Forum: Author Hangout

Authors are readers. We should be able to vote as readers.

I agree. Just because someone writes stories doesn't mean they're not long entitled to having an opinion. However, where the trouble arises is when an author, in order to boost their story's rankings, sets about to downvote (1-bomb) everyone else's stories to make his/her own look good.

Luckily, this doesn't arise often, but it has occurred in the past, and happens fairly frequently on Amazon (which is why you can't rate your own book and IF you're caught downgrading other authors, Amazon can permanently ban you as an author (which is meaningless, since they don't tie that decision to your tax ID status, so authors can easily create a duplicate Amazon account). It's a sufficient deterrent for those who'd never do that type of thing anyway, but no deterrent at all for those likely to abuse the system. :(

As for SOL blogs, if you need to say something, the blog is the best way of reaching people, especially since you can often reach those not currently reading your current story (i.e. anyone on the site is likely to see the blog post, for a few hours, at least).

Personally, as far as voting is concerned, most authors are perfectly capable of living with their decisions (i.e. they don't need to undermine others to feel proud of themselves), so a few bad scores won't panic them. But ... there are a very few who aren't confident in their writing, who feel the ONLY way for them to succeed is by sabotaging others. But luckily, that's rare enough Lazeez can address it on a case-by-case basis.

Voldemort posts here..?? Does Harry know..??

Now I'm SURE that Voldemart would down-vote the entire Harry Potter series, after all, the series ended up KILLING him, so it's simple self-preservation to try to limit the story's appeal! 'D

Multiple accounts are possible on SOL, so it's possible for authors to vote on their stories more than once. Some authors are very competitive and take their scores EXTREMELY seriously.

Lazeez has been known to police this in the past, or at least has stated that he does so (and I wouldn't expect him to announce he had taken such action ).

My understanding was that he policed the competitions. There was quite a decent prize for the Halloween Contest, and it might conceivably be possible for a mediocre author to profit by taking out multiple paid accounts to slew the vote in their favour. (I'm pretty sure that didn't happen this time because the winner was a decent story.)

I'm not sure it's possible to protect run-of-the-mill story voting from abuse by someone with multiple free accounts - monitoring IP Addresses won't work against someone who's determined.

AJ

I would imagine this forum is in 100% agreement that one simply does not vote for himself. Nor herself.

Many authors vote on their own stories and award themselves 10s on the principle that if they didn't love the story, why would they publish it.

Personally, I've NEVER voted for my own stories (other than to test out recent changes to the voting system work, and then I don't vote outside the normal voter margins.

For a while, I DID vote for myself on goodreads, simply because I couldn't figure out how to post a description of the writing process for any given book without attaching a bogus rating, but I've since figure out how to do it (without the bogus ratings). Again, in those situations, most sites bring on the abuse themselves by NOT making clear how their features work. :(

I know a lot of other people on the Internet use general blogs to push all sorts of agendas of which over 99% is pure rubbish and not relevant to how the blogs are used by my SoL authors. BTW: There are no blog professionals at all.

As Ernest suggested, there are NO reader blogs on SOL, and authors typically use them to announce when stories will be delayed, their health is declining enough to impact their output, or other vital elements. By posting to the blog, even if readers DON'T see it, it provides a place to check up on authors who have stopped posting. So yeah, I consider author blogs to be essential. Though posting where you can purchase their books is a tricky question. However Lazeez took care of that by ONLY allowing a single link in any blog/forum post, which keeps the 5-site blog posts at bay.

Kudos on that one, Lazeez.

Upon reading the above a thought crossed my mind, (yes awnlee, it was lonely).

The smelly little oick who was Callan's sidekick? ;)

AJ

Way before my time..!!

OMG! You're not a millennial, are you?

AJ

Original release‎: ‎8 July 1967 – 24 May 1972

So why Jean Simmons? Did your granny tell you about her?

AJ

Whippersnapper!
👧🏼

So, the current algorithm thingy removes the highest and lowest scores (exact % etc irrelevant) so from a tactical voting point of view, would it not be better to vote a 1 for your own story, rather than an 8, 9 or 10?

Again, there is NO need to cheat or 'rig' the system. If your one 10 vote is just one among many, then so be it. If it's the ONLY one, and everyone else HATES your story, then I'm guessing the author has already gotten the message about his particular story. Thus voting 'outlier' votes (1-bombs and 10s when all the other votes are only 5s to 7s) should always be avoided.

If you're NOT a terrific author yet, it really does you no good to pretend that you are. You'll get there in time, if you continue working at it. But playing games won't help you to become a better writer.

As an aside, if I was serious and therefore took your post at face value, it would probably cause me offence. A little restraint on the use of 'you' and 'your' would help to make it clear you are talking generally and not addressing yourself to the poster directly.

I tend to take comments like that seriously, not because I think the post itself was serious, but because others might not know it was in jest. (Ross and I get into this all the time.)

Since readers might be concerned with someone voting for themselves (even if it's not 1-bombing themselves), it was worth addressing the issue, just to reassure readers who might not recognize your humor.

But, yes, I tend to use the generic 'you' (as a stand in for 'the public', or 'various users' at large), so it's often easy to misread my intent.

Typically, if I am attacking you personally, there shouldn't be any doubt about it. When there is, then chances are I'm using the generic 'you' to refer to unidentified 'others'.

A little known writer called Tom Clancy used a game to play out the plot etc of a book he wrote called 'Red October'. So it could be argued that playing that game made him a better writer. Could it not?

That's clearly a significant difference than what we were discussing. I've often picked a particular story simply because it was challenging to write, or it presented an unique opportunity to address a particular situation. While those stand to help you become a better writer, they're valid (even games of 'harpoon'), but 1-bombing others doesn't, and—if and when they ever occur—are more a sign of significant insecurity than anything else.

but 1-bombing others doesn't

Whoa..!! Where did that come from? I certainly never suggested that.

Again, I'm leaping ahead, beyond what you said, to where many may take the discussion about 'voting their stories up or down'. If someone (no longer my generic you), thinks that voting their story up might help, it's only a short leap to voting others down. Again, it was a major crisis in Amazon reviews several years back.

I honestly can't decide if you mean to imply that my post was too complicated. Or that other readers are too stupid to understand it and need you to clarify it for them. It has to be one of those two options, I'm just not sure which.

I'm more of a 'big picture' guy. I take simple statements, and then proceed to write (based on what's often left unsaid, about abuses by others). That's the basis of many of my novels (drawing inferences, based on my fictional settings, about the world at large). As a result I tend to make sweeping generalization about the negative aspects of society (using the generic 'you', meaning 'you' as a reader or writer).

Trust me, you'll either get used to my extreme excesses, or you'll waste massive amounts of time getting pissed at everything I say. In the end, it's easier to just accept that I'm eccentric and often say stupid shit.

So when I encountered, spelling errors, errors in sentence structure, inappropriate word choice, and other items, it did not bother me all that much. Now that I am an author, I am more aware of these things and understand that fixing these types of errors is not that difficult. I am more critical of authors who don't use editors and don't even run spellcheck.

That's easy enough to express via personal comments (i.e. not vetting an author's mistakes before the world at large, but merely providing insights so they can clear up a few outstanding issues before it may affect their scores. But having done that, I wouldn't double down and also 1-bomb the story after you've already pointed out his problems with spelling/punctuation/grammar.

B.S. Not directed at you, REP, merely adding my two cents to your discussion about recognizing things more as an author than you did as a mere reader.

That's okay, CW. If I were going to low-ball a rating, I would give it a 3. Most 1s and 2s would probably be dropped as part of the lower 5%. My 1 would be among them an not register on the histogram and the author wouldn't know someone thought so poorly of their story.

The link between raw scores and the final story score is somewhat convoluted. A 3 might well cause a score of 1.67 to decline.

AJ

That seems impossible. If the 3 is the highest vote it's in the top that is discarded, if not then 3 > 1.67 and thus could not make it decline. Am I missing something here?

It could happen. When we were testing the new scoring system, I gave my story a 10 to test it (I hadn't scored it before). The score dropped.

It had to do with when the score was calculated. Before the 10, the variant-factor must have been lower than when it re-scored it with the 10.

Also, that was before the dropping of the top and bottom 5%. If the 3 makes a score higher than 3 drop off the top, I guess the score will go down.

Thinking you give a 1.67 story a little boost without being too generous and bringing it even down further. That's funny.

Not to the author who poured his heart and soul into the story, and is still bleeding emotionally over it. But yeah, it is ironic.

That seems impossible. If the 3 is the highest vote it's in the top that is discarded, if not then 3 > 1.67 and thus could not make it decline. Am I missing something here?

One aspect of the score calculation system that you can't see is the cutting of votes is only done on whole numbers of votes. The score doesn't appear to readers until there are 20 votes, so at that time only one vote will be dropped off the top and the bottom. However, that will stay that way until the 40th vote is cast. So the votes 21 to 39 will be calculated with only 1 voted dropped off each end while the 40th vote will be calculated with 2 votes dropped off each end. The same process applies all the way through so every 20th vote has a slightly higher visible affect on the calculation than the other 19 before it or after it.

The only time I rate a story is when I feel I've read enough of it to judge the quality of the story. If a story only has a 1.67 rating, it is probably so bad that I would bail on the story very early and not rate it. So it would never get a 3 from me. :)

ETA: I generally don't look at the ratings. The lowest score I've noticed has been 5.x, so a 3 would bring it down slightly.

A few of the hoi oligo wrote to me about loanwords ...

Hoi is the Greek word for the, and the phrase hoi polloi means 'the many.' This has led some traditionalists to insist that hoi polloi should not be used in English with the, since that would be to state the word the twice. But, once established in English, expressions such as hoi polloi are typically treated as fixed units and are subject to the rules and conventions of English. Evidence shows that use with the has now become an accepted part of standard English usage: they kept to themselves, away from the hoi polloi (rather than away from hoi polloi).

(The above was excerpted from some dictionary or other.)

Paige

A few of the hoi oligo wrote to me about loanwords ...

Hoi is the Greek word for the, and the phrase hoi polloi means 'the many.' This has led some traditionalists to insist that hoi polloi should not be used in English with the, since that would be to state the word the twice. But, once established in English, expressions such as hoi polloi are typically treated as fixed units and are subject to the rules and conventions of English. Evidence shows that use with the has now become an accepted part of standard English usage: they kept to themselves, away from the hoi polloi (rather than away from hoi polloi).

(The above was excerpted from some dictionary or other.)

Paige

Authors didn't become authors through lack of reading.

Apart from celebs who produce 'autobiographies' despite 'never having read a book in their lives'. But luckily we don't get many of those on SOL. ;)

AJ

Short answer: Yes. Their own and those by other authors. It is hoped that authors are also readers and their votes should be part of the mix.

By that token, authors ought to be allowed to review their own stories. After all they're also readers and their reviews should be part of the mix.

AJ

I don't know. I hope so. It's possible the situation has never arisen - there are few reviewer slots and the reviewers aren't prolific so it's hard to imagine them authoring as well.

AJ

Has she ever reviewed one of her own stories???

That would be unacceptable.

That would be unacceptable.

The million dollar question is whether it would be unacceptable to management.

If someone has multiple accounts (free or otherwise), how would management know?

AJ

Why would 'management' tie up valuable time and resources solving a problem that does not exist?

I'm pretty sure it's not worth the time and effort. Besides, 10-10-10 reviews are 10-a-penny and lack any wow factor.

I was trying to make the point that if it's unethical to review your own stories, surely it's unethical to score your own stories too.

I've noticed one or two authors quote Amazon star ratings and reviews in their story descriptions. I've found them to diverge from reality - I can only imagine those authors are getting their mums to write the reviews and rate the stories.

AJ

Any reader can vote, only those accepted can review. Also a review and a vote are very different animals.

I'm not so sure - they're both 'measures' of a story for the benefit of potential readers.

Do you really think that anyone standing for election actually votes for the other candidate? Or abstains?

I think those circumstances are different. The electorate aren't swayed towards a candidate by how many votes they get. But the answer is yes, I have read of rare politicians who abstain from voting.

AJ

A great many books and films bomb with the critics but are extremely popular with readers/viewers.

IMO a good critic supplies enough information for readers and viewers to make their own minds up. 'The Madness of King George' and 'Laurel and Hardy' are two films awarded five stars by the reviews I read, but which I would never, ever want to watch :(

AJ

For what it's worth, Lazeez has already said that he has no way of determining a member's IP address.

For what it's worth, Lazeez has already said that he has no way of determining a member's IP address.

I think it's probably safer to say he has chosen not to. Web servers have to know the IP address of the client making the query to send the requested data back. As such, the information is available. You can elect not to log it, but that's a choice.

On my servers, I retrain http (i.e. web server) logs for 72 hours for troubleshooting purposes. If I ran a site which might attract any sort of 'imperial entanglements' I'd turn off logging and only activate it in response to a reported issue.

Web servers have to know the IP address of the client making the query to send the requested data back.

True, but the response info needs can be handled by cookies. Also, most people use and ISP where the individual IP address changes every time they log on to the ISP, and again if they use a VPN service.

I suspect SoL relies on the cookies to reply as I've accessed SoL direct from my ISP service then activated a VPN to pop out in East Canada and continued the access to SoL without any issues while getting a faster response due to the VPN link reducing the number of bounces between me and Sol.

I have both a satellite and an ADSL connection at my house, whenever either disconnects from the ISP for any reason it comes back up with a different IP due to me being given another one within the group the ISP owns. While I have the ISP connection active it stays with that IP, but a reboot for any reason or a power outage will see the IP change. When my son does an update of his Win 10 he has to reboot and gets a new IP on his ADSL line, when we have a bad storm I can lose the sat connection and get a new IP when it reconnects.

Actually, that pretty much only happens with dial-up connections.

I have ADSL broadband. I deliberately chose not to have a fixed IP address when it was offered to me as an exciting, new, free feature. On rare occasions, when I've exceeded eg a file-sharing site's download limit, it's trivial to get a new IP Address from my ISP and continue downloading.

AJ

Trivial yes, but something that you have to do deliberately.

I'm not sure about that. I don't disconnect my broadband overnight, but from day to day I find sites which guess your location put me in different places.

AJ

True, but the response info needs can be handled by cookies. Also, most people use and ISP where the individual IP address changes every time they log on to the ISP, and again if they use a VPN service.

I suspect SoL relies on the cookies to reply as I've accessed SoL direct from my ISP service then activated a VPN to pop out in East Canada and continued the access to SoL without any issues while getting a faster response due to the VPN link reducing the number of bounces between me and Sol.

All traffic on the internet has to be routed, and this is done with an IP address (v4 or v6). The web server MUST know the IP address to send the data back. There is no other way for the packets to move via the routers on the internet.

I use a VPN as well - the server would then know the IP address of the VPN exit node, not my computer's IP. But the VPN server knows my IP. It translates the public IP to the private VPN IP, then sends it back to me to my IP address.

As for IP addresses changing, that rarely happens on cable or fiber networks. For dialup, you would get a different IP (in a set range) each time you connected. My IP address will only change if a) my provider restarts their equipment or b) I leave my cable modem powered off or disconnected for > 12 hours.

I've logged into SoL via my ISP then realised my VPN is logged out, so I turn the VPN on and continue with the activities on SoL. There is no way the VPN can be using the same IP to talk to SoL as my ISP was, but the cookies on my system still advise SoL of who I am. When I do the above the first action on SoL via the VPN takes a little longer, but it works and the later actions are faster. I strongly suspect that what happens is when I change the SoL cookies advise the SoL server via the cookie and it changes the IP data for my current connection to that of the VPN IP. I don't have access to SoL's servers so I don't know for sure, all I know is the ISP and the VPN have different IPs when they talk to SoL and I don't have to log in again due to the cookies.

Now as to IP changing on non-dial-up services, unless you pay for a static IP address each time you log out of the ISP and then log back in you will get the next available number from their group and it's very unlikely to be the one you just surrendered, so it will be different. See my reply to DS for why you would be logging out of the ISP.

Hmmm,
here in Germany some ISPs deliberately disconnect an active connection once a day – with immediate reconnection with another IP – to force small companies to use the ISP's extremely more expensive permanent IP service package.

HM.
That's a real dirty trick which will cost them clients if there are alternatives. Otherwise there's always the option of moving the servers somewhere else.

Not really. Up until your post I've literally never heard of an ISP that doesn't do DHCP leasing with changing IP addresses. What you have is very, very rare.

The dirty trick I mentioned was pointed at the "deliberate disconnecting and reconnecting with a different IP" part.

DHCP session/renewal is a standard thing. Sometimes you get the same IP address, sometimes a different one. It's a standard practice that I've experienced with every internet connection I've ever paid for here in Canada. I've been with Bell, Rogers and Telus as well as two other small ISPs. It's not a dirty trick if you know about it, and there is no 'disconnection', the lease renewal only happens usually when no network activity is ongoing.

Here in Canada, unless you specifically ask and pay for a static IP, you never get a static IP. With my current connection with Bell, my IP hasn't changed in the last couple of months, but that's only a coincidence.

So far they haven't run out of IPv4 addresses around here, so we're still with the same old system. However, I have no idea how they will handle IP addresses allocation when they have to switch to handing out IPv6 addresses. Maybe the will all become static maybe not. The incentive to force IP address change has dropped significantly in the last few years with the advent of 1 Gbit symmetric connections.

DHCP session/renewal is a standard thing.

You and Keet are addressing 2 different things.

You are talking about getting a different IP address every time you start a new session. That is normal for DHCP and you keep the assigned IP address until you end your session. The next time you start a new session you get a different IP address; the odds of getting the same IP address are very low.

What Keet is talking about is - the ISP terminating a company's service and immediately restoring it so the company is assigned a new DHCP IP address in the middle of your session with the company. You and all the other customers retain your DHCP addresses, but the company's DCHP IP address changed. That means you and the other customers have to reconnect to the company to establish new connections, and all of you most likely blame the company for the disruption of your prior connections. That means the company has upset customers and it has to buy the more stable and costly service that the permanent IP address provides.

Personally, I agree with Keet that creating upset customers who blame the company instead of the ISP is a dirty trick.

ETA: a few minor changes

What Keet is talking about is - the ISP terminating a company's service and immediately restoring it so the company is assigned a new DHCP IP address in the middle of your session with the company. You and all the other customers retain your DHCP addresses, but the company's DCHP IP address changed. That means you and the other customers have to reconnect to the company to establish new connections, and all of you most likely blame the company for the disruption of your prior connections. That means the company has upset customers and it has to buy the more stable and costly service that the permanent IP address provides.

I've never heard of any company that does that kind of crap. Most companies I've dealt with have 24 hours DHCP sessions. At session renewal you may or may not get the same IP address you had. Session renewal doesn't happen in a way that interrupts transmission. It happens when there is a lull in activity. As for expensive static IP plans, around here, you can get a static IP only if you're located in a business district and have a business to get such a service. You can't get a static IP on a residential line.

Why would any sane person set up a system that purposefully interrupts their service? That's literally the worst thing any business owner would want. If an engineer sets up such a system it's probably to sabotage the company he's working for. But no business plan includes annoying interruptions to service. Even if the ISP is the only one available, it still doesn't make sense. I can understand if an ISP has a monopoly and uses cheap, unreliable equipment, but purposefully implementing service interruption into the system doesn't make any sense in any situation.

Why would any sane person set up a system that purposefully interrupts their service

You are almost there in understanding what Keet said about helmut_meukel's comment.

1. Helmut_meukel was talking about what happened in Germany, not here.

2. It is the ISP' connection to the businesses that is interrupted, not the residential customers' connection to the ISPs.

3. Helmut_meukel said some ISPs intentionally create a disruption in service.

In other words, the ISPs provide their business customers with a choice of two types of service: DHCP (cheap) or fixed IP addresses (expensive). The ISPs disrupt the service of companies that choose DHCP once a day to coheres them into changing their service to the more expensive fixed IP address service.

I don't know how things are in Germany, but here in San Diego there are agreements between ISPs whereby they divide the region into different service districts. In the district where I live, I have a choice of one ISP (i.e. the other major ISP refuse to provide me with service). Of course, I do have the option of going with a small independent that doesn't/can't provide good service.

In that type of situation, a small business doesn't have much of a choice in who will provide their service. Their ISP can decide to play dirty in order to force them into a more expensive service package.

So if Frankfurt, Germany is divided between 5 ISPs and they all play the game of interrupting service to coheres the businesses into upgrading to a more expensive service, the businesses can continue to have their service interrupted or pay for the stable service.

I've logged into SoL via my ISP then realised my VPN is logged out, so I turn the VPN on and continue with the activities on SoL. There is no way the VPN can be using the same IP to talk to SoL as my ISP was, but the cookies on my system still advise SoL of who I am. When I do the above the first action on SoL via the VPN takes a little longer, but it works and the later actions are faster. I strongly suspect that what happens is when I change the SoL cookies advise the SoL server via the cookie and it changes the IP data for my current connection to that of the VPN IP. I don't have access to SoL's servers so I don't know for sure, all I know is the ISP and the VPN have different IPs when they talk to SoL and I don't have to log in again due to the cookies.

Now as to IP changing on non-dial-up services, unless you pay for a static IP address each time you log out of the ISP and then log back in you will get the next available number from their group and it's very unlikely to be the one you just surrendered, so it will be different. See my reply to DS for why you would be logging out of the ISP.

We're talking past each other, and at different protocol layers of the OSI model.

Layer 1: Physical Layer

Layer 2: Data Link Layer

Layer 3: Network Layer

Layer 4: Transport Layer

Layer 5: Session Layer

Layer 6: Presentation Layer

Layer 7: Application Layer

Layers 3 is where IP addresses live and everything on the internet must use them. All traffic is routed (unless it's on the same physical piece of wire) and as such each router much know where to send each it of date ('packet'). This leve know nothing about applications at all. There is no persistence at this layer. Whatever endpoint you use (your local ISP or a VPN), both the source and destination IP address MUST be included in the packet or no communication is possible, and each end has access to that source/destination IP address.

Layer 4 is where various transport protocols used by the internet live - mostly TCP and UDP in our current internet. Quite often you'll hear Layer 3 and Layer 4 spoken of together as 'TCP/IP'. This layer also knows nothing about applications at all. There is also no persistence at this layer, though there is a facility for replacing missing packets if the remote system signals they did not arrive.

Layers 5-7 are where applications live (e.g web browsing). Cookies live here. They maintain the persistence of a connection (among other things) and are what allow the server to know the 'state' of the application. This is how SOL knows you're logged on and can maintain state, or how Amazon knows what's in your shopping cart.

The SOL servers know these things:

The source IP address (either from your ISP or from the VPN provider)

Your identity via the cookie

As for IP address changing, the standard for cable modems in the US is a long-lease DCHP assignment which rarely changes. DSL is different, as there are many, many ways to provide access and sign on, and how your DHCP assignment works is highly variable. My comments above were for cable and fiber modems which are extremely stable with regard ti IP addresses in most places

Bottom line - cookies identify your session and don't (necessarily) depends on IP Address. IP addresses are required for the internet to work and are available to the web server (in fact, they must be, or it can't send you the date). Easily proved if you want to arrange a time to test with me and I'll tell you your IP address (either the one from your ISP or the one from your VPN).

I spent enough time in Cisco training and worked with this stuff enough to know. Buet here's Stanford:

https://web.stanford.edu/class/msande91si/www-spr04/readings/week1/InternetWhitepaper.htm