nendil | It's too hot to do homework.

I guess it is rather amazing how, when I flip back and forth through my progressive drawings, how much I was able to improve upon the characters' appearances and how (relatively) terrible the previous pic looked, even though at the time it was taken I thought it was the best I could do and even though I thought I haven't done much work at all between "snapshots." ::breeeaaathe::

So here's a thought. What if FF.net was split into two sections/categories?

One for the serious authors who are looking to hone/improve their craft. Only constructive, intelligent reviews here. There's no restriction to the quality of the stories posted here, but you MUST be willing to listen to others' advice, or else get tossed.

One for the fangirlz who just wanna have fun. They can post any inane sugar-rush brainspew they want, and the only feedback they can get are the gushing netspeak raves. No quoteunquote "flames" allowed, nothing that'll hurt their widdle feelings, and they can beg each other for their precious "r/r plz" all they want.

The two policies are not allowed to mingle. If you're a teenybopping author who wants to venture into serious ficdom, no problem, but your story posted in the serious section will be held to the serious rules, and vice-versa of course.

So now, anyone want to let me know how this won't work in reality?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

So you're basically trying to sort things by intent rather than content. It's basically impossible to enforce.

Trying to sort by content (in terms of quality) would be far more difficult to enforce, IMO. And not constructive for beginning writers.

Also, if you tell people that all they're going to get is praise, is it then worth anything? .... Maybe some authors will be content with such, but I think even silly "fangirlz" would be dissatisfied with it.

I'm not the most reliable source on this since I haven't exactly experienced it firsthand, but I've heard plenty of reports from people who get viciously attacked for trying to give constructive reviews. People who get told things like "I have to pay attention to stuff like grammar and spelling in school, fanfiction is for when I have fun". And I know I'm not the only one who sees things like "if i dont get 5 good reveiws i wont update so r/r!!!1!!"

Perhaps there are others who can back me up. To those "authors"... it doesn't matter.

Further, I don't think there's anything wrong with honest, pure praise even for an author who's trying to improve.

I'm certainly not proposing to ban that. It's more like a "If you post in this category, you are NOT ALLOWED to whine about the meanies whenever somebody tries to help you with your work." Heck, I suppose even fangirl gushing can be allowed here...

I dunno, I still don't think it's the same if you know that any review you get will be good. You might as well turn it into a voting system. And then you might as well make it a scale of how many times the piece has been read.

But I suppose your system is not something that doesn't work, it just doesn't exist in the form you're asking for. It's like communism: it works on smaller scales only. There are lots of fanfic mailing lists and message boards that are for serious writers. And I'm sure there are message boards for fluff. But trying to put it on as large and as general a scale as FFnet isn't as feasible. I think any forum like that would quickly be flooded, no matter how much you tried to tell people not to post in the serious category if they can't take criticism. And who's going to keep booting those people out? You underestimate the number of idiots that exist on the internet.

(I'm still waiting, after about five months, for Sailor Bacon to reopen submissions at AnimeLyrics after he finally got sick of all the people who would just submit plagiarized lyrics. I think this would turn into something similar.)

Maybe this is a bad example, but I'm sure something more realistic could be based from it: an author posts in the serious category and is harshly criticized, complains, gets removed. He writes something else and thinks, "well, this one's better," posts, and gets the same results. (Because, obviously, he's not listening to any of the comments.) That's just one person who can cause problems repeatedly.

I don't know, maybe I'm just trying too hard to play devil's advocate.

More elaboration on the example: I think there are many people who write the fluff who are still vain enough to think that, even if they posted in the serious category, they would still get only good reviews. That's what I'm trying to say when I say that I think a section where people are guaranteed raves is not something many would be interested in.

Nothing wrong with devil's advocate, I'm throwing out the idea to see if it can be shot down. After all, a brilliant idea like this, there must be something wrong with it else someone would've done it already eh? ^_~

I know there are specific, smaller communities that are selective regarding quality. Heck, I'm in one right now. =P I was just thinking if there could be any way to help ff.net, because it is THE largest, most centralized fanfiction network, and most influential. Even if another, "better" fic archive site overtook it in popularity, it too would soon be overrun by the rampant fangirl mentality.

Part of where my idea originated was from Worth1000 (http://www.worth1000.com), where they have a check box where you can choose "" or "" It could be that by default stories are listed under "no 'flames'" unless the author specifically marks that they want constructive comments. They could even toggle it back and forth depending on how thick their skin is today. And then there could be a view option where you can filter out one or the other category. Or there could be some other system, but there's one possibility which will favor the sensitive souls.

I think clear, established rules can help a lot, if it's outlined clearly what is accepted behavior and what isn't. One of my peeves is how there is NO official FAQ for ff.net anywhere to be found. Regarding technical issues, sure, there are a few explanations, and an outdated TOS. But nothing about what to expect from the community in terms of quality, content, interaction, nothing describing how certain features of the site works, etc. A few rules like:

- Personal criticisms towards the author are not allowed.
- If you're going to criticise a story, you must offer constructive suggestions on how it can be improved.

And so on, would give people a better idea of what to expect. It will certainly require a whole lot of mature, sensible moderators. I don't believe that's impossible, thought it will be quite a task to take on.

It's too hot to do homework.

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