Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-24463401-20150726180100

Recently I've been reading over the quality standards of the site and have actually noticed a few things that may need to be changed. Personally, I think that the QS of the site should be clear and professional. That way we can attract in better quality writers and not confuse new ones. The quality standards reflect on the site and what we are looking for with new stories. It only makes sense that it would be easy to understand and at least a little bit serious. At this point, I'm not suggesting an entire rewrite of the quality standards, but if the community thinks we should and anyone else is up to the job I think we could potentially do that.

First off I'd like to talk about the overall tone of the document. If you've read the quality standards, you know that there are a few jokes in there. Some of these jokes, however, come off as rude and snobbish. For example, in rule four of the quality standards, there's one sentence that comes off as mean spirited even if it's trying to emphasize a point. That sentence is: "There's no sane reason as to why anyone with a brain and even a basic knowledge of language would write like this." Insulting the author's intelligence and trying to make them feel bad isn't really the way to go. We shouldn't as a community try to make these authors feel bad for making a mistake. Earlier in the document it says that everyone makes mistakes, so doesn't it come off as a bit hypocritical to call them brainless idiots for making them?

The next thing is that the QS need to be more clear. Even from the beginning of the document, we can see the use of confusing language that makes the QS harder to understand. The sentence "Please note that while these are generally guidelines, passing these guidelines is, in fact, a requirement." particularly comes to mind. We could just save the reader's time by saying that each story is required to pass the QS. Instead, it just confuses the reader by saying they're guidelines, implying that they don't have to be followed, but also rules that must be followed.

If you actually read though the QS, it doesn't really give much of what we're looking for plot wise. A lot of things about grammar and spelling, but those aren't the only reason that stories on the site get deleted. I think there are only two instances of where we talk about plot and writing style and they're not even in the minimum requirements. The different sections make things confusing when writers are looking for why their story got deleted. We should put the basic and most important things in one section. Writers shouldn't have to constantly re-read such a large document to find why there story got deleted. I propose we survey a few of editors on the site to see what are the most common reasons they mark a story for deletion or review and add those to the minimum requirements, if they're not already there.

Next I'd like to talk about the size of the document. It can be debated on what's important and what's not, but the document is a bit too big. I propose that we try to trim the fat of the QS a bit and really emphasize the important things. There's a few redundancies that could be taken out as well. Making the document shorter, concise, and easier to read would save us a lot of trouble in the long run. That way, writers won't have to constantly go back to the quality standards to find what does and doesn't apply to their story.

I'd also like to propose we link some more things on the page. We should leave links to the writer's workshop and places where people can appeal deletions. Maybe even link talk pages of each of the admins. But to prevent spam we can leave a disclaimer about reading the QS and using evidence to support your claim.

If you guys have any other ideas on how we can reform the QS, please suggest them in the comments. I'm open to new suggestions about this topic, and any feedback and criticism of my proposal is welcome and appreciated. Thanks.

 