15501 petition signatures and counting @ savebrett.com

[Jimx29]

Sign away please

[SnakeLH2006]

First

[gex]

15510

[Lurker64]

In the history of mankind, has an online petition ever accomplished anything beyond giving those that "sign" it the false impression that they might be affecting something somehow?

[gex]

This should be stickied

[boiga]

In the history of mankind, has an online petition ever accomplished anything beyond giving those that "sign" it the false impression that they might be affecting something somehow?

Asking about online petitions over "the history of mankind" seems rather odd... but in any case...


no

[SnakeLH2006]

In the history of mankind, has an online petition ever accomplished anything beyond giving those that "sign" it the false impression that they might be affecting something somehow?

So I take it you don't vote either?

[boiga]

So I take it you don't vote either?

Voting gives you a chance to make a 1/millionth contribution to a real difference.

Voting in an online petition gives you a 1/thousandth contribution to NO real world difference.

It's like buying 10 lottery tickets with a one in a million chance for a 1 dollar pay off.

[Jimx29]

In the history of mankind, has an online petition ever accomplished anything beyond giving those that "sign" it the false impression that they might be affecting something somehow?

I'm pretty sure that TV networks have brought back a couple horrible shows due to large numbers from a petition

[gex]

In the history of mankind, has an online petition ever accomplished anything beyond giving those that "sign" it the false impression that they might be affecting something somehow?

These kinda things drive the tt jocklickers crazy!
Watch um come out of the woodwork.

They must have an alarm that goes off whenever something good is said or typed about Favre, then they swoop in to diss it or the person who said it, like in the Bradshaw thread.


Haters will Hate

[MJZiggy]

Actually he has a point. When's the last time you heard something like, "well there was this online poll and the Dallas fans have decided that Jessica should just stay away from Tony, so we're banning her from coming within 100 yards of him?"

[SnakeLH2006]

In the history of mankind, has an online petition ever accomplished anything beyond giving those that "sign" it the false impression that they might be affecting something somehow?

These kinda things drive the tt jocklickers crazy!
Watch um come out of the woodwork.

They must have an alarm that goes off whenever something good is said or typed about Favre, then they swoop in to diss it or the person who said it, like in the Bradshaw thread.


Haters will Hate

True that. I just got kicked off of Youtube the other day after 2 years, 100 videos, 2000 subscribers, 3 million video views, but my message was clear and I quote "Haters do what they can, Players do what they want."

[Lurker64]

I'm just saying I've seen a lot of online petitions and I've signed a few and not a single one of them has made any sort of difference in the world whatsoever. People who are in charge of things don't go out looking for these things and in case they stumble upon them, the petitions and the like are ignored. People in charge of organizations and the like have a little thing called "leadership" and leadership frequently involves ignoring what "popular opinion" is in favor of one's own convictions as to what's the right thing to do.

There has never been a television show saved by an online petition, a coach has never been fired because of an online petition, a personnel move has never been made because of an online petition, and an important person's opinion has never been swayed by an online petition. There may be online petitions that run parallel to things that actually happened, but correlation is not causation and shows get brought back for reasons like "exceptional ratings in reruns" and people get fired for things like "incompetence that is obvious to his or her bosses".

Online petitions are entirely and completely meaningless for reasons that include:

1) There is no actual verification that a real person has actually signed his or her actual name in favor or against something. I could go sign that petition 200 times if I really felt the need to. I guarantee there are not 15,000 unique people who have "signed" that petition because it's laughably easy for one person to sign it as many times a he or she wishes.

2) Online petitions are not actually representative of what a cross section of people think. Only vocal minorities are inclined to seek out such things, and there's no clear alternative for people who disagree to support an alternative. In order for a sampling of the population to actually have a statistically meaningful indication of a trend or an idea, those people sampled must be chosen at random and they cannot be self-chosen. Self-reporting is nearly always inaccurate, as numerous studies have shown. The only people who seek out such things are the people on the extremes and most people are not on the extremes (by definition).

3) Due to the degree of anonymity the internet allows, it's trivially easy for important people to ignore any number of opinions on the internet. If real people had legitimately passionate opinions they would let them be known in ways other than grinding one's own gears on the internet. You can't ignore a letter sent certified mail, and it's hard to ignore a personal phone call. But it's easy to ignore an e-mail, and how easy do you think it is to ignore a website?


Basically what I'm saying is that no matter how you feel on this situation, no matter how much you support Favre or whatever, you're wasting your time doing this. It's not going to affect anything at all and it's going to cost you a little bit of time you could spend doing something productive with your life.

If you really want to get the attention of Mark Murphy here, don't even bother with the online petition. Write a letter explaining what you think, sign your name to it, take it to the post office, pay $4 or whatever to send it certified mail to Mark Murphy (or whoever) and then it will get read. If you're not willing to write a personal letter, drive the post office, and spend $4 to mail it then you certainly lack the conviction necessary to get anybody who has made a decision in an official capacity to change his or her mine. Those are just the facts.

This petition will not have any attention paid to it by anybody whose has the ability to affect what happens in any meaningful way.

This is the only online petition (on anything whatsoever) I will support. I don't know if it's worth my time to sign it, however.

[SnakeLH2006]

I'm just saying I've seen a lot of online petitions and I've signed a few and not a single one of them has made any sort of difference in the world whatsoever. People who are in charge of things don't go out looking for these things and in case they stumble upon them, the petitions and the like are ignored. People in charge of organizations and the like have a little thing called "leadership" and leadership frequently involves ignoring what "popular opinion" is in favor of one's own convictions as to what's the right thing to do.

There has never been a television show saved by an online petition, a coach has never been fired because of an online petition, a personnel move has never been made because of an online petition, and an important person's opinion has never been swayed by an online petition. There may be online petitions that run parallel to things that actually happened, but correlation is not causation and shows get brought back for reasons like "exceptional ratings in reruns" and people get fired for things like "incompetence that is obvious to his or her bosses".

Online petitions are entirely and completely meaningless for reasons that include:

1) There is no actual verification that a real person has actually signed his or her actual name in favor or against something. I could go sign that petition 200 times if I really felt the need to. I guarantee there are not 15,000 unique people who have "signed" that petition because it's laughably easy for one person to sign it as many times a he or she wishes.

2) Online petitions are not actually representative of what a cross section of people think. Only vocal minorities are inclined to seek out such things, and there's no clear alternative for people who disagree to support an alternative. In order for a sampling of the population to actually have a statistically meaningful indication of a trend or an idea, those people sampled must be chosen at random and they cannot be self-chosen. Self-reporting is nearly always inaccurate, as numerous studies have shown. The only people who seek out such things are the people on the extremes and most people are not on the extremes (by definition).

3) Due to the degree of anonymity the internet allows, it's trivially easy for important people to ignore any number of opinions on the internet. If real people had legitimately passionate opinions they would let them be known in ways other than grinding one's own gears on the internet. You can't ignore a letter sent certified mail, and it's hard to ignore a personal phone call. But it's easy to ignore an e-mail, and how easy do you think it is to ignore a website?


Basically what I'm saying is that no matter how you feel on this situation, no matter how much you support Favre or whatever, you're wasting your time doing this. It's not going to affect anything at all and it's going to cost you a little bit of time you could spend doing something productive with your life.

If you really want to get the attention of Mark Murphy here, don't even bother with the online petition. Write a letter explaining what you think, sign your name to it, take it to the post office, pay $4 or whatever to send it certified mail to Mark Murphy (or whoever) and then it will get read. If you're not willing to write a personal letter, drive the post office, and spend $4 to mail it then you certainly lack the conviction necessary to get anybody who has made a decision in an official capacity to change his or her mine. Those are just the facts.

This petition will not have any attention paid to it by anybody whose has the ability to affect what happens in any meaningful way.

This is the only online petition (on anything whatsoever) I will support. I don't know if it's worth my time to sign it, however.

The TV show Jericho got brought back by an online petition....great show BTW, don't/can't do a bunch of examples, but know of many more......Who cares, show some passion, or get trampled by the regime. Hate to see your type in Nazi Germany in WWII or everyone would have been killed instead of most. Show some colors, JC, or just tread the water everyone else does..

[Lurker64]

Jericho was not brought back because of an online petition. It was brought back largely because people send forty thousand pounds of peanuts to the producers of the show as part of a fan campaign. Forty thousand pounds of peanuts is hard to ignore, a website is not. An online petition might be part of a successful campaign, but without a doubt it will be the single least effective part of that campaign. Like I said before, if you really cared you'd spend some money to send Mark Murphy and Ted Thompson a letter. Their addresses can't be hard to find.

Moreover, considering that Jericho was cancelled in the middle of the second season due to low ratings the people who bowed to the pressure exerted by the fan campaign were proved to have been incorrect in doing so. In essence, they lacked leadership.

"People cared enough about something to spend some of their personal money in order to make sure their opinions are heard" is convincing "people took fifteen seconds to put a fake name and e-mail address into an online petition" is far from convincing.

Also, congratulations on Godwinning the conversation.