I'm not a fan of the ratings in a place people come for support. I can see where it could be useful with expert blogs (given the option you could also have a 'not so helpful' option. Never really used it and probably most people who reply to journals don't either. LJ I think it'd be a good suggestion for an enhancement to give the journal writer the option of turning off ratings.

This is from the FAQ tab...

"What are Ratings?
Ratings are a new way for you to show how you feel about a journal entry, discussion post, or photo. Do you find another member's journal entry creative or helpful? If so, let them know how you feel, and inspire them to keep posting. Coming soon, ratings will be used to highlight great content--like journal entries, to make them more visible and useful for the DailyStrength Support Group. As a reminder, rating options won't show up on journal entries or photos that are set as private or to be shared only with friends."

I can understand the reasoning behind the ratings, but I would much prefer to leave a comment for the author than to just rate it. You can also rate your own journal, so I guess that'd make for a lot of self-promotion as well. Be interesting to see how that is managed when they highlight the content so the truly inspiring journals don't get flooded out.

LOL - thank you Coogee - I love the part about our being able to rate ourselves. I wonder how many times I can rate myself as "inspirational".....

Actually this is striking me as kind of funny. But really - the ratings thing did create a lot of mayhem in the War & Terror forum a few years ago. If someone wanted to jab at someone they would rate them as being "creative" - i.e. not valid......

Well we'll see how this turns out....

Linda, the ratings used to be only for journals that were open to everyone. So unless they changed it, you can close it to friends only and the rating option should disappear. I looked at my most recent journal entry which is saved as friends only & I don't see any ratings option. I also went to a friend's journal that was locked to friends only & didn't see any rating option there either. My firend's open to all journal does have the rating option.

Sooooooooo, looks like if you don't want to be rated save it to friends only.

Thank you very much. I did have fun rating my own journal as "moving" - I'm wondering how many times I can rate me :)

I appreciate the information MTC. Thanks.

Just a comment about DS journals. If yours is anything dear to you, I recommend you copy and paste it into a local file on your computer ... use Notepad, Wordpad, or a word processor. From then on, compose journal entries LOCALLY then copy/paste them into your DS journal.

This will give you a local backup of your journal ... in the event of a catastrophic failure on the DS end.

Thank you Wandering Vet, that is good to know.

Hey..I tried to rate you again and all it did was change my first rating (helpful) to whatever my second rating was..............so I changed it back to my first rating, so you had one of each...................well ya got 2 of one of the ratings............

I'll try again later...................LOL :)

I don't mind the rating system, as long as I can set it so that only favorable ratings can be made.

(I like my ego stroked!)

LOL......Eulen.............I just gotta ask...what kinda Support Place would this be if one of the ratings said:

Man, this journal sucks!!

Thanks Deb - I'm rating me too - so we'll see what happens.