It bothers me the way some writers can tell (or presume that they can tell) who has voted on what parodies.  It keeps coming up again and again.  Why can't we just drop the subject in the Comments section?  Sure, I like the voting and commenting aspect of the site but the monitoring is too Big Brother for me.  Sometimes I'll vote first and comment later, or vice versa because of time constraints.  In fact, I have gotten into the habit of doing that BECAUSE of the vote monitoring.  For a good example this type of annoying question and commentary, see Rain Man's response to Rick D's comment on Paul R's parody of "American Woman" (June 25).  Even though many writers announce that they've given another writer 5's, I don't.  If I have given someone a high score I'll also add a comment on how much I like their parody.  That should do it.   :P

It bothers me the way some writers can tell (or presume that they can tell) who has voted on what parodies.  It keeps coming up again and again.  Why can't we just drop the subject in the Comments section?  Sure, I like the voting and commenting aspect of the site but the monitoring is too Big Brother for me.  Sometimes I'll vote first and comment later, or vice versa because of time constraints.  In fact, I have gotten into the habit of doing that BECAUSE of the vote monitoring.  For a good example this type of annoying question and commentary, see Rain Man's response to Rick D's comment on Paul R's parody of "American Woman" (June 25).  Even though many writers announce that they've given another writer 5's, I don't.  If I have given someone a high score I'll also add a comment on how much I like their parody.  That should do it.   :P


MAD Mari -  I second the motion...although I have asked a few folks who said they voted 5's on mine if they actually did submit the vote, because occasionally one doesn't register or sometimes the voter (including myself here) has failed to click the "Submit" button. 
Paul R.

Hee-hee!  Word.  I think many of us can be a wee bit obsessed over votes and comments in general.

If I get 10 people who like my parody, why am I so prone to obsess about the one person who gave me a 2-1-2? 

(Ok, Leo -- not everybody is going to like you... SO WHAT?  Get OVER yourself!)

songs don't get voted on because people live under rocks where there is bad reception and the only stations that come in clearly are oldies stations sorry i'm a little annoyed about the 0 votes i have on my last parody... of avril lavigne's first single off her new album (the 2nd on the site)

seriously i think the problems are often that votes don't register after leaving a comment and in the age of all fives for anything resembling a decent parody giving a good parody all fours might insult the author when that was not the intention while leaving all fives all the time gives the author very little incentive to improve their writing

Sometimes something weird happens when I try to register my votes -- I get an intermediate screen that requires me to click again.  Dunno why...  I agree with Ethan, we are suffering from a bit of grade inflation -- I've gotten 5-5-5s for stuff of mine that certainly isn't 5-5-5-worthy...  it would be cool to have the option of allowing comments, but no votes.  But it ain't my site.

A "good" parody usually gets 5-4-4 from me (most people here nail the pacing).  I try to reserve straight 5s for "the best of the best".  4 is a good score, IMO.

...  it would be cool to have the option of allowing comments, but no votes.  But it ain't my site.


Leo Jay, that is a BRILLIANT idea!

Chucky G, don't you think that's a great idea?  You did away with those public top-ten/top-100 lists to settle things down and re-focus people on parodies instead of bogus vote-rigging...

...so don't you think that letting a parody author not only turn comments off-and-on, but also turn voting-off-but-comments-on is a great idea?  I sure do!

If parody authors had the option to turn voting OFF but comments ON, perhaps a lot more people would pay less attention to votes and more attention to commentary, conversation, and community.

I tend to use the votes as a "counter" to see how many people have read the song, and felt strongly enough to vote.  Of course, it can be inflated, and I value the comments much much more but I don't think it's doing harm.  Of course, with your proposal, I could just leave the voting option "on" and we'd all be happy :)

Here's a possible alternative ....... maybe parody authors could have the option of turning voting OFF, turning comments ON, and then also ------ turning on a non-voting-scale "Counter" that a visiting reader could click on to register that they've been there, but not to register their 1-to-5-scale-vote.

That way, Chucky G and the parody author could still get a rough estimate of how many people read the parody, without any 1-to-5-scale-votes being tabulated for it....but with comments ON if the author wishes.

Here's a possible alternative ....... maybe parody authors could have the option of turning voting OFF, turning comments ON, and then also ------ turning on a non-voting-scale "Counter" that a visiting reader could click on to register that they've been there, but not to register their 1-to-5-scale-vote.


Cool idea.

Back when we had top tens and such, I often wished we could turn off voting in just the funny category, so the newcomers and passersby wouldn't wonder what was wrong with us when something that obviously wasn't intended to be funny made the charts in that category.  A site-centric one that was just a list of names is the only one, so far, that's made me wish I could turn off voting in both funny and overall.  When parodies got their own board, I decided that  if I wanted to share any more like that one,  I could just post them here.