Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-4833240-20140301051701/@comment-1196539-20140303174807

Princess Callie wrote: Xelrog T. Apocalypse wrote: Princess Callie wrote: Well, if they have that mindset of "ZOMG, SOMEBUDY CRITICIZED MAI PASTA AND TOLD MEH WUT WUZ WRONG WIF IT! I'M SO BUTTHURT NOW." that's their issue. Don't ask those who actually do make it a point to criticize when asked, or even when not, to hold hands with those people. They don't want to put effort into their work if they have that mindset. Why put effort into making it look like we don't care about the fact that they don't want to, when we care about the Quality and effort of the site?

Swearing is swearing. Again, they're just words. Words that add emphasis and don't actually offend any race, religion, orientation, etc.

And you basically just gave the definition of criticism; telling them what they did wrong and how to fix it. Just because it's harsh doesn't make it destructive. If someone is like that then ignore them. It's just that simple. You (hopefully) made the attempt to criticize specifically and quantitatively and if they got butthurt then that's their loss. Calling their story shitty, crappy, terrible, deplorable, lousy, or any word that is synonymous with "bad"--WITH NO REGARD TO WHETHER OR NOT IT IS CONSIDERED A "swear" because that is not and never was any part of my argument--without a WHY accomplishes absolutely nothing. It will not deter this behavior, it will not knock them off their high horse. It will drive people who were honestly trying away from writing forever and will give trolls the attention they were fishing for in the first place.

"This pasta was shitty."

"The setting of this pasta sucked."

"The characterization was awful."

None of the above statements, even the two which reference specific aspects of the writing, serve any purpose whatsoever. Just like

"This pasta was AWESOME!"

"This setting was great, man!"

"Super characterization!"

serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever. All six of the above statements are equally worthless and are NOT in any way, shape, or form a critical analysis without a "why" to them. And even with a "why" somewhere else in context, statements like that standing by themselves are only going to put people on the defensive.

Let me reiterate once more. They will not help anyone. Not you, not me, not writers, not trolls. Absolutely no one benefits from this. These statements serve zero purpose. "Your story was shit. It had literally no plot and you didn't delve into any of the character's personalities. They were like walking fucking robots. It had LITERALLY NO setting, and none of the people acted remotely close to realistic. Give your characters emotions. Develop a setting. What do they see and hear? Put some events and connect it together. This kind of shit isn't going to cut it."

To provide an example. If it's bad, I'm going to say it's bad. I'm going to give reasons why, but I'm not going to moddy-coddle the author. If I think your story is Suggested Reading worthy, I'll add it to Suggested Reading, but if I think it's a Pasta trying to be good but sucks enough to be a troll, I'm going to post it there. There's no point in hiding an opinion or, and yes, this is exactly what it is, sugarcoating exactly what you think about it. Do you think that HELPS the writer develop?

Not even close. It took getting told my writing was total and complete shit for me to even try to remotely improve. It shows that you want to be a writer, like Guy said.

That makes you a very special case, then. The vast majority of people who read a summary like that will either, one, get butthurt and flame you back (which, make no mistake, what you just posted above is flaming), or two, never post again. Getting attacked violently and aggressively does not result in improved writing in 99% of cases. As previous posters have stated, it's not about whether or not the feedback is negative. It's about how it's presented. And that kind of angry, aggressive, downright flame-baiting summary has no place on this or any literary site.

As for the "test" argument, do you know how many people have commit suicide because the people around them thought that the best way to get them to feel better about themselves was to give them shit until they "manned up" about it? Not that that's the case with our writers here, but it's just an example. Being an asshole to someone under the pretext that you're "testing how much they can take" is being an asshole just the same, and if everyone did it, then everyone would be an asshole to everyone all the time because you're always meeting new people on this or any site. There's no excuse for it.

My argument is not and never was that everyone should be lovey-dovey therapy-group rainbow-and-sunshine friends, starting every sentence with "I feel like" and avoiding those scary negative emotions. Not at all. I'm saying people should NOT be aggressive, violent assholes and intentionally provoke reactions (ie, troll) from posting comments with blatantly confrontational tones. Be neutral. Be objective. Be a decent human being, for Pete's sake.

Honestly, Callie, I'm surprised with you. You didn't provide any opposition to the recent chat proposal. "It's not okay to be an aggressive asshole in the chat... but it's totally fine in the comments section."