AO3 curiosity

[spatz]

So with the news about AO3 making TIME's best 50 websites list, I was thinking about how the site is bound to get some tourists wandering through, which made me wonder if there were any stories on the archive that had inflated hit counts from outsider linkage (the way sam_storyteller's Trying to Communicate went viral because lolcats).

It doesn't look like it: most of the ten stories with hits over 200,000 are behemoth chaptered fic in popular fandoms that were posted as WIPs.

But then there's a few *complete* outliers, all from SGA fandom: gen fic of mediocre quality and short length, all by different authors. They all have low comment/kudos numbers, except one that has 7500 guest kudos and like five personal kudos, and a truly egregious misspelling in the title.

I am VASTLY curious what happened there.

Comments

[ignipes]

I kind of hope the author kudos'ed themselves 7500 times. Because that would be hilarious.

[spatz]

Apparently it was a glitch that let some bots through during genficathon, according to a commenter below. I thought it might be bots! Who would have the patience to do it themselves? I mean, writers are crazy, but most aren't crazy enough to give themselves a RSI.

(Reality is much less funny, alas.)

[liviapenn]

7500 kudos in less than a year? So she'd have to be getting like 20 kudos every single day on this one story since the day it was posted. I can't even imagine.

[spatz]

Apparently it was bots! (In the library archive, during genficathon)

[liviapenn]

That makes sense. I mean, if you did have the patience to kudos yourself 20 times a day, every day, presumably you would spread it out among ALL your fics and not just focus on one random one.

Bots are weird!!

[marthawells]

I would bet you a million kudos she's kudoing herself.

[spatz]

Mwahahah, a million kudos for me, then! According to another commenter, it was bots. Much less exciting. :(

[marthawells]

Oh man, stupid bots. What a pain for her.

[busaikko]

Those fics were posted at a time when a glitch allowed random 'bots to get through, and the fest they were posting for (genficathon) has several fics with high bot-inflated hitcounts, etc. The glitch was stopped after a few days.

I believe the AO3 offered to remove the hits/kudos, but then they'd lose all the genuine ones as well.

[spatz]

Ooh, facts! Awesome, thanks! I knew the internet would provide :)