First off, I do feel highly honoured to have received the March award for "The First to Depart". Thanks very much, all. But mostly I wanted to respond to Isobel's comments about the low turn-out and future of WOLOP. Over 400 poems is a pretty impossible number to sift through, I'd have thought, for most punters.Makes the Grand National look small beer!Maybe if we were able to nominate poems, in running, so to speak, as we come across them, we might arrive at a more manageable number by the end of the month- like less than 50!- which were available to vote for.

Firstly, congratulations for winning WOLOP Ray. Your poem was very moving and on a subject matter that touches us all.

Thank you for taking the time to think about WOLOP and offer suggestions. I like your ideas; I think that more people might be inclined to vote, if they had less poems to choose from. We would have to hope that people 'could be arsed enough' to email me with nominated poems though - as that in itself requires some effort. If nothing else, it would hopefully produce a concentrated list of good quality poetry that people could look through for pleasure also. I would look to putting the list of nominated poems on a discussion thread so people can access them easily. Everything posted on blogs disappears far too quickly. I would also make the voting period much longer to give people time to read through the list.

I will stick with the current format for April as it is too late to change things but will publish new rules for May.

If anyone else has ideas they would like to throw into the melting pot - please do so!

Isobel x

Good idea Ray - certainly worth trying. I think we should stick with the rule that people can't nominate themselves though (whether or not using aliases).

When Isobel publishes the list of nominated poems, should she mention whether a poem has been nominated by more than one person? Should nominater's comments be included? I'm not sure but would lean towards it being a bare list assembld according to date of posting, with nothing added. Others may differ.

An archive of the winners may be an asset on the site. It might be worth asking Admin about that.

Sorry I didn't include your (excellent) winning poem in the WOLOP blog, Ray. I was on a Scottish hill and after several attempts got a connection which was much worse than the T-mobile signnal strength map said it would be, and which broke down straight after I'd posted. So it was all rather hurried.

As far as I'm aware, there has never been a rule about not voting for ourselves Dave - that is something that you dreamed up. It has never been a big issue to me and has never caused a problem in the past. I am happy to go with whatever the people want for the future though.

I would envisage the list of nominated poems being just a list for people to choose from with any salient comments. Otherwise you get into the scenario of the poem being effectively chosen before people have had chance to read all the contendors.

If it takes off, it would be nice to have the winning poem announced along with a round up and a bit of fun - as I have tried to do up till now.

It would be nice to have somewhere official to record WOLOP succcesses. I think before we get to that stage though, we have to reach a stage where WOLOP is a successful thriving competition. Let's just see how we go...

Yes, who IS that Brave Dadley guy that you keep on voting for Dave?
;-) xx

I hope your round-ups continue, Izz, they've been excellent. And WOLOP itself. On voting for yourself, check out Rule 5 in your original blog

It says - don't vote for yourself even if you're name's Steve Black (poor Steve)
http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=6198

I don't think people should be allowed to vote for themselves. Are there really folk who do that? I think that having to send an email to nominate or vote is probably another thing that puts people off. Is it not possible to have a little ballot box, or whatever, on site somewhere to make it easier? I know absolutely nothing about the mechanics of these things and I'm not wanting to come across as a pushy newcomer!But there's something similar on another poetry site I've used so just making suggestions.

Oh Dave - you are like a dog with a nasty bone - you just keep gnawing away. I think all those rules were just a bit of fun.

There has been no issue with people voting for themselves - just the odd poet having a laugh and testing me out.

At no point has this had any bearing on the outcome of WOLOP. I am quite happy to write this in for the future though - IN LETTERS OF GOLD ON A SNOW WHITE KITE....

I will ask Paul about the possibility of people being able to tick a box somewhere without having to email me. This does open it up for people voting for themselves though as it would be hard to determine just who ticked what box unless identifiers were also built in. At this point in time, I am also not sure as to how much effort Admin will want to invest in something that is experimental. It can't hurt to ask the question though...

I would have thought that if you're going to bother to go through all the poems and decide which one is your fave, then the miniscule effort of sending an email is surely not going to put you off. Takes but a trice! (Whatever a trice is!!)