Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-4833240-20140301051701/@comment-24784594-20140303023757

Princess Callie wrote:

Before Guy left he dealt with a stubborn person who had written a very bad story, that had LITERALLY NO PLOT, didn't delve into characters or settings, and had little actual content at all whatsoever. Sure, it can be civil. But civility is something that is not limited to formality. When you deal with stubborness, people unwilling to listen, and etc, you can't say "It could use some improvement." They don't listen to that. Telling them it's shitty and giving the accompanying reasons would get through to them in some way, and if it doesn't, the person isn't going to listen anyhow. When you're being critical, it's important to be honest.

For example, JC the Hyena would've still thrown a shit fit when Sonic.exe was deleted if we just said "It could use some improvement." By saying such, you're making it look better than it is. It's called sugarcoating. It's not something that makes things better. It makes it worse. It would've probably been a bigger shit fit simply because he would say "OH, BUT IF IT'S NOT SHITTY THEN HOW COME YOU DELETED IT! IT COULD JUST USE IMPROVEMENT." Honesty is the best policy.

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." Well, yeah okay, if the user is STUBBORN, then you may be forced to be more aggresive with feedback. But that should only be a last resort. Know what I mean?

But make no mistake, I'm not saying critiques should be sugar-coated. Just saying that if the user isn't being stubborn or ignorant, and are getting their start, that's usually the time when others do the whole harsh feedback routine. At least, that's what I've seen so far. But yes, if those users don't take critiques into account, and they continue to show no effort in improvement, then the truth needs to be more blunt