If there is anything I find annoying, it is Internet petitions. They do not ever seem to work and for the most part they are half assed attempts at grievance mongering. I think part of the problem with internet petitions is a disconnect in conveying a serious message as seriously writing a message. There is no reason any ill-conceived and poorly crafted message should be taken seriously.
Here is a petition that rolled across my bulletins:
“Don't you think it would be a great idea that the people that you have blocked couldn't even view your page, let alone the normal not being able to comment or rate etc. Because they still can go on your page everyday now and stalk your new pics and see your stash and read your comments, they just can't talk to you or rate you. I would prefer greatly that they couldn't even see anything. Please if you agree and believe that BLOCKED USERS shouldn't be able to even view your page, sign the petition I've start below and repost!! Maybe Baby J will see this and do something!!!”
I agree with the sentiment that blocked users should be completely blocked from seeing a profile. It is sensible but like every other online community Cherry Tap is a work in progress and victim to a lot of half assed coding by the powers that be. That is not a criticism, software development is complicated business even for the most experienced developers.
There are many things wrong with this petition. The first is very awkward word selection. I suspect the original writer was typing as if they were talking; contractions, juxtaposed words, all capital letters, abbreviations and poor punctuation are rife.
The second problem is they are inserting redundant some redundant text. Structured writing can be incredibly effective. Unstructured writing can come off as whining or ranting.
The third item from the above petition is paragraphs. A paragraph can assemble a message in nice blocks and turn a rambling petition into a well ordered one.
Here is the same petition, rewritten with the above recommendations:
“Do you think it would be a great idea that people that you have blocked could not view your page?
Even though blocked users can not rate or comment on your profile, they can look at pictures, view your stash, read blogs and read comments. It would be preferable that users could not even see any part of a profile that is blocked.
If you agree please sign the petition I've start below and repost!! If enough people repost and sign this petition it will come to the attention of Cherry Tap’s administrators.”
This is not a slam on the original writer. I think their intentions are good and their criticism of Cherry Tap’s flaw is spot on. Not everyone is trained in writing to a large audience; it is just like public speaking.
Unlike public speaking, there are ample tools to help convey a written message. You have time to make it right, whereas public speaking is on-the-fly. A word processing program can work wonders in fixing spelling and grammatical errors. Also spend some time editing your message and moving text around. Most importantly, remember that written English is different than spoken English.
Take pride in a petition you are sending out into the world. If you don’t take it seriously, why should someone else?
Related Note: I chose to bold my text as the white on red color scheme that Cherry Tap uses is hard to disseminate between italics and normal text. It looked better in Word... I am not happy with the color scheme, but that's life.
