It was brought to my attention today that a small minority of members of the Minti Community appear to have been deliberately going out of their way to drop the rankings of other members. It seems that some people just don't get the idea of what Minti is about. 
It seems they have missed all the other advice pertaining to this, or didn't understand it, so I'll put it in my own words and see if it helps anyone else understand. If just one more person gets the right idea from reading this, spending a night up late and suffering sleep deprovation tomorrow will be worth it for me.
It is not about rankings.
It is not about who gets the highest votes.
It is not about who writes the most articles or comments.
It is not about who writes the best articles or comments.
It is not about voting, medals and patches, the number of friends in your friends list, or any of that stuff.
If you think any of these things are even remotely important, you are seriously disillusioned. You need to re-think your reasons for being a member of Minti, take a good look at why you think these things are so important to you, and I personally would advise you to either seek professional help from a psychologist or get a life!
YOUR RANKING ON MINTI IS NOT AN INDICATION OF HOW GOOD A PARENT YOU ARE!
It's just a number system that calculates your activity levels and the popularity of the things you write, on a web site where you can never know for sure exactly who you are communicating with - unless of course you know some of the members in real life - so what does it really matter? Wow! My writing is popular with a heap of people that I don't know and am not likely to meet anytime soon. How exciting! Duh! I'm not popular, just the things I have written are, and if what I have written is the summation of me, please put me out of my misery.
Minti is about being able to access parenting advice and the opinions of other parents.
Minti is about doing what you can to be helpful to other parents, and keeping the site active and maintained at the same time.
If this is your reason for being here, good on you, you have the right idea. So, if it's not about ranking and voting and all that superficial stuff, why have that on the site? I don't know the exact reasons why the people that set up this site would give. Sure, it's there to help encourage member participation, but here's how I see it:
- If you are new to Minti and are genuinely looking for advice on a subject, you don't know anything about the members, and you don't have a world of time to browse through thousands of pages of advice, you want a way to determine what advice is the best to read. The easiest way to do that is to have the members read the advice and vote on it. Those with higher votes are obviously more popular and better advice, so people looking for something in a hurry will be looking at those ones first - and rightly so.
- Ranking - which is determined by the number of high votes received for advice, comments, etc - creates a sense of credibility to the author. Someone who has consistantly written well accepted advice, comments, etc; will be ranked higher, and thus someone looking at the site for the first time will be able to see that this person's opinions and advice is popular and worth looking at.
- Ranking also gives new members a good idea of who is more experienced with the use of the site, so that when they want to ask someone to help them find their way around, or if they might find good advice on a particular subject that isn't necessarily coming up in a search, they have a few people they can message that can likely answer their questions. This can save them from having to search for hours or turn to the already busy Administrators, for every little thing. It can also save some people a lot of embarassment if they are wanting to ask something they aren't comfortable asking on a public Q&A, but would rather just ask one person that has been active around the site for a while, and has read a lot of the advice - or at least can quickly find the info needed.
- Rankings give the members an indication as to whether they should try to improve the quality of their advice and comments, increase the amount of participation they are putting into the site, and it encourages members to do the things that are important to the general maintenance of the site - that is, read and rank the value of the articles and contribute quality comments to answer questions and fill in the gaps.
There have been incidents recently where people have posted advice that is not advice at all, has been plagiarized, or has been posted incomplete where the person is actually using it to fish for information provided by other members in order to have their "advice" on-line. Of course, the more advice that is posted by a member, the more advice they have that can gain votes, and thus put them up ranks. This is not what Minti is about. So what if someone has more advice posted? That does not automatically mean it is of good quality and worth reading. If these people aren't careful, it could easily back fire on them, as any ranking they have gained could easily be lost, as their articles get severely voted down, or even reported.
There have also been incidents where people have flashed through a heap of advice pages and made votes, often targetting those belonging to certain people. Sorry folks, I don't care how good someone is at reading or how fast their computer operates, no one can read through 20 different advice articles of varying lengths and absorb the information well enough to make an informed decision about whether or not the article is worth voting on at all, let alone worth the mark given, all within 20 minutes. It is especially obvious when every one of those votes are anonymous and voted as Poor. This is nothing short of a cheap method to raise their ranking by bringing down the rankings of others, rather than doing the mature and civilised thing of trying to just improve their own writing quality and their site participation.
Another voting issue is in regards to comments. If the comment is good quality, provides some more substance to the article (and this can include a valid and well constructed disagreement to the view point of the author of the subject they are commenting on), adds a little extra information, or generally improves the quality of the topic concerned, then by all means get to it and vote on it. But if the comment is exactly that, a mere comment, such as a simple, "good onya mate", "I agree, couldn't have said it better myself", "well written, good advice" etc; don't destroy someone's ranking by voting on it poorly. It's obviously just that person's way of expressing themselves, they don't want any vote for it, so just leave it alone.
Also, some people are voting down articles just because it doesn't apply specifically to them. For example, parents with teenage children may vote down articles about breastfeeding because they don't need that information anymore. That is not why the voting system is exists, is not how it is supposed to be used, and if an advice is not relevant to you, ignore it, don't vote or comment at all, and go find something that is relevant to you.
The people that are deliberately going around and damaging the rankings of others are making a big mistake. Not only are they making themselves look bad to everyone else but, it is possible to look at the Recent Activity pages, which go back a very long way, to see who has done what. With a bit of searching, I - and anyone else on the site - can find out what anyone was doing on Minti 2 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 7 hours and 36 minutes ago, or at any other time - if I so desired. Although a lot of stuff comes up as anonymous and the majority of the members can't see past that, the Administrators can still access that information and see what people have really been up to.
When people start behaving in such a pathetic manner as to put themselves up by putting others down, the members that are doing the right thing will get annoyed at it. They will report those sad members to the Administrators, who will investigate, and they do have the power to drop members' rankings, or in worst case scenarios, abolish and ban these people from the site altogether.
Lastly, if anyone wants to drop my ranking by voting this down, go ahead! I don't give a <<insert expletive here>> because I'm not writing any advice for the purpose of votes, rankings, or popularity. I'm significantly important enough to those I love in the real world, and that's all that matters to me. I don't need a high rank, medal or patch to prove I'm good.
"Ego? I don't need an ego! I'm good enough without one."
L. Pascoe, 1997. (No, he's not famous, he's just an old mate of mine, but he said it and I'm stealing it, so I have to give the credit where it is due.)
It's good that you've put this here, it's just a shame there are people about who think it's all about the ranking etc. I'm here to help, which is why I've not done much here as I only tend to ask and answer if I know what I'm talking about. Well written, very concise, I hope people read this and understand what Minti's all about.
