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Dear Marge
Now that it's possible to vote for yourself, what's the correct thing to do?
Some go for nothing at all, daring the world to give them a vote, while others go for a 5 to provide a good impression. But quite a few are going for a very British 4: not too pushy but enough to get started, and more than 3 which shows lack of confidence.
I'm sure you'd do well, Des, even if you didn't manipulate the voting system. Two other differences between Southerners and those of a northerly frame of mind are: a Southerner would say, 'I've only got a small house but it's worth half a million pounds' a Northerner, 'You can get a really big house for half a million quid round here.' A Southerner has the perfect holiday when he has two weeks in the sun and still has money in his pocket after paying off the taxi at his front gate, a Northerner thinks he's had a crap holiday unless he's in hock for at least six months, though it's a bonus when he finds he hasn't been burgled when he opens the front door.
If anyone's in a mind to say, 'I live in the South, but I don't vote for myself' , kindly fuck off will you.
I'm not Marge, by the way, just standing in until she gets back.
That was a bit of a ramble, ram. wot u on about? i still don't see the point of voting for youself - north or south.
i know that cheating in exams is endemic in some countries, but who wants a qualification that you haven't earned? by extension, who wants a 5 on here if it is awarded by yourself?
i hope all the rams are well. i have put a Clark's pie in the post.
I didn't even realise that I could vote for myself.
Now I have the moral dilemma of whether to or not. Like I needed more confusion in my life.
Jeni, how can anyone produce something and be the sole arbiter of it's quality? Surely people make things public so that they can get other people's opinions of them?
If we thought our own work could be better, we would make it better! Almost by definition, we must be offering the best we can, but it is for others to judge how good that is.
The star system scale is flawed. It goes from ‘Poor’ to ‘Fantastic!’ (with an exclamation mark, note). No-one votes ‘Poor’. If a submission is poor, you’re not going to waste further time voting it that. Two stars is ‘Works’. What’s that supposed to mean? ‘I get the joke, but it didn’t really make me laugh?’ Again, a waste of time voting.
Three stars means ‘Good’. Now this would be a better starting point for the scale, because if you think a piece is good, you are more likely to be bothered to say so. Four stars is ‘Great’, which would become ‘Better’ on the new scale (that is, better than the ones you think are good) and the current five-star 'Fantastica!’ would be the new three-star ‘Best’ (for quality satire, well-written, with a good gag in nearly every line and building up to an excellent punchline).
But a couple of extra buttons are needed. A fairly common situation which occurs for many NB Forum users is that they take a mouthful of their beverage and fail to swallow it before reading a one-liner so incredibly hilarious they suffer an involuntary physiological reaction whereby they spurt said mouthful simultaneously down their nose onto their keyboard and project it out of their mouth onto their screen.
Buttons for this might relieve sufferers of Involuntary Spurting Syndrome the tedium of having to spell out precisely which flavour drink / yoghurt, etc was involved, graphic details of the particular spurting technique deployed and the extent of the ensuing damage. Two buttons could simplify this: one to depict the act of snorting out fluid, and the other showing a screen with a huge splat across it.
Writers, in fact anybody who does anything creative, always have to make value judgements about their own work. It's called "knowing when it's finished and not doing any more."
BTW how do I quote from other people's comments, like Mr Square above.
Oh, and I think introducing the whole north/south divide thing is rather odd. Golly gosh...
BTW how do I quote from other people's comments, like Mr Square above.
Ctrl C, hit quote button, ctrl v, hit quote button.
I'm not even sure you can attribute...
[quote= Stephen Byers] Five grand to Westminster at this time o' night, guv.[/quote]
Edit: Apparently not. Does this Forum software have a "quote" function buried in it's php somewhere?
It's interesting to compare two currently successful writers: Ludo, I would guess, launches himself with a 5, while Stoopy leaves a blank. Personally I don't see why the opportunity should be passed up; MPs vote for themselves, and even writers have to push their own work a bit. But really I just missed discussing the voting system.
Next question. Now you have to be signed in to vote, do you ensure someone's online before you give them a 5? And do you wait till they're offline if you want to give a lower mark? Is that another north/south thing? Oh, it's a minefield...
What's happened to the best feature of the new site-the "only one vote so far"?
Does this mean we'll have to assume any sub with a vote has been scored by its writer, unless it has half a star as well, in which case their spouse or mum has also had a vote.
No Plucky, I was having a moan that it no longer tells you how many votes have been given. I thought it very interesting just how few were. Even the really good stuff, with maybe 10 comments probably had only 7 or 8 votes.
By the by, the north/south thing was supposed to be a metaphor for the way you think your way of doing things is proper, correct and you can't imagine anyone doing things differently when others think exactly the opposite. Although, saying that, I do think that them down in the SE of England are a sneaky and treacherous lot, apart from the ones I met when I lived there.
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