Where are the mods???

This may be a strange question and perhaps I'n the only one who's noticed but...hello...where are you? yes...I see you signed in for 5 mins but...I think we need more participation from you????

We're around, Hellon.

We sign on, do what we have to and participate when we can. I'm swamped at the moment with starting at a new university but things are slowing down so you'll see more of me. I'm sure the other mods have been just as busy as I am.

Well...I've been sitting around most of the day hoping to send you ..or any other mod a pm so now...is it ok if I post here?

Sorry you haven't been able to grab one of us. I was wood carving all day (destroying my hands might I add)

Go ahead.

Right...My latest poem...My Hands (hope you will appreciate the fact that you were destroying your own hands is just coincedence) was downvoted to a 4.3....now it's back at a 5 and I wondering why ????

That's odd.

How many votes did the poem have when it was at a 4.3 rating? You have 6 at the moment.

No, it's not odd. One of the mods once told me. When someone gives you a 1 rating, the system often sees this and recognises this as a deliberate act of downvoting and removes the vote.

*posted in between answers from other members..

There you go, Hellon. I think Ingrid managed to answer this one for you.

I hadn't heard of that before, thanks Ingrid.

Oh...Hello Ingrid!!! I love you right now!!!!

So now...I have three missing votes so...what should I make of them?

Sorry Hellon, I'm not following. Three missing votes, how so?

Yesterday...My rating was 4.7 with 74 votes...now I'm 49 with 71...actually it's 72 right now..someone else voted without comment???

You're very observant Hellon, I give you that!

The only thing I can think of is perhaps several of your poems were down rated with 1s over the last few days and now that site has recognized this it has deleted them all.

Hopefully it's not a glitch in the site.

Yes I'm aware of the gliche theory on this site but..mathematically...when a poem is downvoted there is no way it will ever get to a 5 score again..mine's has and I'm asking why???

I don't think it's a glitch Hellon because all people would then face the same problem. If down voting occurs, it would be intentionally... the same thing happened with me, 1 hour ago :)

If only my attention span was as deep as hellon's

glorious things would be happening to me :"(

Lol, it's really true what I said and a poem does get back to having a 5 overal score, when the 1 is removed..I don't know if the system does this automatically every single time, but I know it has the powerrrrrrrrrrrr.

Does that mean that no poem is every legitimately voted a 1 if it's previously been voted a 5? Down voting aside, that seems rather counterproductive. Votes are votes, hopefully honest votes. It seems weird that the system can just delete them.

This is not to say, Hellon, that I think your poems deserve a 1 or anything like that. Down voting sucks.

I think you're missing the whole point Narph...I really don't care about the votes...yes I do feel I get down voted a lot but....put your poems up here and suffer the concequences I think...I'm pointing out the fact that a poem of mine was downvoted to a 4.3 and now...it's back to a 5....it's just not possible...no matter how much upvoting goes on?

Oh, no. Sorry Hellon. I was really just commenting on a site feature I didn't know existed. It is weird that votes can jump around like yours did, but at least now we know why or how it can happen.

Well, now we do know it happens and...I thought it was the right thing to do by bringing it to the table my question is still why?

Ingrid's explanation accounts for your situation:

Someone down-votes 2 or 3 poems of either the same or several poets, the poems' ratings go down accordingly, the system detects the pattern & removes the votes, the ratings go back to 5.0 as though the votes never occurred.

I had not known the system could do that either, but it must require more than a single "1" vote, for I have seen them in poems for which comments were complained.

It's not any up-voting that matters, but the removal of the 1 votes.

Well...I never complained about any of my downvoting I'd really like to make that clear..I knew I had three votes (without comment) that went misssing and...I wondered why? So...Larry..are you saying this person took a dislike to me?

I have no idea.

I'm conjecturing as to the mechanics based on Ingrid's explanation. Sometimes just getting a poem nominated sets you up for down-voting.

Larry..I really would recommend you download the BBC videos of..Yes Minister...honestly...I think you'd love them??

I'll see if they're on netflicks

Gotta go. Early Sunday morning here. Have to tend the flock.

Interesting, the way Janis and prior mods found a way to circumvent the downvoters.

I don't think this autofix occurs for the Quotes.
e.g: I posted this one long time ago:

Judgement is up to god, who are we to take his seat. Being judgemental can be human, but forgiveness is still divine.

at 2011-07-30
[ Edit ] [ Delete ]
rating: 3.7
votes: 3

So, a single voter disagreed with this thought with his/her 1 (I don't think it was purposeful), brought down the rating to 3.7, but the system did not eliminate it.

Not that it matters, perhaps the person does not believe in forgiving, or in God....but that is still OK, it is his/hers life experiences that have taught him/her to be otherwise.

Nor would I want to judge him from his/her actions, as it would be a contradiction to the quote itself. So it is perfectly OK. I do not desire a fix by the system here.

Why don't we just remove the voting buttons and leave the one for commenting only..... bah.

Lonely Soul,
I think it only removes a 1 vote if the person that has voted a 1 goes around and votes 1's on either a few people or a few poems of one person. If I am not mistaken there is some kind of pop up or notification that the down voter gets and it says something to the effect of "your activity has been recorded as down voting" I don't know of any consequences if it continues to happen though.

Hellon, I understand what you are saying, say if you have a poem and it is voted just once with a 5.0 then that poem would have a 5 rating. Say I come along and vote your poem a 4. Then I believe it takes it down a couple of notches in tenths to maybe a 4.8 or so. Then if someone else comes and votes the poem a 1, even if their vote is erased then why would you have a 5 all over again instead of the 4.8 which would have been the "honest" rating of it. Hellon, I commend you that if this is a glitch that you have spotted it. I agree with Yaki I think we need to ditch the voting buttons altogether. It only leaves room for haters and anonymous people to do it. There is no accountability in the vote. As for comments if they aren't suitable then they aren't praised and can be left as just a comment. Or if Janis wants to keep the vote button, then have a little thing to click on on the votes section that will tell you who voted what on your poem. Just my opinion.

Thanks for furher clarification Kay. Though I agree that the voting button down plays on the emotions of the writer, it may also egg the writer to do even better, and so may sometimes be an incentive for improvements, even when the poem may seem perfect.
The strive to perfection should never end for the the artist or the scientist, or anyone who,loves their field of work, for when it does end, so will our innovation.

What sometimes puzzles me is the fact that some beautiful in depth (not 1-2 liners or simple backslapping type) comments, that may have taken a good amount of time by the critic, go unpraised by some authors (though they easily praise lesser comments on the same poem by their friends/club members) for whatever reason. This really dissuades good critics from venturing on that author's poems again. I wish writer's take more notice of how much time and effort some people take to admire their poems, for no selfish reasons. Good critiquing is by itself an equal art that lifts the value of an otherwise good poem, so leaving them unpraised on purpose is unfortunately disheartening to such people who take out a good chunk of their time to appreciate good poetry, without selfish reasons.

I'm very, very sick, and will probably be MIA for a few more days... but Ingrid and Larry explained everything to the best of my knowledge.

A single vote of 1 is not considered down-voting. There has to be a certain amount of them given in a certain amount of time.