I guess you can technically refer to this as a rant, because after all, I am quite frustrated.
Before I get into it, however, I want to clarify that I'm not doing this to attack the admins or make them look bad; in fact, I consider this more as advice with a visual aid sprinkled in. Even if some people don't think so, I really, REALLY want to see a thicker horizon of improvement.
That being said, I give up trying to deal with the Spinoff Appeal system. Not only has the critique I've been given unbearable, but it doesn't even feel like critique anymore at this point. It feels like trying to make up a justification to keep fandom-based writing off of this site.
I've seen bad advice: such as when my SpongeBob story was "incredibly clichéd" with no evidence as to how, and justifying the claim with "SpongeBob being in the story is somewhat of an afterthought." Meaning that SpongeBob simply being involved made it poor by default.
Such as when an original lost episode story I wrote was "annoying and wouldn't have been picked up by Nick," when Nickelodeon literally picked up Fanboy and Chum-Chum over Adventure Time, to give an example. Such as when two in-universe pastas were pointless, even though I implied and/or explained in detail why the events that happened were happening to begin with, inside of the writing.
I've also been given tips outside of the wiki, by administration, such as the fact that just because something has been done before doesn't mean it cannot be freshly presented in some way. I take that advice, and it gets whacked over due to decentralization.
But what really made me think this wasn't worth it anymore, was the response I got on Stir-Fry Cartoon. A story I spent weeks conceptualizing and coming up with ideas for. A big reason for its denial was because, and I quote, "it feels like it's capitalizing off of the trend that is lost media searches rather than ingraining it in an original way."
I can't even put into words how demotivating that was. Not only is searching for lost media literally a job that people get paid for, and objectively not a trend, but don't you think if I was "capitalizing" off of a trend, I would've spent like ten minutes or so of popping out the concept? I've never written something for the sake of gaining an advantage, getting popular or achieving happy points. I write because I simply have fun putting down ideas on paper. This makes it abundantly clear that it's not even about feedback anymore. It's about keeping anything lost episode related out of the place's discretion, because peanuts, I guess?
The administration has even admitted this to me on several occasions, outside of the site: most, if not all of the people handling the Spinoff Appeal, are quite prickly when it comes to criticizing things. I understand that you don't want this place to be like how it was in the early 2010s, but that was more or less than a decade ago. Times have changed and we have better moderation. No trouble.
Anyway, yeah, that's about it. Keep in mind with all that I'm saying, it doesn't mean I want nor am I trying to get all of my work accepted. I'm not going to call myself a perfect writer, because I've never been one; I have my blunders and so do you. I respect that you actually read through stuff before giving your thoughts on them, and that's made obvious by what I read, but I heavily advise thinking more critically when evaluating a review. Centralize opinions more carefully, if that helps.
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