Warning: this is gonna be a huge trip to memory-land, but PLEASE read it until the end. Maybe tu might feel the same.
------

Two years ago, when I first joined fanpop, things were a lot different here. I was 15 years old and I only watched one TV show: Heroes. I was insanely addicted to that mostrar (I still am, it’s my segundo favorito! mostrar ever) and I was searching for some episodes online on some misceláneo site. That site (I have no idea which one is now, Lol) had a lot of enlaces to episodes, and some of those enlaces bought me to fanpop.

The first think I noticed about this site was those funny options things where tu could vote, also known as picks. =P
And those were the reason why, in June of 2007, I joined this site. To answer those picks and eventually get spoiled about future episodes I hadn’t seen yet. xD (if tu watch Heroes, tu know how it works, in season 1, people were always dying there. LOL)
I got totally addicted and I joined the heroes spot, and I eventually made my own first link. That pick gave my first apoyo ever, por no other than Dave (YAY, thank tu Dave <3), and I swear I jumped around the house when I saw the little apoyo thing. xD
Then I made some más picks. =) It was the only thing I was doing on fanpop, lol. (It’s sill my favorito! way of contributing, because I amor to choose the right imágenes to add, and I amor to read other people’s comments.)
So, after 15 picks on the heroes spot, I got my first Dedicated medal ever... And almost a heart-attack when I saw it. lol xD
See, on those days, it wasn’t very common to watch people with many medals. It was VERY rare to find people with fanatics, I think I only met one o two.
Back then, the heroes spot was the spot with más fans and the most popular (which made me extremely happy, yay go Heroes! xD). It had about 3000 fans, and I might be very wrong, but I’m pretty sure it hadn’t had más than this. Yea, pretty crazy right? Considering how much fans the Twilight spot has now. Lol

But this was then.
For some reason, I went un-active a few months. Season 2 of heroes was starting and I didn’t want to be spoiled por picks, since I was waiting for it to come on TV (which took quite time actually, it sucks to live in Portugal). Also, I was running out of ideas for picks. LOL

Months later I got back and I had started to watch other shows. So I joined más spots, like One árbol colina and Supernatural.
OTH is my favorito! mostrar ever, and my segundo dedicated medal was for that spot, also with just picks.
Then I started to add videos and my first die hard was for that spot, I got it on August of 2008.
My first Fanatic medal was for that spot too. Now, tu don’t ever forget your Fanatics (especially your first), so I know that I got on October 22nd of 2008. I also know I’m a nerd for knowing that date.
por December, I was the 6th parte superior, arriba contributer of that spot.
And right now, I’m proudly the 3rd. =]

And this is what happens when tu work hard to something. All the wait and all the work feels undeniably great.

But situations like these are más rare and rare these days. And I guess that’s the point of this article.
tu see, I must really be a naïve person, because it took me a LONG time to figuring out the medal system. I had no idea what kind of “amount” of contribution was needed. And when one time, I read somewhere that the ratings helped, I thought WE had to give ratings to get medals. So I kinda rated ALL the videos on the OTH spot. lol (I don’t regret it btw, I found some great videos there xD). Anyways, silly me for being slow, no wonder why people call me “looser” o “Joey”. =P

Some new fans aren’t naïve at all. In fact, they were very quickly to understanding that whole thing. So it’s simple, they ask people to rate their stuff.
There was a ratings foros on the OTH spot, on the friends spot and maybe on others spots too. All tu had to do was posting enlaces of your stuff and people would rate it. Those foros no longer exist, they were deleted, because it wasn’t a fair way of getting medals. I honestly couldn’t have agreed más with this decision.
Now, those new fans (new fans, not the fans who were using those forums), are fully aware of this. So instead of having a forum, they do it por messages. They message other users asking for ratings. As I see it, this is exactly the same thing as having a forum, except that with messages, there is no prove of the cheating. This kind of cheating is like air, tu don’t see it. But tu know it’s there.

A lot of users have an incredible number of medallas right now. All because of those ratings.

At this moment, I have 26 dedicated medals, 17 die-hard medallas and 7 fanatic medals.
I’m a member of fanpop más than two years now. And I feel really accomplished.
Trust me, it’s not about the medals. It’s how far I’ve went, from having zero medals, to have 50.
So, I think it’s very unfair to see some users – cheating users – who are here, for less than FIVE MONTHS to have way más medallas than me o other users, that work harder for them.

It’s not even about the medals, it’s about the content that they add to getting those medals. To add icons, all tu have to do is find some LiveJournals o some fan sites. Also, tu can add repeated ones. And it gets even easier when tu ask other people to rate them.
Now imagine how I feel, when I’m working for a medal, adding stuff and NOT asking anybody to rate them for me, to witness situations like these.
Let me just use a couple of hypothetical examples.
Let’s say a certain user added, 75 videos and 120 imágenes to a spot.
Let’s say I added 875 videos and 1485 imágenes to the same spot. Which means, I added más than 800 videos and 1000 imágenes than that user. Now, let’s say we both have Die-Hard medals.
Does this scream fair to you?

Other example. Hypothetical. On other totally different spot, with much less fans than the first one.
A user added 170 videos and 130 images. That user has a Fanatic. She’s the parte superior, arriba contributor.
Other user added 20 videos and 200 images. That user has a die-hard. She’s the segundo parte superior, arriba contributor.
I added 350 videos and 1500 images. I have a die-hard. I’m the third parte superior, arriba contributor.
Fair? Excuse me for not thinking so.

The thing is I don’t even care about medals. I don’t. This is about other people taking me the pleasure of feeling ACCOMPLISHED. How can I feel that way, knowing that I worked so hard, knowing that I waited months and knowing that some other user got it easily with less work and in two weeks?

I’m not the only one who feels this way.
Some other people do too. Some other people tried to do something about it. And I watched some of them getting banned. We lost Myra, the parte superior, arriba contributor of all fanpop because of this mess.
Myra, who I truly admire because of her work. There are a lot of people who might not like her. But even those, tu can’t honestly say that Myra didn’t work for her medallas and that she didn’t deserve EVERY SINGLE ONE of them. Because she did. And not only just her. Gogokef, Clarkfan, Addie, Tvfan95. Does this names ring any campana to you?
I hope whoever who is lectura this, understands what this articulo is about. This is not me bragging and/or trying to get más medals. This is me trying to stop unfair situations.

The fanpop 4 built the best site on Earth, hands down. This is not just about picks for me now, lol. I spend most of the times talking on foros and I met the most amazing fans here. <3
So, I’m not, in any way, trying to tell them what to do. But I can’t help to say that this rating system It’s not working. In my opinion (and notice that this is just an OPINION), I think the ratings shouldn’t count as much. They can count, but not as much as they do now.
On one side, I think the videos should be considerate más important. tu can add all the imágenes tu want, all the times tu want, but tu can’t add repeated videos. And if tu notice, the users that “cheat”, don’t add much videos. It’s not hard to understand why. But on the other hand, there aren’t as many videos of one subject as there are images, so yea, it’s not right than the videos count más than images.. In the end, it’s better to leave this situation to the people who know the best, aka the fanpop 4. =P

I was just trying to express how I feel about this.
Sorry If I offend anyone. I didn’t use any names, just to avoid that.
I’m not trying to get anyone banned, like I don’t want to be banned. I amor this site way too much.

I guess this is what I’m trying to say:
I honestly don’t know why people cheat to get medals. There’s no better feeling than getting new medallas when tu least expect it. Especially if one of those medallas is a fanatic. tu get the accomplished feeling and when tu told other users about, they also get REALLY happy (sometimes happier than tu ;)), because they know how hard it is to get a medal. And they totally apoyo spam the hell out of you. LOL

This feeling is great. Don’t take it away from fanpop. There’s no point of having 20 fanatics if they feel like a normal medal to you.
Let’s get this feeling back! =]

EDIT: There’s something I think it’s relevant and I forgot to add. The thing is that, the “cheating” users I mentioned above, don’t just message each other asking for ratings, they also ask to rate others users stuff low. Some users tried to stop the cheating, but not only they couldn’t do it, they saw their perfectly fine stuff being rated with one star.

I’ve saw/read one of those messages, sent por one “cheating” user. I think someone has that message screen caped somewhere. The content of the message was simple, it dicho to rate everything of their “friends” group high (as in 5 stars), and rate everything of the users who tried to stop the cheating low (as in 1 star).
And I’ve seen stuff rated low.

Seriously, who wastes their time like this? Also, who wastes their time creating tons of fake accounts? Because those are against the fanpop rules, but I’ve seen a LOT of them. I think it’s just mean, not only they are getting medallas not playing fair, but they are making it hard for other users to get them. Users than DON’T cheat.

This is not what fanpop is about.

Again, I apologize If it seems that I’m escritura this just to attack someone.
That’s not really my point.

This is just to mostrar how tired I am of all the situation. =/

To finish.. I promise this is my last edit. LOL
This articulo has 5 pages on Word already, I don’t think I would be escritura as much if this was for a school paper. XD