I noticed that too, with my new story. Went to bed with a 94% and three glowing reviews and woke up in the 80s. Spammers were my first thought. Just didn't make sense otherwise.

 

Most of my stories take a specific taste, so some don't rate well. And they are wordy, but yeah most of mine lately have gone down quickly in ratings. I do like to post here in the forums though, lots more comments.

 

I may start doing that, too. Comments are very sparse on the story side.

 

Very. It's helpful to get comments in order to be a better writer and more so for me it's.. uhhh spicy... to hear what others think of and how my stories affect others.

 

I've been writing on this forum on and off for a few years. It use to be more of my hobby but now a way to spice up my girl and my sex life. Brainstorming and editing stories turns out to be great foreplay. I am annoyed by the whole "must post 6 times to log back into your account thing" as I often go on a 6-9 month hiatus between contributions.

 

So, I've decided to delete the stories posted since the middle of March when everything got crazy. It's not like anyone could have found them anyway with them not showing on the Author profile.

When it seems things are ok I'll have these stories plus some new stuff I'm working on to post.

 

I'm wondering if many of the negative comments about stories here aren't the result of the difference in taste between the author and the reader, rather than the quality of the writing.

 

I must say, overall, the voting has not been that big of a deal. I've scanned over a few of these latest stories and to be honest they have not been very good.

The biggest thing for me is the author profile page and not listing the author's latest stories.

That needs to fixed ASAP. A 95% rating was given out like candy to sub par stories and writing. Good stories were down voted intentionally for whatever reason. Almost like when fans vote on reality singing competitions. Vote for the worst!

Also, because the writing may be on point doesn't mean the story is good. The subject matter may be boring. The flip side is the subject matter may be great but the writing may be horrendous.

Get better everyone. Nuff said - carry on.

throatHer out

 

Yeah, rating systems are too easy to game, to the point where I don't really pay much attention to a story's rating at all. I think it was a smart for YouTube to hide the dislike counts. A high like count still shows interest, and constructive criticism really belongs in the comments anyway. I think people dislike entirely for content reasons. A well written story with something controversial about it will probably always get downvoted. It would probably be better to remove downvotes entirely.

 

about to post stories to get to the 6 post requirement. Is that the best way to get 6 posts?

 

So, how is it that these California Girls stories by ToastyHS from 2014 are all showing posted a few days ago? Seems like the dogpile of downvotes started when those showed back up at the top. Are the two things related?

 

Yeah this is a problem. There were a bunch of new stories this morning (none mine) that had good early scores. I haven't read any, no idea how good they were. But now ALL of them are nowhere to be seen. The California Girls series are back at the top and the rest are around 90% or lower.

What the hell is going on?

 

Come on guys!

It's an old story that was reposted. It would be hard to downvote it. The new stories that were posted - not that good.

Voting system has been fair

 

When a story gets edited, it appears at the top as if it's a new story. Toasty's series got a 95% rating back in the day and Toasty recently happened to recently edit it, which made it reappear in the 'last 30 days' section. Back when Toasty first posted it, voting on your own story was allowed. The story's appearance isn't the work of bots, and it isn't the work of spammers. I understand working hard on a story and feeling cheated if your story gets mass downvoted - been there - but these assumptions make the community of this website look like conspiratorial children. Either ask questions about why things happen the way they do, or butt out. Assuming everyone that succeeds must be running a bot or whatever is only going to make the community more distrustful and toxic.

It's so easy to ask, "Hey, why did an 8-year-old story appear in the 'last 30 days' section?" in good faith. You all aren't doing that. Some of us here are making it really easy to believe that the community of this site deserves bots and spammers. Cut it out.

 

Then I guess my work on this part of the forum is done. I've probably spent more time trying to help people, explain how the boards work and talk people through the posting process than anything else.

I know what I've been told behind the scenes, but fuck it. I'll use the forum for entertainment and leave the discussion to others. I'm tempted to take down what I've posted and find another site, but I'm used to this site.

 

Everything will be fine. Criticism is healthy. Like I said before - 95% were handed out like candy. That's 19 out of 20.

These new votes have been, for the most part, fair and accurate. Keep on writing better stories

 

Can you explain how the "new voting system" got to be? There was no change made. I don't recall receiving an announcement that I was to vote in a new way. You guys keep talking about the "new voting system" as if something official happened. Unless I was the beneficiary of bots or whatever without knowing it then I still don't understand.

I know throaHER doesn't like sequels or multi-chapter stories (for the most part), but how do you explain "Just a Small Town Girl" parts 1-3 being in the mid-90s, then parts 4-6 being in the mid-70s?

Even if 1-3 may have been overrated by hundreds of people I seriously doubt the quality fell off so much that hundreds of people who apparently liked 1-3 now thought the story sucked.

Yet, "new voting system".

 

"When is a vote not a vote?"
Never? A vote doesn't register if it's in the same five-minute period of a previous vote, but the system will openly tell you when that's the case. Refreshing after a few minutes and re-voting will fix this. This comment seems needlessly inflammatory. Did you not read my comment about asking questions in bad faith?

"Are only the negative people getting through?"
Only a certain vote per story per amount of time is getting through. This new voting measure was put in place to address spammers, not to address overwhelmingly positive votes, not to address overwhelmingly negative votes.

"The people who used to like my work can't get their votes in?"
The new system only allows one vote per five-ish minutes. If you don't like it, that's valid. I don't see how conspiring about Toasty then throwing a hissyfit when you're called out as conspiratorial helps your cause. What you said above was needlessly throwing shade on Toasty, which isn't needed because they didn't do anything wrong. I asked you to either cut that out or leave. You said, "Then I guess I'll leave this forum," which speaks for itself.

"Why does vote suppression lower scores?"
It doesn't; it addresses spamming. It never claimed to improve/inflate scores. If your scores are deflated after anti-spamming measures are put into place, consider that maybe the spammers *helped* your stories. The new measures prevent someone with a VPN repeating upvoting/downvoting a story's score over and over. That's literally it. If someone who likes your stories happens to vote on your story and it doesn't go through because it happened within the same five minutes as another vote, that's unfortunate, but it's a necessary downside to combat a wave of people abusing the old system of processing votes. Consider how few votes happen within the same five-ish minute period, and that the people who stand to lose the most from this new system are people that use VPNs and systematic downvoting.

I'm taking the time to explain this system to you because I care about open communication. The least you can do is accept we're all in the same boat. At time of writing, Cham-Ee-Seul, you're on the top of the charts. NCFan, most of your stories are ranked over 95%. As unbelievable as it is, especially compared to authors like myself, you two have benefited *the most* from this current situation. You both come across as spoiled children that whine about others when they even temporarily outshine you. It's unprofessional and mean to whine about Toasty, and just weird to presume they're using bots when you didn't even understand how the site worked to process their stories, which are now buried under yours. So to address your last question, "how is it more fair?" It isn't. A lot of authors are buried by this. You two aren't. Sorry that this situation, which affects us all, slightly affects you two as well.

 

I'm not complaining but I am confused. Maybe this is clearer to you than it is to someone on the outside. I don't see a mod/admin tag on your profile but you've clearly got back channels open to site admins. (Which is fine, by the way, not complaining about that, either.) Was this new system just brought online in the last week or two? Timed voting has been a thing for awhile as far as I know. I've voted on stories in the past, much further back than last week when Toasty's stories suddenly popped up, and been told too many votes etc. and I understood it to be an anti-spam measure and it never bothered me. It's slightly inconvenient because I want to give the writer an upvote to support the work but I can't and in five minutes I'll not remember to come back and do it later. But I understand the logic behind it and thing it's a smart thing to do. However, unless I'm misremembering being told 'too many votes for this story' months and years ago, this is not new. When you said votes are "processed and restrained" I took that to mean some votes were removed as part of some new function that was separate from the time-restricted voting. Perhaps we're talking about the same thing, though. However, whatever you're referring to seems to be tied in with 95% being handed out like candy, to use throatHer's analogy. This would imply that the spam the new system was activated to deal with was upvoting stories, but only selectively? This is what's confusing. Am I simply wrong that this time-limit voting has been active for months, if not years?

Also, I did ask about Toasty on Tuesday. I tied it together with the sudden drop of several percentage points on mine and others' stories because it seemed an odd coincidence, but I did pose the question. Your answer came a few days later.

 

Also, what do you mean by this?

My series from last year, Teacher, has an average rating of 95%. My new one, Grooming, has an 88% on the first part and 90% on the second part. Which is fine, I'm not upset that it doesn't have 95. If that's how people feel then that's how they feel. I wouldn't have started writing if I couldn't handle the criticism. However, I don't see how I'm benefiting unless you are counting benefit as the votes are maybe more legitimate now if they were spam-upvoted in the past? And a quick scan of your author page shows pretty much all of your stories well into the 90s. What benefit have I received that you haven't received? Of course I want honest voting on my story and if somehow my other ratings were undeserved then yes, I benefit. But so do you. So does everyone in that votes are legitimate. Compared to an author like yourself, how am I getting more benefit? If it's your position that I'm shit and you're awesome, okay. I've not read any of your stories so I don't have an opinion on the quality of your writing. But what is unbelievable about my current situation compared to yours?