I was hoping for something like BATZ in the wake of a cocktail session in the wee escritoire of Monsieur Chariot. But I'll refrain from a thumbs down nonetheless!

Shameless self-promoting whore donkey!

I rated you. UPZ!

I second the whore donkey and thumbs up! Go BATZ!

As always, you made me laugh. And just for the record, *I* always rate you even if I don't have time to comment. Sill whore donkey.

Just in case you did not know (and how couldn't you!), "whore donkey" is a HH honorific....

Don't give up Caruso, maybe all it will take is a severed ear...

Whatever would one do without one's batte précieuse?

I rated you! But we are all -- at Open Salon HQ -- wondering why people aren't using the ratings more. Any ideas??

I never miss my hi-brow Chiroptera humor! I'd go BATZ!y without it. (OK, that was painful. Sorry.)

As for ratings, I do give thumbs up, but I guess I'm not sure what it is supposed to mean. Is it simply like it or not? In which case I should rate everything I read, which I do not do at the moment. I tend to use it to say "that's exceptional." I have yet to give a thumbs down and frankly I wouldn't be comfortable doing so. It is a pretty harsh thing to do. I could see it if someone was cruel or overtly racist, but lesser offenses, I'm not inclined to dis them.

people aren't using the ratings because nobody wants to discourage people from posting.

Within two days of arriving here, I had someone following me around a bit and negative rating anything I touched. I would post or comment and within an hour, a thumbs down with no comment.

I referred to them as a troll. Maybe I helped dampen the desire to be like that by being willing to say something. They stopped with the weird behavior shortly after I called them out on it.

But it is one reason it is not good the way it is.

I think a negative rating should be accompanied by a required check box indicating a choice of

bad content
bad writing
socially offensive
illogical
insipid

That would about cover any complaints without having to actually write anything specific. You should be able to choose more than one box for some posts.