Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-4833240-20140301051701/@comment-24077689-20140304183657

Princess Callie wrote: When you're dealing with people in their teens, they don't take "neutral" criticism seriously. A criticism should not just be objective; it should be mixed, and for good reason. The writer says "writing is subjective bro." Whenever they say that, it's not because they're an idiot, it's because they refuse to take it seriously.

Knocking that out of the way by stating your opinion cancels that argument. It isn't being a dick and you're still being neutral. It is only the fact that you're being honest with the author so they can't say "Writing is subjective. I think it's good." Because not only are you pointing out everything wrong, you're turning your subjective opinion into objective reasoning by providing the evidence of it being bad.

I'm not saying be an asshole. Once again, give it what it deserves, not an asspat. If that requires you to tackle and beat the information into the author's head, then that's what it requires. If it requires a thirteen page outline that literally points to an error in every word, that is what it requires. You can't cut slack for the sake of being neutral. Yo, it blows my mind that a huge majority of the website are teens.

It makes me personally feel out of place because I'm a 21 year old married dad in college.

But that aside, one of the biggest annoyances I have is like "hey you wrote this lengthy critique that brings up points for why my story is bad, but I have all these other comments saying simply "9/10" or "8/10" and "good job". It really annoys me that a big majority of users will use the stupid comments as the basis and ignore legitimate criticism. But it's also really difficult to get other people to review and comment. I've taken special interest in a couple of stories here and there, giving huge critiques that are well recieved by the author. But I'm not  infallible. So I go to the forums and ask other people to read and review the stories. It's rare that I even get a promise to read. I think a lot of focus too should be paid to actually supporting each other and making a culture of critique. Make it more common that people are willing to read and review in depth.

I think the main cancer isn't trolls or people being douchedicks. The main cancer is the shitposts that say "omg good job" or somesuch nonsense.