Hitting A Social Media Nerve - Bart The Bear Says

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What a day! So far the feedback on my BartTheBear theme has been positive. The feedback on one of the blog posts that I submitted to one of my favorite social sites was not. It was about search engine optimization from my good friend Lyndoman. Goes with the territory I guess. I have run into some real adamant karma in the social sites about posting SEO related articles to them. I thought/hoped that it would be different at my latest most hottest social media site, but I sense...well no sense in going there just to get beat up.

What I want to say here is that it is ok to vote a post down in the social sites. Nothing wrong with it. People do it all of the time. I do wonder the reason behind the down vote and encourage comments to go along with the down vote as a courtesy. I would like to know why my post is getting a down vote and would adjust my posting to the social media site if the general consensus agrees with this.

On the other hand, let me share my definition of controversy with you. Controversy is the laboratory of innovation. Without it we do not grow, so if you have to vote down, give us a reason so we can understand. If it turns out to be controversial, then there will be some discussion about it and someone is bound to learn something new...about you, your likes, and your dislikes.

Here are a few of examples of how I did this with negative votes, and comments, that I made at:

http://www.mixx.com/stories/49873/a-new-sith-or-revenge-of-the-hope/

http://www.mixx.com/stories/51744/man-saves-his-trash-for-the-entire-year/

http://www.mixx.com/stories/38335/religious-freedom-in-military-questioned-yahoo-news

and

http://www.mixx.com/stories/49865/junk-food-ad-ban-comes-into-force/

Honestly, I found the articles to be quite funny. However, I also found them to be lame and therefore gave them the down vote and made a comment on each of the posts so people would know why. Especially the Star Wars post because the original article had been written in 2005. Seemed a little late to have this post on ancient history showing up in a social bookmarking site.

All of this activity came to a head, and hit a nerve, when I asked a couple of down voters that I had noticed, why they had voted down Lyndoman's post and got a history of all my down votes in a comment response. I got spanked. Kind of felt good...

Someone is tracking the votes. Of course they are. They have to to give out all those wonderful awards over at Mixx. I love to get them myself. Even the most contentious which is consistently won by Tamar, one of our most notable social media elitists. I like it when she votes my stuff down because I already know the reason. She just likes to vote stuff down based on her standards because she can and that is reason enough. I love it when I get a negative vote or comment from Tamar because it is a clear signal that my post sucks. Kind of like a social media police woman giving out tickets.

At least she makes it clear, even if indirectly by winning the contentious award frequently. Not saying you have to. You can keep your anonymity if you value it or if your are just plain chicken. I prefer leaving a comment out of courtesy...