"Rate It Even if You Hate It"

The Good Sergeant never came out today like he was supposed to, apparently because he accidentally scheduled David's appointment on a day that he has a big meeting. So he called and rescheduled for next Monday instead. Le sigh.

But all was not lost. The Good Sergeant said that a lot of other kids have "dropped out," which...draw your own conclusion from that I guess...and that David's whole investigation should be done by the end of the month. He said something about everything is done with his check it's just that he needs David's documents, his transcripts, his birth certificate, marriage license, all that kind of stuff. Plus he's already been fingerprinted, so that makes it even faster.

In other words, everything is done and he's still willing to come out to collect documents, so just as we expected nothing came up on him and everything is fine. He's still in the process. Furthermore, because so many kids have left, David will be on the train to Sacramento in February. The only things left are seeing a doctor and seeing a shrink, so we're certain this is it.

Whenever he gets good news, or goes on a ride along, or talks to a cop at all really, he gets all pumped up and starts doing pushups and shit. He asked me if I wanted to watch him drop and do 50, and I was like, "yeah but I gotta poop so you'll have to do them in the hallway."

And he did.

I watched him do a bunch of pushups while I sat on the toilet.

That's love. Or familiarity, I'm not sure which.

He saw the ratings on my last post, the sex scene one, and got upset that for the longest time it was a one-star post with three ratings. I told him that I get like 200 views a day, 80% of which are returning visitors, and if only three people marked it down then it's not nearly as devastating of a message as if say 40 people marked it one star. And if that did happen I wouldn't really know what to think, considering I've seen a few late night posts get tagged with a one-star rating, only to wake up the next morning seeing that three or four other people "white knighted" and marked it a bold five stars to cancel the bad rating out.

David's whole theory on the rating system is that if people are rating it low it's going to encourage others to mark it low as well. I installed the ratings system for a few reasons, one being that I like having feedback and I know that not everyone has anything to say every day, and the other being that I'm giving a voice to the haters. I haven't gotten a snotty comment in over a year, and the only comments I moderate are spam. I haven't even really gotten any hate mail, so I figured from the beginning that the posts would receive the occasional malicious one-star because I know who reads here and I know why.

The ratings also get fucked with, I've noticed. People retract their ratings a lot several days after a post goes up. Let's take for example the post where I talk about visiting an old crime scene with Steppy from last week some time. There was a point where it had three one-star ratings, and now it sits with two ratings at three stars. Not only did the numbers change, but the amount of votes did. Yet the post has a bunch of really positive comments from people saying they liked it or it prompted them to tell a story themselves. So does this make the ratings system pointless? I have no control over the ratings, by the way, I don't know who votes and I cant change or delete anything myself.

I've seen people take ratings personally and even disable them on their YouTube channels. I enabled them here because I wanted the feedback, even the negative. I say "rate it even if you hate it" because I don't want someone who seriously hated the post to be afraid of hurting my feelings by saying so. But I feel that it is being misused. There are posts that get five stars that do not deserve five stars in my opinion, and there are posts that get one star that I really enjoyed writing. Perhaps the real results come out when more people vote, like on my Black Friday post that got six ratings that equaled out to three and a half stars.

I'd hate to remove the ratings because I do like them, I just wonder how accurate they can be if people aren't using them, are abusing them, and are messing with them by removing their vote and trying to white knight over other votes. Then again, this is the intarweb: a playground with no rules (except rule 34.) Maybe they should stay up simply because of that.

I don't take the ratings personally, which I know a lot of other people who do and they're exactly the type of people who wouldn't implement them on their blogs or go so far as to disable them. Comments I do take personally, and I moderate them so I can read them all, because honestly even if someone ever does leave something "negative" I'll probably publish it and egg them on, which is not something I would have done back when I was new to the blogging thing and taking every little thing to heart because I didn't understand the game.

David, however, took it personally and thinks I should too. He's also not on the internet very much so I don't think he gets it. Also when I told Steppy that when Bombshell comes back from its second editing I intend to do a full re-write based on the suggestions, and he got really offended as well. Offended for me, that is. Something about how other people don't have the right to change the story, because I told him that it wasn't just grammatical edits but ideas on how to fix scenes to make the story flow better and such, and about how it would have been better if I had just sent it to a professional editor. HA! You really think so? You should see how much ends up on the cutting room floor when you do it that way, and you don't have a choice in changing it back most of the time. I want to do a re-write and I have intended to do one all along. This came as news to him because now he's all worried about how "ruined" it will be.

I cant leave it in the state it's in, I knew there were problems in it and that's why I wanted them fixed. Steppy seems to think that too much editing will change the story, and he loves loves loves the story. He suggested that I do the rewrite at his house in the office they set up for me, but I'm afraid if I do that he'll just try to reverse everything. I know editor 5 is reversing shit from editors 1-4, so I want to be the one who decides on the final, because after all, it is my story. I just like to know what other people think.

I like to know what you think, which is why I turned on the ratings. I'd like to know what you think of the "rate it even if you hate it" system. Tell me why you rate things down or up, and admit it if you white knight the ratings sometimes when you see that they are low.