Don't vote 5's so you'll get fives, or to make people feel bette

If you do, people will never improve, and if you get perfect fives on every one of your poems, you'd better already be amazing, because you'll never get better. Vote fives on poems that are truly excellent, not just on poems written with good intentions or attempts at emotion. A poem needs to achieve that intent to be worthy of a five.

I don't want to preach, but it does tick me off when I see "oh, that was so beautiful and heartfelt" and a 5.0 rating with one vote and the poem was

I love you so much
We'll be together forever
baby, I love you

You know? Not to say that I don't like to get fives on my poems, because I do--but I also like to know when a poem wasn't my best work so I can see what works and what doesn't.

(I posted this here so that more people would see it, as this is the most visited forum on the site.)

I never rate poems, I think it's shallow and most poems posted here are far from perfect anyway.

I totally agree with "It happened one night".
A lot of poems have thousands of comments
with ratings of 5 but actually the work that
was done by the poet is really simple and often
just like many other poems in here..

What is a number though..

A number, a rating, is nothing. Any idiot can press a button to rate a poem. It takes something else to comment on it, and give constructive criticsm or honest praise.

A number is just an illusion of a quantity, haha.
Rating on this site is never accurate, no poem is completely perfect yet most poems are voted 5.

Britt is a girl haha but I see exactly what you mean.

People downvote sometimes, either cause they don't like the author or they're jealous. Or just want to be immmature.

Votes mean nothing.

I would rather have ONE honest comment than 100 votes.

I dont really like that the voting system is only 1-5; I thought it should be 1 - 10. That way you could get more 7's and 8's on your good poems and maybe a 9 every now and then.

I have been accused in the past of giving low rating because the author though I had something against them. I comment and rate honestly (actually, i hardly rate anymore because of that). If you dont like it, then too bad. I try to help out and give constructive critisism.

In agreement with you all. Numbers don't mean anything, but are merely a self-esteem boost for some people on here. I won't lie, three years ago I was a part of that 'hype' and I loved my 'perfect' rating (at one point the figures on my profile read "5.0 / 92"). One day I insulted this idiot in the chatroom and he down-voted 10 of my poems. I was so aggravated; I wanted to throttle the cow...so I down-voted 5 of his (I was 14 and stupid, haha). Anyhow, I realised that this system was pointless and in no way affected the way in which I perceived my work, rather it was the generally detailed comments I was receiving from others.

I can understand why Janis introduced the system, though. People might just want to distinguish the 'good' poets from the 'bad' ones. Again, I don't think it was executed in a very sensible way. I mean if they really want something like that on the site, then why not have a little feedback bar on the profile page that reads how much positive feedback that poet receives (feedback based on the comments people leave on work).

Meh, I dunno.

PS: And you know one other thing I never understood the necessity of...why in the hell do we get an award for how many posts people make on the discussion boards? THERE IS NO NEED. geez.

Wow, I always vote. Usually 5s or 4s. I only vote if I like it. And I mean like it to my standards. I think voting is great. And giving out 5s is even better.

Yes but you handing out those pretty numbers probably isn't doing much other than making the poet feel good about themself. By all means, feel great...but feel great based on the quality of comments you receive from others.