mn hq, please can we have a policy of discouraging posters touting for votes for their children/husbands/dogs

[wannaBe]

It's just tedius and cheating and tbh not really fair given posters will react positively to the first request of this kind but by the time we get to the tenth request people start getting nasty.

So could we just discourage it from the outset and delete all threads that request such voting?

And really shouldn't we be discouraging these competitions that are based on popularity ie the one with the most votes wins?

Yep, I agree.

is it all of them that you object to, or just from first-time mners? tbh i have no objection to voting for an mner's child, in fact i rather like the idea of swinging a prize for a kid i 'know'. however i find it a bit peculiar that people are signing up here just to tout.

I object to all of them.

If it's someone's child I know then most likely they'll be on my facebook anyway and i can vote via that means. But just because it's a regular mn'er doesn't mean I know their child so no, I think they should all be banned.

Besides which these competitions are horrible and send out the message that you can win if you can get the most votes - is that something we want to be supporting?

And that's before I get on to my opinions on child modelling...

Can you not just ignore the threads? If people keep posting threads like this it can only mean that it is because they know enough people will respond to make it worth their while.

And that being the case, can you blame them for trying?

I must admit something here: years ago, I entered a Christmas quiz run by my children's school and ended up asking Mners to help me with the answers, which they did, very successfully. I ended up winning first prize in the quiz - £15. I felt really guilty about this as I had not filled in the quiz by myself. But then, do I really imagine others did not ask family and friends for help? And no-one on MN turned round to me and said "do it by yourself, you are cheating by asking us to help". On the contrary, I recall several Mners enjoying the challenge.

Oh yes, get rid of the lot of them. Beauty competitions for children give me the willies and are a bit un-mn imho.

well i once got a message from a lovely mner asking me to vote for her son who had entered a talent contest. ( at a talent contest that was really a popularity contest, see Simon Cowell et al for more details).
mortified to ask, i was delighted to oblige. and i don't really see how FB is different to MN, not all of us are big FBers.

she was mortified, that should have read. and i didn't put a para mark in there either, what's going on with the coding on this site at the mo?

ah but if you start getting rid of moggelling comp threads do you not have to get rid of the moggellers?

i saw the thread for the wee girl, btw, and snootily disapproved, so i didn't vote. job's a good 'un.

Yup

get rid of the moggellers, the facebook topic, and AIBU while your at it.

Oooh a nice pre-christmas thorough clean of the site (just like you'd do for the garage before you start putting bikes and giant turkeys and crates of beer in there).

I always look and if I think the child is attractive, I vote, but if the child is the run of the mill, I don't. I don't factor in the identity of the Mner. Are we talking about the Titian-headed girl? I thought she looked lovely (and voted).

i thought she had one of those creepy staged photos, so didn't. blleeeeee.

yeah, slub, if you're going hard core i am 100% behind you.

and before anyone says

YESSSSSSS I have them all hidden, but I still know they are there.

They are the un-cut out scratchy tags in my MN underpants.

I don't like the idea of just deleting them, but I do like the idea of a policy to discourage them.

Not that they've ever bothered me, I just ignore, but I can see why they do irritate.

DG, I get a bit of an oo-ey looking at a photo of a child and deciding if they are attractive enough to 'deserve' a vote.

I've not overthought this issue (I may go and do so now) but my gut feeling is a bit and this is not very nice.

Slubber for MN Queen. I think, seeing as Christmas is the season of goodwill and all that, MNHQ should remove AIBU from the site for the entire festive period (at least).

Yes Aitch, it was quite a stagey shot, but did you look through some of the others?

Oh good god Reality, I am sitting up in bed (ill) eating lunch! You could have given me some warning!

It was fine the first time, but now there's loads of them and now we're getting AIBU's on "Do I have to vote?" it's getting a bit boring now.

If I ruled the world......

[hazy background, string music, eyes on the horizon fantasy moment]

lol at Reality's Steve

totally agree - I really really don't like any sort of competition like this and I really don't like any sort of popularity comp that involves children. It seems so unfair that another child who's whole family has voted for them loses out because some other parent enlists the votes of a load of people who don't know the child from Adam