# Critique Thread or Critique Sub-Forum



## SSJ3Mewtwo (Oct 11, 2009)

With MLR and I having been made the new moderators of the Bloc there's been a change in the rules for submission of critique requests.

Historically critique requests have formed the bulk of the new threads in this section of FAF.  Looking back through the listing there's more than I can even count.  To their credit they often do get responses from people offering help to those asking, so critique requests do get the job done of helping budding writers get opinions on their work.

They're susceptible to board gravity though, and fall out of sight quickly as more threads are posted.  Because the Writer's Bloc isn't dedicated just to that function they're relegated to a fairly low priority and interest for other members, so the responses tend to be few and far between.

MLR now has a single stickied thread meant to hold all requests for critique, so they take up less space in the forum.  As the guy that set-up the Lists of Trade and Request Accepting Artists and Writers in The Art Exchange, I like the organization effort there.  It keeps things more contained and less visibly backlogged.

What's being looked at now is making sure critique requests in that single thread don't get back-logged as well.  A single post might not garner enough attention for the piece being put forward, it could be overlooked, and in short order the multitude of following posts could bury it in obscurity.  The initial post could contain a list maintained by MLR and myself with links to the submissions being offered for critique, but that list would be difficult to maintain without the original submitters checking back in and clearing things for removal.

We've both thought about a sub-forum to be geared expressly for critique threads though.  It'd do an adequate job of making sure individual requests got noticed, and that board gravity didn't bury things too quickly.  But neither MLR or I can set that up, it requires further staff involvement.

So this thread is meant to be an opinion-gathering tool.  Of the options available, which sounds better to members who frequent the Bloc?  To minimize clutter neither MLR or I want critique requests being made in the Bloc itself.  But of the options suggested so far, which sounds more efficient?  Are any other ideas available to be suggested?  Voice your opinions, please, and we'll see what can be implemented.


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## Duality Jack (Oct 11, 2009)

i say do not make things more complex then you must


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## Aurali (Oct 11, 2009)

To be honest, http://forums.furaffinity.net/forumdisplay.php?f=22 this subforum really should be used for more than just art stuff. (maybe with tagging like the support forums)


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## SSJ3Mewtwo (Oct 11, 2009)

Aurali said:


> To be honest, http://forums.furaffinity.net/forumdisplay.php?f=22 this subforum really should be used for more than just art stuff. (maybe with tagging like the support forums)



I'm torn two ways about that.

Yes, it could be split two ways, between art and writing.  

But that brings up the concern for me again about forum-gravity dragging stuff out of sight and out of mind fast.  There would be a great deal more posting action going on, cluttering it more than would be easily tolerable.  Plus the interests and mechanics of visual art and writing are very different, so it's entirely understandable that they're in separate forums.


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## panzergulo (Oct 11, 2009)

I don't have an opinion about this. I don't really care where the requests for critiques go, as long as I don't have to read _"my first sotry, need opinnions"_ threads in the Bloc.

Poetigress' thread is okay by me. It does the job well enough.

A sub-sub-forum would do the job as well. My only request is that if you get this sub-sub-forum implemented, you would move the threads asking for critique there, at least the ones posted during the last couple of months. Also, I think Poetigress' thread should be removed as well, it would be confusing to have several places for asking crits.

I would be greatly amused if people could only ask crits for prose in the 'Tutorials and Critiques' sub-forum. I once saw that happening. A really amateurish, crappy story got really good crits, because the readers were visual artists and didn't know a thing about writing prose. No offence, but critiquing prose needs more than just the ability to read. I'm not saying visual artists are stupid, I'm just saying that reading and giving crits on prose needs experience and knowledge about literature and storytelling. The large number of threads listed in 'Collection Of Collections' just tells how deep and wide this whole writing thing can go.

Yeah... whatever you decide to do, keep it up. It's great to have some moderation here, at last. Looking good, fellas!


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## Aurali (Oct 11, 2009)

Bah. beat to it XD Curses panzergulo! Curses!


SSJ3Mewtwo said:


> I'm torn two ways about that.
> 
> Yes, it could be split two ways, between art and writing.
> 
> But that brings up the concern for me again about forum-gravity dragging stuff out of sight and out of mind fast.  There would be a great deal more posting action going on, cluttering it more than would be easily tolerable.  Plus the interests and mechanics of visual art and writing are very different, so it's entirely understandable that they're in separate forums.



Hm. You'd have to run this by me again hun if I'm missing anything, I'm not quite sure what your talking about. Though my point being is that there seems to be a weird distinction between "Art forums" and "music" and "writing" that seems pretty much pointless in my opinion. If the tutorials forum was split into three separate subforums, one for each major artistic medium, then that might be a good way to keep the forum organized and clean. Though the black market seems to do the combined effort pretty well.

Plus, any good writer wants the critique of the common man, as well as the top notch professional, as that a common persons critique will bring a different kind of incite into what they want from a writing. Writing is my major medium of choice, though I do love dabbling in art and music as well. Saying this however brings to the point that I'm only good at giving certain kinds of critique, and am not entirely apt at giving the general aspiring writer exactly what he wants to hear if he's looking for opinions on what a user wants out of /his/ story. Though on the flip side, yeah, it will receive less critique and probably "good job" or "bad job" but then again getting a pure mixture of reviews would give them a better opinion of their writing overall.

Bah.. I'm rambling and should be asleep, I'm sure whatever is picked will turn out fine in the end though.


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## Volpino (Oct 11, 2009)

I put subforum, but so far it looks like the common thread and the common subforum are going to have the same problem with things dropping off too fast. I just wish there was a way to handle it like we did at the magazine I worked for. I'll have to talk to my programmer friends and see or something.

Submissions were divided into groups of about ten to twenty, depending on the number of volunteers we had at the time. The Fiction Editor removed all references to author and made sure that only the oldest sets were put out for the readers. Once a submission had five readers it either went up to the executive board for review to be printed (not an option here) or was returned to the author with the comments.

With the right coding, it could be even more organized and force each story to get five reviews before it moves on, but I see some problems. First, differences in sizes of story could mean people just waiting until something more time conservative comes their way. Second, novels submitted as WIPs will simply not work, since the author would either have to submit the whole thing at once (see problem, the first) or people reviewing segments would likely be missing prior submissions.

Of course, all those points are moot anyway, unless there's a software solution for it.


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## Murphy Z (Oct 11, 2009)

Either would work, but someone would have to make a sub-forum, potentially making the programmers do something when they could be doing something better (I don't know their queue or priorities) and we'd have to wait for it.
    When asking for a critique, I'd rather it be at one place, which should be where I submitted (usually FA but could be somewhere else). If there were a sub-forum, there would more chance the ctique would be in two places.
    Not having a sub-forum would cut down on the "u shuld quit riting 4-ever" trolls.
    Would people be helped if all those comments were on that forum instead of looking at individual submissions? I could see it helping in some situations, so I'm not all that against a sub-forum.


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## M. LeRenard (Oct 12, 2009)

panzergulo said:
			
		

> My only request is that if you get this sub-sub-forum implemented, you would move the threads asking for critique there, at least the ones posted during the last couple of months.


Of course.  And actually, that would clean up the main forum a little bit too, in that we wouldn't have to delete or close threads that receive responses before someone gets to merging them into PT's thread.
Speaking of, I suppose what we could do with that thread is close it and move it into the new sub-sub-forum, maybe sending PM's to the last couple responders letting them know about the change, and then just let it fade away.  I see no reason to leave it stickied if we do make the change.  Does anyone else?



			
				Aurali said:
			
		

> Though my point being is that there seems to be a weird distinction between "Art forums" and "music" and "writing" that seems pretty much pointless in my opinion.


It's about organization and organization only.  Yeah, we could merge all the various forums into one (which is how it was in the past, really), but then if you were a writer looking for information on writing, you'd have to wade through tons of posts about music and art before you found what you were looking for.  So we separate.  
This doesn't mean that only writers are allowed to critique writing, of course; the forum is public and open for anyone's comments.  Moving all these threads to T&C might also have the opposite effect, that being that the works no longer receive the attention of writers (who don't seem to frequent that forum, just as artists don't frequent this one).

Volpino: your idea sounds lovely, but it's probably more trouble than it's worth.  It sounds like that would be better implemented in a website of its own, specifically tailored to writers (something like Critique Circle, for example).  I don't think it would be good to have this place become super formalized.  It might have a negative effect, scaring people away.



			
				Murphy Z said:
			
		

> Would people be helped if all those comments were on that forum instead of looking at individual submissions?


The argument seems to be that if there were a subforum, the responses to the critiques would be more accessible without cluttering up the main forum with copies of threads.  So people would be able to learn more easily by reading the critiques given to certain works.  My question would be, though, how often do people actually read the critiques of other works anyway?  Because it seems to me that most people only care about the critiques of their own works.

I'm thinking, maybe, if we get a subforum, then Tutorials and Critiques should maybe be renamed and reclassified as an art critique subforum.  That would make sense to me.  And the musicians can then argue to get their own music critique subforum, if they want it.  But this is all assuming we want one and we get one.
Let's wait for a few more replies and see where this idea goes.  The poll right now is split pretty evenly.


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## TakeWalker (Oct 12, 2009)

While I'm really of two minds, I think I'd rather keep the current thread. Let people link to their stories there and critiquers drop their critiques mainsite. Yes, it becomes a pain to navigate after a while. Maybe we could make a new thread every few months/year?


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## SSJ3Mewtwo (Oct 13, 2009)

TakeWalker said:


> While I'm really of two minds, I think I'd rather keep the current thread. Let people link to their stories there and critiquers drop their critiques mainsite. Yes, it becomes a pain to navigate after a while. Maybe we could make a new thread every few months/year?



A time-limit on the thread itself I like.  That way if a back-log occurs it could be at least somewhat limited.


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## TakeWalker (Oct 13, 2009)

That would also help keep things somewhat fresh, and preserve the previous threads for posterity.


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## ShÃ nwÃ ng (Oct 13, 2009)

TakeWalker said:


> That would also help keep things somewhat fresh, and preserve the previous threads for posterity.



I'm on board with that. I had been wondering about a way to prevent backlog and overcrowding from occurring.


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## M. LeRenard (Oct 13, 2009)

I think it would be convenient if there was some way to close a request for critique as well, so that people aren't coming in six months down the road and critiquing something the original author completely forgot about/already got published/is done with.  Maybe just stick a reminder in the rules for people to edit their posts when their request period is over with.  Making a new thread every couple of months would help with that, too, so that folks don't get the wrong idea.


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## TakeWalker (Oct 14, 2009)

M. Le Renard said:


> I think it would be convenient if there was some way to close a request for critique as well, so that people aren't coming in six months down the road and critiquing something the original author completely forgot about/already got published/is done with.  Maybe just stick a reminder in the rules for people to edit their posts when their request period is over with.  Making a new thread every couple of months would help with that, too, so that folks don't get the wrong idea.



This is a good idea, although it runs into the problem of users not being able to edit posts in locked threads.

So you make a new thread and then either no one can post in the old one or people continue to post in the old one because they're dumb. You know this would happen.


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## Poetigress (Oct 14, 2009)

It doesn't matter to me whether it's a subforum or a thread as long as it isn't separate threads like we'd had.

If you want to go with the thread option, it seems the easiest thing would be to just make it a monthly thread -- "October Critique Requests" or whatever -- and then everyone who has something they want crits on that month can make a post. Once the month is over, delete the thread and start over with a new one. If people didn't get enough (or any) crits the first time, they can post again.  (Whether there'd have to be a limit to how many times someone could post a link to the same work would have to be seen once things are up and running. I could see a limit of maybe three consecutive months, but that might be a lot of trouble to enforce.)

I wouldn't see a need to lock/archive old critique threads, as I also don't think people are really that into reading crits on others' stories. You learn more from actually critting than from reading crits, anyway.


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## SSJ3Mewtwo (Oct 14, 2009)

After the suggestion was made I did a bit of thinking about the span of time each thread should remain, so it gets face-time and exposure without getting backed up.  One month sounded pretty ideal to me, and it's nice to hear that that same frame was thought of by someone else.

For archival integrity and to see who posts things more often or not neither I nor MLR would delete things though.  I think it'd be better to just un-sticky them, lock them, and let them drift.  If they needed to be looked at again, like a member puts up a post saying that no one had given them feedback and they'd submitted 2-3 times, we'd be able to actually check and see that.


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## TakeWalker (Oct 14, 2009)

I like Poey's idea even better than mine.  It does still run into one problem, though, which is whether people posting at the end of the month are going to get screwed over.

Though, I suppose if they can post again next month, it's not so bad. c.c Hmm. And monthly, or even bi-monthly, will help keep older posts from getting too buried (it's easy to go back over a month of posts than a year of them). It just depends on how much you mods want to work, I guess.


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## Poetigress (Oct 14, 2009)

TakeWalker said:


> It does still run into one problem, though, which is whether people posting at the end of the month are going to get screwed over.



That's going to be an issue no matter what time limit a thread has. Probably what we'll see is a flood of posts at the beginning of the month, a slower trickle for the rest, and no posts for the last week or so.


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## TakeWalker (Oct 14, 2009)

Poetigress said:


> That's going to be an issue no matter what time limit a thread has. Probably what we'll see is a flood of posts at the beginning of the month, a slower trickle for the rest, and no posts for the last week or so.



That would actually be okay, to be perfectly honest.


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## M. LeRenard (Oct 15, 2009)

I also like PT's idea, although considering the relatively low frequency we have of usage of the critique thread, bi-monthly might make more sense.  I would say, start with bi-monthly (so that the thread can pick up some volume before it dies), then start going monthly if it seems traffic has increased.  And then, I think we mods can just move posts between threads, so maybe we could just take all the replies from the last week of the period and move them to the next thread (where they will appear in chronological order).
Okay... so, we still have approximately half and half support for both sides.  Would the people voting for the sub-forum want to make more arguments?  We need to know, why would a sub-forum be better and more worthwhile than having threads?


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