GotWoot Story Contest - Preliminaries - Round 3

[Sapphire]

The response threads all have positive critiques and negative critiques, flamming critiques and fluffy critiques. What bothers me is that while all of these are normal and predictable responses to a contest of this type several posters, including the moderator of the contest, seem to be somewhat hostile toward certain types of critiques. Negative critiques seem to be held up to a standard that they must be 'useful' and/or 'constructive' and/or 'agreeable' to other posters or else a debate breaks out between meta-critics who would seemingly defend the 'honor' of the authors against negative feedback and the negative critics who have said their piece and will defend their words as their legitimate responses to the stories they just read. No one bats an eyelash at positive critiques that don't say much of anything so the 'be constructive' and 'be useful' arguments fall apart in my mind. Instead it seems the only way to say your piece unmolested is to say nothing negative about the stories at all.

Wait, so it's okay to give a negative response to a story, but not a negative response to the negative response? And realize that you're giving a negative response to the negative response of the negative response.
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Realize that no one's walking around with the ban hammer (at the moment). I welcome Xan's comments, but I'm still going to call him out for it if I disagree with his approach. Negative feedbackers can also call out positive feedbackers on their approach, which is what's been happening (though on a lesser scale, admittedly).

[Lucifus]

The moral of the story here; be as fucking harsh as you like; just use the manners you've managed to scavenge throughout your life doing so. From the display of some of the posters here, it would appear this elusive creature called manners is nonexistent.

[KitKat]

Even though there's an extra layer of anonymity in this contest, when you speak online you are never speaking into a vacuum. All the comments and critiques are read by real people, and I get tired of the whole, "Everybody flames on the internet. If they take it the wrong way they need to toughen up" argument. The things you say can be genuinely hurtful. If nothing else, they hurt me when I read them and put myself in the shoes of the person the comments are directed to. The fact that they are participating in a contest does not justify making personal attacks against them. (Though in the same vein, neither should anyone be making personal attacks against those posting negative critiques. Be respectful please.)

I won't go into the manner and justification of critiques. Y'all can use your good judgement there. But when it comes to saying things like, "This story was written in 30 minutes" or "The authors are all morons", those are making assumptions about the authors that should not be made because neither the authors nor their situations are known. I don't so much care what you say about the stories, but I do care what you say about the people who wrote them.

What are we trying to accomplish here? This is a fun contest for some amateur writers to try out writing a short story. If by the end of the contest all the entrants never want to enter a gotwoot contest again because they are so discouraged and intimidated, I would call that a fail. I would rather call off the contest completely, honestly, and do a different community activity that encourages participation and interaction.

[Sapphire]

What are we trying to accomplish here? This is a fun contest for some amateur writers to try out writing a short story. If by the end of the contest all the entrants never want to enter a gotwoot contest again because they are so discouraged and intimidated, I would call that a fail. I would rather call off the contest completely, honestly, and do a different community activity that encourages participation and interaction.

Wat. This sounds quite extreme. For the record, the contest will not be called off because of some negative criticism.

Also, negative criticism is not banned from this contest. Not being insulting is generally preferred behavior, but we're not going to punish you for a few harsh comments here or there. This is GotWoot, after all.

People who espout negative (or positive) critisicisms should be prepared for other people to disagree with them. Having someone disagree with you or critisize you is no reason to flip out and call the whole thing off. This thread is making me think that everyone wants the world to be happy care-care-joy-joy-land, where everyone can say what they want, and no one else can have a rebuttal. Come on guys. It's GotWoot.

[KitKat]

Sorry, yeah, I phrased that wrong. I meant IF every participant is horribly discouraged, THEN I'd rather call it off. I don't think that is the case right now, as in general most of the feedback has been useful and I think the authors going to the semi-finals are getting ready to apply it and improve their stories.

Edit: Just for clarification, this is personal opinion, using an extreme hypothetical scenario that would probably never happen, but hyperbolized in the heat of the moment. My apologies for taking it too far. These views are not indicative of the moderation team. Additionally, I fully support this contest and I fully support Sapphi who has put so much work into making this happen. I look forward to future rounds and seeing what our authors bring to the table next.

[Lucifus]

We've been squabbling like children. Lets just try to have some fun writing and reviewing, as we had intended. We're adults here, lets move on and take more care in what we say(both parties).

I still think this can be a great deal of fun, as I've had a number of good laughs reading some of the work of gotwooters.

And KitKat, have you ever thought of being a negotiator? ^_^

[Yukimura]

@Sapphi: I think it's fine to have negative responses to negative responses to stories ad infinitum, but I think that detracts from the discussion of the stories which is what I thought the feedback was supposed to be about. When people are arguing over each others criticisms they generally drift away from talking about the stories and towards talking about each others tastes and presentations and behaviors. If we're all here to argue over each others tastes there was no need to make the authors write stories as you could have just grabbed some random stories off fanfiction.net or livejournal and had people criticize and meta criticize those. Heck once this is done why don't you have a criticism contest. Pick a story or show or movie or something and have people submit criticisms of it and then we can vote on who had the best criticism, and then we'll end up squabbling over each others criticisms of the criticisms. Rinse and repeat for infinite fun!

[Sapphire]

@Sapphi: I think it's fine to have negative responses to negative responses to stories ad infinitum, but I think that detracts from the discussion of the stories which is what I thought the feedback was supposed to be about. When people are arguing over each others criticisms they generally drift away from talking about the stories and towards talking about each others tastes and presentations and behaviors.

So basically what you're saying is commenting on other comments is useless. Valid point. My previous statement about commenting on comments still holds, however.

Heck once this is done why don't you have a criticism contest. Pick a story or show or movie or something and have people submit criticisms of it and then we can vote on who had the best criticism, and then we'll end up squabbling over each others criticisms of the criticisms. Rinse and repeat for infinite fun!

LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!! This snippet was the best of the whole thread.

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I don't have much else to say. Our conversation has gone a bit abstract. I humbly request that we go back on topic, or at least 1 degree of saturation away from on topic. We are like... 4 degrees of saturation away at the moment.

[Sapphire]

Five and a half hours to vote! Then round 4 already!!!?!!?!!

[Sapphire]

TIE AGAINN????????????//

[Dark_Sage]

Conspiracy.

[Edort4]

I think that too many ppl had grown up and discovered "criticism" with AI and Simon Cowell.

[Dark_Sage]

I think that too many ppl had grown up and discovered "criticism" with AI and Simon Cowell.

I haven't watched either of those movies.

[XanBcoo]

People who espout negative (or positive) critisicisms should be prepared for other people to disagree with them. Having someone disagree with you or critisize you is no reason to flip out and call the whole thing off. This thread is making me think that everyone wants the world to be happy care-care-joy-joy-land, where everyone can say what they want, and no one else can have a rebuttal. Come on guys. It's GotWoot.

For the record, I left the thread and dropped the issue because you were right. I didn't want to derail the thread by bickering.

I left my short impression of the bracket as a whole, defended my right to leave as short or long a commentary as I liked, and left. As a better poster I would have gone through each story in detail, but I saw no value in it and didn't have the time or energy.