Criticism and You

Original message to an admin transcript:
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This is a followup of the brief talk we had yesterday.

On 11th April 2015, two users, Dr.Leonard (relevant link here) and MrAnakinSpecter ([http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-583167/mranakinspecter#post-2268208]) have been in the former case staffposted and in the latter case, threatened with an official warning, for including various permutations of the sentiment "I think you should scrap this." in their criticisms of forum drafts.

This is frankly unacceptable, for at the very least, two reasons.

First of all, this staff action has no basis in site rules, or policy.

The site rules on commenting on entries state the following.

>    Comments: You can comment on any entry provided you are respectful to other users. All comments must follow the Criticism Policy. No personal attacks or trolling.

The criticism policy itself consists of three hard and fast guidelines, which were heeded in this case.
The statement of "I think you should scrap this" or its permutations do not attack the author (1), the relevant posts were contentful (2) with reference to guideline 4 for the minimum standard of acceptable content, and they were contentful/non-selfserving as per guideline (3) as a whole, and for the part cited (as it suggested a course of action).

The broad guideline of "Don't be an asshole" was also clearly heeded. To elaborate on this - Guideline 3 states the following:

>    Feel free to be as harsh as you need to be. If an article is pretty bad, you don't have to say nice things to make up for your criticisms. The point is for your criticism to be effective, not to fluff someone's ego. If most of the article's bad, you don't need to search for something good to say.

Now, a dispute around this and by extent about what constitutes necessary harshness has already come up a couple months earlier. Besides the (then unstated) argument that the guideline states "be as harsh as you need to be" rather than "be as harsh as a random staff member feels you should be", and much more importantly, a clear statement from the moderator SoullessSingularity in charge of site criticism was obtained on what constitutes necessary harshness.

To quote them [http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-378997/complaints-thread#post-2114932]:

>    Firstly, allow me to explain Guideline 3, which seems to have been misinterpreted here. Just because it says you can be as harsh as you need to be, doesn't mean you can be as harsh as you want to be. **The point is for your criticism to be effective, not to fluff someone's ego, including and perhaps especially the one doing critique.** I cannot stress enough that criticism is and has always been a two way street.

>    Much like writing, you critique to be read by someone and understood as to what your message is. In this case, a personal desire to express with vehemency the terribleness of the post is ultimately equal to purple, overworked and over-described prose. As in prose, the effectiveness of critique need not be in how much description you can slide in, but in how well you use your words to sufficiently relay a message to the one receiving the critique.

(relevant section bolded)
followed by a host of examples of what is acceptable.

>    This is not to say that there is no room for harshness and letting a reader know you think that this work has no merit. However, even that harshness can be used for the benefit of the one receiving the critique. Here are a few ways, though they are by and far not limited to these examples:

>    "I feel this work has no merit because of the inclusion of shallow, underdeveloped cardboard characters."
>    "The purple prose here is dragging the article down and much of it suspends my disbelief- in short, I'm calling bullshit here."
>    "Your portrayal of this mental illness is offensive and disgusting in its inaccuracy."
>    "I'm not buying the science here and I think it's a bullshit attempt at avoiding researching a subject."
>    "This researcher behaves like a total dumbass. Why would they do X? It makes no sense."

In light of this, there is no way that the statements expressed by the users can be constructed as unnecessary harshness, as they are plainly, directly and civilly suggesting an acceptable course of action to the author. (as opposed to say, telling them to delete their account and not come back. However, I shall address this in more detail later on).

As such, as already stated, the disciplinary action that took place is arbitrary and therefore abusive.

Secondly, I would argue that as a whole it is thoroughly unhelpful.
Let us quote the relevant posts by the enactors.
Zyn:

>    Some overly harsh critique: http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-1167264/critique-my-scp#post-2268157

>> Meh. This didn't really interest me. It's a creature that creates, alters and removes memories… for no reason. To be brutally honest, I can't imagine this succeeding in anything close to it's current incarnation. Sorry, but I think you should scrap this.

>    Staffposted, since there's been an uptick in another user's critique posts telling people to outright scrap drafts, and I really don't want people shutting down new authors' works like that. The forums should be a place people want to get their stuff reviewed at.

>    Wogglebug recently noticed that this user has been giving feedback on the forums that has included telling the authors to scrap drafts, which has resulted in some authors outright giving up on their draft before getting further reviews.

>    I'm currently staffposting on recent incidents, to get the message across that telling someone essentially "give up" is not remotely close to what we want going on in the forums.
    show block

>    Here's a shorter (and more comprehensive) version, compiled by Coony. Thanks Coony!

Staffpost by Zyn:
>> Sorry, but I think you should scrap this.

>   Dr Leonard, telling an author to outright scrap an entire draft is rather harsh. In the future, please advise the author to either set the draft aside to work on once they've gotten more experience/reading, or rework the idea. We want people on the forums to feel that their writing efforts are worthwhile, and they have the ability to fix things should the first draft have mistakes.

Dexanote:

>    This is unacceptable. None of these are remotely close to anything we should ever consider straight up telling someone to scrap.

>    He's in no position to tell anybody to scrap anything. Decent crit is decent crit, and I can understand the occasional "this probably won't work like this" is fine but come on.

Now, to address the relevant statements

>    Staffposted, since there's been an uptick in another user's critique posts telling people to outright scrap drafts, and I really don't want people shutting down new authors' works like that. The forums should be a place people want to get their stuff reviewed at.

The argument made above is demagogous. As stated by the policy, the purpose of the forum (or site) criticism isn't to fluff someone's ego, and empty accolades are (or in any way) should not be a reason for people wanting to get their stuff reviewed. If a reviewer sees an idea as fundamentally unworkable, them saying so saves time and effort that the writer would otherwise spend beating a dead horse. It has long been my opinion that to learn proper execution with regards to article writing, a new writer needs a strong idea because there, they are most likely to get feedback on the quality of their execution and learn what works/doesn't work, as opposed to one that will fail even if they do their best.

>    We want people on the forums to feel that their writing efforts are worthwhile, and they have the ability to fix things should the first draft have mistakes.

The same applies here. There are drafts that are workable when mistakes are fixed, and then there are ones that at core stem from a weak, cliched idea with uninteresting execution, and fixing secondary mistakes leads nowhere. Making such an author feel that the effort spent in polishing such an article is worthwhile is the very definition of useless ego-fluffing, and what's worse, it does disservice to the author because it places upon them an entirely wrong set of expectations with regards of viability of their work and site quality standard.
The purpose of the draft forum is to identify drafts that have a chance to succeed on the main site, and to improve them so as to increase this likelihood when they are given the go-ahead. The ideas expressed by Zyn above are not only do not help such a goal but actively hinder it.

>    I'm currently staffposting on recent incidents, to get the message across that telling someone essentially "give up" is not remotely close to what we want going on in the forums.

The same applies here, doubly so insinuating that telling someone to scrap an unworkable draft is somehow equivalent of telling them to give up writing for the site. Anyone that would do so would likely also do so after their stillborn, yet meticulously worked upon draft got downvoted on main site, which ultimately is a feature, not a bug. The goal of our site is increasing volume of quality writing (to which new users are instrumental) , not an increasing user count.

As for dexanote's statement

>    This is unacceptable. None of these are remotely close to anything we should ever consider straight up telling someone to scrap.

Most of the relevant articles are either uninteresting cliche monsters/items done straight (and poorly) or in one case, something that seems either an OC of the author or taken from somewhere. Therefore, Specter wasn't wildly off.

Besides, the onus is on the author to know how much and what feedback to listen to - if a reviewer's opinion is that something is unworkable, they should be free to state it.

>    He's in no position to tell anybody to scrap anything. Decent crit is decent crit, and I can understand the occasional "this probably won't work like this" is fine but come on.

"Telling" as used above seems to imply an order, which is not something Specter was doing. As for the ordinary meaning of the word, he *is* in a position to tell anybody to scrap anything, as it is within his rights as an user and reviewer.

Also, "this probably won't work like this" is an understatement in some cases, including a lot of the articles cited - while you could possibly make some of them workable, it would be cooking soup from an ax - a reworking extensive enough so as any connection to the original to be purely superficial.

Finally, I would like to state that looking over at the draft critique forum, a good half of drafts present receive feedback from a single person, often of incredibly substandard quality. As such, the cavalier attitude with reasonably competent reviewers presented here which involves staff attempting to force their personal standards on them with threats, is something that is perhaps a more serious problem than it appears at first.

Thank you for your time and attention.
-VAE

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Another message, also to the same admin some weeks later

I shall raise the issue with Crayne myself, then.

As for overreach in criticism, there's another instance, involving ChrisAKAPiefish as the target, and sparking a discussion between me and Zyn here http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-1174309/scp-2153-the-shadow#post-2274417
After the staff post closing the discussion, I have not pressed the issue further as I ordinarily would, precisely since I assume a broader-scale solution is in the workings.

Tangentially, this http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-771211/djoric#post-2274610 chat treatment of Djoric is of equal grade. As FlameShirt accurately sums up, and as is obvious from the logs , he was jumped on before he could elaborate why the draft is awful - and honestly, there being an issue with calling a fundamentally unworkable draft fundamentally unworkable in a reasonably civil manner as Djoric has done also contradicts the spirit of the criticism policy in question. Furhermore, Djoric is one of our best remaining writers and critics, and unlike certain one-hit wonders, one that has been persistently active in the community - the apparent effort to drive him away or force him to conform to certain staff members' personal ideas that are by no means site policy is something that we could really, really do without.