Quote Originally Posted by Yukimura View Post
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).