Since opening what I suspect will be an almighty can of worms with the new member page, I have learned something interesting. While battle may have raged in words of varying coherence, and several people called several other people very bad things, the new stats shows that while Barry may have messed with your minds, he’s never depleted your point stock.
Not one downvote. Ever.
I find that quite remarkable. I’ve issued 206 of them.
Do we need to start referring to him as the Barai Lama?
You should weight downvotes by the frequency of who issued them so, i.e a barry downvote should ve Holy Grail and worth i.e 1000 pts, whereas as a Lou Downvote does next to nothing.
Pap, I don’t post much these days – I’m v. business as Bear might say – but I still lurk pretty regularly: this place has a rather crazy addictive lure.
Anyway, despite my infrequent posting history – and at risk of springing the far-too-frequently-sprung trap of taking forums far too seriously – I hope you don’t mind me making a comment on the down-voting (and up-voting) system:
All too often, imo, voters use it to simply express their disagreement or agreement with a poster; this is particularly noticeable on the political threads. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with this per se, but I think it sometimes stifles debate (posters simply down-vote rather than argue their own POV).
I also think there are occasions when voters play the poster (or their political persuasion etc.) rather than the post.
IIRC, I’m not highlighting something that you haven’t already expressed your own concerns about in the past.
Anyway, FWIW, I reckon there’s probably a good case for removing the anonymity of the down-voting system. I’d be interested to read other posters views on this, and may be you could consider a poll?
I very rarely downvote and it’s usually only when someone is being a massive bellend. Or I’m doing it for a laugh. Or to annoy Bletch. I personally have no problem with downvotes being public.
I would be more impressed with someone who used the downvote system rather than launching directly into tirades of personal abuse and threats of physical violence.
I profoundly disagree, RB. If we get the retroactive downvoters in, I’m a bit nervous there will be one or two rage votes exposed. I think it’s a remarkable achievement under the circumstances, and have repurposed an Oasis song in Barry’s honour.
Slip inside the mess of his mind
And you know you might find
That he’s not a cunt
You say that you’ll never see
The dick we perceive
You’ve got him back to front
He’s gonna start a revolution in his bed
And turn the town of Chertsey to blood red
Step inside, replace sandals with some shoes
It’s the culture, not the race
Take that look right off your face
'Cause you don’t know as much as the Ba…zza…aaa
And so, Barry gets shite
He says, “that’s all right”
“Snide whoppers all day”
Your mind slides away
“No downvotes in anger”, you hear him say.
The thing is after a while it is easy to actually see who is genuine when they post, who is snide, who is trying to be funny, who is a tory yet sits the on the fence for fear of being labelled one, a liberal etc etc, a down vote by me does nothing, people play the poster (we know who) without reading the post.
I’d love to know the amount I have been downvoted, it must break the fucking records of playing the poster and not the post since the internet began.
In fact, I’m quite surprised to see that I’ve issued 7 down votes in my time. I reckon a few of those must have been fat finger syndrome when I hit the wrong button. All the more reason to be impressed by Bazza (especially a pissed Bazza) issuing 668 up votes without once hitting the down vote button by mistake!