Vote [only] for senior status requirement

To clarify:
I count No vs Yes just to see the majority's position

Then I count the numbers averaged by those casting numbers.

Having thought about this a bit more I agree with what Abby is saying..... but I will take it a step further, why bother with senior status at all, I think I was here for like three years and wasn't a senior member because I didn't praise any comments, yes I wrote critiques but didn't praise anybody else's.. I thought what's the point, nobody ever spoke about it, we were too busy having pirate mutiny's on the forums than worrying about being a senior member, the only thing I couldn't do was nominate poems for the front page, there is no other benefit that I know of.

There should be more emphasis on the critique than on the praising, somebody writes a great critique and somebody else gets to be a senior member for it, and that critique can only be praised once, and yet don't get to see the praise anyway..

Do away with senior membership... its more about the fascination of those little coloured squares beside your name anyway...

...Nicko, you don't get awarded for praising someone else's comment. You get awarded if your own comment gets praised by someone else. There is a roundabout way to check how many of these you have.

"Senior" is really the wrong word for being allowed to nominate. Maybe it should just be called "Nominator status". I do think this needs to be earnt, though not as rigorously as others seem to. Seniority and activity is already represented by the medals on your profile.

Larry, feel free to move these posts to another thread if you like.

"Do away with senior membership... its more about the fascination of those little coloured squares beside your name anyway..."

I am in complete agreement!!

Senior Member status is highly overrated and maddeningly.
elitist.

Becoming a nominator has little to do with the coloured squares. It is something earnt through writing a few good critiques. I think that part is fair enough.

"Nominator Status" would probably step on less people's toes even though it means the same thing. Sometimes a title is everything :)

It's nothing to do with elitists or discrimination based on favoritism, I am confused why anyone thinks this?
The reason we have some sort of standard for who gets to nominate poems has a lot to do with keeping the judges from being overwhelmed by a mass influx of nominated poems.
How do we give equal opportunity AND keep the judges from being swamped in way too much work?
By itself, getting angry is not productive. If you have a problem with the system, help us brainstorm a realistic solution. Clearly no moderator is approaching this topic with a 'too-bad-we're-not-going-to-change-anything' type attitude.

I voted Yes and a 30 minimum for praised comments. Guess how many praised comments I have? I'm definitely not voting 30 in favor of myself, haha, because it will mean I'm no longer able to nominate poems. What it does mean is I'll be more inclined to read poetry and leave thorough comments in the future.

^^Is that how it works? well there you go, here was i thinking the mods judge the quality of the praise not the critique..

"Becoming a nominator has little to do with the coloured squares. It is something earnt through writing a few good critiques. I think that part is fair enough.'

Yes i know its not relevant to being a senior member, but it is in the over all picture..

Why do you guys and gals insist on making such an abyss between you and new members?? It's simply not fair to make comments a part of senior membership. It's like saying to get into the NFL hall of fame, you must have dunked a basketball 30 times...

" It's like saying to get into the NFL hall of fame, you must have dunked a basketball 30 times..."
^NFL and basketball aren't related but having poetry knowledge and gaining senior status on a poetry site is.

"Why do you guys and gals insist on making such an abyss between you and new members??"

How else would you recommend narrowing down which members get nomination rights?

I see how letting everyone get 1 nomination would be really cool, regardless of status, but I don't know if it's realistic since the nominations page would probably turn into a bottomless pit. How would the judges sift through all the poems on a weekly basis?

Also, if everyone could nominate, there's almost no point in having a nominations page. Might as well let the judges sift through ALL poetry submitted each week. (What a nightmare).

Rob, there needs to be a baseline somewhere. It's a control on the both the quality and number of the nominations. We've nearly doubled the amount of nominations we used to have, so it's a lot of work for judges.

By basing senior membership on praised comments, it helps ensure that the people who can nominate poems are those who have shown a capacity for thoughtful critique. New members have just as much of an opportunity to do this as old fogies like us. I think a better metaphor would be "It's like saying that in order to get on a film judging panel, you have to have shown an ability to critique movies."

It's not a perfect system, though. There ought to be a way to account for people who have been active in the past, but who have left and come back over the years.

1)Here is how to find out how many comments you have made that have been praised:
http://www.poems-and-quotes.com/author_comments_praised.html?id=457599 (replace this id by your id to see yours)

2) It does help lift the ego of a poet when fellow poets/commenters leave good comments and nominators pick them for nomination. Encouragement does helps people become better and brighter poets, without a doubt.

3) The colored boxes/awards do have a purpose, they help naive/new readers find good poets and poems easier than weeding through a sea of similar looking grey and white. They also give the new members a goal to chase, and writers a sense of pride on their hard work when they do achieve that status.

Yes 10

Edit I change my vote to No
After seeing I have 14 praised out of the thousands I must have submitted

NO!

I've been a senior member for a few years, and now all of the sudden I'm not and might have to fulfill a requirement?

I don't comment much, but when I do I like to be complete about it, however my comments never get praised. I prefer to message the author and tell them my thoughts directly. Praised comments does not equal participation and therefor should not be a deciding factor of seniority.

Thoughtful comments on poem do show poetic activity on the site, though.

I think it's important to note that it wouldn't mean ONLY people who have a specific amount of praised comments would be senior members... we still have the favorites or whatever the other award is that you have to have (I can never remember), or the length of time you've been a member, right? It's an "either or" type of thing?

Right now it's either you've submitted 100 poems and retained an average of at least 4.3 OR you've had 3 comments praised.

There's a huge disparity in the difficulty of these awards. 100 poems takes a loooong time. 3 comments can take less than an hour.

EDIT: So AJ would still be screwed.

"NO!"

^ Lol, AJ, there is an emoticon appropriate for this.. Rolling On FLoor (not laughing but) Crying - ROFC.

Peace man =p

I don't get it. If a member is not capable of producing 100 poems and is not favored by at least 20 people, and the only way to acquire seniority is through praised comments, do you people think 3 to 9 praised comments are sufficient? Writing a praiseworthy comment usually takes a lot of time, likewise, in order to write poetry, one should read lots of poetry and I agree with Jane, 3 to 100 is much unearned.

EDIT: AJ would retain his seniority, he has completed his Gold Favorite's Award.

All I know is I got anywhere from ten to twenty-nine praised comments I could not get the link to work I have started trying to include in my comments something that would only apply to the poem I commented on . So I can't believe it is that easy for any given member to get points from praised comments

Judging from how long I have been 19 points from the platinum lol
http://www.poems-and-quotes.com/comment_praise.html

"AJ would retain his seniority, he has completed his Gold Favorite's Award."

So a Gold Favorite's Award equals seniority too? There are 3 ways to obtain seniority?

Welp, clearly I don't know what I'm talking about :) haha.

I think we should have it listed somewhere on PnQ what it takes to become a senior member and what being a senior member means. People keep asking/wondering, and I can't seem to remember.

AHEMMM, my apologies to Larry for littering his thread with non-votes.
Carry on, my lovelies.

Not even a Gold Favourite's Award but Silver Favourite's Award will do, too.

Check these profiles and their awards..yet they are able to nominate poems :)

http://www.poems-and-quotes.com/author.html?id=477590

http://www.poems-and-quotes.com/author.html?id=282720

Yes 30

I have a question.

Is it possible that the praises could disappear when the one that praised it, closed his/her account?

Sib..
you look amazing :D

Honestly no

Could I ask any of the mods to post in this thread the praising guidelines so that everyone could see how easy is to write a comment that is worth to praise?

This is in our helpful hints for new mods thread, though I believe we have a more thorough breakdown for what makes a praise-worthy comment. I'm trying to dig it up.

"Approve comment praises if they have both quality and quantity. Typically 5+ sentences of in depth analysis make the cut.
Decline all other praises."

That means 5 in depth sentences written by the commenter and does not include quotations from the poem being commented on. Also, in depth does not mean sheer flattery. There has to be some kind of analysis of the poem, personal interpretation, and preferably some degree of helpful advice/criticism.

Example:
"OMG this is so awesome, how did you come up with something so creative? I'm going to nominate this! You blew my mind! You're amazing, please stop, your talent is blinding me. No but for realz, keep up the good work, hun, you are going to go far on this site."

^ This is an example of sheer flattery. It would be declined.

Yeah, I'd say I generally require more than 5 lines. And I -especially- look for a technical breakdown of at least parts of the poem. I might approve a comment that is mostly an in-depth statement about the effect of the poem on the individual reader, but probably not without some clear analysis as well.

A good rule of thumb is: if your comment could be copied and pasted onto any other poem and have the same effect, it's not going to get approved.

^ I agree, and I've gotten stricter in last few months. I require at least one hefty/dense paragraph, not just 5 lines.

Instead of concentrating on raising the number of praised comments to MATCH the calibre of 100 poems/membership duration/number of favourites and poems- can't we just altogether get rid of these other methods of attaining nominator status?

To become a nominator (which is the lone advantage of "senior status"), you just need to be able to read and assess poetry. The only thing that reflects this is the number of praised comments you have. The other qualities don't come into the equation at all. I maintain that 5-8 comments is sufficient evidence that someone is worthy of nominating poems, especially if the mods have tightened their approvals.

Ha, that works too. Though I would still say more than 8, since one of the things we're trying to ultimately do is lower the number of nominations.

Calculating and linking nominator status with the main intention to lower nominations is not the most prudent process, in my opinion. It is unfair for a general site problem to negatively impact an individual member's rights. The goal should be to have the RIGHT people nominating, and not just to make it harder or longer to get the status. (The latter would only ever be a short-term solution in any case.) If you have 8 praised comments through a strict approval process, that is more than enough to deem you worthy of being someone who can critically assess a poem. And that's it.

Lowering the number of nominations is a different matter altogether. There are various ways to tackle this, and should be open to discussion. Some ideas:

1) Only allow a set time period during the week to nominate a poem- eg 48 hours over a Friday and Sat. (We would have to ensure that a poem is viable for two voting periods to ensure it has enough time for consideration after its date of submission.) This will cause a bit of an uproar at first, but is actually pretty fair. You miss out, you miss out. The judges then have the rest of the week to read and vote.

2) This also controls how long the poem is nominated: only a week and no more; no repeats. This will cut the list down further.

3) Only allow one nomination per member, though a poem can be nominated multiple times. (I think this should be a last resort.)

4) As a former judge, it took around 4-15 seconds to tell whether a poem was worth considering or not. What I wished for was a "shortlist" tool so I wouldn't have to go back and mistakenly read the same poems again. If judges could narrow down (personally delete) nominations from their ever-increasing list as they read them, that would greatly assist them in sifting for the final winners.

^ Some alternate thoughts in a heated debate:
1) Simply allowing poems to stay up only for 1 week in the nomination list, until cut off time for judging to start, and cleaning them off of the list after monday (when the computer selects the winners from the scores) will reduce the nomination list by 1/3rd, which alone would suffice for now.
2) Putting a max of 30 or 35 agree upon number for the nom list, and then automatically placing the overflow in a waiting list for the next week (not knocking them off the page as before) would also help cut down the nomination list to be judged.
3) As a corollary to point 1) it will then not be necessary to a)reduce the number of nominations per member, or b)raise the praised comment requirement for seniority beyond a reasonable # say 5-10, as it has already generated a great deal of discontent in this voting thread and may displease talented folks who do not like to comment much and wish not to be pursuaded to(yes, in real life it is not uncommon for some to look beyond one's own art)

Sir Larry, it seems we have opened a can of worms, by not only having a silver whip threatening to tighten her standards to approve praises, but a golden girl (aka Farrah Fawcett) ready to whittle down anyone who gets a praised comment in fewer than a paragraph! :) Though 3 line poems (Haiku or Senryu) can still win hearts and PnQ contests.

The length of a comment should have very little bearing on whether it is praise-worthy. I would take a one line comment that actually says something over a long-winded comment that doesn't tell me anything.

I also agree with Abby that the number of praised comments isn't nearly as important as the quality of the comment. If a person can write one excellent critique, that is enough to show me they can nominate a decent poem. The number of weekly nominations will reduce themselves, once the nominators become more qualified to nominate.

I think writing up more than one or a few praise-worthy comments is important. Writing just one might reveal that you know *how* to write a good comment, but having left say 20-30 comments reveals that... you've taken the time (and have the time therefore) to read and analyze more than one poem on the site, you've experienced a variety of poetry on the site (giving you a broader scope to pull from), and you value PnQ poetry and PnQ poets (because you have dedicated so much to them).
These qualities should be required to become a nominator.

And Kiko, I'd really like to read a one-line comment that deserves to be approved for praise. That'll be the day.

^I agree with silvershoes.

I didn't say a one-line comment deserved to be praised. I just said that a useful one-line comment is preferable to a windy comment that says nothing. I was just using a bit of hyperbole to make a point.

The larger question here is whether we want this website to be a site for serious poets, who like to socialize a bit, or a site for socializing, where we dabble in a bit of poetry.

If it's the former, then we need to continuously try to upgrade the caliber of poems and poets, have a few poetry workshops, and have some good, honest critiquing going on.

The forums are for socializing. There are forums for poetry related things, but I don't see many people moving there, because no one does anything other than ask opinions.

If we are looking to improve, doesn't emphasizing the importance of better comments help just that??

I don't think trying to lower the number of poems getting nominated should be the criteria at all... what happens when the number of poems getting nominated drops off, as has happened before... this waxes and wanes and will again. As stated it only takes a short time to assess a poem so what if there are thirty poems, the more participation the better...

It comes down to the quality of the judges not the nominator

"It comes down to the quality of the judges not the nominator"

Ahh, but they are one and the same, since the judges are chosen from the pool of nominators. So, if we improve the caliber of the senior members, the judging will ultimately improve.

A lot of the people I see resisting to this change rarely nominate poetry, so why is it a huge deal?