Reading Rating Complaints

Off topic but I find solace in the fact that harold_maude's rank is now two white stars instead of 3. Who's next? I've been corrupted and now all I see is those damn 3 white stars. It's severly affected the quality of my posts, and my enthusiasm to write them. Damn, oh well...

This post used to be a reply to this post.

(smiles as I read the above post) I saw that Jazz's rating went down as well.
How much does it really matter?
To you, obviously alot. Write good. Get rewarded.
Mine's been down to two white stars for awhile. And I realized that it doesn't really matter, this isn't school where you adjust what your handing in to boost your grade.

If it is then we should all stop writing.
I've thought for a very long time that rating the posts that people write was kind of a weird thing.
It makes performers of otherwise intellegant people. And that sucks.
Kind of has a school- corporate feel to it.
My soultion is this: Screw the ratings and write anyway.

You have to ask yourself why you write. And what difference does it make if anyone reads it.
Once you loose that it's important at all then you'll be free to write because what anyone thinks won't matter at all.

By the way, I'm glad you took solice in my loosing one white star.
It makes me feel good that my falling a bit was able to help you feel better and somehow vindicated your own loosing of a white star.
I am sorry that it has affect your wanting to write. I hope this helps give you a better perspective on things.

Your a great writer, as are many of the people here. Don't let those little white stars fuck with your confidence. They don't and can't change your ablity to write, because it was there before you got the three white stars, and it was there while you had all three, and guess what? It's still there!
Why? Because those stars arn't doing the writing, you are.

But that's just my take on things. Hope your struggle with it doesn't keep you from writing. That would be a loss, and a shame.

It only looks that way because your standing on your head.

Well some of us are just that shallow that we cannot function because of the rating system. The problem stems from this scenario:

1. you write a post.

2. you think it's good.

3. others rate it and they don't think it's all that great.

4. you see the physical manifestation of this by the low percentage you now have for the post.

5. you now have a shyness to post because you can't bare to look at the ugly ratings and you resent it for ever being created.

6. you know deep down that you are just never going to keep the three ill fated white stars and you realize you can't live up to that much pressure.

7. you now have to see a physciatrist because of this illness.

8. you have liquidated all your assests and are now considering suicide as a viable solution to getting rid of the rating pain that has encompassed every fascet of your shitty existance.

9. you have written notes and hidden them in secret locations in the event that you are ready to take the big plunge into suicide

10. your wife and daughter have disowned you because you cannot function in life any longer because of an acute case of rating phobia.

11. as a possible contingency plan you have considered raising funds to pay Jaz off so that he will create a feature to allow users to hide their ratings from view.

12. as a backup to the contingency plan you've called your local Al Qaeda sleeper cell and have given them the information from a whois on the netalive.org domain name and told them that Jaz is a zionist pig from the west that has verbally professed outrage to the islamic ways of life and has publically held demonstrations to condemn Allah and the 40 theives..

Hmm.. I think I got that last part wrong.. Oh well =)

Now that we know where I stand, time to... ah.... GET THE FUCK OVER IT. I wish I really could do that but so far I haven't been able to. Damn!

(Grinning silently, as I read the senerio....thinking this could make a great movie...hell they've made movies on less substance than your list...what a deal...obsessive writers who hide in darkness needing the approval of people they have never met face to face with who they have given the power of life or death to based on what they got rated as...)

Yeah, your right about needing to get over it.
But the big question is can you?
If you can, wonderful, you can sleep that much better.
If you can't then you need to re-think why you need approval of people who sit at computers just like you and write in the dark.....
(everyone got their cheezy poofs? Good, now put some tape over the offending area of the screen and write unitl your fingers freeze)

:)

It only looks that way because your standing on your head.

Please send cheezy poofs. :-)

If mountain goats like living at high elevations, why do none live in high rise apartment buildings?

I've thought for a very long time that rating the posts that people write was kind of a weird thing.
It makes performers of otherwise intelligent people. And that sucks.
Kind of has a school- corporate feel to it.
My solution is this: Screw the ratings and write anyway.

I might be wrong, but I view the ratings like this: They keep the brain-deads out. Once you've gotten beyond that, who cares what color your stars are?

If you get anything over 60% or anything that has at least one yellow star, congratulations, you're not a brain-dead anymore. We've voted, and we think you're a good writer / intelligent person.

Now, if you break the posting rules, we'll vote you down. But feel free to come back when you're considerate and can spell correctly.

What's the difference between a few yellow and white stars anyway? Unless you feel the need to post more than 100 times a day, it really doesn't matter.

Please contiune to vote AND post.

The rating system has had it's effect one way or another on most everyone who has come to this place.
Very reciently with the nasty business of the person who was stalking rosy, and his band of followers who went to the extreems of rating everything that she wrote down, and their own group of posts as excellent, just to mess with her head, tells me that not all ratings are based on the quality of the writer.

Because of that and what I've said ealier, ratings don't mean a hell of a lot to me.
They don't keep me from writing and they don't encourage me to write more.
They are, from my perspective, just there.
This place, after all is not a school for writers. If it were, the ratings would seem to be more usefull.
There are sites on the net, solely dedicated to writers in all stages of the writing process, and their work is critqued by their peers.

But here, this place is a more elegant journal hall of people who don't really seem interested in writing childish crap, like some of the other journal sites that I've been to.
This place has a class all it's own, and from where I sit, the rating system and all the importance that it seems to carry isn't nessiary to keep the "braindead" out.
The brain dead will show up where ever people gather.
The ablity to post replys works as a filter to keep people aware of who is reading their stuff to a point.

And who knows, maybe someone out there who is "brain dead" is reading your stuff or my stuff and wondering how many screws loose we have or if we're "brain dead" or arrogant or what ever?
I just don't give a shit anymore.
There is no time in my life or energy to give a rip about what someone thinks of my writing...
There is a huge freedom in that.
Would be nice to see less people care about how their writing is rated and more about just writing.

But that's just my view of things.

It only looks that way because your standing on your head.

The person who was stalking rosy, and his band of followers who went to the extreems of rating everything that she wrote down, and their own group of posts as excellent

just for the record, the rating power of the (l)users in question has been adjusted accordingly (i.E. Is next to zero).

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

just for the record, the rating power of the (l)users in question has been adjusted accordingly (i.E. Is next to zero).

Paranoia at it's best. Is NAO turning into a Police state? Why are we tweaking the users rating power because *we* feel like he's abusing it? The solution would be to disable his right to rate instead of giving him a false sense of rating by displaying some shit that really didn't have any effect. I side with the people abusing the system on that one, I think that's sneaky and unprofessional.

I'll say this. My stalker can go drink swampwater, and I don't need his ratings to make me feel happy...nor anyone else's. I just had many, many clues that he was here trying to play head-games and retaliate in response to my online confessions. Primarily, his objective seemed to be to get me to distrust everyone here, and he almost succeeded. I threw the baby out with the bathwater. But then, I thought: I can't live my life like this...always in his shadow like a dog. I'm more of a cat-person anyway, though I have recently fallen in love with my potential new roomie's beatiful German Shepherd...but here, I digress. Moving on...

I realized, what he should have realized. People will know what you are REALLY up to, by the way you behave, and whether your idea of posting to the net is to just cut and paste other people's writing and call it yours... or sneak around with several online identities. That is sneaky and unprofessional as well. You just ignore them if they are jerks. eventually, Everyone else will know too, and lowering their rating ability won't be necessary. People like that thrive on the 'negative attention', regardless of what they say. I would tend to suggest ignoring the ratings, unless it gets you to the point where you can't post.

Half the time, I purposefully avoid rating posts I have a personal problem with, so that I won't run the risk of being more than a little too biased. When Aynjell and I were arguing, I refused to rate because I knew that my hurt feelings would eventually disappear, and that if I rated him, I would likely be way too personally biased at the time. And as for what people rate me? I could frankly care quite less. Actually, though... I will admit I get a little pissed when I see people rating up one of my posts that I think is totally bogus and doesn't merit the attention. Namely...rants. I find it interesting that people rate me up when I am pissed off, and then my ranking jumps. That's funny. I asked null about this discussion, and he said he could manually move me down a few notches if I didn't want to be the object of attention... but I tend to think, why worry about it?

It really shouldn't be that important. I think most of us eventually realize that. I personally find this whole process quite intrigueing. It is a source of humourous fodder for me...as it appears it is for you, majic. I see your outrageous humor on the subject now, and I think it the heighth of funniness. Bravo!

If mountain goats like living at high elevations, why do none live in high rise apartment buildings?

This post was edited by rosyxxx on Aug 18, 2005.

Why are we tweaking the users rating power because *we* feel like he's abusing it?

Disabling a user's right to rate is a black/white thing. Adjusting a user's rating power is more elegant and allows you to take it into account when (f'r instance) a user deals out hundreds of Excellent votes where a Nice would be more appropriate (i.e. one-line posts). I don't think this is typical for a police state - after all, the votes aren't censored or otherwise manipulated.
In the case of rosy's stalker(s) we do not feel he's abusing the rating system, we know it for a fact. And since the alternative would have been to just sit back do nothing, I think the right thing has been done in this case.

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

So then if a user likes to dish out excellent ratings to posts that you feel aren't worthy then you adjust his rating power? How is this justified? I dish out lots of excellent ratings to posts that people don't normally rate as excellent. How does this affect my rating power? Are the *admins* going in and adjusting and actively monitoring the ratings that NAO users are dishing out? If so I simply will not rate again, this is ludicrous.

Are the *admins* going in and adjusting and actively monitoring the ratings that NAO users are dishing out? If so I simply will not rate again,

This isn't how it works, but didn't you vow to boycott the rating system anyway several times during the last couple of years?

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

This post was edited by null on Aug 20, 2005.

This isn't how it works

So if I give every post I read an excellent rating, you are saying that my rating power will not be adjusted to effectively make my rating useless?

but didn't you vow to boycott the rating system anyway several times during the last couple of years?

Probably, grep the database. After all you are an admin.

I walked away for a little bit and came back to all red stars. lol So if you want to trade for a uniform color (ok not all white but hey red is a nice color, isn't it?)...

I figure that as long as I can keep typing and posting, what do I care.

I know I'm dead on the surface But I'm screaming underneath

Or better yet, I think there are some scripts that can transform css of a page to whatever you want. So one could write a script to change all red NAO ratings to white ones. This would give you an illusion that you are now cool and popular and then maybe you (we) can get back to work. Haha...

Wait, what are you saying? I am cool aren't I? Oh, hold on... I just got the message that I have 5 posts left for the next 6 hours.

Ok, that sucks. *looks around for the CSS code to block out that message too*
LOL

I know I'm dead on the surface But I'm screaming underneath

Ok, that sucks. *looks around for the CSS code to block out that message too*

Wouldn't that be nice? Or better yet what would be nice is a community where the users can have some flexibility in the evolution of the place they love. w00t!

This is a neat perspective.

Besides, I'd rather right angled brackets.:)

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