You're assuming that everybody's main intention is to specifically change the behavior of badficcers. (Or potentially good writers who just need that push towards getting a beta, etc.) It may well be so for some, but for some, it's just a rant to blow off steam. For some, it's a discussion topic that they'd welcome opposing arguments to, because they enjoy the back and forth of trying to convince people that they're right. Even if it's the same back-and-forth, from the same types of people.
Hence my pointing out that the back button and the scroll wheel exist for folks who are tired of such discussions, just like they exist for those of us who are tired of badfic. The difference here is that those of us who are tired of badfic are at least talking about something specific -- bad *things* in fic, bad trends, opinions on pet peeves. Something that could possibly be contstructive. We're not -- most of us anyway -- tearing down specific fics and telling those authors that they shouldn't be wasting their time posting. While there's a couple of y'all -- who seem a bit like you popped up here with an agenda -- who are essentially telling Estepheia that she's wasting her time posting, and specifically annoying you. So I don't think my comment about your delete key is hypocritical in this case.
In answer to your actual point -- do I think targetting individual writers with suggestions for improvement would be more constructive than posting occasional public lists of things that annoy me? (Not that I usually do the second; I'm just defending Stef's reasons for doing so.) No, I don't think so. I think they're about equally constructive, for different reasons. Sending feedback to specific authors -- which a lot of us do anyway -- is helpful for those specific authors, but it doesn't let the general public know what annoys some readers. So under your model, there would always be more specific authors to say it to -- and time wasted on small, ridiculous stuff that we could be using to say "I loved your storyline and language, but I thought the Angel characterization was a bit wonky here..."
There's a reason, for instance, that when someone sends an OT post to the fic-only list I co-mod, we always send a mod/warning both to the individual, and to the list. A personal one for the individual, and a note to let the list know that such posts aren't acceptable -- otherwise the one person won't do it again, but everybody else on the list wouldn't know that yeah, we're serious about the fic-only rules. I'm not implying anything ridiculous like "I or Estepheia think we're good taste fic-mods for the world" -- I'm just drawing a parallel in the reasoning.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2003-04-15 07:26 am (UTC)Hence my pointing out that the back button and the scroll wheel exist for folks who are tired of such discussions, just like they exist for those of us who are tired of badfic. The difference here is that those of us who are tired of badfic are at least talking about something specific -- bad *things* in fic, bad trends, opinions on pet peeves. Something that could possibly be contstructive. We're not -- most of us anyway -- tearing down specific fics and telling those authors that they shouldn't be wasting their time posting. While there's a couple of y'all -- who seem a bit like you popped up here with an agenda -- who are essentially telling Estepheia that she's wasting her time posting, and specifically annoying you. So I don't think my comment about your delete key is hypocritical in this case.
In answer to your actual point -- do I think targetting individual writers with suggestions for improvement would be more constructive than posting occasional public lists of things that annoy me? (Not that I usually do the second; I'm just defending Stef's reasons for doing so.) No, I don't think so. I think they're about equally constructive, for different reasons. Sending feedback to specific authors -- which a lot of us do anyway -- is helpful for those specific authors, but it doesn't let the general public know what annoys some readers. So under your model, there would always be more specific authors to say it to -- and time wasted on small, ridiculous stuff that we could be using to say "I loved your storyline and language, but I thought the Angel characterization was a bit wonky here..."
There's a reason, for instance, that when someone sends an OT post to the fic-only list I co-mod, we always send a mod/warning both to the individual, and to the list. A personal one for the individual, and a note to let the list know that such posts aren't acceptable -- otherwise the one person won't do it again, but everybody else on the list wouldn't know that yeah, we're serious about the fic-only rules. I'm not implying anything ridiculous like "I or Estepheia think we're good taste fic-mods for the world" -- I'm just drawing a parallel in the reasoning.