Uncle Owdy

Great! Thanks, Jobo05 That's good to hear. Hope everybody else voted successfully and that this turns out to be a very short term fluke that was not widespread or long lived. Heard of it in other seasons, but didn't know it was still happening till the screen shots started up on twitter tonight/

Trouble Voting Tonight Several people on twitter reporting tonght that they are casting votes for Meryl online and the vote screen afterward says : "Your favorite this week is Drew " Reports are this has happened at least when using Firefox browser and Google Chrome. Seems to happen, not on every vote, but every forth or fifth time. DWTS producers: Please check this out and fix it! Also now reports that sign in for voting not working for some using Firefox. Anybody here have trouble voting tonight? Opps: Just saw comment on ABC board that iparisi was voting for Candace and was told the vote recorded for Billy Dee. Tonight! Rosie could not get in using Firefox to vote online so she used the phone and was allowed to vote 11 times instead of 9. Sounds like the voting system needs a little maintainance.

Warning: Ensuing discussion mentions boards, for those who would rather not continue ... crowceilidh - about your idea for a boards thread: Yes! You really touched me. What a good idea and it could work to be helpful in several ways. And isn't the best defense against the damage of fan camps going against each other (or being made out to seem to), the common ground meeting space? We could call the thread the Greater DWTS Community Thread ... like the Greater Boston area - that extends out to all places DWTS. It could even be subbed down to break out twitter and facebook and other social media on DWTS, and also blogs, columns, news stories, interviews, discussions groups and boards. Or the media part could be on the separate Media thread. We could learn to be civil about it if we worked to keep it sane. I have felt so much like you on this. The board is where we come to share our opinions, but I really like the idea of coming to a board where there is a Media thread to check out for all the new media stories and interviews and vids members have found and posted. So much that comes up on google subject capture is some article repeated over and again written from some tweet or rumor or two weeks ago happening. When we find substantive stuff or rehearsal tapes or interviews not shown on the show, it would be great to be able to share them here in a media thread. And the same goes for other boards and twitter fan groups and the pros' and dancers' tweets. It is interesting to browse around to see what others are feeling or finding out. The techs who were doing twitter vote statistics would not have learned about the error in vote counting that was causing such grief if they had not put together a pool of information where some people's tweets came together from a connection here and a connection there running across each other and, seeing something wrong, seeking each other out and checking each other's work. Knowing there was a place to go to compare notes would have made that easy. There is also the issue of "sources say". I would love to have a thread to go to where people talked about the different reports from sites about what was happening with the rehearsals as the week wears on toward Performance Night. Lots of people have friends associated with the show. The reputation of a dancer or celeb or producer is vulnerable to the hints and suggestions of a singular "source" that may get quoted enough to spread but is not followed by the eventual correction or modification. Having a thread where the talk showing up in different places can be discussed. I know we don't want to inflame fan wars. Not a good plan. Would really like something to calm them. However bad, they are not responsible for what is being blamed on them this week. Some of the talk is being reframed as fan wars or fan loyalty gone wild .... and this part about the existence of a mistake in one site's vote count was not coming from "rival fans trying to make trouble" but from statisticians. This time, fan groups getting together to compare notes helped stop people from getting hurt. It is a given that the net is a dangerous place and people all over use it to hurt people. There is no oversight on a free medium except the standards of the community of users. The community that makes up PTV has a deep history of providing a safe and civilized space for fans of DWTS to gather, learn, share and express their feelings about all things DWTS. Some readers come here looking for that safe, civil atmosphere to express their uncivil experience elsewhere and find a way past it. Is there a way that is not offensive or hurtful or illegal to have a board board? Having the discussion about the other board the last few days was tricky and probably not what some wanted here.They shouldn't have it in their faces without choosing to.( I am sorry for doing anything there that might have offended.) For some others it was too short to encourage opportunity for their responses sharing their experience, comparing notes and questions and checking the validity of what was being discussed. Maybe a board thread could have allowed that sharing and questioning in a safely monitored way. Maybe a board thread could include some sharing of other DWTS sites, twitter groups, blogs. statistics. So many comments over there asking about other sites about DWTS that they might visit. Annie Barrett , long time reviewer of DWTS and friend of Tom, has just announced she is leaving EW. Where are fans to find her next? If we had a place for members to bring word of the twitter and forum and blog sites they knew about, we would have a list to contact about the new board at ptv! We could invite Annie over and all her fans. Had there been a board thread to move the Pure discussion to, once it got started, there may have been a way to continue a discussion that was healthy and useful, accessed only by those interested. In this particular case, there are many, many people who have been cut off from dissent and blocked and hurt and some of them became TWo readers and some are now coming here to check the new place out. This discussion may not have been one that helped stop the vote thing from moving to the threatened "Proof that DWTS is Rigged" Exposé article that was due to be posted over there this weekend, and based in large degree on their vote tabulating error. Several different folks were working to try to get the error shown to the site so they could test it for themselves and correct it for their readers. Whatever the reason, the mods made the decision not to do the article, just before this step-too-far triggered legal action against their own blog site or threatened to start the kind of uproar that could lead to federal investigation or even potential cancellation of the show. There needs to be somewhere where this stuff could have been seen and shared and figured out together. I won't be going to that site any more, and anyone displeased with them can choose not to. The problem comes when the rest of the DWTS community backs away from fansite that seriously threatens - directly or inadvertently - to undo the show we care about, with ramifications to all the pros, the celebs, the shows personel, and all the fans. We need to be able to express our fondness for this show and the people associated with it in ways that help it be fun to watch, interesting to follow and still on TV for us to watch. The folks who built ptv, I understand, have a powerful history of creating and maintaining safe and rational discussion areas. Who better for this? Thanks, crowceilidh. Hope they can take your request and run with it.

spanana - really agree with what you said about the pros. Maks and Derek and Val have not only gone out together in New York a couple of months ago, but there have been many pics of them over the years, including lately, going out with each other after the Monday show in LA. I think you're spot on.

ari333 Really like your idea of posting the song title on the screen. Seems they could at least put it up during the intro, even if they didn't want to keep it on for the dance. One way or another we could refer to it to check out the song. I have been having some trouble with the camera angles, too. Seem not to show off the dance or put it in a context of the whole. Wishing for less back of the neck shots and more whole couple moving in space and closing in on foot action, or something. But did really like the tight shot of Meryl and Maks last week. Like your idea. All for making the viewers better able to enjoy what everybody works all weekk to bring. Oh, and about Knoll replacements: I had been toying with Where's my tin foil hat? or maybe Under the Tin Foil Hat before finding your Area 51. Your's sounds clean and clinical;kind of giving a scientific aura, Maybe it will add credence or an air of dignified accuracy to all of our birlliant insights. And it comes off less messy and deranged than my thought..

TeeM, thank you. Appreciate your eloquently presented comments.There are so many things we love about this show and so many difficulties to get past trying to enjoy it, it is especially helpful to be able to compare notes and connect with each other about our observations and experience of it.... One of the great beneffits of having 18 seasons is it gives us all time to feel we are getting to be experts when it comes to what we like and what we don't and what we would like to change and see more of.. Maybe they should ask us. If not, we should all say it here and maybe an intern will see it and tell them.(Smile) Much rmore decorous talking about them knowing they are listening than about them when they are not. Love reading the comments on this board.

Yikes! This is soo not working. I tried to quote part of your comment, radishcake, and when I hit reply to quoted post, it said 2 quoted posts and posted none. Do you hit first the reply button to get the reply page and then go highlight the post or vice versa? Thanks. I should have learned all this before I started so would have been caught mid stream. On other attempts it kept quoting my own entire article already posted. I realize i got very long winded in the heady excitement of being a poster first time, but not really trying to quote my own self.:)

Uke, still not getting the quote thing down yet. About the video with James = agree with your assessment on that. Not the vid snip I meant, though. It was very early in the promoing of the switch wheh hosts were nattering on about it. Yes, about Derek mentioning on camera a reference to partnering with NeNe: I realize you and your group stopped watching the vote count Sunday as you mentioned but there are probably count graphs still up showing that huge spike in number of votes being entered on Monday. Derek made his on camera remark at near 6pm Pacific. In the 6 hours remaining till 12 Pacific the surge continued. But, regardless of any campaigns that may be peaking, it we clear that Derek was acting as though he was NeNe's partner. I think he will do a show stopper with her, as would Maks, and that it will be the entertaineing dance of the night, in liklihood. The mystery was whether Danica would poll momre total votes on all pros than NeNe and that would decide who got Maks and who got Derek. Danica polled highest Maks was her highest voted pro.. That may have been clear to Derek by 6 o;clock, like you said. Think he will do a great dance with her and it will help her stay on the show longer. Am bummed that Cheryl and Maks did not get the chance to do Argentine Tango twice this season since they both danced with Forever Tango and Cheryl studied with them in South America. And now looks like he won't get to do one this season at all. Radish Cake - thanks for the caution! It is tridky to figure out how to express opinion/concern for the show and the fans and the dancers and pros when there is an event that impacts or could impact all, when that event involves a site and the site has blocked efforts to fix some of the problem, isn't it? But, if we are not going to imitate it, we have to be careful in discussing. I apologize for any loss of decorum. I so valued where PTV came from and the people who have worked so hard under very difficult circumstances to get it up and available to us. They surely had other issues to address with their time and creativity and I am very grateful to them and don't want to trash their work. So, thanks for reigning us in and maybe we can share our concerns and try to repair some of the misinformation damage to all involved without trashing the people who won't. Thanks, Radish Cake.

Yes! Abour Mark. And, Uke, I see what you mean about Derek not meaning to be disrespectful. And the business of creating shapes and such with his celebs using a lot of time in dances without their feet moving is something I really recognize in him. I have often felt that he does not "show respect" with partners' potential to learn to do the fundamentals of the actual ballroom and latin dances. And think he seems to value his shapes and moving the partner's body with his hands, more than trusting them to learn to move their feet in the steps the dance style showcases. There are a number of obvioius exceptions, of course, but I have often found myself talking to him through the TV screen with "Let her DANCE!" As much as Kelly accomplished, I always thought she was able to do a lot more moving on her own using much more of the dance style requirements and, ultimate, being able to enjoy dancing those styles long after the show when Derek was not there to hold and move her body for her. Since I clearly have a problem with that, not surprised it comes up with Amy, too. My take on disability includes the notion that people who have them and work hard to deal with, overcome or work around what they take from their lives, usually succeed where they are able to put the focus on what they can do and not on what they can't. For a lot of people it is especially important to still be viewed as a whole, complete person and not the wheelchair, the cane, the missing limb, the prosthesis, scar, the illness or brain anomaly, etc. I see that the show really plays up injuries, old back,surgeries, family members' car wrecks and any other thing that means "drama". Think some is a difference in British sensibilities.and some just tasteless. I am moved by what Amy has suffered and what she and her family have done to reclaim her life and greatly admire her accomplishments. I just flinch when the camera languishes on her prostheses and Derek doesn't choreograph her moving her feet much after the first week. I first noticed with Johanna that he was getting more heavily into a lot of upper body and doll movement as camoflage for lack of ability. I wish he would trust them more and teach them more and cover less.The less they start with the more he can teach them and the more growth we get to watch and celebrate I once read him talk about what he did on the show to control how the dances were presented. He mentioned that he not only picked the music but oftem prepared the arrangement he wanted the band to use,; he designed the lighting, props, costumes, staging, fog machines and obscuring light flashes, and asked for extras. And then designed the camera shots he wanted used and listed them out for the director as instructions.for the director to follow during the dance. I understand he sees movie making as his future, but I really want him to teach his partners to dance some dances they can do without all that. (And before somebody jumps here that other pros do costumes and props and pose their partners....yes, I see that.) So, back to you, Uke. I appreciate what you said. .I am trying to figure this quote capture system out so this may come out wrong. Agree with your Mark comment, too. Amy has really moved most of the audience, hasn't she, and think everyone wants her switch pro to be good with her.

Thank you, Sparky, for your splendid, exuberant response. Think we are singing in the same choir as I was nodding enthusiastically as I read the thoughts you shared and grateful to share in your observations. I was being more restrained than I actually felt and enjoyed getting quite carried away on your tune! Thank you, Uke, for your excellent, thoughtful response. I am so happy that you ended your debate with the decision to share your thoughts and we benefit from your effort and generosity. Have read your comments for quite a while and have always been interested in your observations and the time you take to share them, especially for lurkers like I have been till now. I am honored that you were the first comment on my first post on a DWTS board. I agree with every word in # 3 about the two sites and we could probably agree with a lot that we didn't say on that. I also agree with what you said on # 2 about Mark and Amy and people wanting to see them together. Personally, I would like to see her dance with any and all of the other pros. I mainly want her to dance with people who would respect that she flies down mountains with her legs and feet and maintains a very active life with them. She can do a whole lot of dancing with them, too, if her partner allows her to move across the floor and stand on them.Who cares if her toes point? I found the efforts to have made for her some feet that pointed toes, but could not be walked on without his support, disrespectful and creepy. If she had on her feet that flexed she could have carried herself. Can't speak for her, of course, and don't know Amy, but I am very impressed with her! And I find the focus and treatment of her disability by Derek and the show a huge diss of all the ability that she has worked so hard to create for herself. Let her dance! She can. And please stop carrying her and acting like all you see are her prosthetic legs. Oops. Sorry for the burst of pent up rant. So, yes, I think a lot of people voted for Amy and Mark. The coincidence, for me, was that the properly counted votes paired them and so did the erroneously counted votes. I very much look forward to her dance. # 1 is a little more complicated. About K Burrt - was unaware of her until this week and only have two bits of information on which to form an opinion. I first saw her name when she leaked to Pure that the vote was for naught and that she had seen the pairs list from the show but would not reveal it till later in the week. I am aware that she received several tweets immediately after Pure shared her first announcement. And the tweets included references to Derek's unavailability to partner Meryl, and, seeing she had her info on the vote tallies from Pure, she was told of the error in the Pure vote counting technique. She was also provided a list of the pairs from the counting techs and expected to look them over and decide if she was still of the opinion that the votes had been for naught or if the vote tally pairs from the techs of other sites, corrected for the no Derek effect, matched the list she had received from the show people. I think they wanted to help her to save face as well as to correct the warning she had issued about the vote before it was more widely spread and believed. For their trouble, the techs saw the messages deleted and further ones barred. I don't know if it was deliberate or accidental, coincidental or an outage. My understanding is the tweets were there briefly on her page and then gone. I assume it is possible that they matched the leak she had received and she didn't want the leaker to think she had broken confidentiality, or something and took them down. I don't know why, how or if someone knew or thought they knew their switch partner ahead of time. I did hear Tom mention a couple of pairs as currently showing well in the vote, one with a sort of countering follow remark. But he mentioned, too, that the vote was not finished yet. You probably noticed in your analytics that there was a huge surge spike in the vote graph in the last 30 hours or so before the vote closed at 11:59 Monday night as people remembered to vote and serious serial voters got really busy making the level of difference your example helpfully describes. Is it possible that expected outcomes changed on Monday? Sure.Some did. Is it possible that the show said first one thing and then another? Absolutely. Even though we know the vote, do we really know who the pairs are. NO. They may not be connected. But we do know that a bunch of people have shared their tallies and methods and produced identical numbers as their results, even though they came from different fan bases. And they have been tested and replicated by others. They weren't trying to make the results turn out a certain way or other. They were invested in the accuracy of the count when the posted/announced rules were applied. And they acted to correct Pure and Kristyn's mistaken impression of what the vote had tallied to be. The show was very irresponsible about not making everything very clear to the voters early on. The techs cannot know what the show ultimately did with the votes. They did see that whatever was leaked to Kristyn was, according to her, different from what she had learned from Pure's tally and they wanted to help correct Kristyn and Pure's mistake before it spread and more people were upset and suffering the outrage. What the ultimate pairings would be, they couldn't say. They could only report the vote when the counter was used correctly, read the posted rules, announcements and the schedules. A lot of Maks fans wanted Maks with NeNe and a lot of Derek fans ran a voting campaign to "stick"(in their terms) Maks with NeNe as you probably saw in your work. I wanted Maks with NeNe; thought they would be a hoot! But, whatever their preferences, the techs were advocating for a good vote count, whatever the outcome, using methods that were repeatable reliably. Yes, I heard a passing reference to Derek not being elligible to work with Meryl. There is a video being circulated with the time on the vid where the remark is made. And, yes, I think I have seen many instances when I felt Derek was given more freedom, control, showcasing, props, leeway and permission that other pros. So I wouldn't find giving him time in LA to have his movie premier and promotion and his work with the dance kids any unexpected exception. I have no desire or ability to explain or endorse how the show makes decisions, nor do I find them consistent, fair, or helpful to the show a lot of the time. My experience is that the rules, choices, judging, packages, gimmicks and sudden requirements and alterations appear very inconsistent and sometimes inhumane. And I wonder why, sometimes, we keep watching and celebs and pros volunteer for the abuse, aside from it's a job. I gathered from his comment to NeNe after her dance Monday about being ready for her little munchkin, that Derek was revealing on the show and before the vote was counted or finished, that he was paired with NeNe already and that he appeared to expect or know that she knew it when he decided to speak out on camera. She may actually dance with Maks and I would be very happy, but I doubt it. Others may have known their pairs or thought they knew or had hints that turned out to be or not be true. Don't know any of that or what KB meant. I do see her seem like she is not being careful to check out facts this week and that is all I know about her. Don't know why Pure didn't warn their readers that it would not be in Derek's career interests for him to be pulled out of LA this week and that they should, therefore, not power vote to see him with Meryl. They could have expected inside information from those in the know that he would miss out on too much and be worn out by all that travel and waiting. They could have orchestrated a push for another preferred pairing, for his sake, instead of indulging the desire to see the two together at his expense. Unless, of course, they didn't do the homework and put it all together, or they didn't raise it because they knew the show would take good care of his needs. Or something else I haven't thought of. At any rate, it is fun to work this out together with you and Sparky and I am really glad you posted about all this.

I'm seeing several comments about the Switch Up and Pure. I've seen a lot of things over the years that I thought were being manipulated, and I'm more a fan of Anna, Kym, Edyta, Tristan, and some others they're no longer hiring than I am of some of the current pros. I certainly know the producers can be counted on to make decisions that are very harmful to the future of the show, and haven't a clue what they might do next. But something going on this week involves a mistake made on a fan site that's being blamed on the show, rather than being acknowledged. Tuesday they posted a list of switch up pairs that they said was a result of the twitter vote, and it was not. Pure made an amateur error in their counting method, and they haven't yet told their readers. They asserted that both Derek and Meryl's schedules were known well in advance. It precluded a pairing, but they didn't put it together for their readers. I have never posted at Pure, but I lurked there often and enjoyed the site since it's beginning, until the last couple of years. And that makes me very sad, because when they started that site, they started something wonderful. Readers at Pure who spent the week voting hard were misinformed about the results because the folks at their site doing the vote counting made an error in setting up the search for votes with spaces in them. The vote counting tools they used could not count the votes properly unless they typed quote marks around each string with spaces in it. Without " " marks around the pair name that had spaces between the names the count would come out wrong. The tool would look at a tweet that had five or six different pairs voted for in the one tweet and take one name out of one pair and another name out of another pair and count them as paired together. If the Pure folks doing the counting had used quotes, they would not have gotten every pair wrong but one. The statisticians who counted the votes for DWTSMaksimFan and for TeamAmyDerek and a Candace fan said that they all came up with vote counts that exactly matched each other and not one of them matched Pure's vote count.( It is not a bad thing not to understand the fine points of the technicalities of computerized data tabulating on Twitter Hashtags. Just a little requirement that all the techs knew to do and Pure folks and people counting votes at Pure, new to it, might not. The voters didn't need to use quotes, but the counters did) So several different opposing fan teams each counted the votes independent of each other and got results with numbers that matched each others' tallies, exactly. They only matched one pair that Pure's count came up with and that showed up in checking to be a coincidence. The numbers didn't match but the pair of Mark and Amy happened in all counts. They ran some tests and discovered the error that created all the pairs that Pure was posting, exactly. So Tuesday, after the voting had ended, several very different fan groups had the same votes counted with the same results. It was already clear that the pair of Derek/Meryl could not work, either from ineligibility or unavailability. Derek and Meryl had worked together before the show when he assisted with some of the choreography for their short program performance. Also, Meryl was to be skating and learning a group of new programs for Stars on Ice in Florida and at the White House this week and Derek was having his movie premier and his debut as a creative adviser to Macy Stars of Dance happening this week. So Derek was either ineligible or unavailable to work with Meryl. (Although this was mentioned, it was not made clear by the show and it would have been very helpful if it had been at the start.) Also, the folks at Pure run two large Derek fan sites with news and info on his doings. Unfortunately, they had not warned their readers of the implications of his work with Meryl and Charlie before the show or of Derek and Meryl's conflicting schedules.( Maybe they didn't understand the first but clearly could see the second would make the pairing too hard on Derek to consider. So when the votes were counted and Pure posted their predicted pairs, their readers expectations about next week were set and celebrated. Then Pure posted a leak about the votes being "for naught" and their readers were severely distressed to learn from the site that inside information had revealed that their votes were thrown out by the producers of the show and a totally new set of pairings had been hand picked by the show instead of honoring viewer votes. The outrage has been intense. Word was that the pairs were not at all what they had been told had resulted from their votes. Immediately people from other Derek fan groups and other statisticians apparently tried various ways to inform the folks at Pure that their vote count method contained an error and taught them how they could correctly operate the counter and how to run tests for themselves to show how their vote was erroneously creating bad counts and why. People on other sites and twitter tried the test and found how Pure's pairs were counting wrong. The techs from the other fan sites were correct. I gathered from tweets and posts that the various tech folks and fan groups attempts to help were unsuccessful and unappreciated.(Some actually were lambasted with efforts to publicly humiliate the techs.) Unfortunately, Pure never corrected their vote tally, nor did they inform their readers that the error had occurred there. Rather than admit they had made the same mistake in both of their tallies and correct their readers expectations and assuage their powerfully hurt and heavily vocalized feelings, they defended their tally and they blocked all attempts to ask questions or to share the true data on their site or to explain the misunderstanding about how to use the vote counter. Any effort to post any help for the distress and outrage that the readers were expressing about having all their votes "thrown away" by the show were blocked or shouted down by the people running the site. I saw several posters who simply stated their pairs or their lack of surprise at the pairs now spoiled to be correct. But haven't seen any official talk of an error. The only poster I have noticed of the accurate count and expected pairs that explained the quotes problem that got through and posted was early in the week, late on an old predictions thread and was roundly assailed by the site runner and dismissed as totally false...even though it listed exactly the pairings that Pure finally "leaked" later on as their inside scoop on the expected pairings for Monday. It is not a scoop; it is the actual vote, with Derek not able to pair Meryl. Still, it looks like most of the readers don't know about the error that created the pair list Pure had run all week as their version of the " true" result of the vote, before "producers threw out the vote and made up the pairs they wanted instead." Some write of sadly giving up on a show they have dearly loved, now that they have been so "betrayed". Some want investigations by federal regulators. All manner of speculation about why the show would trash the vote has been encouraged and applauded by the site moderators all week. People are being inflamed to rage, ask about legal recourse, and damning the show to cancellation - when the site could have prepared the fans with appropriate expectations, calmed them, and informed them of Pure's vote counting error by early week, when the error was first pointed out to them. Such behavior is an assault against all people who love the show - viewers deserve more than that, and so fans of Pure. Some people will not be relieved to hear that their votes were, indeed, counted and that Derek had always been unable to partner Meryl. But a lot of fans of the show would have their outrage soothed and love of the show renewed by the truth about the counting error at Pure. Wish someone could tell them that it would help their readers and their brand if they would just be honest about their mistake and explain how they got it wrong. The site runners there have stopped mentioning the vote tally specifically today. The promoted article that was to explain in "excruciating detail" how the vote was counted and the show had completely disregarded all their votes and rigged the show, didn't get written. The latest theory in discussion is that the show "trashed the vote to please the C brothers."