Ao3 Kudo Weirdness

[labingi]

This morning, I got a notice of, like, 20-ish kudos on a single story of mine, not new, not a big fandom (Trigun), not especially good--it's basically a whimsical mega-drabble. This is totally unprecedented in my Ao3 experience, and it makes me wonder if it's a bot or something? I'm not complaining; it's just bemusing. :-) (Also, the story does not engage with race, so I don't think it's a political thing springing from the racism troubles.)

Comments

[sffan]

Could be Trigun Stampede fans looking for any Trigun-related stories :)

[labingi]

Bushwah (below) identifies it as probably a bot. Oh well. Love your icon by the way.

[sffan]

Thank you!

[bushwah]

https://uhf-comm-pass.tumblr.com/post/666755557129175040/i-havent-been-following-the-kudos-bot-issues-very Here's a post with more information (and speculation), but tl;dr, yes, it's a bot, and no, there's no way to fix it beyond archive-locking your fic so it can't happen again. And archive-locking will make your fic not show up in searches by logged-out users, so that's less than ideal.

I'm a little surprised the bot is still running -- haven't heard anything from it in months, if not over a year -- but knowing you got hit by 20 kudos, the bot is for sure where my mind goes.

To further confirm it's the bot, check the hits. An increase of 20 kudos should come with at least 200 new hits (10% being high end of normal for a kudos to hits ratio). The bot doesn't give any hits whatsoever, and can even result in a number of kudos greater than the total number of hits on the fic, as it did for some of mine.

Hope this was helpful.

[labingi]

Thanks for the information. This is good to know. :)

[bushwah]

Hang on your username is Bilbo's last name. Fucking superb.

[labingi]

I've had this username since 2004, and you are literally the first person to comment on it! Points to you!