I seem to be terribly late to this but I just stumbled across this post and read it + the comments with interest.
You make some excellent points, especially regarding sloppiness. I hate re-reading my own stuff - I didn't re-read my essays and fictional writing at school, I don't re-read my work, but I do re-read any fic I write, even if it makes me cringe and want to hide, because there is always at least something there that I've missed.
I know it still won't be absolutely perfect, if only because no one seems to agree on every single comma (I'm only slowly learning to use commas in English, and sometimes despairing when I see native speakers with a background in writing disagree on them), but it doesn't mean I couldn't do my best anyway.
So I suppose I'd expect the same from others. At the very least, spell check should be absolutely mandatory, no matter whether posting on a moderated archive or ff.net - and one most certainly doesn't need Microsoft Word for that. OpenOffice has spell check. FireFox has spell check!
I'm not sure I agree about recs, though. Perhaps it's because I expect there to be a certain bias, whether it's bias towards friends or bias towards certain kinds of stories or whatever - I just don't expect to agree with a lot of them anyway. I make my own decision based on the summary and rating, most of the time, and only follow recs when they're by someone whose opinion I trust (i.e. whose taste I know I share). And if I still don't care for it, I simply back-button without getting too far.
Mostly, I just view rec lists as a good way to keep an eye on stories I might not otherwise have seen - in other words, I take a closer look at a rec if it's to a story not on ff.net, Ashwinder, TPP or OWL, as in that case I've probably not seen it myself. Or if it's a short story, not a chaptered WIP, in which case I might have missed it in the recently updated stories list.
I'm really only more likely to read something only based on reccing (and not the summary etc) when I see a specific story suddenly recced by a lot of people all over my f-list. The last time that happened was with The Silvering Divide, and I was very glad I read it - but then, it was a story I'd meant to read at some point anyway, the reccing just made me read it a bit sooner.
As for egos... don't we all have them? I think it's entirely natural that writers can feel hurt when they see a long list of corrections, whether by a beta or an admin, especially when they're fairly new to this. I still get this momentary sting when I first see corrections, although it passes in an instant and I don't take it personally (years of doing work where everything goes through an editor or two helps). I've seen it at work, when new translators start - some of them don't last past their first bit of work, as they get too offended and/or hurt by the editor handing back a sheet entirely covered in red.
It takes a thick skin to get over that, and I can understand the people who aren't able to, especially when they've come to writing from the "I'm only doing it for fun" angle. It's fine by me if they don't bother - if it's too awful, I just won't bother reading either.
no subject
You make some excellent points, especially regarding sloppiness. I hate re-reading my own stuff - I didn't re-read my essays and fictional writing at school, I don't re-read my work, but I do re-read any fic I write, even if it makes me cringe and want to hide, because there is always at least something there that I've missed.
I know it still won't be absolutely perfect, if only because no one seems to agree on every single comma (I'm only slowly learning to use commas in English, and sometimes despairing when I see native speakers with a background in writing disagree on them), but it doesn't mean I couldn't do my best anyway.
So I suppose I'd expect the same from others. At the very least, spell check should be absolutely mandatory, no matter whether posting on a moderated archive or ff.net - and one most certainly doesn't need Microsoft Word for that. OpenOffice has spell check. FireFox has spell check!
I'm not sure I agree about recs, though. Perhaps it's because I expect there to be a certain bias, whether it's bias towards friends or bias towards certain kinds of stories or whatever - I just don't expect to agree with a lot of them anyway. I make my own decision based on the summary and rating, most of the time, and only follow recs when they're by someone whose opinion I trust (i.e. whose taste I know I share). And if I still don't care for it, I simply back-button without getting too far.
Mostly, I just view rec lists as a good way to keep an eye on stories I might not otherwise have seen - in other words, I take a closer look at a rec if it's to a story not on ff.net, Ashwinder, TPP or OWL, as in that case I've probably not seen it myself. Or if it's a short story, not a chaptered WIP, in which case I might have missed it in the recently updated stories list.
I'm really only more likely to read something only based on reccing (and not the summary etc) when I see a specific story suddenly recced by a lot of people all over my f-list. The last time that happened was with The Silvering Divide, and I was very glad I read it - but then, it was a story I'd meant to read at some point anyway, the reccing just made me read it a bit sooner.
As for egos... don't we all have them? I think it's entirely natural that writers can feel hurt when they see a long list of corrections, whether by a beta or an admin, especially when they're fairly new to this. I still get this momentary sting when I first see corrections, although it passes in an instant and I don't take it personally (years of doing work where everything goes through an editor or two helps). I've seen it at work, when new translators start - some of them don't last past their first bit of work, as they get too offended and/or hurt by the editor handing back a sheet entirely covered in red.
It takes a thick skin to get over that, and I can understand the people who aren't able to, especially when they've come to writing from the "I'm only doing it for fun" angle. It's fine by me if they don't bother - if it's too awful, I just won't bother reading either.