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Suggestion:
Stephen Robins @ 213.146.148.199
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14-Aug-06/6:28 AM
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Reply
Perhaps the defiler of the "best" list should be given a pair of onanistic wings.
Replies:
Self-voting has always been allowed and therefore encouraged on Poemranker. Whoâs to say that the multitude of anonymous zeros on your record were not self-inflicted from utter shame and repugnance over the scandalous smut you later recognized as such.
Dovina, you are truly black hearted to keep on disgorging your bile over everything I do. All I have ever done is extend the dove of friendship to you to see it rudely bludgeoned to death by your immense parpings. Well I shan't tolerate this for much longer, I know it is born of deep seated sexual tension and that you long to take a delicious long suck on my swollen memeber but as I have said on many occasions I don't date fat chicks.
I think we all realize the fact that you don't date chicks of any form except with dicks of course.
I have never dated chaps with baps.
Totally different kettle of fish altogether, you know that.
To be serious for a second, I always enjoy reading over the best list. I've just returned to the ranker after a couple of months and now the top 20 is stuffed to vomiting with the rhyming equivalent of Bush hate mail and poo jokes. What do you suppose anyone new who stumbles across poemranker is going to think, if this is what he sees in the celebrated Best List? This is hardly the way to attract new members, to say the least, and I can't imagine too many of the old members are thrilled.
Agreed.
While anonymous voting is enabled it'll be oh so easy for people who want to win poemranker, hence the worst best list in living memory. Really though, the worst part isn't so much the self-voting of tens, but the anonymous turding on other poems to keep them down. As far as I'm concerned, that's what happened to Instructions To A Sculptor, and while that's languishing in obscurity the best list isn't doing its job. An idea might be to put a button on the page to take the reader to the next 20 (like on the most recent page and the comments) so if places 1-20 are taken up by the same author, you can skip to 21-40 for some variety. Possibly a subtle hint at the top of the list would be appropriate, to warn the reader that the top spot is a much-contested place, and may not necessarily reflect the view of the majority of rankers.
But please, Kaolin, get rid of those blue lines.
Much would be gained by simply ignoring the "Southpark" poet society. They are rodents that thrive on attention. All you have to do is look through some of their recent posts to see we have been all too willing to applaud them. I'm sure Kaolin would have granted them their wings by now but with other's voting them 10s his hands are tied. Although most of the 10s come from fellow rodents. Besides it seems the wings have become more of a prize then a punishment for them. Maybe if after recieving your wings you were on a probation pending being banned then it would be worth its salt. But the answer's really quite simple. Nail them with as many 0s as they have 10s. It's not like it's hard to find them. So let's start dropping eggs.
Us old-timers readily ignore what you humorously call âThe Southpark Poet Society.â Newcomers cannot ignore them without first doing the research. When newcomers see the poop-laden Best List, they assume that Poemranker is a poop site. I think this is why most of the newcomers, over the last weeks, are so oriented.
Kaolin has inserted safeguards against selfish votes. He has disallowed more than one vote from any IP or from any user-name. Edna and others have raised their status by voting through multiple IPâs. They probably log in with dialup, which gives a new IP every time they log in, and almost always an IP unassociated with any user-name. Thus they vote themselves onto the Best List. I oppose anonymous voting, and think that disallowing it is the only way to reduce the problem. Many people have multiple user-names, and they cannot be as easily prevented from self-voting. Kaolin has threatened to eliminate user-names whose emails bounce, or whose emails are the same as for another user-name. I think this is also a good idea.
I second that. Perhaps we should put "disallowing anonymous voting" to a vote?
Are we going to allow anonymous votes in that poll though?
In all honesty, if someone's determined to reach top place on the ranker, nothing's going to stop them. They'll get their friends to create accounts and ten them...multiple zeroing will just lead to a rerun of the horusettle wars, which ultimately bores a lot of people. All we can do is put a warning that the best list is highly-coveted turf and so probably won't reflect the opinion of many poemrankers. Perhaps, if nentwined is willing to spare a little time (you can laugh at me for that if you want, nent ;-)) there could be an unchanging 'recommended' list as well, for which we could put forward maybe one poem each, and he could decide which to add to the list. I'd still like to see a 'next 20'/'previous 20' button on the best list though, it would allow easier access to a wider range of poems. Having said that, I don't think people make enough use of the option to only see the best 20 of a certain type of poem - there are some hidden gems in there.
*amendment*
For the recommended list, we could suggest one poem each, but not one of our own.
That's what the Favorites page was installed for. Any respectable newcomer should check your Favorites if he likes your poems or taste in poems. The onanistic couldn't do anything to inflate themselves because people would just know to ignore THEIR favorites, see? Personally, I think it's brilliant. It's like IP-searching someone in Kazaa. If anything, the Favorites link should be given more play, and the Best list given less. But then there's the whole matter of the place being called poemRANKer.
If the favourites could be promoted more it should. The problem is that someone new to the site actually has to find you and read your poetry before deciding if your tastes are similar - so we're back to square one. Most newcomers won't find you unless you've just posted something, or are in the top 20. Alternatively you can post comments on their work, but I tend to find that I'm lucky if one out of every ten comments I post gets something back. Maybe it's just me.
This isn't true. Any respectable user is going to check out your poetry and favorites list after reading your interesting, literate comments on his or her poem or on the comments page. And are you really interested in the opinions of *non*respectable users?
Ah, maybe that's it - maybe I need to post some interesting and literate comments ;-)
And no, you have a point, I'm not worried about those not categorised as respectable ones. By the way, apologies for taking so long to get round to properly reading through your catelogue of poems. I'm slowly working my way through them currently. --suggestion (yet another unintelligent one, yawn) -- The random ones which appear when pr is first opened tend to be from the lower half of the ranker. I've never seen a poem in the top 100 when first opening. This would (possibly) make an excellent impression on newcomers.
The random generator picks from the least voted-on poems, which is why they are not in the 100 best. To be on the best list requires at least 10 votes, and usually more, unless they are all tens. I don't know kaolin's secret formulas, but these are my observations.
I have never posted a literate or interesting comment. I resent the notion that I should.
Maybe you just expect to be informed and entertained without effort on your part. Like the site's staffed by robots.
I should interject here, I'm not trying to bring up old junk now. I've appreciated your presence on the site lately. Amends? Great. Now, robots: A problem with poemranker and sites like it is that people seem to think they're populated by critiquing robots, which is why they tend to post a bunch of poems and expect a bunch of critiques without having to offer anything worthwhile of their own. At best, they post poems and offer critiques for awhile, thinking this will earn them critiques, and then get bored and leave because, frankly, it's not much fun to read other people's mediocre poetry. The trick to fixing this is community. I'll read the mediocre poetry of the people on this thread because I have a kind of relationship with you folks not really related to poetry. The relationship comes from chatting with you about things only vaguely connected to poetry until I get the feeling that you're normal people with lives and personalities sitting in front of computers somewhere, rather like I am. I read your poetry because I like you (more than I like much of the poetry, to tell the truth.) The most successful writing sites I've seen have strong communities. They have good crowds talking and relating to each other personally and only occasionally commenting on poetry. But the poetry-commenting happens BECAUSE all the relationships and community are there, see? Okay, great. I'll stop repeating myself now. Long story short -- stop worrying about how to make more stringent rules enforcing participation and critiquing and blah blah blah. Talk, invest, be sociable, have a presence, communicate, and you can save the site. Amen.
Fair point. Keep the faith :-)
I tried and, it appears, failed miserably.
Not so.
Absolutely so. I tried being knowledgeable and interesting, and still the participation level is at an all-time low. Oh well. I'll stick around to chat with you, and Nick, and Mr. nyp22 and a few others.
How is life, anyway?
Oh, please do stick around, you're so much more agreeable to argue with than zodiac.
He'd have a fit if he read that.
Yes, thanks for the pleasant memory. I do miss his fits.
It'd be nice to have ALChemy back as well. I hope he's still alive...
Me too. At leasst Amanda will be back on about 10/30 after her vacation.
I'm back which will give you great comfort.
I am so relieved to know that you haven't succumbed to the Dark Lord of Chav. I hope Fraser is just as well.
That uber fascist nentwined has prevented Fraser from logging on for the past ten months because he posted a series of comments calling nent a queer. which he clearly isn't - I have no desire to be redirected to the disney site every time I log on, and there is nothing remotely gay about the picture to the left, oh no its very straight.
Surely he'd just come back under a pseudonym? I mean, it's not as though he wasn't able to invent them...
Besides, I'd rather Fraser was here than the 'controversial' poets* we currently has; his advantage being that he has a brain. *Air quotes should probably have gone round the word poets, sorry.
Alive and well but it's football season and I just started playing fantasy football and it's freakin' addictive. Besides that, you haven't looked for me hard enough.
I have looked high, low, yah, and hoo. Must I dive into some porno crevice of a web site to find you?
It's true. I hunted round my house, but you weren't there so I gave up and went to a Hallowe'en party instead.
Fantasy football - this is your version of football, right? If it's good old fashioned soccer you're talking about, then bonus kudos (although I had lumps kicked out of me in our last 5-a-side match :( ). I haven't kept up with the NFL for years though - how are the Chargers doing?
Change of opinion: no they aren't.
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