Unintended Consequences: Petition to bring back the thumbs.

Huh... Well this is a new one for me. A double blog: Hey! Wait till the thumbs down fairy sees this. Oh wait.

And this, my gentle readers is the crux of the problem. We used to have a thumbs up/thumbs down capability. It let us know when people enjoyed our blogs, and when people didn't. The point was there was a type of feedback. That feedback was removed. Why? Because people bitched about he thumbs down fairy. The thumbs down fairy is different than a simple thumbs down. The fairy was seen to be personal: people didn't read the blog, but they just gave you a thumbs down cause you are being you. The result? I am fairly certain people are blogging less. There was no way I should have my beautiful face still up on the top of the blogs, it's been quite a while since I blogged last time.  I used to see my blog whiz off the top page in a manner of hours.

People were bitching about the thumbs down, but was it just that? Bitching?  Kinda like bitching about eating your broccoli.  You whine, but you know it's a good thing. I am fairly certain that the bitching was not really sincere. We are all adults here. We understand that people are different than us, that they value different things. "But if people don't like what I have written shouldn't they give me a thumbs up for a good argument?" No. Grow up. If you want positive feedback, then you have to take the negative too.

Deal. Learn. Grow.  

If we are all big enough to put ourselves out there in the webbernets, then we are big enough to handle the "consequences" that people may not actually like us.  As adults, we should be able to learn from this. "A-ha. some people don't like when I blog about "X". Okay, why? Is it the message? Is it how I present my argument? If I am a constant victim of the thumbs down fairy, am I being percieved as a sucktacular individual? Am I sucktacular? If not, why are people getting the wrong message? Or are people just jackasses and I should ignore the thumbs down?" 

By removing the feedback I can't learn. I don't know what you guys like. I don't know if what I have said rings true or if it strikes hollow. I can't adjust my writing style so that you can read something you will enjoy.

I believe it also goes one step further than that. In order to create a community, at a certain point the site has to take itself out of the picture, and there has to be a way for the community to communicate peer to peer, rather than member to site. We have removed one avenue of that communication, a simple thumbsup/thumbs down score. I know my score, I know what the community thinks of this blog.

It also removes the capability for providing encouragement. Sometimes things happen where you don't know what to say, especially if the person is a stranger or if the event is big. If I can give a thumbs up, and that person can see the dozens of thumbs up, that can ease pain knowing that we are there. This doesn't have to be for sad events; births, birthdays, graduations, weddings: it's just plain nice to see a high score at the bottom of your blog on a big day. It pulls people in. Interactions like these are the glue that holds a community together.

To sum up. I think that by removing the thumbs up/down we have removed one layer of community involvement, we have taken away the ability for people to know if the community appreciates the blog, and people are blogging less. Most importantly we have taken the ability for people to learn. Sometimes the lessons are harsh, but they are lessons all the same.

I am hereby asking you, the membership of 2old2play: Which would you rather: the ability to see your score, or the way it is now: no score. No other options: we don't want Doodi and/or DSmooth to rewrite a ton of code, we will see that in version 3.0.  I am fairly certain that this won't be too much of a problem to reveal our score to us as it was a few months ago.

 Please indicate what you think in the comments below. Am I off base? Do you care? I would suggest if you want the thumbs back: gimmie a thumbs up. If you want things to stay the way they are, give me a thumbs down. The score is there, it's just invisible to me, but Doodi et al. can see it. 

Thanks.