Yes, the Toplists are Broken

[SugarStorm]

The answer is because only the all-time top-lists are being intentionally targeted.

I don't know about the rest of your statements, but I have two stories that have received an abnormal amount of voting in a downward direction. No rhyme or reason why these two. They were not on any top lists when the most recent downswing took place.

If someone wanted to target me, or my stories, and keep them from the top lists, they should have chosen the two-three stories I have that actually do visit the Lesbian Sex Top List every now and then.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

I don't know about the rest of your statements, but I have two stories that have received an abnormal amount of voting in a downward direction. No rhyme or reason why these two. They were not on any top lists when the most recent downswing took place.

If someone wanted to target me, or my stories, and keep them from the top lists, they should have chosen the two-three stories I have that actually do visit the Lesbian Sex Top List every now and then.

First, I'm sorry that happened to your two stories. I follow you and have enjoyed the stories of yours I've read.

The fact that someone/something is capping all-time top lists at 4.84 does not preclude trolls from dropping one-bombs on other stories outside the top lists (for whatever reason). My guess is that that's what happened to your two stories.

I notice that you currently have at least two LS stories at 4.84 that are not on the all-time top list. You mentioned above that they occasionally do make the all-time top list. So I assume they hit 4.85 and then soon after receive another vote(s) that drop them to 4.84, which then knocks them off the all-time list again because they don't have as many votes as the other 4.84 stories on the list.

Is that what you're seeing happen? If so, it's consistent with the mass downvoting/flattening being described.

 

[RocketGrunt]

I don't know about the rest of your statements, but I have two stories that have received an abnormal amount of voting in a downward direction. No rhyme or reason why these two. They were not on any top lists when the most recent downswing took place.

If someone wanted to target me, or my stories, and keep them from the top lists, they should have chosen the two-three stories I have that actually do visit the Lesbian Sex Top List every now and then.

When we say that "only the all-time toplist is being targeted" we are saying that this is the only part of the site where stories are universally and procedurally targeted.

There are lots of trolls who target individual writers, individual stories, individual tags, or whatever. Haters gonna hate. In addition, there are people who mass-spam contest entries in an effort to change who wins a hundred dollars. It's not a lot of money, but it is money and people get real vicious once there are a few actual bills on the table. Some of these acts of vandalism get purged when vote sweeps happen, some don't.

But none of these other vandalism actions follow a protocol where an outside observer can predict which stories will be hit, when they will be hit, and how hard they will be hit. Because all these other things are being done by random angry basement dwellers rather than a person or computer following a protocol. The protocol based troll hammer targets stories which rise above the 4.84 mark while on the all-time toplist (but not the 12-month toplist, or the all-time popular list, for example). That one is as regular as the sunrise. And whatever system they are using, it bypasses the sweeps list.

 

[redgarters]

From watching my own stories and the LS toplist, I've come to the conclusion that

• any story that enters the top list with 100 votes above 4.85 gets voted under 4.85 quickly
• any story that gets above 4.85 gets voted down automatically
• this wasn't like this before (not sure of the exact date it changed) - same stories used to sit at the top for years
• the stories at the top of the list (first page) rotate, so readers see 'new' stories on the top lists more frequently
• The overall effect is that more stories get their day in the sun at the top/first page than before

Now, laying aside any frustrations, the only thing that makes sense to me is that the manipulation of the top lists is a site management tool that

• brings 'new' stories to the top lists regularly by systematically rotating the top seats on the list
• keeps readers coming back to check for 'new' stories on the top list - retaining users
• retains/increases ad revenue by retaining/increasing users and views numbers

So while the systematic bombing of the top list stories may be frustrating for us authors who are lucky enough to frequent the top lists, it makes perfect sense from a site management/business pov. And as a user of a free platform, I can accept that.

 

[onehitwanda]

this wasn't like this before (not sure of the exact date it changed) - same stories used to sit at the top for years

November 2025 was the start of the current site-wide downswing.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

the stories at the top of the list (first page) rotate, so readers see 'new' stories on the top lists more frequently

I don't believe this is correct. The stories on all pages of the top list, including the first page, appear first according to score, then according to the number of votes received. So assuming four stories are rated at 4.84, they would always appear in the same order (e.g., 1,000 votes, 700 votes, 500 votes, 200 votes).

If you can point to an all-time top list that is not sorted in this order, then I'm certainly willing to reevaluate my stance.

Edit to add: I don't dispute that you are seeing some changes on the first page. But these changes are due to stories being bumped down to 4.84 and then being resorted according to number of votes. This is not happening because the site is randomly rotating story placement on the first page.

 

[old_prof]

I don't believe this is correct. The stories on all pages of the top list, including the first page, appear first according to score, then according to the number of votes received. So assuming four stories are rated at 4.84, they would always appear in the same order (e.g., 1,000 votes, 700 votes, 500 votes, 200 votes).

If you can point to an all-time top list that is not sorted in this order, then I'm certainly willing to reevaluate my stance.

Edit to add: I don't dispute that you are seeing some changes on the first page. But these changes are due to stories being bumped down to 4.84 and then being resorted according to number of votes. This is not happening because the site is randomly rotating story placement on the first page.

I think it does happen because some stories out of the vast morass of 4.84's cross the barrier every day. Even though they get bombed almost immediately, they stay on the top list because it is only refreshed roughly once a day.Most of the first page stays the same, but the top handful are probably new every day or two.

This should be easy to check over the next week. But I've already invested more time and mental energy into this than it deserves, so I'm not doing the leg work.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I do have a problem with posters trying to ignore the evidence that it's happening, evidence which I find overwhelming, just because they can't handle the reality. And getting angry at people trying to point out that it is happening.

I have no doubt that it is happening. I just don't like the proposed cures, like at all. They are all short-sighted and selfish. If there was a cure that made significant improvements and didn't disrupt the traffic, I'd be all for it, but so far (and not just in this thread, I mean ever) no one has come up with one that can remotely achieve this.

there are people here who are willing to severely damage the site and reader engagement just so that they can score higher.

 

[TheLobster]

it makes perfect sense from a site management/business pov.

From that PoV, it doesn't make sense to have top lists at all. It was all fine and quirky in early 2000s or whatever, when the site housed a handful of thousands of stories and the idea you could enable a few dozen of them to be called 'best' made some amount of sense.

Not so in the current year, when we have almost a million of submissions, in wildly different and totally incomparable genres -- yes, even within the same category -- and a rating system tailored for the late 90s internet when everyone assumed everyone else was nice and malicious actors were few and far between. Top lists should've gone the way of the dodo long ago, but of course this site isn't exactly known for getting with the times in general.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

I think it does happen because some stories out of the vast morass of 4.84's cross the barrier every day. Even though they get bombed almost immediately, they stay on the top list because it is only refreshed roughly once a day.Most of the first page stays the same, but the top handful are probably new every day or two.

What you are saying sounds reasonable, but I'm not quite following. Can you help me understand? Are you saying that a 4.84 story with 500 votes that is right on the edge of 4.85 might get voted up to 4.85 at some point during the day. And then, as a result, it appears on the all-time list in a position ABOVE another 4.84 story with 1,000 votes. And that it appears out of normal "sorting order" because the all-time list page is only updated once per day to reflect the new 4.85 score that it has just attained?

If so, then that's a good point that I hadn't considered.

The main point I was trying to make is that any rotation on the first page of an all-time top list is not a decision by the site to give different stories top billing on the first page randomly as a service to readers. It's simply a consequence of the systematic vote manipulation.

 

[redgarters]

I don't believe this is correct. The stories on all pages of the top list, including the first page, appear first according to score, then according to the number of votes received. So assuming four stories are rated at 4.84, they would always appear in the same order (e.g., 1,000 votes, 700 votes, 500 votes, 200 votes).

Yes, the votes order is uniform. But, three points here:

First, my stories usually go down to 4.81-4.83 which kicks them way down the lists. Same thing seems to happen to others. So while most of the first page may still stay at 4.84 in the votes order, as soon as they hit 4.85 they get booted down, making room for some other stories at the bottom of the first page and others that may have gotten a few 5 stars and moved up to 4.85 for 2-3 days.

Second, because of this and the votes order, this mostly affects the top 5-10 seats and the bottom 5-10 seats or so, and that means the top and the bottom of the first page keep regularly changing.

Third, what I mean by 'new' stories is that when the reader comes to check the top list (first page) there are different titles at the top than there were last time they checked and in a different order. They may not have changed a lot, but enough to look 'new'.

We can add to those movements the new stories coming in to the top list with very few votes but ratings over 4.85. They will make things look 'new' as well by actually being new.

Most readers on this site probably aren't diving deeply into how the top lists move. For them, to see two new story titles on the top list first page every time they check may be enough to create the illusion that there are 'new' stories there. And that is more likely to make them come back than if they always see the same story titles at the top, thus serving management's purpose.

That's the only point I'm making.

 

[MelissaBaby]

November 2025 was the start of the current site-wide downswing.

Looking in my back files, on November 20, I had 18 stories with 100+ votes and scores above 4.84. I don't have any saved records from the previous months, but I had several that had floated around 4.90 for a good while, and had all dropped to around 4.85.

Now I do not have any over 4.84. I have one story at 4.87 with 85 votes.

 

[old_prof]

Looking in my back files, on November 20, I had 18 stories with 100+ votes and scores above 4.84. I don't have any saved records from the previous months, but I had several that had floated around 4.90 for a good while, and had all dropped to around 4.85.

Now I do not have any over 4.84. I have one story at 4.87 with 85 votes.

Unfortunately, that 4.87 will last only 15 more votes.

 

[old_prof]

What you are saying sounds reasonable, but I'm not quite following. Can you help me understand? Are you saying that a 4.84 story with 500 votes that is right on the edge of 4.85 might get voted up to 4.85 at some point during the day. And then, as a result, it appears on the all-time list in a position ABOVE another 4.84 story with 1,000 votes. And that it appears out of normal "sorting order" because the all-time list page is only updated once per day to reflect the new 4.85 score that it has just attained?

If so, then that's a good point that I hadn't considered.

Yes that is the process I suspect is happening. It would give a certain amount of churn to both the top list, making it attractive to readers looking for something new to read and for the type of individual churn that BobbyB was describing happening to his stories.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

Most readers on this site probably aren't diving deeply into how the top lists move. For them, to see two new story titles on the top list first page every time they check may be enough to create the illusion that there are 'new' stories there. And that is more likely to make them come back than if they always see the same story titles at the top, thus serving management's purpose.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but are you saying that capping all-time top lists at 4.84 could be an intentional decision by site management to increase the frequency with which new stories appear at the top of the all-time list? Wouldn't that mean that to achieve this result, the site would have to actively lower the scores of stories on the all-time top list to bring them to 4.84?

I'll grant that it's possible, but I'd argue that it's unlikely.

If it is an intentional decision by the site, I think it's insane. Setting aside that the site would be manipulating the scores of stories that we provide to it for free, it would turn the top lists into a simple list of which stories have the most votes. Only those stories right on the cusp of a 4.85 rating would have any hope of upward movement.

 

[RocketGrunt]

The amount of "rotating" slots is very small. On the SF&F board there are literally hundreds of stories at 4.84, which means that their order is unchanging day to day. Further, that list is not something the site would want it to be. At this moment, there are 13 stories above 4.84 awaiting their troll hammer in the next few hours, and the entire rest of the first page is taken up with chapters from one of three different series. Every one of those chapters has been knocked down to 4.84 exactly, and every one of those chapters has been rated over four thousand times. If you go to the second page? The threshold to get there drops to 3,585 votes, and it's still one hundred percent chapters from series, and there are now 7 series represented instead of only 3.

But that's still 87 spaces on the board being used to present seven distinct stories. Less than one new story every ten entries. With no plausible way that any other stories are going to get in on the second page any time soon. In case you were wondering, the third page is 100% made of chapters of stories as well.

A better way to give people new material would be to actually show them new material. Like, there's the "popular in the last 7 days" tb, and if that worked properly we'd see new content on it every week. If we had a "trending" tab that was "ratings divided by the number of months it has been on the site" then the chapters of a series where every chapter got rated by the same three thousand people would still have chapters fall off the trending list for having a rising denominator - even if the numerator was all the same.

The flattening of the scores is horrible for list diversity. Both on any given day and between days.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Dedicated trolls seems easily like the most likely scenario.

Not if you also consider all the stories that are not in top lists, or very high on them also being affected. I think it has to be systemic.

I check my scores every morning and download the stats every week.

 

[redgarters]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but are you saying that capping all-time top lists at 4.84 could be an intentional decision by site management to increase the frequency with which new stories appear at the top of the all-time list?

Yes, that's what I'm saying. It makes sense if you believe that readers will visit the site more often if they think visiting the top list is an easy way to find 'new and/or 'good' stories (which I think a lot of them do - we know that stories that go high on the top lists generate more views).

If that's the case, then having them find a few 'new' stories each time makes sense. So yes, I am saying that it makes business sense for management to manipulate the top lists with a downvoting script that makes sure the top lists rotate.

Granted, I've only watched this on the LS top list, don't know if the rotation works the same way on other lists. But the site wide rating top list only has 68 stories in total that rate over 4.84, which suggests it's systematic over the whole site. I just can't see what motivation a 'troll' or even a group of 'trolls' could have to keep all the stories in all the categories on the site under a 4.85 rating. It makes much more sense to me that it's a conscious business decision.

It may sound crazy to authors to manipulate ratings, but we are not paying, so we are the product

 

[old_prof]

Not if you also consider all the stories that are not in top lists, or very high on them also being affected. I think it has to be systemic.

I assume by systemic, you mean caused by the site, either intentionally or unintentionally. I don't follow why you would think that.

Is it just because we're talking so many stories? The entire site does not have so many stories that a dedicated tool would be challenged by hitting all of them if it wanted to. As big as the site is in human terms, it's tiny in terms of doing anything automated to it.

 

[BeechLeaf]

It makes sense if you believe that readers will visit the site more often if they think visiting the top list is an easy way to find 'new and/or 'good' stories (which I think a lot of them do).

An easier and less destructive way of doing that would be to display a random ten of the top hundred stories. No-one actually needs to know the precise top ten, only 'here are some of the very best'. Of course that could also be trolled, but trolls would need to curate a top hundred rather than a top ten. And the size of this site now, a random choice from a top thousand would be equally good.

 

[RoyalAuthor]

I had a story a month ago hit 4.89 on its hundredth vote. Not only did it immediately start getting the 2s and 3s, it got 2 or 3 votes a night for three weeks driving it down to 4.45 before I finally froze the voting.

I have a story that's at 4.89 with 98 votes right now. Can't wait to see what happens tomorrow.

 

[old_prof]

Yes, that's what I'm saying. It makes sense if you believe that readers will visit the site more often if they think visiting the top list is an easy way to find 'new and/or 'good' stories (which I think a lot of them do). Then having them find a few 'new' stories each time makes sense. So yes, I am saying that it makes business sense for management to manipulate the top lists with a 1 bombing script.

Granted, I've only watched this on the LS top list, don't know if the rotation works the same way on other lists. But the site wide rating top list only has 68 stories in total that rate over 4.84, which suggests it's systematic over the whole site. I just can't see what motivation a 'troll' or even a group of 'trolls' could have to keep all the stories in all the categories on the site under a 4.85 rating. It makes much more sense to me that it's a conscious business decision.

It may sound crazy to authors to manipulate ratings, but we are not paying, so we are the product

It is possible that you're right, but I'm dubious. The gain is pretty minimal, so I think there would be low hanging fruit of comparable effort that would bring more advantages to the site. It would be at least as easy to make a "featured" stories that simply randomly selected from the highly ranked ones to promote each day.

And it doesn't feel like something I would expect Laurel to buy off on. She has her flaws, but I really get the feel that at her heart she thinks like an author. She clearly has passion about the site and its stories; that's presumably why she has not given up editorial control despite the obvious win that could come come with that.

As I said, it is possible, but, pending any evidence of it, I find it far, far less likely than it being trolls.

 

[redgarters]

An easier and less destructive way of doing that would be to display a random ten of the top hundred stories. No-one actually needs to know the precise top ten, only 'here are some of the very best'. Of course that could also be trolled, but trolls would need to curate a top hundred rather than a top ten. And the size of this site now, a random choice from a top thousand would be equally good.

Sure, that would probably work towards the same goal. I'm not defending this (if this is indeed what's happening), I'm just saying it makes more sense to me that it's a business management issue rather than troll behaviour.

 

[BeechLeaf]

But from a programming point of view... just look at all the to-and-fro in the above thread about how scripts would need to work to shift things by micro-points. Random selection is hugely easier, and far more obvious as a solution if you want to display variety.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

So yes, I am saying that it makes business sense for management to manipulate the top lists with a downvoting script that makes sure the top lists rotate.

I simply can't imagine that Laurel or Manu would act so unethically. I think it much more likely that they see there is a problem with the top lists and just lack the time/resources/expertise to address it.

But the site wide rating top list only has 68 stories in total that rate over 4.84, which suggests it's systematic over the whole site. I just can't see what motivation a 'troll' or even a group of 'trolls' could have to keep all the stories in all the categories on the site under a 4.85 rating. It makes much more sense to me that it's a conscious business decision.

If it were across the whole site, I would expect to see the 12-month top list experiencing a similar effect. That doesn't appear to be the case. The 12-month top list for Novels and Novellas, for example, has 78 stories above 4.84. The all-time top list for that category has 4 stories above 4.84. To me, that is evidence that the script is targeting mostly the all-time top list stories.