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News
Wish Upon A Star - Update (Correction) |
| After a few comments, complaints, and other e-mails from authors, SIYE looked into the unusual swing in story ratings. We determined that a large amount of Trolling was happening. Trolling is the practice of giving a story or chapter the lowest rating (star) possible. The lowest score, a “1,” is named Troll. When you give the same story or chapter numerous Troll ratings, it affects the star ratings. Our investigation found that approximately ten members were practicing Trolling, creating 1489 1-point ratings for 119 stories. Two members were responsible for 1098 ratings alone; one story had over 120 (I stopped counting). Why they did it is anybody’s guess. Maybe to make a good story look bad or to make their story look better. We don’t really know and, at this point, don’t care. To correct this “flaw,” SIYE has updated its programming: 1) The reviews function now shows even the 'empty' reviews and all of them are accompanied by a star rating provided by the reviewer. 2) A program was run to remove those 1489 1-point ratings from the 119 stories affected. 3) A member can leave only one review-less rating per chapter. If a member writes two reviews accompanied with a rating, both ratings will still be recorded. 4) Ratings no longer start with a default of 10. It will be blank. Someone must actually give you a rating for your story to get one. Over the next week or so, the authors of those 119 stories will receive an e-mail explaining that their story was affected. The two main offenders will be dealt with. Other areas that are affected by ratings were updated. We also know that some authors are doing just the opposite and inflating their ratings with multiple entries of 10, Outstanding. That will be dealt with separately. SIYE regrets the actions of a few members that prevented good stories from getting the top star ratings they deserved. I hope this puts to rest the practice of Trolling. Tom Sir Ollivander SIYE Administration |
| Sir Ollivander on 2008.01.27 - 09:51PM () |
Comments
zoemcfoe came out of the woodwork on 2008.01.27 - 10:46PM to say:
Thanks so much to the admins for this and all you do to keep this site running. It's unfortunate that some people use the reviews to vent their immaturity. One of my favorite stories on this site recently came under attacks of the trolling and foul-mouthed kind. As a regular reader, it's infuriating to think that a couple of bad apples might lead the author (and others who are subjected to similar nonsense) to just walk away from writing in disgust. Posters here work incredibly hard for nothing but their readers' responses, and should never be paid back with anything less than kindness.
Sir Ollivander came out of the woodwork on 2008.01.27 - 10:49PM to say:
Ginny Guerra - On behalf of the others involved, I thank you for those kind words. It's unfortunate. However, it's a shame that we have to. Some people just can't do right and leave it at that. They have to screw with something.
sinisterDei came out of the woodwork on 2008.01.27 - 11:53PM to say:
Just curiosity killing my cat here, I'm interested to know which story someone felt so strongly against that they decided to leave 120+ 1 star reviews on. I don't know if you have any objection to naming it here, or in a private message, but I'd like to know. Call me a glutton for punishment, but someone hating on a story that much seems grounds enough for me to give it a shot personally.
harmoine came out of the woodwork on 2008.01.28 - 01:28AM to say:
I just want to say a big thank you to the staff for dealing with this problem. From now on I will never submit anything bad. Only stuff I will submit is only positive stuff or constructive critism to why I don't like the story. To authors keep up the great exciting work and just so you know I have started a story of my own as well and hopefully it will be up as soon as I can find a beta.
Kezzabear came out of the woodwork on 2008.01.28 - 06:42AM to say:
Although the Troll half stars were removed from my story in chapters 1 and 3 they still rate as lower than they should in the chapter listing that comes up when you click on the story. It's rating five stars overall now but the individual chapter ratings are still out.
Thought you oughta know ... :D Thanks for fixing this up btw, it isn't fair for people to troll like that.
MyGinevra came out of the woodwork on 2008.01.28 - 09:49AM to say:
What I do, harmoine, is to send constructive criticism to the author via PM or email. No matter how confident an author is, a negative review is always at best a jolt to the ego. A private message at least shows some mercy by not making it public. Just a suggestion.
MyGinevra came out of the woodwork on 2008.01.28 - 09:50AM to say:
Sorry about the bold in the last comment. I must have messed up a tag. Please don't troll me for that. :-)
melkior came out of the woodwork on 2008.01.28 - 10:03AM to say:
Fixed the runaway tag. No worries. :)
quinn came out of the woodwork on 2008.01.28 - 10:39AM to say:
I just want to say thanks to all of the admins. I think you've found and executed some very wise solutions to this problem. I'd noticed some of this stuff happening, but I never thought to report any of it. I'd assumed that you all would be too busy to deal with that kind of thing. But once again I've been proven wrong and reminded why I like this community. You don't just say that you care about content; you actively adapt and enforce the rules. Bravo, and thank you.
Leonheart666 came out of the woodwork on 2008.01.28 - 02:17PM to say:
wow, when I saw the original message, I thought something bad must be happening for you to look into it so deeply, but that many on so few stories? That's pathetic really. I'm glad that admins are making a stand against this. It's really not fair for authors to come under that sort of attack when all they have done is spent time writing a story. So well done admins for the response made
harmoine came out of the woodwork on 2008.01.28 - 03:07PM to say:
MyGinerva I won't troll you for what that. If you like once my story is up and running please feel free to comment on what you think of it. No hard feelings.
Sibling Creature came out of the woodwork on 2008.01.28 - 06:36PM to say:
I seem to recall suggesting changes like these a couple of years back.... up until now I've found the rating system to be almost useless because it always seemed to me that the default of 10 meant that the ratings were being artificially inflated by anyone not paying attention to the ratings when leaving a review and almost every story had 4.5 or 5 stars. It will be interesting now to see what levels stories actually get when not being influenced in either direction.
Kezzabear came out of the woodwork on 2008.01.28 - 10:08PM to say:
That is a point actually. Having teh default set to anything could be inflating. Plus it says you can leave a review or rating or both but it isn't actually possible to leave a review without leaving a rating. Is it possible to have a default postion of void in that field so that rating has to be thought about. IYWKIM? I know I've messed up and left it on the default sometimes and I wouldn't have rated it a10 and you can't edit it.
Kezzabear came out of the woodwork on 2008.01.28 - 10:37PM to say:
Er, yes well never mind that now ... someone needs to read the updates before rabbiting on like a mad thing ...
Chris Widger came out of the woodwork on 2008.01.29 - 09:49PM to say:
Thanks for doing this. I was having some serious issues with most of my stories, particularly my latest one. I'm not overly egotistical, but I know that my stories were much better than the ratings I was getting.
Ginny Guerra came out of the woodwork on 2008.01.27 - 09:57PM to say:
I wonder why people would do such things. Why hurt people who don't wrong you? Why try to get a grade you don't deserve? Thanks a lot, Sir Ollivander and all the Administration team, for all the efforts you keep doing to keep fairnes and cleanliness in the site.