It’s yeah write voting time!

Line up here, virgins…

If this is your first time here, welcome! You are invited to choose up to five favorites from the grid and vote for them. I only ask that you read before voting; that’s only fair to everyone on the grid. If this is your first time as a blogger on the challenge grid, I ask that you not vote-bomb us. Oh, and if this is somewhere between your second and 59th time on the challenge grid, I ask that you not vote-bomb us.

Totally. What’s vote bombing?

No pleading for targeted votes in email, on Twitter, on Facebook. No standing in front of the camera flashing your grid number to the audience. Let your post stand on its merits, and if you did indeed submit one of the best posts on the grid this week, the popular vote or the judges’ favorites will reflect that. Good sportsmanship is always sexy and in style.

How yeah write voting works

Vote by clicking the yellow star which, depending on your browser, will be either below or above each thumbnail. 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. Once you’ve voted five times, the stars will disappear, and the current vote tally for each thumbnail will show.

Last week, about 400 people participated in the voting process. The popular vote winner finished with 36 votes and the grid averaged around eight votes per thumbnail.

Voting closes Thursday, 9 p.m. EDT

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.

Friday winners

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• lurker’s favorite by Jen W
• lurker’s favorite by Kristin W
• lurker’s favorite by Flood G who will also win a copy of The Pen and the Bell donated by grid sponsor Skinner House Books
• lurker’s favorite by guest lurker Ben J who will win the second copy of The Pen and the Bell donated by grid sponsor Skinner House Books
• popular vote winner by the entire Interwebz if the entire Interwebz is made up of, like, 400 people, your next door-neighbor and your co-workers

• 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. If you don’t have an ad banner for your blog, pet project or small business, I will whip one up for you. This is the 125×125 banner I made for last week’s winner.

  

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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 yeah write #60 is open.