A higher requirement for Senior Members. Please.

As a senior member we're allowed to vote for poems of our choosing in the site wide poetry contest. At first when I had achieved this member status I was quite excited. It proved my "senority" over other members if you will.

The only thing is it seems as if more and more people are obtaining this status and its hurting our site. Not to be harsh whatsoever, but one of the winners of this recent contest has a poem up that has 3.1/5 (as it unfortunately deserves), but upon viewing the other poems that had been voted on, this poem should not have trumped the many others.

I'm sorry but it kinda hit a nerve with me. No offense to the poem nor the poet, who actually won their contest spot. I just think there are many others better deserving, and that maybe this Senior Status should be more exclusive than it is.

Well, how about throwing out some ideas on how senior members could be chosen.

Sorry Ann, I wasn't quite there last night =p I was more worried about getting logged from the site.

It doesnt even have to be a broad amount at all, maybe an exclusive group of Users who have not only been on the site long enough, but have added to the site, either through detailed critiques, or remarkable poetry.

Maybe chosen by moderators and other senior members? I just believe that if the group was more exclusive, we'd see more true poetry, rather than our stereotypical, overly dramatic, peices of literature.

As poets we grow, we adjust from our premature mindset to a more advanced and deeper sense of thinking.

As our poetry grows from amateur peices to veteran masterpeices, the site should accompany.

((I'm running on 2 hrs of sleep and its 1 am here, so if I need to reclarify tell me you dont understand something =p))

Well, Romeo, I understood what you were saying in the first post, but you did add a little more detail with your second one... just a few more questions...

How many senior members should there be?
Do you, as a senior member, have time to sort through the thousands of members on this site? And just how would you (or any of us) determine that they are worthy?

We could set criteria.. like Registered date, praised comments, # of discussion posts in poetry related threads, etc... but the problems with that are pretty much countless.

-what if the perfect senior member is on a second account, so their register date wouldn't meet the criteria.
-what if some loser met all the criteria, but all of their discussion posts were "yeah, I agree" rather than something substantial?

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I do agree that we should try to come up with something... but no matter how we do it, we will miss good people and some not so good ones will pass the test.

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I'm up for suggestions though... and then of course.. nothing can be done until Janis ok's it.

Well you group as moderators are the direct line to Janis. Our thoughts get sorted through your system, and then whichever you guys approve of and deem worthy of the site, I'm sure he receives notice of.

I was thinking Senior Members could be possibly a SMALLER, group. Not nearly as small as the moderators selection, but small enough that if you are chosen for the stataus of Senior Member, it is an honor and a privilege knowing that not many others have this position.

It would be nice if we were in a perfect world I'm sure. That every senior member stuck out perfectly amongst the many others. But who says that the senior member has to meet ALL the requirements.

I'm not saying the senior member position should be EXTREMELY EXCLUSIVE, but maybe those who are renown critics, those who keep conversation going in the forums, keep the poetry site about POETRY, and last but not least, are exquisite poets.

Start from scratch. Well, maybe not that severe, but either add a newer level above Senior Status, or slowly demote senior status members right now, to a lesser but still somewhat glorious position.

I could think of more but I would just like to see where others stand on the discussion before going into DEEPER detail.

As soon as something becomes more exclusive you have more problems, just look at the flak the moderators come in for!! exclusive becomes like "Animal farm" where some are more equal than others

If anything it should be more open, but with a criteria! Say the nominations must meet 3 points....be they what they may, but hey I'm not a senior member and can't see the nominated poems!

Agree with Nicko, well said

Likewise any club naturally has members who wish to have a prominent place and those that couldn't care less. Senior members should be those that have canvased lots of votes and are able to pay bribes just like those in high positions in politics all over the world.

They won for a reason?

you must not have seen the most recent contest have you?

and its far from Animal Farm in the sense i'm thinking of. We're not supporting some sort of communist heirarchy (sp?) by selecting certain members due to their outstanding acheivements in the site due to their own personal SKILL.

It doesnt have to be as big as you are making it out to be. Its just a simple way I believe in improving the level of poetry we view consistently every week on the contest nominations page.

When you read the critiques on the said "poem" and none of them either have anything constructive, nor do they say the poem is contest worthy, how does a poem make it as a contest winner?

As Shank said, It is the lack of common sense that is hiding us from a lot of this true poetry on the site.

Honestly "dude" it is hard to take you serious when FIRST is spelt wrong, multiple times, I understand the occasional mispell of a word when you're typing as fast as you can, but seriously, pick up a dictionary and just read it. Or go back to the third grade when we learned how to spell 5-letter words.

Secondly, yes a poem that has raw emotion is great, but a poem that has raw emotion, style, form, rhythm, that poem in my eyes, has become a POEM, and not just a pile of sentences mashed together.

Yes raw emotion is great in a poem, and emotion when used in a poetry styling can make a poem pop right off the screen. If a poem has no style, form, rhythm, rhyme, nor a story line, can this "poem" be considered one?

If you plan on insulting me back, then please do it in a manner that will actually insult my personal standing. The inability to type a mere sentence correctly will have the effect of others looking down on your opinion. If you can not take the type to type a simple statement correctly, why would anyone take you seriously.

The same goes for poetry. The greatest poems I've read I can understand. You're not listening to what I'm trying to say. Its not the spelling of the poetry that I'm attacking, its the almost zero ways that the poem can be considered a poem. Take the time to thoroughly read my post before jumping headless into a conversation that is rapidly "bunny trailing" away from my main suggestion.

Anyone else have any comments on the higher req. for Senior Members?

I was under the impression that if the poems were "a joke" for the contests that the person who puts the winning poems up wouldn't consider it. I thought I read that in a recent discussion, or perhaps I was imagining things.

I definitely think there should be higher requirements. The fact that having a certain number of poems means you get to be a senior member seems crazy to me. Why should some 12-year-old (no offense to you youngin's) who has 200 poems that have only been voted on once (most likely by the poster) be rewarded as a senior member?

Not only should the person be a skilled poet, but I think they should also be able to help others. Article writing? Truly praise-worthy comments? Those sound like things a senior member should have done/do.

Only thing is i wish there was some trust within the old moderators from Janis that would allow them to subsequently take the reins and help because I hardly see Janis =/

It may be a possibility that Janis could give a mod or some mods the power to promote people to senior member status.

In which case, we might have an open tread for users to nominate people or apply for the senior member position, and we would vote on them... or something like that.

I will ask Dainz if he thinks it's possible and to ask Janis about it.

Thank you =)

I'm confused about my senior member status. I know I used to have it - it said it under my name and I was eligible to nominate people for the weekly contest. Now I think I can't do that anymore... I know the requirements for being a SM were altered, recently, but I -thought- I was one anyway. I might be crazy. Agh. What are the new requirements?

You should be Sib... I believe it is still Silver Favorites OR Poems award.. and you have both of those.

One thing to look at is when the poem was written. They are only eligible for nomination for a week, I'm pretty sure.

Ann Marie can I become a senior member, Ive always wanted a mobility scooter and the false teeth sound really practical

Lol, Carrot... I'll see if I can contact Hoveround! :)

A true story:

One of my friends is interested in poetry and song writing, so I recommended this site to him.
He read a couple poems on the home page, and told me they sucked and that's why he opted not to read anymore poetry on this site.

Morale of the story:

We need better poetry on the home page so we don't turn off people. The talent on this site is not being represented properly because of how easy it is to earn 'senior member' status.

Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it's not good. Maybe you're just stupid. Their work is praised BECAUSE they don't state things simply, they allow you to think; which obviously you don't do, or like to do much. And before you EVER try to knock some "wisdom" at us, learn how to spell/type. You've also contradicted yourself by saying Poe was not good, and then later telling us that he's somewhat good and that you like one of his poems.
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"Any ways I feel that my opinion stands on the senior member there should be a higher requirement and praised comments i feel is where it's at. Someone who is commenting regularly has to go through us to be accepted. Therefore if they're accepted the depth of their criticism struck us in a way that they should be recongnized. why not take that one step further an give them the Senior member status. This also allows a newer member to be able to help the sight out and not having to wait till a certain criteria is met such as the amount of poems written etc."

^I like this. I believe Bob posted something like you should be a member for two years? At first I kind of liked that idea, but now that I think about it and actually put myself in a new member's shoes, that wouldn't be fair to me if I felt I really could help this site but had to wait to make all of the requirements.