Writing Forums 2021 Revamp Part 1. The Workshop Hello, fellow writers! Lately, the moderation team has been discussing many things about our community. Who are we? What do we do well? What could use improvement? What can we do to further our forum and generate the kind of content that attracted our members—both old and new—to the forum in the first place? The first part is easy: We are a writing forum. Members join our community to learn about writing, improve their skills, and workshop their stories to receive critique and feedback from other writers, many of whom have the same questions about their own craft as you do about yours. Receiving critique is the best way to improve your own work. And critiquing the work of the others is the best way to learn the tools you need to be a better writer. That is what the forum was built to do. The Workshop is the heart and soul of the forum, but it is not without its drawbacks, as everyone knows. Sometimes the rules can be restrictive, especially for new members. Sometimes the quality of critique is lacking or absent altogether. Sometimes it feels like the forum traffic is bogged down in the Lounge instead of being driven towards the areas of the forum that spawned its existence in the first place. With that in mind, the moderation team has decided to amend the Workshop rules as follows: · New members will no longer be required to wait 14 days and make 20 posts before they are allowed to post in the workshop. · New members will still be required to post two quality critiques of other members’ work before they will be allowed to make their first Workshop post. · After satisfying the requirements to make their first Workshop post, the old 2:1 critique rule for all subsequent posts will be removed in LETTER but retained in SPIRIT. So while we will no longer enforce a strict two for one ratio, all members will still be expected to actively participate in the Workshop and other writing areas of the forum. · The collaboration forum will now be accessible after 14 days and 20 posts instead of the old 90/100. In short, we think it would benefit everyone to participate in the Workshop as much as possible, but only if members continue to give as good as they get by critiquing others the way they would like to be critiqued. And while the old 2:1 will no longer be a rigid yardstick, everyone will still be expected to pay it forward when posting their own stories in the Workshop. Call it the honor system if you like… we’d prefer to think of it as encouraging the good, rather than overly-policing the bad. Having said all that, this loosening of the Workshop rules is not a license to steal. It is a community effort to increase the traffic and enthusiasm in the forum’s core values so we can all become better writers. The moderation team will be actively participating and monitoring the Workshop and will not hesitate to sanction members who abuse the community. This might include members who post a lot of their own work but make little or no effort to help others with theirs. Or members who continually post short, vague critiques that don’t help others become better writers. Critiquing takes time, just like writing. Critiquing is hard, just like writing. But by critiquing, you'll also learn to be a better writer. By examining others' works, you'll learn to find these mistakes in your own. Respect that craft and the time you expect others to examine your own work. To enforce the SPIRIT of these rules, the Mod team reserves the right to issue a “Workshop Thread Ban” to anyone deemed delinquent in the volume or quality of their posts in other areas of the workshop. These bans prevent a member from posting new threads in the Workshop but allow them to comment on other threads until their deficit is settled. Honoring that deficit might entail a little or it might entail a lot. The Workshop ban is indefinite, and while we might not count the 2:1 to the LETTER, everyone will be better served if they try to follow it anyway. There will be more announcements to come as we continue to evolve. We are hoping to revamp other aspects of the forum to better suit the needs of the community and thought that focusing on the Workshop would be the best way to put 2020 behind us (finally) and look forward to 2021. Thank you all for contributing to our forum and building it into the strong, engaging, diverse community of writers we have today. We are nothing without our members, and we are proud to include many of you as family as we continue to grow. Happy writing! The Writing Forums Staff
Yes, please, please police this. It's frustrating to see critiques along the lines of "I liked this story, I would read more. Oh by the way, rewrite this sentence." from people who are clearly posting so they can either post a story of their own or trying to churn out "critiques" to make up for the ones they didn't do. One of the criticisms of the forum is that it can sometimes feel like there are too many people who are here to take, rather than give. But it goes in cycles. Sometimes you get an influx of members who give good, detailed critiques, other times you get the opposite.
We also shouldn't forget that giving critique is a skill in itself... the staff will deal proactively with anyone who is taking the michael, but we don't encourage a witch hunt for anyone giving below average critique. The best thing anyone can do about that is to lead by example in giving good crit I'd also hope that removing the absolute 2 for 1 letter of the rule will reduce the amount of "making up of numbers" which sometimes leads to the shower of inadequate crit
So question, and maybe I’m overthinking it, but sometimes you read something in the workshop and you don’t have the time for a full critique, but you want to pay the author a genuine compliment. Example: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/chapter-one-it-is-just-finished-the-whole-thing.167728/#post-1893461 Obviously this doesn’t meet the spirit of a full critique nor is it meant to. But there ought to be room to make a quick note of good work. I guess that’s where it’s on the honor system? I know, in this case, it’s not a real critique so I don’t count it? I don’t really know how many full critiques I’ve done anyways, so that’s another problem lol. -MC
We're not going to police every single comment for worthiness... no one has the time, even if we had the inclination, which we don't.. we're not the Ministry of Love seeking out Wrongthink... but if every single one of your workshop contributions was like that, then that'd would be double plus ungood comrade
Nooo that's not what I said... I said the opposite of that... the occasional compliment is fine, we not going to police every comment... what we don't want is every single one of your workshop interactions just being a compliment... if you like a piece so much that there's nothing you'd change you can still give constrictive crit by pointing out the bits you especially liked and why
No. Compliments are cool. Compliments are righteous. Nothing wrong with a quick compliment, or a short review making a simple point... particularly for a longer thread that has covered most of the things you would have said anyway. What we're trying to avoid, is members thinking a one line critique satisfies their obligations. That is neither cool nor righteous. I leave short comments all the time, but not when I'm actively workshopping something. Members who participate consistently should feel secure leaving quick blurbs and compliments. It's the ones who constantly bombard the Workshop with new threads and never give back that are the issue. Make sense?
Sounds like some good changes. I know for my part I can never remember how many critiques I've done, so I end up not posting for fear that I'd go negative (probably a sign I should critique more frequently). With a more relaxed stance, I'll be more inclined to post first, then go and squeeze in some crits while waiting for people to critique my work.
I suggest just writing the truth if you don't have time for a full critique but liked the story. Compliments are fine if not masquerading as a critique.
You can find the number of threads you've posted for critique by going to your profile page and checking the "workshop entries" tab: You can check how many posts you've made by searching for your own name in the Workshop area of the forum. That doesn't discriminate between the number of posts you've made re: your own work and others but it'll give you an idea.
Obviously I get that. As the author of these critiques, I feel I have a sense of what constitutes a good critique: The Battle of the Wyrm and the Prince- Looking for feedback! | Creative Writing Forums - Writing Help, Writing Workshops, & Writing Community Untitled Shapeshifter Fantasy | Creative Writing Forums - Writing Help, Writing Workshops, & Writing Community A re-write of Chapter 1 (Joshua Clark) (2620 words) | Creative Writing Forums - Writing Help, Writing Workshops, & Writing Community Chapter 13 - A Charmer's Story - A Novel | Creative Writing Forums - Writing Help, Writing Workshops, & Writing Community Chimeran: Chapter One (2230 words) | Creative Writing Forums - Writing Help, Writing Workshops, & Writing Community Time Stamp 1st Redraft. Chapter one 1,150 words | Creative Writing Forums - Writing Help, Writing Workshops, & Writing Community Dragonlord Bain | Creative Writing Forums - Writing Help, Writing Workshops, & Writing Community Lovelight: The Red Room - (5000 Words) | Creative Writing Forums - Writing Help, Writing Workshops, & Writing Community I'm probably just being super sensitive for no reason, I guess I just felt that I was told, that a short compliment, at best, wouldn't be policed. Felt like a bit of an insult after the effort I've put into some of these. But maybe I'm overrating myself. Maybe just a sensitive day for me. Probably best if I log off.
I believe the like function adequately conveys a compliment... or better yet PM the author if you're lazy and useless like me. Edit: I can't stop critiquing myself, never mind the work of others. I suck, I know.
The thing is, I find if you give critiques in good faith, rather than to meet your quota, you won't run into a problem - that is, give critiques because you want to. It's a worthwhile exercise to do, to see what other people have done and to improve your own writing. I've been a bit lax of late in giving critiques. Just been too tired to engage brain.
Yup. I know I've given some short critiques, but I've given plenty of good long ones as well. I don't worry about my ratio because whenever I'm in the mood or have some spare time I drop by the workshop and, well, do some work there. I'm not privy to the thinking behind this decision, but on another forum I was a member of (not writing related, RC cars) someone once tried to fill their requirements by posting "Nice truck, man" on the top twenty threads in the equivalent of the Workshop. Took them all of five minutes to earn a custom strikethrough username.
This is a fairly radical change, and I think it certainly has potential. It will encourage new people to post their work, which is why many of them join in the first place. I know when I was a Mod, I used to attempt to meet and greet all new members. I found that many of them were quite discouraged that they couldn't post their work right away. Many of them had joined BECAUSE they had work they wanted feedback on right away. So it's important to make them feel welcome. However, it's important to realise this is also a community. If everybody just posted work to get feedback—but gave none—then nobody would ever get feedback! The more critiques you give, the more you will be aware of flaws in your own work, and how to correct them. I know it sounds like a platitude, but it's not. Critiquing gives writers insight into how writing strikes the reader. If readers don't like your work, or don't understand what you've written, or get distracted by silly mistakes, then your chances of building that bridge between writer intention and reader comprehension will be handicapped. Critiquing the work of others makes you aware of how these bridges get built.
I think we can all appreciate that without critiques the workshop is literally useless. So if we don't provide critiques ourselves it won't work for anyone. We feel that by relaxing the rules it will help eliminate quota critiques and encourage participation on the forum, while still maintaining a sense of responsibility. Abuse of the good faith system will not be tolerated. It's pretty obvious if people are not even trying, and that's all we can ask for. Just give it a go and help each other out. There are also many new members who feel they are not experienced enough to give critiques in the early days and may feel intimidated that they can't 'qualify' for a critique themselves. But the veterans know that isn't the point. Critiquing in itself is beneficial. You learn as much as you teach. It's hard work, but if we don't do it, no one else is going to.
As difficult as it may be on here, I'd be more inclined to critique people whom I have built some form of friendship with. It is a double edged sword, however, as bias then comes into play. But I personally don't like the idea of completely tearing apart somebody else's writing and sometimes that is all that can be done, in my eyes. I guess even just familiarity in the community, as they become a contributory part - outside of the workshop, would raise such an inclination. Edit: Perhaps some variable implementation of the anonymiser? It could be a feature of abuse, though, so it would need to be regulated. Further edit: I feel that a lot of people make alt accounts on here, too, so such a thought might be worth taking into consideration.
Of course, there are also many new members who are intimidated about posting their own work, because they're not confident, embarrassed or afraid of the kind of critique they might receive. I'm not sure what we can do about that. And it can also be discouraging to people when they post work and don't receive any critiques at all, so it's incumbent on the longer serving members to provide them. Even if you don't post your own work in the Workshop, there's no reason why you can't give critiques. Personally, I reckon if you're looking for help in any area of the forum, this should be something you give back to. If every active member of the forum gave just one or two critiques a year, we'd have much more activity in the Workshop - and more people signing up to WF to look for help (instead of going to some other *spit* forum).
Not tearing people apart, but I think including what you didn't like about a story is more helpful than what you did, because that gives you a pointer to the areas that need improvement. Of course, you should always add what you did like as well, so that the author knows they're doing something right as well!
Hopefully, it will also mitigate the "disappearing critics" issue - you know, when a new member joins, posts some good critiques but then vanishes because they didn't want to wait 2 weeks before being able to post their own work.
It's against the rules - and will lead to an instaban. The mods have tools that help them detect this.
As Nao says no, just no... one account per poster... when we detect this (which we will sooner or later) we usually give the poster concerned the chance to explain and if the reasoning is innocent the accounts will be merged, or one account banned, and the poster warned not to do it again... if the reasoning isn't innocent (spam, avoiding a ban, cheating in the contests, causing trouble etc) all their accounts will be permanently banned On point you are worrying unnecessarily - giving constructive critique is a good thing... you're not going to offend any reasonable person who by posting in the workshop has invited such critique...
Its also worth mentioning the other side of the crit coin, that we also take a dim view of those who are unable to graciously accept the critique they have asked for.... there is no compulsion to agree with it, or take any of it on board if the poster doesn't want to, but when another member of our community takes the time to give a constructive critique the appropriate response is 'thank you' not half a page of angry argument that your work was practically perfect and the critics don't know what they are talking about. fortunately this doesn't happen very often, and we appreciate that everyone had bad days, but someone who continually behaves in this manner to those giving them critique will also find themselves the proud recipient of a create threads ban.
