Experimenting a little with voting this week.

Going public

Since we’ve opened the hangout grid specifically for those of us who like the community aspect of yeah write but dislike the competitive aspect of it, I’m assuming those of us on the challenge grid are confident enough for the votes to show throughout the 24-hour voting period and into perpetuity once voting ends. That’s a fair assessment, right?

It’s time to take it to the next level and be publicly confident in our writing. Which is very easy for me to say since I’d never open my personal writing to a public vote in the first place and if yeah write had existed when I’d first started blogging in 2006, I’d have built me a tree house over at the hangout grid and started a barbeque on the balcony overlooking the challenge grid, occasionally spotting it with my special spicy honey mustard rub.

But for you writing extroverts who’ve already shown willingness to write toward a hidden vote, this heart palpitation is for you.

Everybody gets five votes even though not everyone uses all five votes

There are usually about 250 people participating in the voting, and those 1000 or so votes are divided among 50 bloggers on the grid. The popular vote winner averages about 15 votes during a non-prize week.

Depending on your browser, there will be a yellow star above or below each thumbnail. Click on the thumbnail to read the post before voting, click on the yellow star to vote for the post after reading.

Voting closes Thursday, 9 p.m. EDT

After each yellow star click, the page will refresh, and you’ll have to make your way back down to the grid to click another yellow star, and so it will go five times.

If it’s after 9 p.m. EDT [-4 GMT] on Thursday when you’re trying to vote, voting is closed. There will be no more yellow stars and voting will not work.

Once you’ve voted for your five favorite posts, you’re done voting, the yellow stars will disappear and the current vote tally will be visible. You are then free to campaign for votes for your favorite entries including your own.

Sometimes the voting program can be glitchy. If you’re voting, but the stars don’t disappear, don’t worry: your votes are registering. However, if the app prevents you from voting for any additional entries before you’ve voted for five blogs, please send me an email with your remaining choices, and I’ll register them for you on the back end.

Only one vote per IP address per entry will be valid

Remember, this is a writing challenge, not a clicking contest. Avoid the temptation to vote for yourself or anyone else from various IP addresses. That’ll just create more work for me as I validate all the votes and delete the self-votes and the wipe out the votes from your neighbor’s wi-fi. If I added your link for you, the system will not recognize your IP address as a self-vote, so you’re officially on the honor system about it. Thanks!

Internet campaigning

We’re doing our best to introduce yeah write as an encouraging, supportive community for writing bloggers and blogging writers, not as a click-fest. Ask your friends, family, Facebook fans and Twitter followers to read some of the other blogs on the grid while they’re here, and they may stay for a while and become one of us.

If they’re sent here to zero in on one or more yellow stars, they arrive not as readers, but as task masters. Please give them the option to choose their own favorites. Kismet and serendipity are where it’s at whenever we’re scouring the universe for new experiences; we should let them explore openly.

[stextbox id=”no”]Hey, you guys, I’m #454 on the grid. Vote for me vote for me vote for meeeeeeee!!![/stextbox]

[stextbox id=”no”]Hey, you guys, I’m #454 on the grid. Vote for me and #545, #234, #213, #653![/stextbox]

[stextbox id=”yes”]Hey, you guys, come visit this cool writing challenge and vote for me for and a few others on the grid. If you love discovering new blogs, it’s a great place.[/stextbox]

Friday winners

• editor’s choice by Erica M
• lurker’s favorite by Flood G
• lurker’s favorite by Emma T
• lurker’s favorite by Jennifer W
• popular vote winner by the entire Interwebz if the entire Interwebz is made up of, like, 250 people
• randomly drawn winner of a week-long ad space in the yeah write sidebar with its whopping 500 daily visitors, 12,000 page views and 15,000 outbound links. That’s damn close to a million, y’all

Have fun!

Have fun and help the rest of us have fun by turning off comment moderation, word verification and Blogger’s comment CAPTCHA until voting ends tomorrow at 9 p.m. EDT [-4 GMT].

Thanks for being so awesome.

Voting for the #yeah write #57 challenge grid with public results is open.