Read It Now Reviews #83 – Breaking Peeved, All Better Now, Make It Better, A Brief Glance at the Papers on Luna’s Desk, Peachy Pie and Misty Moon Keep the Realm Safe Until Dinnertime · 6:59pm Jun 9th, 2016
A lot of people I follow came out with new stories yesterday, and in the spirit of not procrastinating, I actually read them. 
Today’s stories:
Breaking Peeved by Bad Horse
All Better Now by OCalhoun
Make It Better by Twinkletail
A Brief Glance at the Papers on Luna’s Desk by Chuckfinley
Peachy Pie and Misty Moon Keep the Realm Safe Until Dinnertime by Pascoite
Breaking Peeved
by Bad Horse
Comedy, Crossover
4,571 wordsAfter Zephyr finally gets a job, Dash points out that Fluttershy still hasn't got one. So where's her money coming from? Fluttershy seems to be the only pony who doesn't know.
Why I added it: Bad Horse is a good writer. Also, Fluttershy being a meth dealer is hilarious.
Review
Fluttershy seems to always have plenty of bits, but she doesn’t seem to have a job.
And everyone seems to always be coming to Angel Bunny to see him about… stuff. Sports cards, help with their magic, party favors, that sort of thing.
It is all very confusing, doubly so with all those bits showing up all the time…
It is beautiful.
And terrible.
And the ending (along with some hints along the way) makes it all the funnier.
I wasn’t really sold on this at first, and frankly, it seemed to be beating a dead horse a bit at times, but at the end, I have to admit to chuckling and smiling a little.
Recommendation: Worth Reading if ponies dealing drugs is not too absurd for you.
All Better Now
by OCalhoun
Romance, Slice of Life
2,013 wordsRarity helps Pinkie out by kissing her boo-boo. This is totally okay and not awkward.
Why I added it: OCalhoun is a good writer.
Review
Pinkie Pie kisses Rarity’s boo-boo to make it all better.
Then Pinkie Pie, who apparently has a deep unrequited crush on Rarity, kisses Rarity… on the lips.
And then Rarity decides she likes Pinkie Pie and gives her a kiss back.
Alien brain worms are transferred via physical contact, especially hugs and kisses, so clearly Pinkie Pie got infected after hurting her leg, and then Rarity got infected from Pinkie Pie.
Sorry, that's a bit smarmy.
This story didn’t do much for me. No, there aren’t any alien brain worms actually in the story, but that’s the underlying problem here – they kiss because they kiss, and ultimately it didn’t feel like it had much in the way of depth or even pull to me. It is hard to establish a relationship, let alone a mutual one, in so few words, and this didn't really end up making me feel like the characters should or would kiss. The story didn’t make me want Pinkie to kiss Rarity or vice-versa, and the tension ended up not really coming through at all for me between Pinkie’s initial kiss and Rarity’s "yes" kiss.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Make It Better
by Twinkletail
Romance, Comedy, Slice of Life
2,664 wordsPinkie has a very important request for Rainbow Dash.
Why I added it: OCalnhoun mentioned this as being a sister fic to his story.
Review
Pinkie Pie wants Rainbow Dash to punch her in the face.
Pinkie Pie makes a lot of strange requests, but being punched in the face?
But as Pinkie Pie explains her day, and what drove her to this request, it all becomes clear.
This story, like Ocalhoun’s, is based around Pinkie Pie hurting her hoof and Rarity giving it a kiss to make it better. But I have to say I liked this version better. Here, we start out with the strange request, then we flash back to see what happened and why Pinkie Pie is acting weird. It is cute Pinkie Logic, and I have to admit I smiled a little bit at the very first line, as I realized where it was going.
Alas, I can’t say I loved this story; it was a cute idea, but some of the descriptions felt a bit overwrought, and in particular, Pinkie’s conversion to liking Rarity, while hinted at earlier in the text, didn’t end up really lighting my fires.
And this sucks a bit, because that’s really the part that a shipfic has to land. Consequently, I was left feeling kind of cold by the end.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
A Brief Glance at the Papers on Princess Luna’s Desk
by Chuckfinley
Random, Slice of Life, False Documents
2,406 wordsPrincess Luna should invest in an in-tray.
Why I added it: Chuckfinley knows his writing, as evinced by the fact that I referenced one of his blog posts in this very review post. 
Review
Really, this is exactly what it says on the tin – a bunch of random papers that Princess Luna might have lying on her desk. Some of them are mildly funny (Prince Blueblood’s notes contrasted with Celestia’s notes tended to be the highlight of the piece, and earned the only suppressed chuckle this got other than a reference to self-help books about war) but a lot of it is just kind of bland and boring. There are pieces of a puzzle you could put together here, possibly some signs that Luna might be harboring a crush on Twilight, and might be trying to write her love poetry, but nothing ever really ends up coming together to make it feel like a piece.
Frankly, a lot of it kind of bored me.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Peachy Pie and Misty Moon Keep the Realm Safe Until Dinnertime
by Pascoite
Dark, Slice of Life
1,079 wordsWhen you're a princess, you have to worry about political intrigue, affairs of state… and knowing when your friend is pulling your leg. There are no monsters in the basement!
Why I added it: Pascoite is a good writer.
Review
A cute story about two young fillies – Peachy Pie and Misty Moon – playing at being a knight and princess. Peachy Pie wants to see what is in Misty Moon’s basement – after all, Peachy Pie has been in every other room in the house, and Misty Moon seems to want to keep it a secret. “We can’t go in the basement,” Misty Moon said, “’cause that’s where the monsters are.”
Obviously, there isn’t anything bad down there, as this is a cute story about fillies.
What do you mean, “This story has a dark tag”?
It is a cute little execution of the “don’t go into X” trope, and the interactions between Peachy Pie and Misty Moon work well. It is basically a Goosebumps type story, and is short enough and cute enough to work without wearing out its welcome.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Summary
Breaking Peeved by Bad Horse
Worth Reading
All Better Now by OCalhoun
Not Recommended
Make It Better by Twinkletail
Not Recommended
A Brief Glance at the Papers on Luna’s Desk by Chuckfinley
Not Recommended
Peachy Pie and Misty Moon Keep the Realm Safe Until Dinnertime by Pascoite
Worth Reading
Huzzah! The number of stories I’ve got left to read actually went down for once! And I only had to read six stories in a day to do it. 
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 132
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 483
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 1919
I'm not quite sure what happened to the Romance tag in my story. I was positive I'd checked it when I was setting it up.
Fixing now. Thanks for the review!
4011247
S'all good. Fixed it in my description as well.
That reminds me, I really need to get around to reading Small Scale.
4011263 You should. It's sweet and a little disturbing (which says something about my taste in fics, I suppose)
Why do I keep reading these? They only ever make me angry.
4011561 Reading the reviews, reading the stories, or reading the reviews and realizing lots of people like these stories?
There's a glaring basic physics error in "Breaking Peeved": Fluttershy's glass jar would be too heavy for her to carry, and not strong enough to hold its contents. And that scene is totally misleading anyway. Is the writer even trying?
4011734
Yeah, what a hack.
4011561
I, too, am curious as to what exactly is making you angry.
4012255 4011734
Quite often I'm one of the people that like these stories, being the case of clicking the link from Chuck Finley's, which I enjoyed immensely.
Simply put, I dislike a reviewer who consistently proves he cannot grasp concepts like authorial voice and comedic techniques set himself as an arbiter of story quality, especially when so many of these reviews have such a condescendingly negative tone.
I don't believe Titanium is in a position to judge anyone, for better or worse, and that my friends so often end up on the point of this blunted spear every other week disgusts me.
I find these reviews to often be at the expense of people who put genuine work into more-or-less free products for people's enjoyment, and even if you dislike the end result, I think publicly lambasting this work in the name of being an 'objective critic' -- again, on a volunteer website -- is morally repugnant. I think this is especially the case when you remember how many people are doing this for the self-esteem boost. It's also not like you ask permission to do this, either. Authors are notified of the review by a comment on their story after the fact, which brings up an issue of consent.
And that's why I should stop reading these, and why they make me angry.
4012301
Reviews are an essential part of fimfiction. Without reviews and recommendations, we'd be reduced to reading things from the featured box, or off the Most Popular page. Without reviews, I wouldn't know how well my stories worked. (Thumbs up and down don't communicate quality; they indicate how risky the content is.)
Reviews also take genuine work, and it's also volunteer work. Personally, I think TD is an unusually good reviewer, as proven by the fact that he usually likes my stories.
I understand your point about self-esteem. But TD doesn't dive into New Stories, pull up a ten-year-old's first fan-fiction, and lambast it, as many people have done on fimfiction. He reads stories that are recommended by others or that appeared in the featured box. If something has been in the featured box for 3 days and gotten a thousand views, the author has already gotten a big self-esteem boost, and the question of whether or not the story is any good is a matter of importance to the fimfiction community, which I think outweighs the need of the author for privacy, which is not very consistent with posting something on the Internet anyway.
TD tries to post reviews of stories while they're still in the featured box. If he asked authors for permission, he wouldn't be able to do that. My perception is that the community standard on fimfiction is that if you post a story, you're inviting criticism. That's one of the reasons fimfiction is better than other fanfiction websites, and why I post here instead of elsewhere. If someone doesn't want that, they should say "Please don't review this story" in their author's note. I don't want people to hesitate to criticize a story, because then I wouldn't get the critical comments that I need.
(I really don't understand the "post positive comments only" headspace. It seems like a crippling self-limitation to me, one that tells the community it's their obligation to participate in the author's self-deception, not something that should be encouraged. It reminds me too much of America's growing consensus that people should be insulated from criticism rather than learn to use it.)
TD is doing as much of a community service by reviewing stories as by writing them. You could quote some specific things he said, and say that he could have said them in a nicer way. But I don't think it's reasonable to call what he does "morally repugnant".
4012301 Writing is an unusual hobby, because it requires the perspective of others in order to grow and learn. Judging your own work objectively is often incredibly difficult because of your proximity to it, and so editors and critics are a crucial part of becoming a better writer.
I personally think that Titanium Dragon does a good job of outlining why he doesn't like a given story, and stating that in reasonably objective terms. Obviously critique and review is going to involve subjectivity, but I wouldn't follow TD if I thought he did a bad job of it.
I've always said that the difference between a bad author and a good one is not how well one writes: one is willing to improve and the other is not. I agree with what 4013244 said: posting something publicly is an invitation to be criticized. How the authors respond to that criticism is their own business, and it is true that part of being an author is learning which criticism to take to heart and which to ignore. But having more feedback available to you can only help matters. Posting something for free doesn't mean it is immune to criticism, because time is still a resource.
If you think that TD is a bad reviewer, you are absolutely entitled to your opinion. Fiction is a subjective medium, and opinions aren't mutually exclusive. But saying he's a bad reviewer because he dislikes things that you like, or because he often reviews the works of you or your friends, is immature at best, and petty and hostile and worst.
4012301
4013244
4013319
If someone asked me not to review their stuff, I wouldn't (and have done so on at least one occaision that I remember). I've stopped reviewing stuff from people who got very upset when I reviewed their stuff, and unfollowed them and made a note on my spreadsheet not to read or review their stuff because they don't want feedback (it ain't like I'm going to run out of stuff to read; it is kind of unfortunate, as one of the people who got really upset was a decent writer).
Out of about 750 reviews overall, having only a couple people get that upset seems like the overwhelming majority of people, even if it hurts a little bit to get negative feedback at times, appreciate getting it. People thank me for reviewing their stuff, positive or negative, and I thank people for reviewing my stuff, positive or negative. Sometimes it leads to conversations with authors; sometimes it doesn't.
Honestly, though, I'm with Bad Horse here; if you're posting something on the Internet where there is a comments section, you're asking for reactions and feedback to your work. This is one of the great things about the Internet; you can communicate with and talk to and interact with people. Moreover, FIMFiction has a general culture of giving people feedback, and sometimes that is going to be "I didn't like this story because of blah, blah, and blah", and that's okay. Sometimes it helps you improve that story; sometimes it helps you improve your future works; sometimes it just helps you understand your audience better.
That's how virtually all reviewers function - they just start doing reviews. That's how most video game reviewers got their start - they started reviewing video games in their blog or whatever and then realized "Hey, I could make money doing this," and got in contact with people/befriended people in the media and then got jobs doing it for websites. There is no "certificate of being a real reviewer" - you just do it, and your audience is more or less what determines whether or not you're actualy any good at it. The fact that people actually read my reviews - hundreds of them! - suggests to me that I have a decently sized audience of people who think I'm good at it. I've gotten stories that I recommended up into the popular stories box. I may have helped get some stories featured. I don't really know.
But that says people think I have a worthwhile opinion on things often enough that it is worth reading my reviews.
And some people choose to read the stories I didn't recommend, or give a "Eh, you might like this, but I didn't" to, because my review pointed it out to them, or it sounded like something that they would like, even though I didn't.
My reviews are not just an up or down; they're supposed to explain what I thought about the story.
Moreover, I think you're kind of running into a problem here that a lot of people don't understand - namely, comedy is both hard and non-universal.
Prak and I, for instance, have pretty divergent tastes in terms of comedy; while there is stuff we agree on, a large fraction of comedic works are things we differ on. Understanding why Prak enjoys stories like Pop Goes the Bunny and I don't is actually valuable to me, because it tells me about things that other people find funny that I end up not being as amused by. Understanding things that other people find funny that you don't can be helpful to guiding your own sense of humor and improving the appeal of your own works.
But if Prak didn't do reviews, I'd never have known that he enjoyed Pop Goes the Bunny, I never would have read it, and I wouldn't have been like "Okay, so, the running gag here worked for people. Why didn't it end up working for me?" And I do understand why he enjoyed it, even if I didn't enjoy it as much myself - the running gag kept working for him, while for me, the pacing of the story made it feel too long, and by the point I got to the end of the story, the repeated absurdity of the descriptions of Angel exploding like a fleshy handgrenade had worn thin. But other people enjoyed it all the way through to the end. Other people have a grater tolerance for the running joke going on than I did.
Thinking about stuff like this can be valuable, and looking at what succeeds and fails for other people can be useful.
The fact that I didn't like that story doesn't mean it is a bad story (I didn't downvote it, for the record - about half the stories I NR don't get downvotes, but the :| face from me), but it means it wasn't a good story for me.
Likewise, Prak didn't like Apple Shampoo. But let's look at what reviewers had to say about Apple Shampoo:
Griffon/Dream:
Present Perfect:
Lord Sylus:
Prak:
And from the story:
Fernesh:
JustAnotherTimelord:
FanOfMostEverything:
Sapidus3:
Bradel:
That's a pretty wide gamut of responses. So who is right, and who has no taste in comedy?
The answer is... well, no one, really. The story worked well for some people as being a fluffy, silly comedy, with the silly first scene leading into the silly second scene, and the whole thing just being kind of silly, as Rarity ineptly covers for herself and gets herself into trouble, while the audience thrives on the schadenfreude and silly dialogue. Other people walked in expecting that their expectations would be subverted, and were disappointed because the story wasn't a subversion - Rarity smelled like apples for exactly the reason that you'd expect from the cover art and description and tags, and so they were disappointed when what they thought was the entire point of the story ended up not paying off for them. And one person got double subverted - they expected a subversion, so when the story subverted their expectation of a subversion, it worked for them.
It has a solid upvote:downvote ratio and nearly 8000 views. It is certainly an enjoyable piece for many. But it isn't the best thing I've ever written, and I can understand why people would be disappointed by the lack of subversion.
Personally, I still enjoy it, and I'm still more proud of
than I really should be, but it makes me smile, and it made a lot of other people smile. So I consider it a success. It isn't perfect. I can do better now (and, in fact, have). But I don't regret writing it and I'm happy a new person finds it every once in a while and smiles.
The thing is, there's nothing wrong with people liking or not liking a story, and when you get a wide gamut of responses, you can learn more about people and how they feel about it.
Feedback - both in the form of reviews and comments - is helpful. Knowing that the story being too straightforward bothered some people is useful information, and knowing that some people expect subversions from stuff like that is not bad information. It helped me understand why some stories worked for me and others didn't.
No good will come out of being upset that people didn't like your story. And if someone doesn't like something I write, knowing why is useful - if not for that story, potentially for stories to come.
The thing is, the more reviewers there are, the more you can cross-compare and look at what worked and what didn't. Even as prolific as Present Perfect, Dream, Chris, and I are, we still don't review the overwhelming majority of pony stories. Most stories are lucky to get one review, if that. Only the upper echelons of writers can consistently rely on getting even one review for their stories, let alone 2-3. Aquaman has 806 followers and is a good writer. Only 14 of his 21 stories have even one review, though some have multiple (Plural possessive has 6, Far from the Tree has 8). Archonix is another good writer with 737 followers. He's written 18 stories. 5 of them have reviews. Five. Bad Horse has 33 stories listed on his profile; 23 have reviews. He has 1300 followers and knows multiple reviewers, and we still don't review everything he writes!
Heck, Monochromatic regularly gets featured, has gone all the way up to 1,031 followers, and has been writing huge amounts of stuff in the era where reviewers were operating and still only 13 of 27 stories have reviews, and most only have one.
Every day, I see a post in the writer's group, or authors helping authors, or wherever else, where there are new people who are begging for someone - anyone - to leave them a comment and tell them what they thought about their story.
If you don't like my reviews - or anyone else's reviews - the best solution is to write your own! Talk about the stories. Talk about what worked for you and what didn't. Add your voice to the chorus of voices, so that people can see things from more than one angle. The more reviewers, the more points of view people have to consider - both the authors and the audience.
I endeavour not to insult writers in my reviews, and I don't think that I do - I learned my lesson back in 2014 on that, and just how to come off as an asshole online.
Sometimes, I do point out problems I see in an author's writing which end up consistently bothering me. When I talk about, say, what weaknesses I see in Estee's writing, I'm not doing it for the purpose of picking on Estee - I'm doing it to try and explain what it is that I'm seeing, where it is that I'm coming from, why it is that I don't like some of their stuff (and remember, I have liked more of Estee's stories than I have disliked, and one of their stories is one of my favorite stories on the site).
Sometimes, my reviews are negative, but that is the nature of not liking a story and seeing that it has problems and examining what it was that bothered me about the piece. I'm not trying to be down on the author - I'm trying to explain what is wrong with the work. And while, yes, I understand that our work can be personal, that doesn't mean that I (or anyone else) who is saying that they don't like or care for something are trying to hurt or insult the author.
Understanding why a story worked - and why it didn't - is really what being a good reviewer is all about in my eyes, what it was that made you react in the way that you did. Explaining this to the audience is the most useful thing, because when they look at it, they can say "Oh, that sounds like it is right up my alley too!" or "Oh, I think I like that, actually" or "Oh dear, that doesn't sound like my sort of thing at all." It isn't just about the recommendation at the end (though that is useful as well), it is about the reaction to the work.
This is one of the reasons that I really like Cleverpun's reviews, incidentally - the whole "What worked, what didn't" is very explicit about what it is that... well, worked and didn't work. The fact that they have high standards also means that they're unlikely to send me off after a story that is kind of mediocre, which is nice as well.
You cannot guarantee that your tastes will fall in line with those of others. But you can at least expose the reasons why your tastes might differ. And indeed, it is possible that two people will dislike or enjoy the same work for entirely different reasons.
It is when I fail to actually explain what it was about a story that made me feel the way I did about the piece that I am really failing as a reviewer, as then, all I'm really doing is saying "read this" or "don't read this" to the audience.
If my reviews upset you, you're free not to read them. But if you feel like I'm missing stuff, why not write reviews of your own to explain why stuff is actually totally awesome? At the very least, another point of view is always valuable.
4012301
4013319
4013244
Incidentally, the way I found a lot of the good writers on the site initially was pretty much exactly this - I found Green, A World Without Rainbows, Applejack's Love, Eternal, Composure, Duel Nature, Twilight's List, and The Games We Play from recommendations on TV Tropes. Those were the first few fanfics I read (along with Background Pony and Fallout: Equestria) and they got me hooked. I then looked at other things written by those writers - Kits, Absolute Anonymous, and Eakin in particular - and then ended up stumbling onto stories like Blueshift's Two Peas in a Pod, The Descendant's Variables, Aurora's Morrow, Tumbleweed's work, Cupcake's work, ect. via following through from things people said in various places there. I found Benman's Mortal, Norm de Plume's Plucked from the Air... and eventually managed to stumble onto Bookplayer.
And then bookplayer had her AppleDash fic recommendation thing (the AppleDash primer) which lead me to not only her, but ObabScribbler, bats, HoofBitingActionOverload, Bad Horse, Ebon Mane, and a number of other people. And then it kept on rolling and roling, as Bad Horse and HoofBitingActionOverload and Bats all lead me on to still more people.
Recommendations are pretty much how I ended up IN the fandom, because I found a ton of great authors and great stories right off the bat, both via recommendations directly from people's posts on FIMFiction and TV Tropes, as well as via spying on people's favorites stories lists on the basis of "Well, these people are good, they probably have good taste."
I mean, just looking at the first people I followed, I managed to quickly find a huge number of great writers which provided me with a huge amount of great stuff right off the bat. And it is all because a chain of recommendations to good stories got me more and more and more of the great writers.
Without that initial seed, I never would have gotten into pony fanfiction.
I've been meaning to write some fanfiction primer posts which could serve the same function as Bookplayer's AppleDash primer did for me, but I always feel like I'm not capturing things well enough. But I really should, at some point, at least get a primer together to get people started, because having a "these stories are amazing" primer that leads people to 10-20 of the best stories from the best writers will help people get started out on the right foot. I think being able to find your way to the best writers is very important. And the more people who have stuff like that up on their pages, the more likely it is that people will find at least one of them and get hooked.
4013714 Roger Ebert once said (paraphrased since I can't find the full quote), that as a critic/reviewer it wasn't his job to tell people if something was good or not. Rather, he was there to tell them if they would like it.
Now obviously, one can make an effort to say as much about the work as possible so the reader can make an informed decision. But it's going to involve some subjectivity. If you disagree with a reviewer's opinions, it is going to make it harder for their reviews to help you, and vice versa, regardless of how well-written and comprehensive they are.
"In my reviews, I feel it's good to make it clear that I'm not proposing objective truth, but subjective reactions; a review should reflect the immediate experience." -- Roger Ebert
There is a difference, however, to having different taste from a particular reviewer and being hostile to the criticism in general. I, too, have a list of authors who reacted hostilely/immaturely to criticism and thus won't waste my time reviewing. The audience loses out when that happens, of course, but that's the cost of dealing with petty people.
Also, point of order: comparing the percentage of a user's stories that have been reviewed and their follower count isn't necessarily a good illustration of your point. There could be lots of reasons why a given person doesn't have a lot of their work reviewed (like how Monochromatic tends to write stories that all cover the one subject). I agree with your point--that having more reviews is better for cross-comparison--but not with how you chose to illustrate it.
Short version: yes, I agree
PURELY ADDRESSING BAD HORSE AND CLEVERPUN: There seems to be a confusion here between me stating that I dislike public humiliation and that I dislike criticism. I think criticism is very important. I deplore when it's done as a seperate, unaffiliated medium for a seperate, unaffiliated fanbase. That's not criticism for the author's benefit, that's criticism for the reviewer's benefit.
4013244
I also didn't say post positive comments only. If you have problems with a story, the comments section is a much better place to do it or even PM in some more niggling cases (IE spelling and grammar sporadic issues). Criticism is very important, for all the reasons you said and more. Public humiliation less so.
Which is, astonishingly, what the vote ratio and the story's comments are for, and not the highly inflated regard of a single individual. Bad reviews should not be seen as a benefit to the community if it's a detriment to the individual, especially if the individual is the one providing the original content. That's biting the hand that feeds you at best. Public shaming is not a key feature in this transaction.
I'll answer this quote with a quote I quoted in a blog about opinions on opinions. With me so far?
4013319
The comments section of a story exists and is only seen by the author, other people who have seen the story, and people who might genuinely have read the story regardless.
Thus this sort of public, unaffiliated review serves two purposes: To publicly advertise stories that you might have overlooked, and to publicly shame stories you might have overlooked. Guess which is the one I have a problem with.
I had a very long list of reasons, but I had to run it by a moderator before I posted the comment, and he made me take it out.
Comments like this might be a good example though of some of the issues I have.
ADDENDUM:
4013716
This talks entirely about positive reviews. This is something that can be done and done well, like by the Seattle's Angel's group and, to a lesser but greater extent, the RCL. Equestria Daily also served that function to a degree.
I argue that the use of negative reviews does not add inherent value to the use of positive reviews, just like the use of positive reviews does not justify publicly dismissive negative reviews.
4014728
What does the linked- to comment have to do with reviewing a story?
That was "TD pontificating about random crap in response to other people's off-topic comments", not "TD reviewing a story".
Yes, I am sometimes too aggressive when I am correcting people. Especially when I'm annoyed by someone talking about stuff they don't understand very well, and especially when they're misinforming people. Duty calls and all that.
imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png
The sort of person who does that is the kind of person who wants other people to walk on eggshells. I sometimes half-jokingly say one of my hobbies is arguing with people on the Internet. I'm also pretty bad at holding grudges, which is why I keep forgetting that... someone... has me blocked. And I'm not even joking, I don't remember their name. Again.
Eggshell distributors are people who want others to walk on eggshells around them to avoid offending them, or to "avoid offending others".
If you don't like people who spread around eggshells, why are you doing it yourself?
Because that is precisely what you're doing by suggesting that people should ask permission before posting a review of a story.
If someone wants me not to review their stories, all they have to do is ask, and I will unfollow them and won't read or review their stories ever again (unless required to by a contest I'm judging or something, but frankly, if you submit something to a contest I'm judging, you're pretty much saying you're okay with that anyway
). If someone doesn't feel confident in me reading their stories, then clearly they know something I don't about their quality, and don't think I'll like them. If they don't think I'll like 'em, they're probably right, and so I'd be wasting my time reading them.
The purpose of my reviews is not to publicly shame people. The one time I did something even remotely akin to that with a review post was before I started regularly doing reviews all the way back in 2014, and people called me on it, and I apologized for it to everyone involved. As far as I know, we're all cool. If we're not, they never told me.
Not recommending a story is not public shaming. Nor is stating that you didn't like a story, nor is pointing out issues with a story.
There is a crucial difference between public shaming and criticism.
The most valuable commodity people have is time. Our free time is at least as valuable to us as the time we spend working; if it wasn't, we'd spend that time working.
If you spend two hours reading a story, that's worth at least two hours of your working time. If it isn't, why did you read that story instead of working to earn money, or do something else with those two hours?
4014731
Getting to that. I linked it because it shows you routinely have a disregard for the author, enough so to write a longer-than-2,000 word rant in someone's comment section entirely unrelated to the story on milk just so you could go after someone else.
I was going to explain that more in a second comment addressing you specifically, but I haven't had my coffee and I just woke up after sleeping some 18 hours or so, so picking further internet fights at the moment would be a very bad idea.
4014738
That is completely unrelated to reviews, so I'm not even sure why you're bringing it up.
Why do you even follow me if you're so upset with me that you want to write a bunch of stuff "that a moderator made you take out"?
Do you just really like my stories?
Or do you enjoy my other blog posts, or my recommended stories review posts?
Or are you just having a bad day and feeling a bit cranky?
If it is the last one, I understand - goodness knows I sometimes end up pontificating when I'm tired and do very little self-editing when I do so.
Also, I added a bunch to the post below in response to stuff.
FYI, if you ever feel like I'm being too aggressive in a comment or whatever, feel free to send me a note about it. If I'm coming off as overly aggressive or insulting or condescending or whatever, let me know. I've had people send me notes before for comments that came off as being mean-spirited or aggressive or ornery and I edited the comment to dial it back/apologize.
4014742
I don't follow you. I follow Chuck Finley, and clicked the link in his comment section. Which is usually the case of why I end up reading these.
4014748
Ah, fair enough. Explains your dead dove response.
Anyway, FWIW, I am interested in eventually getting around to The Mare Who Once LIved on the Moon, once you're finished with it. I liked your Rarity poker game story and enjoyed what I read of Demense enough to follow it, so I'm interested in what you end up doing with your new, improved writing technology.
4013714
Thing is, you've talked about on how reviewers helped you personally -- but you've made damn sure to only talk about the positive influence of the good reviews.
I don't have anything aginst you personally, TD -- but I think the problem here is less on what you do and more how you do. I don't share MrNumbers' opinions on reviewing, and we've argued about this a couple times.
I have a really strong opinion on how criticising should be done. In the perfectly reasonable case that you didn't click on the link -- I believe in sugarcoating, and being nice. I believe in explaining what didn't work, but I also think that you need to say it in an extremely careful way, so as not to hurt the author's feelings.
There's a fucking art to reviewing. I don't leave negative comments on stories, nor do I downvote, because quite simply I know I lack the ability to really offer anything to the author.
I want to avoid a super long comment, so I'll go straight to the point: I think there's a contradiction in what you do and what you say you do. Put it simply: nobody is going to listen to someone who hurts their feelings. That is just not going to happen. People will reply to the negative review with nice words, but most of the time they won't really listen to what you say, or won't really think about it twice. They'll just have a general feeling that you disliked it. They will remember, however, the positive reviews.
Because one gives you an ego boost, and the other just fucks you up. When you quote a bad review, you explain it as people having different tastes in comedy, not as you doing something wrong -- that is the general attitude. Because when a comment slams somebody (ESPECIALLY in a blog, where you diver the attention from the story itself to the comment, making the reviewer the protagonist) the author doesn't listen. The author doesn't learn. If you want to really help the author, you write the review in a way that makes them learn, not in a way that does nothing but resent them.
You can say that the review is for the audience (a point that's been mentioned in this discussion), in which case being as unsugarcoaty as possible is the way to go. This is for the readers, and they only want the harsh, cold truth. But that argument is invalid. You link the review in a comment that you send to the author -- instead of just leaving the review there -- and you do it twice, in fact. So it's clearly meant for the author. But it's written for the audience.
Bottom-line: the reviews you write won't teach anything, because people are not going to listen to you. Comments like this:
This alienates the author. Maybe you're entertaining an audience with this kind of comment, but you're not helping the writer.
4014751
My reviews are not primarily written for authors, but for the audience. Most of the people who read these blog posts aren't the people who wrote the stories. That doesn't mean there isn't anything useful here for the authors - there often is. But the primary purpose of these posts is not generally to go into the minuate of editing or whatever. I will sometimes give advice, but more often it is about what ended up going wrong or right for me, what worked and what didn't.
Writing reviews for authors is editorial work. That's not, generally speaking, what I'm doing. I do sometimes do go through and talk about particular issues with stories - I've done it before - as well as talk about particular things which were done well. I do dissect stuff like that in some cases.
But review posts like this - Recommended Story Reviews, Read It Now Reviews, Read It Later Reviews - are directed at the audience, not at the author.
Authors do benefit from reviews like this - they're seeing it from the audience's perspective. But they're not the same sort of feedback you'd give if you were editing for an author.
This is the sort of review I give in the Writeoff:
This is very different, as this is directed to the writer of the piece rather than an audience.
Somewhere in the realm of 200-400 people read my review posts. 5 of them are the authors. One of them is me. The other 200-400 are the audience.
I put up those notices for several reasons, but one is to notify them that they got a review. I don't put the review in the comments section because the review is intended for the audience, not for the author, and addressing the audience of a story in the comments section of a story is kind of a dick move, especially if your post is a "don't read this story" post, ultimately. It is also pointless to put there, because people generally read the comments after they read the story.
But when I get reviews, I like knowing about it (and I do actually check the Master Review Sheet periodically, and get excited when someone adds one of my stories to a reviewed bookshelf or tells me they wrote a review or whatever). I read every review anyone posts of any of my stories. I read every comment people post on my stories. I try and respond to most of them, because I want to engage with people.
I'll also add that the one time I forgot to put up those notifications, I had two authors complain that I wrote reviews of their story and didn't tell them about them. They thought I was trying to hide them or something. So it isn't like people don't want to know.
Yes, that was a kind of smarmy review. I don't think OCalhoun was mad about it, though, given their response. I probably should have thought about it more before posting it.
That said, I hope it got across my point - the kissiness did not ultimately feel very natural. I linked to the Alien Brain Worms thing because that was the problem that the story had.
Contrary to what you seem to expect, I have people thank me for reviewing their stories, ask me for additional feedback about specific issues, ask me to review other stories... I even have random people ask me to review their stories, even knowing that I don't recommend most stories.
Generally speaking, I've found my reviews to be an overall positive experience. Most people are happy to get feedback at all, and even if I don't like it, they seem happy that I took the time to read their story and say what I thought about it.
Yeah, it does suck a bit when someone reviews my story and doesn't like it. But that's life, you know? I learn stuff from what people say in reviews. Knowing what other people really thought is nice.
4014731
Alright so there's a lot of new stuff here, most notably:
Maybe in other contexts, certainly. But remember that I said it was a quote?
The quote was from PA' Tycho Brahe, on critics. About critics.
Please don't twist my words to support your own argument when they have a rigid, established meaning. Maybe in other contexts, certainly, it means what you're claiming, but that would be a separate argument. But in this instance, no. Especially when you do such a good job in this section of your comment explaining why I think it applies to you.
Fantastic.
Yet you'll end a review with the summation:
You find it boring? Sure. But that's the most blunt summation you could have put it as, and you've put that blunt summation on a public facing blog you're intending to be read by a lot of people, you would hope.
But I'm sure the criticism will inspire the author to be less boring with their experimental pieces next time, eh?
Right, not recommending it isn't publicly shaming. You accomplish this by saying nothing. That's not what you do.
Publicly telling people a work is not worth reading is.
The criticism, then, is not telling the author to improve, but telling your audience their story is not worth their time, and that's where a line is crossed.
Point ceded. Rebuttal? You're arguing that you're saving people time by telling them to avoid certain stories, telling what stories not to read then, which significantly undermines some of your prior arguments.
Or, most notably, contradicting what Bad Horse says you do.
EDIT
Then why would asking permission from an author first be so hard for you, if people are so willing?
4014762
Filtering the featured story box is useful - the featured story box is a useful tool, but a lot of stories that make it in there end up not being all that great. It isn't always readily apparent whether a story will end up panning out or not. Knowing what the stories are really like and how someone else reacted to them is useful for determining whether or not you should read them.
Yes, people sometimes don't read stories on my recommendation. And that's not a bad thing. Sometimes people do read a story I don't recommend anyway because my description of it interested them, or they think it sounded like something they'd like even though I didn't.
And sometimes they'll avoid it because "Yuck, that sounds bad."
I'll note that I'm hardly the only person who does this - Obs does his wackybox reviews, and John Perry used to do "John Perry vs the Featured Story Box", which often had him pointing out that a lot of the stories in it weren't very good.
Moreover, a story fresh off the presses with a favorable review will get an extra surge of attention directed at it - that's why when someone releases a good story, I'll often go out of my way to complete a review post for that day or the next day to try and get it featured. Ever notice how many review posts I have that end up coming out on the same day or the day after a good writer releases a good story?
I'm deliberately promoting those stories. And there's nothing wrong with that, either.
From what I can tell, though, my recommendations mean a lot more than my NRs - I've never noticed a major negative hit on a story's views after I NRed it, but I have noticed a significant boost on some stories after a positive review. I suspect I do knock off a few views, but I doubt it is more than a dozen or so at most - most people likely would never have read the story in the first place.
It isn't public shaming. It is a recommendation to my readers. Public shaming is something like train wreck explorers or something similar.
I use the term "not recommended" because I don't recommend the story. That doesn't mean that no one should read it, just that I don't recommend it, and I do explain why.
I don't publicly shame people. That would be doing something like making a blog post about how someone was an asshole, or airing dirty laundry in public.
Saying "I didn't like this story, and here's why" is a world away from public shaming. If you can't tell the difference, being on a site with a comments section is likely to be hell for you, as almost everywhere allows "I didn't like this, and here's why" comments.
Heck, you're making one of those right now.
4014759
No, they aren't. You've clearly implied they're criticism, and meant to make the author a better writer:
Bad Horse talked about the wonders of criticism, good and bad. You agreed with him, and developed your comment on the basis that he stated -- mainly, that criticism is necessary. Now you say you're not actually giving criticism, but you still call your reviews "reviews", and compare yourself with people who gave you actual feedback to you as an author. You start with one argument, then change to the completely opposite one when I call you on it.
So get a point and stick to it, please. Don't just be reactionary, because then we go nowhere -- is this for the audience or for the authors? If it's for the audience, don't talk about feedback or criticism or improving your story, because that's not what you're doing.
I could say more about the rest of the comment -- that there's a difference between gratitude and politeness, or that lack of drama is not actually a sign of quality, it just means that people are civilized -- but that would just be starting a fight, I suppose.
And, to be honest, if this is for the audience, a not-recommendation is entirely unneeded. At no point did a negative audience-directed review of a fic help anybody. Positive recommendations ("read this") are useful. Negative recommendations ("do not read this") really don't affect the audience. They do hurt the author if they see it, though -- and you make sure they see it -- but I guess it might be slightly more entertaining, and so you get more people following you. At this point, it's a matter of what you think it's more important.
4014774
Reviews are primarily directed at the audience.
They're also useful for the authors.
These are not mutually contradictory things.
It helps every time someone saves their time by not reading a story that isn't recommended. And yes, I do have people thanking me sometimes for reading a story and then explaining what it was about, thus saving them from reading it. I've never been able to notice a large statistical effect from a NR from me, but I know that I have been directly thanked in the comments a few times for saving them the time on a story in the featured story box.
That said, I doubt the effect is very large - stories I recommend get a decent boost, but stories I give NRs to don't suddenly stop getting read. If I had that kind of power, the Featured Story Box would be a very different place.
I'm hardly the only person who gives stories NRs - Obs and John Perry both have done their own featured story box reviews and often talk about flawed stories. Chris, Present Perfect, Cleverpun... a lot of folks who do reviews will grade stories and recommend or not recommend them.
That's how it goes.
I don't usually talk about this much because some people get super butthurt over the idea that someone would DARE to try and save a fraction of someone's lifespan by getting them to steer clear of a story that ended up being disappointing. The thing is, though, we all recognize the value of reviews of movies and video games that suggest that we shouldn't go spending our time and money on them. Sure, fanfics are free, but the time investment is still there. When I play a bad video game, I generally regret the time I lost on it far more than I regret the money I spent.
However, sometimes people read stories that I don't recommend because they thought it sounded good or liked the cut of its jib.
And that's okay.
4014776
You're offering the author feedback that is clearly not meant for him ("I liked this/I did not like this") and you admit you have stolen actual, author-oriented feedback from them with your reviews, by denying them an audience.
Please, note that you edited your comment as I was writing this, and you added:
So that wasn't a flounder. You're perfectly aware that you're damaging the writers of the site with each new recommendation. I won't comment on the apparent prideful tone of that statement, but let it be said that I noticed it, at least.
Please explain me how that is, in any way, useful for the authors. If we agree that your reviews are not for them, then, even if they have some useful stuff, they're not nearly as useful as an actual piece of literary criticism. Like the comments you posted earlier. Which are the ones that helped you grow as a writer.
Yes. I fail to see your point.
At which point you're depriving an author of potential criticism, at which point you again contradict the points Bad Horse was addressing for you.
You're also arguing that positive reviews are okay, something I've never claimed otherwise, but I have claimed does nothing for your argument as it's irrelevant. It's not the issue. It's something you're stating defensively to justify the toxic element I'm actually calling issues on.
Obs also doesn't give a rating, and finds a target audience to recommend the story to, no matter his preference. I fail to see how this comparison justifies anything we're arguing.
Fantastic, your positive reviews help people. I never claimed otherwise, and in fact already cited groups who deal purely in recommendation as a good example of reviewers I appreciate. This comes across as nothing but self-aggrandizement and defensive.
Stay on topic.
And yet:
You simultaneously argue that your Not Recommended doesn't hurt anybody, and is good for the author, while saying you're doing a public service by telling people to avoid a story. You can make either argument and I will address it in kind, but making both arguments is contradictory and, again, disingenuous.
Finally:
I have already stated that I am supporting the notion of criticism and critical comments, supported placing criticism in the story's comments section if criticism was to be made, and specifically distancing it away from public facing blogs intended for your own audience rather than the story's.
Please don't be disingenuous about what I am stating here.
4014779
If I had the sort of absolute dictatorial power over taste that you seem to be ascribing to me, how is it that stories that I don't recommend get featured?
But let's humor you for a moment. Every time someone writes a bad story, you're costing someone a fraction of their lifespan by reading it. If 600 people spend 20 minutes each reading a bad story, that story destroyed about 200 hours of human life - or about 8 days.
If I could really save people 8 days of their lifespans, wouldn't it be worth it?
Heck, this argument is costing you lifespan. Why are you engaging in it?
Tick. Tick. Tick.
You noted with pride in your earlier post that you don't feel like you are capable of doing reviews.
So what makes you think you understand anything about it?
The Dunning-Kruger Effect suggests that by your own admission, you don't understand what you're talking about.
You really just seem like you're trying to win an argument on the Internet right now.
Look, I review stories to try and point people towards what is good and away from what is bad. That's what reviewers do. It is a useful service. If you don't value my opinion, don't read my reviews.
But if you ever read reviews of a book or a movie or a video game before you consider buying it, you understand the value of reviews.
And if you don't, then you probably buy a lot of bad books, movies, and video games.
My goal is not to hurt people, it is to help people.
Authors have no right to viewers. We all are asking people to give up a fraction of their lifespan to read our works. We'd better make it worthwhile for them.
If you don't like what I'm doing, you're welcome to do your own.
4014780
Have you ever used reviews to determine whether or not to go watch a movie, buy a book, or play a video game?
If so, then you understand the value of reviews, including negative ones which influenced you not to watch, say, that awful Fantastic 4 movie.
If not, then you probably waste your time on a lot of crap.
We all have limited time. Even with an infinite lifespan, there's always more to do than there is time to do it in. For mortals, there's even less.
Spending time wisely is important.
So, yeah, there is value to the audience in terms of negative reviews.
That said, negative reviews from me are going to cost an author, at most, a handful of viewers in most cases at best. Why? Because most people don't actually bother to read most stories. On the other hand, a recommendation will net you enough to hit popular stories. And sometimes people will see a negative review and say "Well, I think that sounds good" and read it anyway. In fact, they'll read it because it was brought to their attention. And yes, this does happen sometimes - again, remember, most people don't read most things. I'd be unsurprised if a NR actually increased views simply because it was one more way for someone to click through to a story. That isn't my intention, but it wouldn't surprise me. I have no way of knowing or tracking it.
On the other hand, a review is actual feedback you can use. Most people don't leave feedback. I'd probably have to cost someone hundreds of views to cost them as much feedback as they get from a review post, given the usual rates of commenting on the site.
I'm hardly the dictator of taste on FIMFiction. I'm not even the only reviewer. Chris and PP both do tons of reviews, and plenty of other folks do as well. Chuck's story got featured despite my NR. For all I know, it got featured because of it. "Oh, hey, Chuck wrote a story, I'd better check that out." I'd be totally unsurprised if at least one person had that exact thought process on seeing my review post.
And let's face it - if I do review a story, it means you got at least one more view than you would have otherwise.
I'm not going to stop reviewing stuff. A lot of people like my reviews. I was thanked by several people for writing reviews today alone.
If you don't like it, you're welcome not to read my reviews. You're welcome to write your own reviews! You can do whatever you want in your own reviews. Only give positive reviews? That's totally your prerogative!
I'm not sure what you are hoping to gain out of this.
4014784
You say, at once, your negative reviews do nothing, your negative reviews are good criticism, and that your negative reviews save people time and that your negative reviews don't detract too many readers because they weren't going to read it anyway.
I say this: You're not giving helpful criticism, you're not doing it in the appropriate space, and what you do at the moment hurts people. And that you are proud of this service you are providing. I have also cited that the criticism you perform is not helpful, but derogatory for the sake of entertaining your audience as your goal is not to help the author. You have stated repeatedly you are not doing this for the author so your claims that it is intended to help them is again made in bad faith,
What I am hoping to get out of this is that you stop performing a toxic service in the name of hurting authors for the sake of your own viewership.
At the moment you are hurting people, some of whom are my friends, and I want that to stop.
So keep performing reviews and recommending people. So keep performing criticism of authors that is intended to help the author. My problem is that you conflate the two, and all that does is hurt people.
Please, stop being facetious to cover the weakness of your arguments. Let's stay on point without gratuitous attempts at jokes or meaningless literary cleverness.
Ignoring the rather weird ad hominem-ish tone your reply suddenly took (both this and the second half), I honestly don't see how reading a fic out of your own will means wasting time. If anything, it means that you're wasting time in a slightly different way. The audience was going to read a fic anyway. Your NR just made them move to another fic. In the process, you give a NR and risk hurting an author's feelings.
But now you say you don't have that much power, which is a good point. If we accept it, then why are you still giving NRs? In your own words, they're useless. So they're just hurting the author's feelings. What little power they have, it implies stealing an audience. But they don't really do much, so in the end it's just a slap to the author's face. One can say that, as they didn't steal much audience, they're still useful -- they count as feedback -- but you said they weren't feedback. They're for an audience. And they're written in such a tone that the author is not really going to listen. So we're back at square one.
I'm a writer. I've worked as a prereader countless times. I don't give reviews or negative comments because I don't think I'm good enough to do so unless we're talking in private and I can make sure, with actual face-to-face conversation, that I am not needlessly hurting anybody. A comment is too cold, to "in the open" for me. You write it and you leave -- it lacks humanity.
Even if were completely inpet at reviewing, however, please remember that I've been reviewed before. By you. And I didn't find it useful. I found it flattering, because the reviews were positive, but then again, that's sort of my point all across these messages. I'm not arguing on how to review. I'm arguing on how people react to your reviews.
As for the link you posted: the Dunning-Kruger Effect suggests that, by my own admission, I understand what I'm talking about. I'm apparently underestimating my abilities, go figure. It sort of implies you are greatly overestimating your ability to be useful. I don't understand why this link was supposed to be relevant.
You also have no right to do reviews, if we're using that argument. I'm going to ignore the rest of your comment because, really, there's no argument there, it's just you apparently trying to make me mad. For... some reason.
4014796
If people have a problem with my reviews, they're welcome to talk to me and ask not to get reviewed anymore.
If you don't want me to review your stories anymore, I won't. I'll unfollow you and will remove all your stories from my read later list.
If you don't care if I review your stuff, then there's nothing more to be said. People find my reviews useful. If you don't, don't read them.
4014799
You don't understand.
I have the right to write. That's guaranteed by the Constitution. As long as I agree to the terms of the site, they allow me to write here. That's a privilege I am granted. That's true of both stories and reviews.
I do not have the right to force anyone else to read anything I write. The site does not force anyone to read anything here.
The fact that you conflate personal action (writing) with forcing other people to read what you write suggests a fundamental lack of understanding of what basic human rights are, or a lack of understanding of what I said.
I'm not being nasty or trying to make you angry.
If you don't want me to review your stories, you're welcome to ask me to. I'll remove all your stories from my read later list.
Otherwise, there's nothing more to discuss. People find my reviews useful. If you don't, you're welcome not to read them.
4014805
You don't ask for consent. People can't ask you not to review them in advance, and many would would fear coming across as poor sports or insecure or thin skinned.
Your saying that people can ask you not to do a thing seems to require that you've already done it. You can't justify it, you can't defend it, you can only state that you'll stop doing it in some specific cases after the fact and hoping that will placate me. That not doing it to me should satisfy me, when that has never been the issue.
Stop hurting people and claiming it's helping. That's it.
EDIT: Based on Titanium's final reply, I'm ending this here. So if someone wants to continue this because they disagree with me, PM me rather than drag it out here as a courtesy, probably.
4014811
Lack of understanding of what you said, then. I must have missed some context cue. If you were talking in actual legal terms, instead of just explaining that authors are not inherently entitled to be read just by the virtue of existing, then that was clearly my miss.
I don't quite grasp how that's relevant, mind you, but a miss is a miss. You do, in fact, have the Constitutional right to write. You're not inherently, by the virtue of God and Nature, gifted with the moral obligation (or ethical permission) to write reviews, but you do have the law by your side, as long as you follow the site's ToS. Good argument, and I'm sorry for my flounder.
So bottom line: people aren't entitled to everybody always reading their stories. Okay. Now, that non-sequitur aside -- NRs hurt authors, or at best, risk hurting authors. That is my point. I'd like it if you addressed the entirely of the comment, not just the one sentence within which you found a flaw -- especially if said sentence has no real connection with the rest of the argument.
4014816
You don't need to ask for consent to express an opinion.
You are trying to make the world a worse place by suggesting that it should be necessary to do so.
I offer people the option to not be reviewed by me as a courtesy, because a lot of people want reviews, and if someone does not want them, I have plenty of other reading material. I could continue to review someone who asked me to not do so, but I see no reason to do so given the circumstances.
Plenty of people appreciate what I do.
You're allowed not to. But quit bothering me about it.
4014819
NRs benefit authors by giving them feedback they wouldn't get otherwise.
If NRs hurt authors, they do so by helping readers by steering them away from weaker stories and onto stronger ones. Even if someone read nothing but stories I gave a WR or above to, they'd have over 7 million words to read, and that number keeps rising. They are, therefore, helping the writers of the better stories, and helping the readers, and only hurting the writers of the weaker stories.
To not give NRs would hurt the writers of the better stories, and hurt the readers, but help the writers of the weak stories.
That's a lot of people benefiting from a very small number of people being potentially harmed in a pretty small way (too small to readily detect by looking at viewership numbers), with the people who might lose a small number of readers still getting the benefit of extra feedback.
EDIT: The point I was trying to make WRT: views was that you aren't entitled to views. People viewing your story is their choice, not the author's, so I'm not "taking anything away" from them, because the views were never the author's to begin with. It is the choice of the reader to read a story or not.
4014762
He's not twisting your words. You're distributing eggshells. You're telling someone who's doing a free community service to stop doing it because you don't like it. You're not acknowledging that there's room for debate.
I'm calling bullshit one this whole "reviews aren't helpful for the author" argument simply because reviews like these aren't primarily meant to benefit the author in the first place—they're for recommending the stories to people who will read them. TD's blog posts provide readers with his opinions on whether particular stories are or are not worth the time of reading them. Sure, an author can derive some sort of criticism with which to improve their technique, but if that's what such an author truly wants, then they're much better off seeking private help in a one-on-one interaction.