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I'm So Lonesome, I Could Cry
It's a lyric of a song folks, look it up, especially those of you who rushed here to revel in my discomfort.
I chose the section of lyric to make a point about Neopoet in general.
Neopoet is a community and much noise is made by certain factions about folks being unfriendly yet it appears these same factions are the ones most responsible for making Neopoet unfriendly to new members.
Huh?
I'll use me as an example because I often get accused of trying to drive people away from Neopoet.
I don't submit a lot of poetry to Neopoet. I write a lot of blogs and a fair share of forum entries, but as these do not show up in the Stream we'll set them aside because it is the Stream, and most notably the first page of the Stream, that people generally use to comment on poetry. Some time back we imposed a "one submission per 24 hours" rule in response to folks dumping a cartload of work and driving all mention of anyone else from the front page. Some folks quickly discovered that if you "updated" a poem it would reappear on the Stream as well and there were cases of people "updating" work so they could highlight a series of poems in the Stream.
I put update in quotes because often there is nothing changed as you can tell by comparing revisions. So the update is really an exercise in "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!"
But what's the harm? We all want a little attention, right?
The harm is that we, as of a spot check 5 minutes ago, have nearly 50 poems submitted without any commentary to them in the last 30 days. When an established member has this happen occasionally, no worries, but when the "updating" of poetry pushes a new member's work from sight we have an example of the damaging effects of insecurity and Neopoet is unfriendly in the eyes of this new member since no one bothered to offer any comments on their work while 30 comments of "OMG THIS SPOKE TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!" flood the submissions of the work of established members.
Everyone craves attention and approval, it's human brain wiring, and no one, including me, is immune from this. How we define this and to what lengths we take it determine our actions and give an insight into our individual personalities. And, to make a moral judgement, if you are willing to do harm in order to garner attention, there is a problem.
Sometimes the harm is obvious, physical, etc. Sometimes the harm is subtle, such as "updating" a poem as a passive aggressive way of forcing yourself to the front of the line merely because you do not feel as if you have received sufficient attention and you are willing to slight others you have determined are less worthy of attention.
If you absolutely feel something you have done deserves to be reviewed, make a comment on it saying what you want. Take a position and be honest, such as:
"Bump. I would like commentary of how this flows."
and while it will not appear in the Stream, it will appear in the Tracker. And if you are just looking for attention, have the spine to admit it. Tell us in your comment that forces the poem, story, blog, whatever to the top of Tracker:
"I deserve more attention, give it to me."
Because that is exactly what you are saying when you "update" a poem and there are zero changes.
And for the inevitable question:
"Aren't there more important things going on? Why are you writing this?"
I write this blog because we have had credible complaints from members about this sort of thing and in the past when the phantom updates have been abused, and they have, members were censured.
As for more important things to do, certainly. But every complaint submitted to the AEC is reviewed for credibility and if credible, some sort of action is taken. In this case, I volunteered to highlight the issue in a blog because this will appear in the tracker and will give me the attention I so richly deserve.
For the slow and feeble minded, that was sarcasm, look it up.
I chose the section of lyric to make a point about Neopoet in general.
Neopoet is a community and much noise is made by certain factions about folks being unfriendly yet it appears these same factions are the ones most responsible for making Neopoet unfriendly to new members.
Huh?
I'll use me as an example because I often get accused of trying to drive people away from Neopoet.
I don't submit a lot of poetry to Neopoet. I write a lot of blogs and a fair share of forum entries, but as these do not show up in the Stream we'll set them aside because it is the Stream, and most notably the first page of the Stream, that people generally use to comment on poetry. Some time back we imposed a "one submission per 24 hours" rule in response to folks dumping a cartload of work and driving all mention of anyone else from the front page. Some folks quickly discovered that if you "updated" a poem it would reappear on the Stream as well and there were cases of people "updating" work so they could highlight a series of poems in the Stream.
I put update in quotes because often there is nothing changed as you can tell by comparing revisions. So the update is really an exercise in "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!"
But what's the harm? We all want a little attention, right?
The harm is that we, as of a spot check 5 minutes ago, have nearly 50 poems submitted without any commentary to them in the last 30 days. When an established member has this happen occasionally, no worries, but when the "updating" of poetry pushes a new member's work from sight we have an example of the damaging effects of insecurity and Neopoet is unfriendly in the eyes of this new member since no one bothered to offer any comments on their work while 30 comments of "OMG THIS SPOKE TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!" flood the submissions of the work of established members.
Everyone craves attention and approval, it's human brain wiring, and no one, including me, is immune from this. How we define this and to what lengths we take it determine our actions and give an insight into our individual personalities. And, to make a moral judgement, if you are willing to do harm in order to garner attention, there is a problem.
Sometimes the harm is obvious, physical, etc. Sometimes the harm is subtle, such as "updating" a poem as a passive aggressive way of forcing yourself to the front of the line merely because you do not feel as if you have received sufficient attention and you are willing to slight others you have determined are less worthy of attention.
If you absolutely feel something you have done deserves to be reviewed, make a comment on it saying what you want. Take a position and be honest, such as:
"Bump. I would like commentary of how this flows."
and while it will not appear in the Stream, it will appear in the Tracker. And if you are just looking for attention, have the spine to admit it. Tell us in your comment that forces the poem, story, blog, whatever to the top of Tracker:
"I deserve more attention, give it to me."
Because that is exactly what you are saying when you "update" a poem and there are zero changes.
And for the inevitable question:
"Aren't there more important things going on? Why are you writing this?"
I write this blog because we have had credible complaints from members about this sort of thing and in the past when the phantom updates have been abused, and they have, members were censured.
As for more important things to do, certainly. But every complaint submitted to the AEC is reviewed for credibility and if credible, some sort of action is taken. In this case, I volunteered to highlight the issue in a blog because this will appear in the tracker and will give me the attention I so richly deserve.
For the slow and feeble minded, that was sarcasm, look it up.