Important Heirarchy of responses to stories

While I intend to put this in more detail and such later, I wanted to make a quick announcement about the planned means of responding to stories. Especially before certain authors lure you into praising them in the wrong places and set off a chain of events that puts us back on the mismanaged system that was our old forums. So... here's the deal:

1: Praise, kudos, immediate reactions, and direct comments to the author of a story:

These should be casual, personal responses to the stories. They shouldn't involve discussion of any story details, they shouldn't involve feedback on improving the story, and they definitely shouldn't be any more negative than "This story wasn't my cup of tea. I'd like to see more action stories."

To make these sorts of posts, please use the Commenting system that is provided at the foot of most stories/articles on the site. These comments can be made by ANY reader, registered on the site or not (though Guest readers will likely have to answer a Captcha question and will require a moderator to approve their post before it will be visible to anyone else). Comments can be voted on, so be sure to vote up comments that praise the author if you agree with them or if you share the opinion of that reader. It is also possible to subscribe to the comments of a specific story/article, to ensure that you are aware of every comment that is posted on it (especially useful for authors who want to know when and what people are posting about their latest story).


2: Discussions about a new story, a PoV/protagonist character... based on fact or speculation about matters that didn't definitively come up within the text of the story:

This is where many of our old Feedback threads on stories went awry. You cannot have speculation and impersonal reviews/feedback in the same thread without resulting in discussion between readers instead of a direct line of communication from reviewer to author or with the inclusion of material that wasn't written (yet) being speculated on adjacent to an evaluation of fact from the text. These are simply contradictory means of looking at stories. So, for general discussion about a story, or character, or concept presented in canon material; please start and use a thread within the appropriate "Speculation" section of the forums. You can still discuss technical details and the success of the story as written to/with the author... but this should be on a non-critical level. For the most part this would be where 'most' of the posts of our old Feedback threads should end up.


3. Some few readers (and other authors) have a significant understanding of the art and craft of writing to offer real reviews or critical feedback about stories. If an author is open to getting these, they can choose to invite formal feedback in the Evaluation section. ALL response posts in the Evaluation forums are moderated and will not be visible until staff approves them... and we WILL rigorously enforce the requirement for well crafted reviews and critiques that both treat the craft and author with respect and do not mockery of the value of good feedback. If in doubt, PM me a copy of your review first and I will let you know if your review is likely to be approved.

NO discussion between readers or references to other reviews will be allowed. Your observations and opinions should be your own and should be based upon the elements of the story itself, not upon contradicting another reviewer or in discussion based further revelation of details after the publication of the story.


So... three different levels and styles of feedback. Please use the appropriate one in your response to the stories. Even if Elrod tries to talk you into praising him in all three areas for the same story.

This already started to happen with one of the new stories. Granted we hadn't opened the site up to everyone at that point. But please PLEASE use the forums if you think your comment will spark a discussion. The old comment system was on Sapphire's place and it was one reason I added the forum to the old site because on stories that had been around a while you would have to hunt and search like crazy through sometimes hundreds of post to follow the thread of a discussion.

Yes. One bit of clarification that might help make this simpler:

1. Comments - Your reactions written specifically TO the AUTHOR.

2. Spec threads - Your observations of the story discussed WITH the COMMUNITY.

3. Evaluation threads - An analysis of the CONTENT prepared FOR the AUTHOR.


As Warren said above, if you engage anyone other than the author, the place for it is the Spec/Discussion threads. The other two locations should be between you and the author. Your reactions and opinions of the author's writing? That's Comments to the author about their work/effort. Your analysis of the work? That's an Evaluation/review of the work for the author.

Hope that helps.