fountainhead

cross my mind - to vote or not to vote

i've said something about following,  i would also like to say something about voting. i sure got over myself quite fast regarding this issue, although it did take a little time. i started off all puritan and dutch reformed and with the best of critical intentions, that is for sure. this lasted for a while, but made me itchy and edgy because somehow there were always poems that made me want to vote, but they didn't have the criteria i thought they ought to ( i know because when i reread them now, i cannot believe i did not vote previously). and what on earth was the criteria i was looking for? quite frankly, i'm not sure. (i was so unrealistically ambitious.) i wanted poetry to take my breath away so that i could vote for it. and there definitely was poetry like that. but there was also a lot of poetry that did not take my breath away as such, but was good poetry nonetheless, for any number of other reasons. then there was poetry that was wonderful in a technical sense, but did not appeal to me personally, just as there was poetry that technically was probably not up there, but it was so entertaining and/or fresh and a lot of other things, that i wanted to vote for it because, as far as i am concerned, it certainly deserved a vote for making me happy just reading it.

i tried to find out from other readers how they voted or felt about the voting process, but oh dear, was i in for a riot of different thoughts! one person felt that if one liked a poem or commented favourably, this merited a vote automatically. others felt that it was necessary to vote in order to encourage young and inexperienced writers; still others felt that if one commented at all, there should be a vote too, otherwise one should do neither. another writer said that when one did not feel like commenting, one voted instead. some admitted to voting for the work of ‘friends’ just because they were ‘friends’. others saw voting as a labour saving method for when one had no time for typing up a comment. in the mean time i noticed that many readers would vote for just about every read, while fewer were less forthcoming with votes. nothing made sense and there didn't seem to be any guidelines or consistency.

it is often said by readers that votes are quite unimportant. is this true? i do not know, but if it is so, then what is important? again, i’m clueless. what i do know, is that some readers believe that 'scouts' are attracted to writers by the number of followers as well as the number of votes that  he/she has. if this is the case, fewer of the writers i have read on here will have anything published this way, as i have seen so many writers who have a number of million reads, tens of thousands of votes and the same number of followers. are they getting published? (i don’t know.) if not, how many votes and followers and reads must one have to satisfy a ‘scout’?! (that is to say if this assumption about ‘scouts’, voters and followers is accurate.) are there readers who feel some writers get votes they do not deserve? is that even possible? we all know that there are some excellent,  above average, writers on this site who have relatively few votes, while others who write for the masses have many. (this speaks for itself and to my mind it says a lot about the masses, but this is life, sadly.) the fact that vote trading is not permitted, tells me that somewhere someone has a specific idea of what the voting is supposed to be about, otherwise no one would have cared. i think we all feel the same way about vote trading (or do we?). but why? what value do we put on the votes we receive?

this brings me to another point. how do writers feel about why others vote for their works? does it matter to anyone that sometimes one gets the distinct feeling that one receives votes out of habit? or out of respect more than anything else? or just because not to vote is somehow too hard? or even, lord forbid, out of sympathy?  or maybe obligation? (we know some healthy obligation is supposed to take place here when it comes to the reading...)

right.  so how do i decide when to vote? there are many reasons these days and what i can say is that i must be moved in some way about something in that piece of writing, even if it is by one single, solitary word in the right spot. it should make me happy, make me smile, make me sad, somehow move me. how to vote is up to each individual, i think, as long as we do not expect others to necessarily vote in the same that way we do... if i was always left breathless, i could easily just vote, vote, vote away without thinking too much…

in the end, does any of this really matter? we love reading and we love writing. that is what we can do lots of, here. nothing else matters. does it?