New Idea (Sort Of)

[sr71plt]

This is too good a thread not to jump into.

I agree -- sending out unsolicited edits is not a good idea. It's wasted work, for the most part. If someone wanted an editor, no matter how much his stories needed editing, he would have found one in advance.

SR, I agree that everyone needs an editor. I'm not going to tout my qualifications, but your "Dancing for Each Other" had five clear-cut problems in the first four grafs and a few other debatable points, found on one quick read.

One thing I've learned from my professional editing is humility. Writers cannot edit their own work effectively, and editors -- even multiple editors working on the same prose -- look at things in print and wonder how he/they missed earlier what is so clearly seen later.

Backward, turn backward
O time in thy flight.
I've thought of an edit
I needed last night.

Glad you agree with me that everyone, including me, needs an editor, palisa. Based on that agreement, what is the point of posting that you think you've found mistakes in one of my stories?

No need to answer really--I just find your posting unnecessary and irrelevant to the topic--an invitation to outraged combat, I presume(?) I never claimed my stories were perfect (little is "perfect" even after several edits--this beyond the point that your "right" may not match my understanding of what is "right"), so that has no relevance here that I can see.

(What, do I go looking for one of your stories to tit or tat now? Don't hold your breath on that one.)

Thanks for reading the story, though. Hope you enjoyed it. Do you have one you think I'd enjoy reading? I'd be happy to read it and not say a thing about anything I thought I'd found wrong with it.

 

[LadyCibelle]

Oh, sorry, right. You contributed that early on. And then after I posted an opinion, you stopped contributing to the discussion and started namecalling and personal attack (being the first poster to do so).

Would be happy to see you get back on point on the thread discussion. Think you can start being a moderator and do that? Thanks.

Can I point you to this post?

If really you want me to put on my moderator cap, I will. But you might think LadyC the poster was a breeze compared to LadyC the moderator. If you think I'm a bitch now, don't wish to see me in my moderator role....you'll wish never to have crossed my path.

 

[sr71plt]

Just to be clear about something, SR71 - LadyC hasn't been responding as the moderator in this or any other thread that I've seen. I haven't seen any of your posts removed or altered by her.

She's been responding as a participant and frequent poster in the EF. As a Volunteer Editor, LadyC has a few years of experience in dealing with editing ups and downs on this site and is usually here to offer a shoulder or a laugh. She is a VE and has experiences and advice that she can share with anyone else that posts here.

As a moderator, she is responsible to remove spam or misdirected posts and in the event that some nastiness breaks out, she has the ability to remove the posts and/or thread. This is something that rarely happens - this forum is pretty quiet most of the time and when there is a dust up, everyone wakes up, looks around and settles in to watch the fireworks. I don't know that I've ever seen a serious poster's stuff removed (I've seen ads for penis pictures disappear, but not legitimate posts).

There is a line between participant and moderator and I don't see her crossing it. LadyC has garnered a fair bit of respect on this Forum, but not because anyone is afraid of her moderator powers - her temper may be reknowned but she plays fair in a forum discussion.

If you feel that she is personally attacking you, she is doing so as a particpant in this forum, not as the moderator. If she were picking on you as a moderator, your posts would disappear.

Thanks for the rundown, RogueLurker. Guess we'll just have to see if that jives with how Laurel thinks a moderator should act. It seems quite a bit "off," though, that a moderator would be given the lattitude to be the abusive beserker in discussions on threads the moderator was responsible for. But perhaps that's the custom on this board. As I said, I'll see if that's Laurel's understanding too. Regardless, it's bad behavior.

Of course, if that is the custom here, I'll just have to continue trying to have substantive discussions whether or not Lady C. stops the personal attacks. She'll have to do that attacking on her own, though--plus anyone else she can coax into joining her.

Right off hand, I'd say this thread is played out on points that focus on the topic that was introduced--unless someone else out there has something interesting to add(?) I didn't really see anyone end up with the position that delivery of unsolicited editing was a great idea.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Lord, this grows tedious. And it does so chiefly because of its transparency.

sr71plt, honestly. If you have the experience, skill, and years you've laid claim to, you ought to be ashamed to be selling such a clapped-out line of goods as this:

This, of course, is just the continuation of personal attack--part of a shell game based in Lady C's fear of the topic discussion.

...

Once again, I ask that she stop the personal attacks and contribute to the discussion. She's posted nothing on what's actually under discussion on this thread--she's just attacked me personally.

Given that it's about the tenth or twelfth time I've seen this sort of post from you, and that that number is undoubtedly lower than it might be if I ever bothered to read most of what you post, it seems to be necessary to point out to you that what you're doing would be obvious to a baby.

(1) Adopt an unpleasant and arrogant tone in your communications in hopes that it will discourage any challenges to your claims.

(2) If people act offended by your tone, accuse them of personal attacks and insist that they address the factual content of your communications. Pretend that you are somehow both a professional editor and wholly unfamiliar with the words "tone" and "style."

(3) Maintain the unpleasant and arrogant voice and continue to introduce irrelevant quibbles in hopes that people will find you too tedious to keep arguing with you.

(4) Continue to insist that people address the substance of the thread and not your childish behavior, in hopes thereby of forcing them to continue to submit to your boorish tactics. Ideally, as in the above quote, continue to make that demand even after every person on the thread has agreed that the original topic has been resolved. The fact that the thread substance might have been resolved back on post #5 (as in the "pulled submission" thread) is no reason to stop demanding that people address it; the goal is to prevent people from addressing your own unpleasant behavior while simultaneously using it to try to bore them out of the conversation.

(5) At such time as no one can possibly stand to talk to you for another second, sit back in the warm glow of contentment that comes from a job well done. You've won.

It's difficult to say what's more pitiable in all of this - that the illusion of control is so important to you that you'll sacrifice all sense and civility to maintain it, that you actually imagine that the users of an Internet bulletin board haven't seen this novel tactic in the past and learned an utter contempt for it, or that, to judge from the frequency and confidence with which you engage in this strategy, it's often worked for you in the past. But then, I suppose that one can triumph through any method if one's goals are small enough.

 

[snooper]

... You wouldn't want a brain surgeon giving you a hysterectomy or a master carpenter doing your interior decoration. ...

Becoming either a brain surgeon or a master carpenter requires more than just paper qualifications. I wouldn't want a newly qualified doctor performing difficult and dangerous brain surgery as the first operation (s)he did after graduation day. People learn, as they grow older, that paper qualifications just equip you with tools for a task. Learning to use them properly takes time and experience; we truly learn by our mistakes, and at 68 I am still learning.


What I learned today is to put you on my "ignore" list.

 

[palisa]

Glad you agree with me that everyone, including me, needs an editor, palisa. Based on that agreement, what is the point of posting that you think you've found mistakes in one of my stories?

It was an attempt to penetrate the arrogance with which you approached this thread. Obviously, it didn't work.

And I don't "think" there are mistakes; there are problems. You didn't proof that short story very well.

 

[sr71plt]

So, gangbanging glee aside, the general agreement on the topic of this thread seems to be that it isn't really a great idea to pick someone's story out of the Lit. posted pile, "edit" it, and send it unsolicited back to the author out of the blue--and expect them to receive it as some sort of gift from heavenly angels. I agree with that.

 

[LadyCibelle]

Becoming either a brain surgeon or a master carpenter requires more than just paper qualifications. I wouldn't want a newly qualified doctor performing difficult and dangerous brain surgery as the first operation (s)he did after graduation day. People learn, as they grow older, that paper qualifications just equip you with tools for a task. Learning to use them properly takes time and experience; we truly learn by our mistakes, and at 68 I am still learning.


What I learned today is to put you on my "ignore" list.

ROFLMAO


Snooper,

Keep this one tightly to yourself, I LOVE YOU!!!!!

 

[LadyCibelle]

Thanks for the rundown, RogueLurker. Guess we'll just have to see if that jives with how Laurel thinks a moderator should act. It seems quite a bit "off," though, that a moderator would be given the lattitude to be the abusive beserker in discussions on threads the moderator was responsible for. But perhaps that's the custom on this board. As I said, I'll see if that's Laurel's understanding too. Regardless, it's bad behavior.

Of course, if that is the custom here, I'll just have to continue trying to have substantive discussions whether or not Lady C. stops the personal attacks. She'll have to do that attacking on her own, though--plus anyone else she can coax into joining her.

Right off hand, I'd say this thread is played out on points that focus on the topic that was introduced--unless someone else out there has something interesting to add(?) I didn't really see anyone end up with the position that delivery of unsolicited editing was a great idea.

Oh please,

Go crying to mommy, maybe she'll change your nappy and give you a dummy too; that way you'll stop yapping and whining.

Right off, I'd say you're a pain in the ass, a pompous, arrogant, misogynistic prick who doesn't like when women disagree with you. Don't think I haven't noticed that every time a woman says something contrary to what you say she incurs your wrath much more strongly than if it is a man.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Sounds like the perfect way to piss off some Egotistic, pea-brained newbies, to me

 

[LadyCibelle]

Sounds like the perfect way to piss off some Egotistic, pea-brained newbies, to me

Tsk tsk, Jenny,

You shouldn't toy with little 'boys' who don't know how to play nicely with others. He'll go crying to mommy again.

 

[MarshAlien]

Sounds like the perfect way to piss off some Egotistic, pea-brained newbies, to me

I agree; sort of like an intervention. Except that, instead of getting all your friends together to tell you where you've gone off the tracks in your life, we get a group of involuntary editors together to tell you where you've gone off the tracks in your writing. "Congratulations, newbie. Your Literotica entry has been selected from among hundreds of submissions to receive FREE editing!"

 

[LadyCibelle]

I agree; sort of like an intervention. Except that, instead of getting all your friends together to tell you where you've gone off the tracks in your life, we get a group of involuntary editors together to tell you where you've gone off the tracks in your writing. "Congratulations, newbie. Your Literotica entry has been selected from among hundreds of submissions to receive FREE editing!"

Yeah well, when you say it that way.......yep, it's enough to piss off some newbies.

 

[sr71plt]

Sounds like the perfect way to piss off some Egotistic, pea-brained newbies, to me

Ah, so, since the "editor" picked the story out of the blue to gift an unsolicited edit to, obviously the story's author was already known to be egotisitical and pea-brained? (I would suppose the "editor" could figure out beforehand if the author was a "newbie"--which I guess is some sort of crime too).

Hmm. Yes, that is a new wrinkle on the thread discussion. Interesting.

 

[sr71plt]

I agree; sort of like an intervention. Except that, instead of getting all your friends together to tell you where you've gone off the tracks in your life, we get a group of involuntary editors together to tell you where you've gone off the tracks in your writing. "Congratulations, newbie. Your Literotica entry has been selected from among hundreds of submissions to receive FREE editing!"

Yes, I see the lovely scheme. When the thread started off, it seemed to be from a concern to help authors with a perceived insufficiency or two to improve their stories (although from the get-go, these authors were defined as subhuman--certainly inferior to the voluntary editors of Lit.). But now I see that it's just to piss authors (other than the regulars here) off and show them how superior the Lit. VE is.

And, by George, if they won't come to the forum to be gangbanged, VEs now will go out and pull them out of the pile to gangbang.

Yes, that certainly is clever. Now I see.

 

[cloudy]

Yes, I see the lovely scheme. When the thread started off, it seemed to be from a concern to help authors with a perceived insufficiency or two to improve their stories (although from the get-go, these authors were defined as subhuman--certainly inferior to the voluntary editors of Lit.). But now I see that it's just to piss authors (other than the regulars here) off and show them how superior the Lit. VE is.

And, by George, if they won't come to the forum to be gangbanged, VEs now will go out and pull them out of the pile to gangbang.

Yes, that certainly is clever. Now I see.

this song has gone on so long, in so many different threads, in all the forums that I believe it has now achieved earworm status. "I'm so persecuted! They all gang up on me! Help! They're oppressing me!"

Have you ever stopped to think that when quite a few people have a problem with you, that the common denominator is you?

Here, sr, I'll save you the trouble:

gangbang, gangbang, gangbang, gangbang, gangbang, gangbang, gangbang...ad nauseum.

*yawn*

back on ignore you go.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I agree; sort of like an intervention. Except that, instead of getting all your friends together to tell you where you've gone off the tracks in your life, we get a group of involuntary editors together to tell you where you've gone off the tracks in your writing. "Congratulations, newbie. Your Literotica entry has been selected from among hundreds of submissions to receive FREE editing!"

God, I wish I'd had that intervention. The sex scene in "Will" has been a guilty, nagging presence in my conscience for a year and more. I know how badly it needs to be rewritten, but it's too embarassing to even face it - or so I explain to myself my repeated failure to return to it, despite having carefully revised and tightened the entire rest of the story. It's like the one closet in the house that is simply so squalid and horrific that you can't even bear to open the door and look at the work before you. I needed a team of editors to drag it firmly in front of me, back when I submitted it, and say, "Now look, this really will not do."

(Not that it's the nature of the sex itself that I find it embarassing to own up to, although it's a challenge to convey with emotion - it's just the sprawling, mawkish, overdone way I handled it. Far too much of people explaining what they're thinking.)

True, most authors would not appreciate said intervention. I might well not have at the time. But, damnit, I wish I could kick my earlier self now!

 

[MarshAlien]

Yes, I see the lovely scheme. When the thread started off, it seemed to be from a concern to help authors with a perceived insufficiency or two to improve their stories (although from the get-go, these authors were defined as subhuman--certainly inferior to the voluntary editors of Lit.). But now I see that it's just to piss authors (other than the regulars here) off and show them how superior the Lit. VE is.

And, by George, if they won't come to the forum to be gangbanged, VEs now will go out and pull them out of the pile to gangbang.

Yes, that certainly is clever. Now I see.

My problem here is, I'm always treating as a joke what other people seem to take seriously. To the extent that you thought that I was suggesting that we actually identify stories by inexperienced authors and have them critiqued by a committee of unwanted editors, then obviously I need to learn to write better. Humor is a lost art form, and apparently I should keep looking. Sorry I stopped by.

What does gangbanging have to do with all of this?

 

[BlackShanglan]

Humor is a lost art form, and apparently I should keep looking.

Possibly it's something to do with that eyepatch?

 

[sr71plt]

My problem here is, I'm always treating as a joke what other people seem to take seriously. To the extent that you thought that I was suggesting that we actually identify stories by inexperienced authors and have them critiqued by a committee of unwanted editors, then obviously I need to learn to write better. Humor is a lost art form, and apparently I should keep looking. Sorry I stopped by.

What does gangbanging have to do with all of this?

No, I did see the humor in it--and that you were being humorous. (I do see that you do that across the forum and appreciate it).

But I also saw the irony in it (which had nothing to do with you). So, I went with the irony.

I rather hope that Jenny J was being tongue in cheek as well, as I usually appreicate her posts too.

 

[cloudy]

Yes, I see the lovely scheme. When the thread started off, it seemed to be from a concern to help authors with a perceived insufficiency or two to improve their stories (although from the get-go, these authors were defined as subhuman--certainly inferior to the voluntary editors of Lit.). But now I see that it's just to piss authors (other than the regulars here) off and show them how superior the Lit. VE is.

And, by George, if they won't come to the forum to be gangbanged, VEs now will go out and pull them out of the pile to gangbang.

Yes, that certainly is clever. Now I see.

As clever as you badmouthing people posting in this thread in another forum, perhaps?

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

I rather hope that Jenny J was being tongue in cheek as well, as I usually appreicate her posts too.

The post was tongue-in-cheek as you suspected. The point was not. Think about some new kid posting a story with high hopes of some decent, poisitive feedback and being randomly selected for destruction by a gang of editors.

If a story is crap, I'll tell them it's crap. But that's just my opinion. They can take it or leave it. it's quite a different thing when an unsolicited gang beats him/her up and tears his/her story to pieces in a public forum.

I don't see the positive side in this from the writer's point of view.

 

[sr71plt]

The post was tongue-in-cheek as you suspected. The point was not. Think about some new kid posting a story with high hopes of some decent, poisitive feedback and being randomly selected for destruction by a gang of editors.

If a story is crap, I'll tell them it's crap. But that's just my opinion. They can take it or leave it. it's quite a different thing when an unsolicited gang beats him/her up and tears his/her story to pieces in a public forum.

I don't see the positive side in this from the writer's point of view.

Yes, right, in my opinion as well. (Although I don't think the proposal was to post the "edit" in a public forum--that's what at least one poster wants to do to stories of mine for an irrelevant reason, but that wasn't in the original proposal, I don't think.)

My understanding is that the owners of the site have the filter they want on submissions already--that stories they think should be redone in some way before being posted will not be accepted, with guidance given on where to go to get help making them acceptable. This is a filter that few other sites I know of have. Don't see the need for self-annointed vigilantes messing around in this.

 

[MarshAlien]

Possibly it's something to do with that eyepatch?

In the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And in the world of the one-eyed alien pirate, we find that our share of the treasure just isn't what it ought to be.

God, I wish I'd had that intervention. The sex scene in "Will" has been a guilty, nagging presence in my conscience for a year and more. I know how badly it needs to be rewritten, but it's too embarassing to even face it - or so I explain to myself my repeated failure to return to it, despite having carefully revised and tightened the entire rest of the story. It's like the one closet in the house that is simply so squalid and horrific that you can't even bear to open the door and look at the work before you. I needed a team of editors to drag it firmly in front of me, back when I submitted it, and say, "Now look, this really will not do."

(Not that it's the nature of the sex itself that I find it embarassing to own up to, although it's a challenge to convey with emotion - it's just the sprawling, mawkish, overdone way I handled it. Far too much of people explaining what they're thinking.)

True, most authors would not appreciate said intervention. I might well not have at the time. But, damnit, I wish I could kick my earlier self now!

The most important thing, of course, is admitting that you have a problem. And since you've already done that, an intervention would be too late. And the next most important thing is that I have no idea who would have even thought of intervening on a story like that one. I didn't read the whole thing, to be sure, but I couldn't even tell who or what that dude was supposed to be having sex with. So you're on your own there, buddy. I was impressed though, that the story not only had a red "H," but also a green "E" and a blue "W." I doff my pirate hat to you, o mighty horse. y.

But I also saw the irony in it (which had nothing to do with you). So, I went with the irony.

Irony? What was it Steve Martin said in Roxanne? Something like, "Irony? Oh, we don't do that here.. . . I was the last practitioner and I had to stop because I was tired of being stared at." I love that movie.

 

[sr71plt]

Irony? What was it Steve Martin said in Roxanne? Something like, "Irony? Oh, we don't do that here.. . . I was the last practitioner and I had to stop because I was tired of being stared at." I love that movie.

Jack Benny once told Rochester that Irony was a ghost town in Nevada where they tried to find gold in what was a silver mine and went bust because they insisted they were mining for gold. But I thought Roxanne was great too.