Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-4833240-20140301051701/@comment-4832646-20140302214012

Xelrog T. Apocalypse wrote: Princess Callie wrote: Believe it or not, I know this from experience. Telling the person the straight truth has caused improvement more often than "It could use improvement, but's it is not bad. Even though it is." Honesty is the best policy. But constructive criticism is NOT the same thing as "sugarcoating." Sugarcoating is lying. Saying "it's not bad" when it is bad is sugarcoating. You can analyze what, specifically, is wrong with a story without words like "just bad," "shitty," "terrible," "awful," etc.--words which don't actually define any aspect of something but just insult it for no reason.

"Such-and-such is an incredibly overused cliche, and the relationship between whatshisface and whosthatgirl needs a lot of work because..." is an example. It's called "critical analysis," and no self-respecting critic would use the word "shitty" in an analysis because it tells everyone "I don't know how to quantify this." Deal with people who refuse to listen to that and rant at you on a day-to-day basis for deleting their stories, and hold that opinion.

Shitty is a word. Same as fuck, damn, bitch, and about every other swear word there is. They're no different than other words, actually. Criticism, like civility, isn't limited to formality. A story with hardly any effort put into it deserves Harsh criticism, which more times than I could care to count involves words such as "shitty" and "terrible."

The issue doesn't lie in how the critique is done; the issue lies in the fact that whereas you can harshly criticize something, you have to be willing to help that person stay in the game. They don't give up if someone that they listened to hit them hard enough to knock them off the high horse but is willing to hold out their hand and help them back up.

Again, I'll use Guy as an example. He criticized harshly - including the use of the words "shitty", "terrible", "crap", and everything else. It was still a constructive Critical Analysis.

Especially considering that with all the resources, blogs, and etc that people are given for this kind of thing, there are a few times you will see harsh criticism like that deserved.