Story notes/warnings - Common courtesey?

POSTED BY: AgentRouka
UPDATED: Tuesday, February 20, 2007 06:10
VIEWED: 9589
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WILLIAMJAMESW

Thursday, January 18, 2007 12:37 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by EmpireX:

(snippage)

On another note, a little off-topic, perhaps... How the heck do some of the pieces of crap posted in the BSR get rated at 9 or 10?!? Seriously! Some of you are way too nice. What's the point of having a rating scale if people aren't going to use it honestly? If a fic has ridiculous spelling errors and is written in some bizare format by someone with very little understanding of grammar... Should you really be giving them a 9 just to be nice??? If you don't want to leave negative feedback, fine. Don't leave feedback. But don't give an undeserved score.

Speaking of the ratings; is there any way to actually use them? I don't see any way of sorting or searching by rating. (It would be interresting to see if there is anything here with a 1 or 0.)
Of course, most of the stories here are of quite good quality; but there have been the occasional (few and far between) stories that were nearly unreadable, and it would be nice to use the ratings to weed them out.

I could stand to hear a little more.

QWERTY

Monday, January 22, 2007 1:57 AM

Quote:
On another note, a little off-topic, perhaps... How the heck do some of the pieces of crap posted in the BSR get rated at 9 or 10?!? Seriously! Some of you are way too nice. What's the point of having a rating scale if people aren't going to use it honestly? If a fic has ridiculous spelling errors and is written in some bizare format by someone with very little understanding of grammar... Should you really be giving them a 9 just to be nice??? If you don't want to leave negative feedback, fine. Don't leave feedback. But don't give an undeserved score.

Wow, that's a little harsh...just because a fic may not be up to *your* standards, doesn't mean that it doesn't have an audience that appreciates it. Though I'm one of those that if I don't like a fic I more than likely won't leave a negative feedback/rating, but again that doesn't mean that other folks don't like it...

EMPIREX

Monday, January 22, 2007 3:58 AM

You're right, qwerty. That probably was a little harsh. But it really does seem like the majority of fics here are rated 9 or 10... And when I compare some fics that were rated 9s to other fics here that were rated 9s... It seems a bit unfair to rate them the same when one author clearly surpasses the other in craft.

I've come across writers in the X-Files and Firefly fic community that are ridiculously talented. A few of them *are* writers in real life but most of them aren't. At any rate, some of the fics I've read are of *publishable* quality and these are the fics (in *my* mind, at least) that deserve to be rated the highest. Doesn't matter what it's about. If a fic is well written, the characters are *in-character*, the dialogue is sharp, the story is fresh and original, if it's grammatically correct... IF IT'S LEGIBLE!... If it makes you go, "Wow! That was awesome!", then give it a 9 or 10.

When I come across a fic that is rated a 9 and it reads like a 13 year old wrote it... What am I supposed to think? I've read fics that, while I appreciated the effort the author put into it and they were somewhat enjoyable, I've rated them anywhere from 5-8. This was because they needed work. Maybe it was in a bizare format and I couldn't tell who was saying what. Maybe the characters sounded like they were fifteen instead of thirty. Whatever the reason, if it's undeserving of a high rating, I'm not going to give it one. I mean, we all went to high school, right? Did the whole lit crit thing. If something is well written, you can just tell. I guess I hold fanfic up to the same criteria as a book I would read. Is that unfair? I don't know. Does that make me a fic-snob? Probably.

AGENTROUKA

Monday, January 22, 2007 3:10 PM

My office day is boring, so... To add another angle...

What are the thoughts about warnings done in certain "code words". Like pairings that are pushed into a new word?

"Rayne" comes to mind. Or "Jaylee". Less often the hair-raising "Maliver" or "Malnara"

Personally, I can't really stand them. They make my teeth hurt.

But find them acceptable because they're all over fandom. You can't really escape seeing them and learning what they mean, so their function as a warning is still fulfilled.

But it seems kind of unhelpful to make such contractions involving the names of original characters that the author made up. Especially if the resulting word sounds like another name entirely.

What's the public opinion about new word formations? It's all the rage in every fandom, apparently?

ARCADIA

Monday, January 29, 2007 6:12 AM

I think its annoying as hell, personally. We'll see how long it lasts, which will hopefull not be much longer. Damn Ben Afflek and Jennifer Lopez. Bennifer. This is all their fault.

Arcadia (aka Greyfable and/or Katie)
www.stillflying.net -- picking up Firefly were Joss left off. We will hold 'til he gets back.

STORMWOLFDAWN

Tuesday, February 20, 2007 6:10 AM

I usually give warnings in my stories, unless it totally gives away the plot. Myself when I read fic there are only a few warnings I would really like and one of them I never see.

I don't like Jayne/Kaylee, River/Mal, or River/Simon fics so pairing warnings are good, I will agree with those especially since it tells me where the Jayne/River fics are so i can go read those hehehe.

But the biggest warning I would love but never get is Mary Sue/Marty Stu warnings. The problem is that most of the author's who write them have no clue that that is what they are writing. So basically if they would just warn me that they have written in an OC that will be warning enough because in the BSR 99% of the time OC=Mary Sue/Marty Stu.

Yes I definitly agree warnings would be nice. They don't always work though, I warned in one of my stories and got flamed big time and personally attacked. It was very hilarious.

I'll be in my bunk-Jayne

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