Time of day death: 5:45
Apr. 14th, 2011 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinYeah, I'm calling it. It's fifteen minutes early but I'm not doing anything productive with those 15 minutes. This wasn't a good day. It wasn't a bad day. Well, it was a blah day that turned good then turned bad.
Final score: 2,500, a fun but very minor site feature, and a resolve that I need to redefine my relationship to the comment section.
2,500 words is less than I could have written. It's less than I should have written. I'm not blaming anyone else for that, and I'm reminding myself that it's still a substantial number of words to write in one day, still larger than King-sized and I still have a chapter ready to be put up tomorrow. (It's not finished, but nothing is ever finished until I post it. That's the way it goes.) My schedule is designed to absorb these kinds of setbacks.
Okay, but the comment section...
Again, I'm not blaming any commenters for what is my personal failing. I told Jack in an email I was closing the site window and wouldn't check it again, and then I went right back and looked. Morbid curiosity. And I re-engaged. Morbid... engagosity.
Not reading the comments at all is not an option. I miss too much when I'm not reading the comments. Getting rid of the comments is also... well, it's not my preferred option. I've had no comments and I've had unmoderated comments. What I need is a basic and fundamental shift in how I approach the comment section.
Now, the risk one runs in moderating comments is the risk of being seen to stifle criticism. But here's where I am right now: criticism isn't the point of the comment section.
I'd say the point of the comment section is to discuss the story, and while that can include criticism... it's not the whole of the thing. I don't think stifling criticism on the comment section would actually hurt that much.
Look, nobody is so great at what they're doing that there isn't some advice that could be given that would improve what they're doing. I'm certainly not.
But we're 500 numbered chapters and a bunch of other stories into this thing. At this point it's safe to say that no one should believe that their advice/critique is the one thing that's going to save this whole thing from collapsing like a house of cards.
...and he's just posted something about how he may not say it very often but he loves the story. Oh my fucking gosh. What is the thought process here? I was thinking of him as being at about a high school level when it comes to literary critique, but now I'm thinking closer to kindergarten: "I like this story, so I'll pull on its pigtails."
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, I'm sick of every chapter getting a running conversation between him and me, or him and other commenters, or some combination thereof, that ends up eating my brain and that I usually end up shutting down. So I've just told him: stop bringing this bullshit into my space or be banned. Sorry, Jack, but at this point it's him or me.
I'll write up new comment guidelines that actually support this kind of thing sometime tonight or tomorrow night. I'm going to try to focus on the positive in them, in encouraging the kinds of comments I'd like to see because the thing is that the commenters who bug the piss out of me also tend to be the ones who dominate the conversation.
Final score: 2,500, a fun but very minor site feature, and a resolve that I need to redefine my relationship to the comment section.
2,500 words is less than I could have written. It's less than I should have written. I'm not blaming anyone else for that, and I'm reminding myself that it's still a substantial number of words to write in one day, still larger than King-sized and I still have a chapter ready to be put up tomorrow. (It's not finished, but nothing is ever finished until I post it. That's the way it goes.) My schedule is designed to absorb these kinds of setbacks.
Okay, but the comment section...
Again, I'm not blaming any commenters for what is my personal failing. I told Jack in an email I was closing the site window and wouldn't check it again, and then I went right back and looked. Morbid curiosity. And I re-engaged. Morbid... engagosity.
Not reading the comments at all is not an option. I miss too much when I'm not reading the comments. Getting rid of the comments is also... well, it's not my preferred option. I've had no comments and I've had unmoderated comments. What I need is a basic and fundamental shift in how I approach the comment section.
Now, the risk one runs in moderating comments is the risk of being seen to stifle criticism. But here's where I am right now: criticism isn't the point of the comment section.
I'd say the point of the comment section is to discuss the story, and while that can include criticism... it's not the whole of the thing. I don't think stifling criticism on the comment section would actually hurt that much.
Look, nobody is so great at what they're doing that there isn't some advice that could be given that would improve what they're doing. I'm certainly not.
But we're 500 numbered chapters and a bunch of other stories into this thing. At this point it's safe to say that no one should believe that their advice/critique is the one thing that's going to save this whole thing from collapsing like a house of cards.
...and he's just posted something about how he may not say it very often but he loves the story. Oh my fucking gosh. What is the thought process here? I was thinking of him as being at about a high school level when it comes to literary critique, but now I'm thinking closer to kindergarten: "I like this story, so I'll pull on its pigtails."
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, I'm sick of every chapter getting a running conversation between him and me, or him and other commenters, or some combination thereof, that ends up eating my brain and that I usually end up shutting down. So I've just told him: stop bringing this bullshit into my space or be banned. Sorry, Jack, but at this point it's him or me.
I'll write up new comment guidelines that actually support this kind of thing sometime tonight or tomorrow night. I'm going to try to focus on the positive in them, in encouraging the kinds of comments I'd like to see because the thing is that the commenters who bug the piss out of me also tend to be the ones who dominate the conversation.