I have seen a few critiques and then discussions arise from pieces that were submitted some time ago -- often years in the past -- where the author has also been absent for a similar amount of time. If the older say 18month+ posts were moved to an archive section, they would remain searchable, readable and critiqueable, but it would (hopefully) be highlighted to the forum reader that what they are now reading / potentially critiquing is OLD and to keep that in mind. This may also encourage potential critique writers to focus on more current submissions, although this is only a hypothesis.
Though I think we all know by now that my personal view of the critique process looks down the other end of the proverbial spyglass, that the critic is the beneficiary, not the critiqued party (or not as much, at least) there is a part of me that sees some profit in this idea. Keeping with my personal view on the process, it does force the critic to pick a piece wherein the OP is likely still present to ask questions of the critic as regards his/her critique, thus further honing the critic's eye.
It's a good idea. I never considered date of submission. The last two pieces I critiqued were simply the ones at the top of the list. I just looked and both were over a year old. If you archived everything that's been hanging around more than 12 months I'd be happy. Though to be honest, I'm not sure how helpful the workshops section is? I was last in erotica October 2nd, Jax was the person before me on September 9th. There hasn't been any post after me so there isn't a lot of critiquing going on in that workshop regardless of age of post.
The erotica section is not the best example of Workshop influx. It's new and, well, it's erotica. People are still getting over the shock value. Our forum tends to the "I'm writing a novel" writer, so the Novels subforum is the hotspot.
I'm a novel writer but the scene I wanted help with was sexual in nature; not erotic, just sexual. I didn't want to offend the sensibilities of anyone by posting that in novels. I've had two real, live, people read the scene and both complained it was to graphic. At the same time I would have no problems with either of my boys reading the scene (they are 16 and 18) so I was hoping for other input. Can you post sex elsewhere? Would it be acceptable in any of the sub-forms? I read the workshop rules and was under the impression that passages involving sex needed to be posted in erotica and rated, with no mention of sex in the title because those are visible to all viewers and not just those of us over 17.
No, you posted in the correct area. Long story short: We used to have a very young congregation here. Scenes with explicit sex weren't allowed at all by the prior staff in office. The new staff asked for a change since the congregation was getting older (on average) and more mature and the idea of excluding sex scenes from critique feels a bit fuddy-duddy at this point. You have found us in a state of flux on this issue.
Hmm, I thought of this but as I wrote it I saw a problem. Here was the idea: It doesn't have to be an archive. It can just be two sub-forums in the workshop section, recent entries and entries > a year old. Then I realized there were all the genre subdivisions in the workshop. How about just adding some kind of alert or prefix to the older threads so people know they are necro-entries before embarking on a critique? It can be annoying to reply only to find out the original author is long gone, or has finished or retired the piece.
Another forum I'm on has that kind of thing. When you hit reply there's a big red message saying ALERT! ZOMBIE THREAD! More than 120 days old! or something to that effect.
Which may be a better solution, as you don't necessarily access all critique threads via the forum directly. It's possible to link to a thread directly from a post or a forum search.
I think either an archive or an alert would be a good idea, just to make it easier for critters to find the newest crittable threads. However, I don't know about the technicalities of e.g. setting up an alert. @Wreybies and @Komposten, you guys know more about Xenforo magic.
I don't think XenForo allows something like this by default (note that I don't know too much about XenForo, though), so I did a quick add-on search and found 2 possible options (there may be more add-ons as well, of course). The first one automatically moves threads after X days of inactivity (i.e. no new posts), the second one displays a warning at the top of threads older than X days (similar to the info banner for closed threads).
Some of the classes I teach are hybrid and have online components. I set my assignments and discussions to automatically close on specified dates. Why not just have workshop entries just automatically be closed to comments after a year?
If the value is in the critique, why not critique a piece that was posted by some who is still active on the site and possibly still working on the piece? That way they'd get some value out of it also. If all you want to do is critique, you can do that on paper, or split your screen and use a word document.
Because critiquing is more valuable to the critiquer, and any discussion arising from that also has potential value. My issue is when personal advice is being directed toward the author, who has not visited the site for a year or more. If said advice engenders rejoinders or ongoing discussion, oblivious to the attention said posts will never receive, that is when I feel the energy being spent would be better placed in a more contemporaneous piece.