Numbering System
11/16/2020 11:24 p.m.

Numbering System

I felt it was about time to clear the air and clarify the purpose of this practice; that is identifying the number of reads or hits any given piece of writing has received. Although it is flattering to see these amounts steadily rising, at dizzying speed in some cases, it was not out of any sense of vanity that I started to do this about 6 years ago.

A few years before that, with a previous posting of the poem, Star Love, in Love & Friendship, I was informed by another member here that this poem had been posted on another poetry site by some guy I didn’t know…in his library. I was given no credit for writing the poem. My friend took the liberty of informing the administrator of the other site about what was going on, and my poem was promptly taken down.

The source of the inspiration for the above mentioned poem has also since been identified, especially as it is the title piece of a sub-collection in Love & Friendship. As I’ve said before in the past, I don’t mind others copying, downloading, sharing, or even posting my work on other sites, as long as I am given © credit for writing it.

I decided then that in an attempt to thwart future plagiarism, all poems would include the number of hits they had received, to show others, especially potential wrong doers, that a poem had been read, or at least seen by many others (including other poets), so that those same wrong doers would think twice about passing off something that I wrote as their own.

In closing, although I have no way of knowing who is actually clicking on my writing, I would hope that they occasionally stop to read some if not all of them, considering the amount of work I put into each one.

Thanks again everyone for your support and patronage!




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