This is exactly why I am an advocate of "roll your own"... Alot of the free modules out there are crap.

I would be happy to modify the comment module to fix the bug if you like...

Tricky DOM work-arounds are my specialty.

Thanks a lot for the good work. Due to the great efforts by all of you guys we are able to have a good forum of discussions. Pl keep it up!

Gee, I thought this pesky comment rating feature was just somehow cancelled or sank into techno oblivion.

Why do the oil drum mods/owners want to know which posts are most popular?

Or want readers and posters to vote?

To what end?

They surely don’t imagine the ordinary, regular, sensible user pays attention to that, a throwaway remark or a joke gets zero (as is natural), a dig at the conventional pov gets minus 10, particularly if technotopic, and some post which are more than a parag. long and support the mainstream thing, get + 10. Or more. (Nothing against those posts, they probably deserve gold stars, glued with teacher spit and totted up.)

The variation is pretty meaningless because of the small nos. - I thought there were statisticians here? How many readers does the oil drum have? What is the marketing biz model being applied?

What gold stickers would Einstein, Darwin, or Stalin, in his time, or Clinton in the 90s (yes I am mixing it all up on purpose) or Hubbert in 1955, have gotten and why?

The oil drum presents povs, facts, discussions, that are on the whole, if not always or entirely, in contradiction with, or orthogonal to, what can be found in the mainstream media, from the Sun, to Fox news, the BBC, the NY times, etc. All these media outlets either pander to their audience, sort out what can be popular, sell, catch on; or are straight out manipulative branches of corporations or Gvmt, or a combination of all of these.

All of them study up in their own ways what is ‘cool’ and will win approval (polls, focus groups, ratings, call ins, expert opinion, or just plain subservience to the pay master), study the effects of this or that move. Their aim is both to influence and to sell, and they keep careful track, believe me, of what they *can* measure, and argue about what it means, and how to use the info. They also pay a lot of money to specialised agencies to figure all that out.

I understand the impulse to grasp how to convince, how to have an impact, how to do successful propaganda, strike into mainstream consciousness, etc.

But the positive ratings on the oil drum won’t help there.

The model is the wrong one - it is for ex. typical of the slice and dice electoral policy that Hillary C. implemented; a bit of everything for everyone, from unemployed grannies, to dog owners, to small entrepreneurs, and eventually finding a message that appeals to all...Marketing folly from the 80s.

And never mind that what garners approval on the oil drum is not, per se, likely to make a hit outside it. (Not to say that some top posts or comments aren’t excellent and important, that is a different topic.)

So I doubt that such considerations were, are, actually the aim.

So what is it?

To unobtrusively get rid of posters whom other posters rate negatively?

Or to boost, encourage, those whom others approve of, like in the high school dance hall or sports team? Again, having the crowd cheer ... some would argue it is in itself a poor choice, others might, perhaps extravagantly, refer to mob rule, democracy gone authoritarian, the lowest common denominator, fashion, dumb sheeple followers, etc.

Of course, in a friendly fashion, offering flowers (plus points) to someone who went to some trouble, wrote in a proper form, made a stand, tried to get a point across, offered information, links, or just made a good joke, is not detrimental.

But looking superficially at the scores in the past weeks, it doesn’t seem to be working that way. Some opinions are always rated negatively.

The friendly candy/star thing can work in a tightly soldered small group, where the points are not for opinion but effort, and those who never get them don’t feel left out or dissed. They just know they don’t write as well, or spend the same amount of time, etc. Sensitive primary school teachers understand this..

I genuinely don’t understand what the rating system is supposed to accomplish.

So I reckon it is just a US thing. So much here has been written about community, about collective effort, about solidarity, about -dare I mention- love, in its brotherly sense; about the need for inclusion, etc. And yet, everyone is just some vulnerable individual, subject to approval/disapproval for one single post.

I am sure some people are hurt and disappointed. Conversely, others may become combative and angry for no real reason. Or may egoistically preen for an empty college essay...

Looking for ‘leaders’ in this situation is just BS.

Anyway /end rant/ about one of my pet peeves.

Hah! So it's an IE bug...serves me right for posting from my work computer (WinXP) instead of my home computer (Ubuntu Linux).