jthserra
Thousand Cranes
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2003
- Posts
- 678
It is unfortunate what has happened here.
When I first came to Literotica it was for the poetry and for the first several months I was here, that was all that I read and wrote. I was surprised with what I found here, a vibrant group posting, commenting, discussing and in general developing their poetry. There were an informed group of poets who would review the new poems and intellegently outline which poems they liked and why they liked them. Other poets supplimented the commentators talking about notable poetry.
I was a refugee from sites like Themestream and Writtenbyme, which, for a short moment in time during the dot com explosion, were paying writers based upon number the views your writing drew. I posted a lot of my work there, only to watch both sites crumble. Some of the others I knew received some payment, but by the time I had enough views for payment, they had stopped paying.
Those two sites had a rating and commenting system similar to Literotica, so I understood the positives and negatives of the system. Disheartened by the pandering I saw at Theme and WBM where high votes and flowery comments bought views, I came to Literotica with a resolve to rate and comment honestly on the poetry.
I continued posting my poetry here and got to know a number of amazing poets, all of whom were reading, writing and commenting. Mind you, this was before the induction of public comments. Through email commenting, we were commenting, asking questions and basically improving our work.
When public comments were introduced, we suddenly could share our comments with the other readers. In the first few months of 2004, Rybka decided to discontinue his Monday reviews and, pending his return to the post, I took over for him.
Wanting to do something different with the new poetry reviews, I decided that by using the new public comment feature, I would expand the reviews. I would write about the new poems that caught my eye as either excellent poetry, bold or innovative step for a poet, or an effective use of one of the many tools of poetry.
However, in addition to writing about the few that caught my eye, I began posting comments to every new poem posted that day. Lauren had done a bit of this, commenting on a lot of the poems on her review day. I decided to do it every week. In the comments I gave them honest feedback, but took great care to note the positives in the poem and encouraged their continued writing efforts.
The response was incredible. I started getting ten to fifteen responses to my comments in my email and pms. Experienced poets and beginners alike thanked me. Over the course of a month or two, I had people telling me they tried to post their poems so they would fall on my review day.
Other new poem reviewers, also taking advantage of the public comments began commenting more. The poets themselves began reading and commenting on work. The forum picked up on some of the commenting and small workshop threads were started.
I don't write to take credit here, it just happened that the public comments became available just as I began commenting on every new poem on my day. Lauren had actually started it and I'm sure Rybka would have done the same had PCs been available for him. The point is, I was excited at the vibrant, active group of poets here and I was excited as the level of poetry soared.
Poets new to Literotica came in and thrived here, Syndra Lynn, Echoes_s, and many, many others splashed into the scene. The late Smithpeter had branched into several personna including one called 2Rivers who never failed to fascinate me. It was amazing how consistant in style and voice each of his different identies were.
The level of poetry continued to improve here, as challenges were introduced almost weekly, with ten and fifteen poets responding to each challenge. The challenges gave us opportunity to grow into new things, new forms, new ideas. The feedback we received was read, and put to use.
Anyway, things seemed good, until... apparently to fill in poetry slots several prose writers began posting poetry. These were works that some even admitted weren't worth the effort to run a spell check on. Some of the poems got comments, however instead of understanding the comments for what they were, the forum was suddenly splashed with "poets" explaining that their "style" was to write so rough that mispellings, etc were just a part of the effort. They also took great exception to the fact that their poems were not mentioned in the new poems thread.
Even after the intent of the new poems review was explained, they continued complaining about the reviews and the comments they received. Backed by their group of followers from the prose ranks they began attacking commenters in the forum and in the public comments.
This tide of activity rolled over the poetry here in the forums and in the public comments. Suddenly, even some of the most positive comments and commentary was defined as "Shiteing on someones work." Commenters and reviewers, instead of begin recognized to the time and effort they volunteered for the site, were attacked, through comment and on the voting on their own work.
Several new reviewers immediately quit at this onslaught, which, after the prose writers submitted their forty poems suddenly slackened. The majority of the group went back to their prose writing.
Unfortunately the damage had been done, reviewers had left and although YDD did ressurect some of the positives the public comments systems offer, one by one, comments dropped.
I personally quit responding on everything except poems written by a few people. Somehow suddenly it was considered rude to spend the time to read, re-read, scan, find and appreciate poetic tools, note the good and bad and then to tactfully identify what I liked about a poem and what I thought the poet might think about.
It is disheartening to put in that effort in conversing and replying to a poet and then have that correspondence suddenly tainted by someone who did no more than read a few lines of a poem and then comment, "Wow, your best poem ever."
Sack, you ask why comments on poems are lower than prose. The quick answer is, as Catbabe said, there are less people reading the poetry, so there are less comments. Actually, if you take a ratio of comments to reads, poetry probably has more comments than prose.
But, I offer the long answer above. Feedback and commenting has declined dramatically because of the continuing complaints about feedback. There was a time when four or five different poets had over five hundred comments. YDD even slipped into the 600 level... I got close I think, as did Eve. There were many others commenting at the 400 and 300 level... all poets, all at the same time.
Eve remained a consistent commenter in spite of the headaches many people have thown her way, and I compliment her, along with Liar, Tathagata, Angeline, and several others.
Forgive the drama, but I miss the good times here.
As for lesser poets... as I said before, we all are lesser poets, the idea is to work on being less less.
jim : )
When I first came to Literotica it was for the poetry and for the first several months I was here, that was all that I read and wrote. I was surprised with what I found here, a vibrant group posting, commenting, discussing and in general developing their poetry. There were an informed group of poets who would review the new poems and intellegently outline which poems they liked and why they liked them. Other poets supplimented the commentators talking about notable poetry.
I was a refugee from sites like Themestream and Writtenbyme, which, for a short moment in time during the dot com explosion, were paying writers based upon number the views your writing drew. I posted a lot of my work there, only to watch both sites crumble. Some of the others I knew received some payment, but by the time I had enough views for payment, they had stopped paying.
Those two sites had a rating and commenting system similar to Literotica, so I understood the positives and negatives of the system. Disheartened by the pandering I saw at Theme and WBM where high votes and flowery comments bought views, I came to Literotica with a resolve to rate and comment honestly on the poetry.
I continued posting my poetry here and got to know a number of amazing poets, all of whom were reading, writing and commenting. Mind you, this was before the induction of public comments. Through email commenting, we were commenting, asking questions and basically improving our work.
When public comments were introduced, we suddenly could share our comments with the other readers. In the first few months of 2004, Rybka decided to discontinue his Monday reviews and, pending his return to the post, I took over for him.
Wanting to do something different with the new poetry reviews, I decided that by using the new public comment feature, I would expand the reviews. I would write about the new poems that caught my eye as either excellent poetry, bold or innovative step for a poet, or an effective use of one of the many tools of poetry.
However, in addition to writing about the few that caught my eye, I began posting comments to every new poem posted that day. Lauren had done a bit of this, commenting on a lot of the poems on her review day. I decided to do it every week. In the comments I gave them honest feedback, but took great care to note the positives in the poem and encouraged their continued writing efforts.
The response was incredible. I started getting ten to fifteen responses to my comments in my email and pms. Experienced poets and beginners alike thanked me. Over the course of a month or two, I had people telling me they tried to post their poems so they would fall on my review day.
Other new poem reviewers, also taking advantage of the public comments began commenting more. The poets themselves began reading and commenting on work. The forum picked up on some of the commenting and small workshop threads were started.
I don't write to take credit here, it just happened that the public comments became available just as I began commenting on every new poem on my day. Lauren had actually started it and I'm sure Rybka would have done the same had PCs been available for him. The point is, I was excited at the vibrant, active group of poets here and I was excited as the level of poetry soared.
Poets new to Literotica came in and thrived here, Syndra Lynn, Echoes_s, and many, many others splashed into the scene. The late Smithpeter had branched into several personna including one called 2Rivers who never failed to fascinate me. It was amazing how consistant in style and voice each of his different identies were.
The level of poetry continued to improve here, as challenges were introduced almost weekly, with ten and fifteen poets responding to each challenge. The challenges gave us opportunity to grow into new things, new forms, new ideas. The feedback we received was read, and put to use.
Anyway, things seemed good, until... apparently to fill in poetry slots several prose writers began posting poetry. These were works that some even admitted weren't worth the effort to run a spell check on. Some of the poems got comments, however instead of understanding the comments for what they were, the forum was suddenly splashed with "poets" explaining that their "style" was to write so rough that mispellings, etc were just a part of the effort. They also took great exception to the fact that their poems were not mentioned in the new poems thread.
Even after the intent of the new poems review was explained, they continued complaining about the reviews and the comments they received. Backed by their group of followers from the prose ranks they began attacking commenters in the forum and in the public comments.
This tide of activity rolled over the poetry here in the forums and in the public comments. Suddenly, even some of the most positive comments and commentary was defined as "Shiteing on someones work." Commenters and reviewers, instead of begin recognized to the time and effort they volunteered for the site, were attacked, through comment and on the voting on their own work.
Several new reviewers immediately quit at this onslaught, which, after the prose writers submitted their forty poems suddenly slackened. The majority of the group went back to their prose writing.
Unfortunately the damage had been done, reviewers had left and although YDD did ressurect some of the positives the public comments systems offer, one by one, comments dropped.
I personally quit responding on everything except poems written by a few people. Somehow suddenly it was considered rude to spend the time to read, re-read, scan, find and appreciate poetic tools, note the good and bad and then to tactfully identify what I liked about a poem and what I thought the poet might think about.
It is disheartening to put in that effort in conversing and replying to a poet and then have that correspondence suddenly tainted by someone who did no more than read a few lines of a poem and then comment, "Wow, your best poem ever."
Sack, you ask why comments on poems are lower than prose. The quick answer is, as Catbabe said, there are less people reading the poetry, so there are less comments. Actually, if you take a ratio of comments to reads, poetry probably has more comments than prose.
But, I offer the long answer above. Feedback and commenting has declined dramatically because of the continuing complaints about feedback. There was a time when four or five different poets had over five hundred comments. YDD even slipped into the 600 level... I got close I think, as did Eve. There were many others commenting at the 400 and 300 level... all poets, all at the same time.
Eve remained a consistent commenter in spite of the headaches many people have thown her way, and I compliment her, along with Liar, Tathagata, Angeline, and several others.
Forgive the drama, but I miss the good times here.
As for lesser poets... as I said before, we all are lesser poets, the idea is to work on being less less.
jim : )
