Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-18736543-20140221121809/@comment-10950063-20140221190654

The Damn Batman wrote: Exactly. This place has turned way too strict. The thing is, we have over 12,000 stories. If we just allow everyone to post every damn story on to the site, we'd be flooded. Quality standerds have lead to the deletion of famous pastas which brought trafic away from the site.

Too many people are leaving these days. So we would have to find a way to use all these stories without getting too much, but allow more users to expiriment or learn how to write. I sugest we get a more expirienced writer to make tutorials or something ike that on how to write a pasta. It may be formulaic, but it would allow more users to learn how to not write utter shit. Not a single thing you've said is right.

-This place hasn't gotten way too strict, it's finally established standards. Creepypasta.com has standards very similar to ours, the siterunner is just smart and doesn't allow people to upload garbage before it gets taken down.

-Our traffic is not hurting. In the last week we've had over 2 million views, averaging about 300,000 views per day. I think that's pretty damn good.

-Who is leaving? Let me rephrase that, who of importance is leaving because they're not satisfied with the quality standards? Now, we can pretend that every user is important, but they're not. FarRealm here has 77 edits. All of them seem to be comments. Never did any actual editing, never uploaded a story, never contributed anything. I'm sure he's a nice person, but if we're being deadly honest: we're not losing anything. That seems to be most of the people who announce they're leaving. Off the top of my head, I can't think of anyone who actively contributes anything of quality who has left. If you can think of someone please tell me. I know it sounds incredibly cruel, but it's the truth. No matter what we do, we'll never please everybody. There will always be somebody who gets pissed off. We should cater to the people who actually try to make the site better instead of the people who don't. If all the people who contribute get pissed off because the site is a garbage dump, they'll leave and then we'll be left with just a garbage dump.

-The purpose of this site isn't to teach people how to write. It's not. It's not even close. We're not a school, we have no obligation to teach people proper grammar or spelling or how to tell a story. If people want to write it is their responsibility to know the basics. More than that, a good majority of people don't care that they don't know how to write. They're writing because other people are doing it. We have a great guide on the basics of proper grammar. No one looks at it. So, why should we take each individual person and try to get them to learn what they should've known before they started writing? And even after all that time there's no guarantee they'll produce anything of quality.

-Which leads to the last point. You can't write a tutorial on how to write well. You can give advice and that's it. And most people won't follow that advice. But advice won't teach people how to write. This isn't building a shelf, you can't get a step-by-step guide. Especially when the people you're trying to teach don't know fucking anything. I mean that literally. There are so many people who obviously don't read anything other than creepypasta and fanfiction. Those things are fine, but they're terrible for learning how to write and tell a story.

The problem isn't that we don't take the time to make people better writers. We're not a school and it's not that easy. How many English classes do people take? How intensive are creative writing classes? It takes time. More than that, it takes willingness. I've written so many critiques of people's work on this site. I'm not always the nicest person, but I'm always constructive. Rarely, if ever, has any one ever come back and written another story. Maybe I scared them, maybe I hurt their feelings, maybe they didn't get the instant approval and adulation they craved or maybe I somehow impressed on them that writing is difficult.

Because that's the fucking problem, when you get down to it. Writing is difficult and people don't respect that, because they don't know jack shit about writing. A bad writer probably doesn't know they're a bad because there's no immediate warning sign. If you're a bad artist you can know it, because what you're trying to draw doesn't look like it should. If you pick up a guitar and the sounds you make with it are bad, your first thought isn't, "Hm, I should probably do this in front of others."

But not writing, because if you don't give a shit then all writing looks the same. As long as it's in English and it's semi-coherent it's acceptable. So, people come here with no respect for writing, with no knowledge of how to do it and somehow we're the assholes. We're the shitheads because we dont stop every individual person who stops in here for a few weeks and individually teach them grammar, spelling, how to create good characters, how to tell a story or because we don't let them vomit whatever they want onto the internet or use this place as a host for the backstory for their RP characters or because they wanted to show a story to their friend and apparently don't know what e-mail is.

TL,DR: People should give a shit about their writing before they come here. Because if they don't there's nothing we can do to make them care, which means we can't make them get better. And if people don't care, and when I mean care, I mean care about writing well, not caring that their story was removed and it hurt their feelings, we can't teach them.

Apathy, laziness and ignorance aren't disabilities. We shouldn't coddle or protect those who display those attributes. Now, I will always help any one who asks for it, because I love writing, I love helping people to become better writers, but if they're not willing to try, to ask questions, to admit that maybe they're not perfect then why should we care either?

It just gets old, day after day, getting told that you don't give a shit or that you're an asshole or an elitist because you want people to try.