"Hmmmmmm 18 votes out of 17,000+ members not looking good "

Yeah I'm sure all 17 000 of them swung by the thread and just didn't vote. In fact I'm pretty sure all 17 000 of them visit here all the time. The thousands upon thousands that have never made a single post because they only created an account to use the chatroom, for example.

Throwing that 17 000 number around is just silly, I'm sorry. It in no way makes any effort to reflect the genuine active membership.

I'd also like to point out, asking us (the poetry group) to prove the writing is popular *before it is published* is a totally absurd hoop that no other form of writing on the site would ever be asked to jump through. By that same standard any story that gets enough bad reviews should be removed due to being unpopular with the masses.

Also, the idea that writing, in terms of it's worth to be posted, should be judged solely on it's popularity (which seems to be the only factor that concerns you), is not one I'm particulalry pleased with.

Quite frankly you're going out of your way to make this unecessarily difficult, and with very litttle (if any) valid reasoning. If people don't want to read the poetry then DON'T READ IT. All we're asking for is to give people the opportunity to make that choice.