I'll agree with you that I do believe there are some people who deliberately treat new authors poorly. The saddest thing I have seen is that some of them are treated like that by 'established authors'.
There have been a few new authors who impressed the crap out of me with her first story. You could read it, you can tell at there are some minor flaws, but it blows you away for first story. And then I read the review thread and find these subjective reviews that must be hurtful. But they walk that fine line between a flame and a constructive review by offering something nice with their criticism. And it's usually something stupid like: "You've had a few typos and some canon problems. You need a good beta to help smooth these over. This is a nice little tale, especially for a first attempt at trying to tell a story and I think if you keep at it, you'll write something good some day."
I'm actually quoting from a review I received. I won't say I'm established, but I have been around the archive once or twice. And I have one story that I'm very proud of and it's probably the best fan fiction I'll ever write. For a while, I sent it around to different archives where I was not known, just to see what people who didn't know me thought of it. You see, I've had it said that I only get reviews because people know me and I really wanted to test that theory. Most of the reviews echo things the people who do know me had to say, mostly extremely positive. But a couple of times, however, I received reviews like this from established writers at those sites.
I think sometimes people get jealous of new writers, especially, as you pointed out, if they couldn't get their story on the archive or if they're not capable of writing. I read at a lot of Yahoo groups and noticed recently that the people who were mostly negatively opinionated seldom had stories out on the Internet. And sometimes, I think there's a bit of jealousy from writers who do make it on the archives.
And I'll never understand having a sock puppet, especially if you link the two together and give the excuse that you don't any one to feel obligated to read you. I've never left a review hoping that someone would read one of my stories or review me. I've never worried that someone could flame me because I left a less than squee review. I do tend to hold my tongue more in Yahoo groups. :-) But my icon is certainly getting a workout today.
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There have been a few new authors who impressed the crap out of me with her first story. You could read it, you can tell at there are some minor flaws, but it blows you away for first story. And then I read the review thread and find these subjective reviews that must be hurtful. But they walk that fine line between a flame and a constructive review by offering something nice with their criticism. And it's usually something stupid like: "You've had a few typos and some canon problems. You need a good beta to help smooth these over. This is a nice little tale, especially for a first attempt at trying to tell a story and I think if you keep at it, you'll write something good some day."
I'm actually quoting from a review I received. I won't say I'm established, but I have been around the archive once or twice. And I have one story that I'm very proud of and it's probably the best fan fiction I'll ever write. For a while, I sent it around to different archives where I was not known, just to see what people who didn't know me thought of it. You see, I've had it said that I only get reviews because people know me and I really wanted to test that theory. Most of the reviews echo things the people who do know me had to say, mostly extremely positive. But a couple of times, however, I received reviews like this from established writers at those sites.
I think sometimes people get jealous of new writers, especially, as you pointed out, if they couldn't get their story on the archive or if they're not capable of writing. I read at a lot of Yahoo groups and noticed recently that the people who were mostly negatively opinionated seldom had stories out on the Internet. And sometimes, I think there's a bit of jealousy from writers who do make it on the archives.
And I'll never understand having a sock puppet, especially if you link the two together and give the excuse that you don't any one to feel obligated to read you. I've never left a review hoping that someone would read one of my stories or review me. I've never worried that someone could flame me because I left a less than squee review. I do tend to hold my tongue more in Yahoo groups. :-) But my icon is certainly getting a workout today.