:(

[sherryillk]

I just got admonished by a mod on the Snupin gift exchange website. How very mortifying! Someone should have told me critiques are generally considered bad form when it comes to gift fics! Why has this never come up before? If I had known, I would have been more careful! :( Gah, this has me all depressed now... T_T I don't like people thinking I did things maliciously when I was just making a comment about a story... If you state a truth about something, it doesn't really make it bad or good, right? I thought it was just constructive... Apparently not. Oh well, I'll just refrain from reviewing anything that isn't awesome anymore since apparently it's considered bad etiquette. :(

Although truthfully, this sorta sapped the joy out of things... I don't really want to leave any more comments now. Who knows what would be considered bad and get me kicked off the site? I love Snupin fics! That'll be such a crushing blow... :( Anything short of glowing has a chance of being considered critical... I went and deleted all the other reviews that I've made that weren't of me raving about the fic. *so don't want this to happen again*

*wants to crawl under a rock*

Now I'm going to be self-conscious about all the reviews I leave for the various gift exchanges going on now... I feel like someone should have posted something somewhere about not leaving constructive reviews for gift exchanges. It wasn't even a mean one and was very mild in my mind. I didn't even think anything about it... But obviously it's raised a red flag so I guess it wasn't as tame as I thought it was. :( Was this just understood? Did I miss something that said "don't say anything if you can't say anything nice, even if it's true and said neutrally"? Gah, I feel so horrible about this... T_T *totally fails*

Comments

[mithril-56.livejournal.com]

I don't understand how you can have a competition involving written works without critiquing/reviewing going on. How do they determine who 'wins' if they don't do this? Isn't quality part of what is being assessed? It doesn't seem like much of a competition if that element isn't considered. I've never seen that fandom or the event, though, so don't know how they run it.

[mahaliem.livejournal.com]

It doesn't seem like much of a competition

That's the beauty of it - it isn't much of a competition. It's all a pretext for writing stories with a particular 'ship and everyone who reads that 'ship wins.

There is voting, but that's entirely anonymous and scores for individual stories and categories aren't revealed so there's no 'winning' there, either. Team standings were announced, but that was it. If you're at all interested, the voting is explained here - http://community.livejournal.com/hd_worldcup/618.html.

If it ever became a real competition, I definitely wouldn't participate.