I am due around April 2nd 2008 with a boy! I am so happy and excited, I am already in nesting mode and thinking about all the items to get organised. Also, we are flying back to Perth to have our little man, so it looks like we will be living in Perth for the time being, which will be good for the family and we can still maintain our Silicon Valley ties here in California. Clay came up with a really nice name that I am really warming to, Joshua Cook.

Sadly, I learned today, a mother was responsible for a teen cyberbullying which pushed a teen to suicide. These neighbors knew of the teen's condition, played a very cruel and fatal prank. My thoughts go out to the parents of this teenage daughter, who was the subject of the cyberbullying.

read the full story here...
MySpace Cruel Prank Leads to Teen’s Suicide

Little man starts a new preschool today. I feel that he will thrive at this program. He seems more into play based learning, so I am running with it. He is still so little so at 3, if he is the most happiest at something like this, I feel it is the best decision.

I emplore all members to read this quick Minti article on Code of Honor and the rights of members regarding voting.

I reiterate and will keep reiterating the following....

1. You can only vote ONCE on a particular article when logged out. We know that the person voting is not logged in to an account, so this once off vote (you can change your vote as many times as you like, but it still only counts as ONE vote) counts for very little. So to ask someone to vote whilst logged out is of little effect. We will also track how many votes are made from one computer whilst logged out.

2. We do NOT allow bulk voting and we are warning any members flagged for voting sprees. What are voting sprees? See this article on Voting Sprees.

3. Fair voting: if you vote honestly the system will reward you with weighted rankings, all this means is if you play fair and vote according to your beliefs you can't go wrong. Members also have to accept that not everyone can have five stars, and if you feel bad that you have received one vote marking you down, over time you can either edit and improve the article or accept that not all your articles can have FIVE STARS.

4. You can change your voting on any article, as many times as you like. It will still only count for ONE VOTE (your last vote you made).

5. You can try and ask others members to vote in a certain way, but I would hope you get reported for "Voting Coercion". This would make it very easy for you to get voted off.

6. Visitors don't often arrive at your articles via your member pages. More often than not they arrive at your content by searching in Google for a particular term. So members should not focus on ratings as much as making sure that they have tagged their article correctly, added lots of related Minti articles and bookmarks and an article that is well received by the Minti community. Visitors don't compare ratings of members, but they see the ratings and feel better to read this information than other search results that haven't been rated.

In another words ratings of an article help the article stand out from other parenting links in search results. What members should be obsessing over visits from all over the web, rather than voting is the following...(HINT: that is the real rating, the number of worldwide visits, that is true popularity)...thousands and thousands of visits, versus a handful of votes - votes only provide confidence building to the reader, visits is what the member should be tracking, to get the most readers!!!!!!

- Title contains the right keywords of the theme of the article, this optimizes the article for the most visibility on Google.
- Google loves articles tagged with relevant terms.
- Learn what are the most searched terms. Clay has a list, if your articles can use these search terms (must be related, as google can tell if its not) update your articles with the new titles and keywords.
- Google loves related articles and external bookmarks to the article.
- Google loves comments to articles.
- Google loves articles that have healthy informative content with an image.

Focus on visits and improving the "quality" of your article, then you can't lose in regards to voting and MORE importantly VISITS. Also take into account that if you have improved your articles, your older articles may have more visits, or the theme is more popular. But each individual article can be optimized to received the best amount of visits, given the genre and topic.

So stay true and focus on giving back to your world wide community of parents, looking for easy to access, community supported parenting advice and provide QUALITY information and ADVICE to parents who desperately need to find it and find it fast.

Howdy all, phew what a day.

I have read all my mail, but I haven't had a moment to reply. We are on to the voting spree issues!

Just got off the phone with the little man's preschool principal and what a relief I had the courage to talk to her. Otherwise I would have just kept him at home. I hope going to just three half days a week instead of five works, as well as him really enjoying himself, handling any challenges and feeling like he is comfortable and fitting in.

Anyway, a lot off my shoulders.

It has come to our attention that some members are going on "voting sprees".

The Co-Founders of Minti have had a meeting regarding "voting sprees". We have come to the conclusion that voting sprees show a disdain for the Minti system and we consider it a form of "gaming the system" and a breach of our Terms of Service.

We have issued warnings to members that we are aware have conducted a voting spree. The warning is "if you do it (a voting spree) any more we will be forced to delete your Minti account".

If we find others doing it we will also issue them with the same warning.
  We are improving our system to prevent such behaviour but in the interim we will take manual steps to crack down on very swift voting.

If you have a concern with the Minti approach I would appreciate you write me (or Clay or Matthew).

Thanks
Rachel

Phew what a busy day, off to chat to little man's preschool principal about a different class for the worried little man

Voting down is the only negative thing on this site, which also causes the most issues? and I am emploring all members to mass together and provide support, education and understanding when a member has any issues about voting. Mothers are very sensitive and this is an amazing trait, because of this we have so many happy children. But when we are tired, grumpy, sometimes it is hard to handle the voting down even if all your articles have 5 stars. It could be that last thing in the day that hits your self esteem.

I am urging members to band together to support members who worry about voting, it is okay to worry. We should not attract attention to ourselves, but focus on explaining how voting works. Sometimes just by explaining your personal voting just escalates the issue further, breeds hate into a site that wasn't intended for it.

We need to accept and embrace that members who struggle with the issue of voting and we need to as members, provide a loving hand and explain how the system works.

We can all throw insults, but if our own children did this in the playground how would we handle it? Can you imagine if they thought someone was targeting them and they took it into their own hands?

We have mothers on the site dealing with massive issues like depression, we need to be understanding. I accept now that we will always have issues with voting down, but I feel if members explain how voting works and provide comfort and reassurance, you ALL can improve the issues without myself trying to calm things down or other admins having to ultimately delete members who cross the line.

Is this what sisterhood is about?

To end: please support members who have concerns about their content being voted down with understanding, guidance and education about how it all works. The less focus on how your vote, removes fuel, confusion and perceived intimidation (which of course is not true), but like the playground we need to help those who struggle with things that effect how they feel.

We let the site run on its own, but like all communities we have Minti's Editorial Guidelines and Code of Honor. I stand by providing a safe place for all mothers to land, regardless of their mental health and I feel with more love and understanding, we can support and focus on the real goals of the site, making the lives of our children better.

Maybe we need to set up a private group for any members that have any concerns about how voting works and to freely express their worries in a safe place?