly appear on the toplists, so the collective wailing would likely be picked up by gravitational wave detectors. Using any metric other than a simple average is going to summon a torch-wielding mob screaming WITCHCRAFT!

 

[Safewordmustcontain]

Whatever the result or truth of it, I'm actually relieved to see that I'm not the only one that has seen this happen to their works. I'm a bit of a hermit and a total Luddite. So thank you all. It was both confusing and disheartening to see stories that I'd put so much time and heart into, and that seemed well-regarded initially, suddenly get torpedoed into oblivion without any explanation why. It's a good reminder to 1) ask myself why I write these kinds of stories, 2) read things that aren't on top lists, and 3) appreciate and leave comments. Now if I could just find the time to do all that...

 

[lovecraft68]

There's a reason I end all my submissions with a note like this.

One vote per reader, and don't down-vote other people to "help" me either. No stuffing the ballot box.

It's because I had a couple of readers mention off-hand that they were doing stuff like this while corresponding about the stories. I immediately told them to please stop, and started making sure everyone else knew it as well — constantly. This is back when I was averaging about 50 votes per submission in Sci-Fi & Fantasy. Rest assured that if there were two, there were many more. Rest assured that if I had people doing that, then everybody else does too.

I know people heeded it because the number of votes swept off my stories dropped off a cliff, and the jumps in score after sweeps increased. Their unsophisticated bombing and cheerleading was no longer vanishing every time the Hoover came around, because most of them stopped when asked to.

You don't need some sophisticated, organized attack. All you need is a few fans from every author cheekily "helping out" their favorite by boosting them and down-voting everybody else that threatens their darling. Remove the bulwark of the monthly sweeps and simple math wins the day. Everybody slowly descends in score, and the scores flatten out because once someone is no longer a threat to their darling, they move on to someone who is. Anyone who's been bombed off the toplist knows there's a cutoff when it stops. That cutoff is when you're no longer a threat and they can see it because the toplist updated.

And this whole notion of counting only fives has another serious problem. When a story with a 4.80 and 600 votes is ranked above someone with a 4.84 and 500 votes, the 500 vote author's screams of cheating and site bias will startle people out of a dead sleep on the other side of the world. And there would be a butt-ton of those stories from ages long past that suddenly appear on the toplists, so the collective wailing would likely be picked up by gravitational wave detectors. Using any metric other than a simple average is going to summon a torch-wielding mob screaming WITCHCRAFT!

On the topic of helpful fans, you and I were discussing a particular story recently that always finds its way back to number one. When I saw this top list situation had started I went and checked that top list and sure enough they're bumped to #2 as some fake fives came off and some bombs to the new number one did as well.

Now, we'll see how long it takes for them to get back to #1