User blog comment:RuckusQuantum/Poll 1: Cruelty or Kindness?/@comment-25226524-20150207025115

I prefer to be honest/harsh, but in a kind way. It's really not that hard. You can tell a person that their story is terrible without making them seem like the Ed Wood of creepypastas. There's no need to berate the author and make them feel embarrassed or humiliated. Think of the good teachers that you had growing up and learning- did they make you feel like an idiot every time you did or wrote something bad? No, they just showed how to improve. I've told people that their stories need to be tossed, I've told people that they need to read and practice more before they even try submitting another story, but I've (for the most part) always managed to do it in an empathetic way. As I said, it's not really that hard to not tell someone that their story is stupid or that they write like a five year old. Just tell them what's wrong with it, even it what's wrong with it is that they have no idea how to write. A lot of these writers are young and still learning, and even the ones that are older still have a lot to learn, so we need to encourage them to get better, not attack them and make them never want to write again. None of this was directed at you, this was just a general response to your question. Is it really that hard to be civil?