Dear B/R, Can We Have a Democracy Here?

I'm James Williamson. I've been a writer on B/R for almost a year, and B/R has changed my life dramatically.

I no longer want to waste my days in boring law school, I want to be the new Dr. Z of Sports Illustrated. This site has been a great catapult for my self-confidence, my writing abilities, and my growth into a mature and respectable writer.

Now, lets cut to the chase. I DON'T LIKE CHANGE!!!!!

Now that I've vented, I just think that the way the articles were set up with pictures, with the POTD buttons, with the idea that you don't know how many people have picked your article because it is your business was the best thing for B/R.

It is one of the basic principles of voting that no one is allowed to know how an individual voted in order to protect their privacy, their anonymity, and their personal thoughts.

I don't like the idea of knowing how many votes this writer may have gotten because it is a way someone could corrupt the voting system.

If writer A has ten votes and is in the lead for the award, then writer B could either tell people not to vote at all or to vote quickly so he/she can get ahead in the votes.

Even though the POTD system is just for fun and has no monetary profit, I look at it as a motivator for me to try to write harder, to make my work good enough so my peers would say, "Now that's an article! I'm picking this thing for sure!"

Whenever I write my special projects, like my NFL Legends series, I write with the mindset of, "Is this a POTD article?"

The CEOs of Bleacher Report, I beseech you. Please change the system so that the POTD system can remain private and therefore ignorant of corruption.

The second notion of business is that the makeup of the articles where the pictures are now on the right side of the article instead of the top. I find it distracting when I'm trying to read something and a bright shiny picture is right in my face. I like to scroll down and focus solely on the text.

Things do change, but could we, the writers of B/R, have a voice? It goes back to the Revolutionary War and "No taxation without representation."

We, the members of B/R, should be allowed to have a say in the changes that happen because we have to write here, and I, personally, don't like coming on to my favorite web site and having to decipher how everything works again.

It was hard enough the last time.

I humbly ask you now to consider giving an option to write an article with the picture at the top or on the right. That way, a writer can have their own preference.

This is James Williamson saying he wants notification of change and a voice in the matter for himself as well as the other loyal writers of Bleacher Report.