critics united?!?!?!?!?!?!
I was just made aware by hellozinnie of a thing that exists on fanfiction.net called 'Critics United', which appears to be a group of users being all Robin Hood about fics that are against the ToS and what I believe to be generally "bad fics".
While I am not a major user of fanfiction.net anymore, nor do I particularly like it or agree with it, I do have some history with it, so I think it's only reasonable for me to have some feelings about the whole CU business, which apparently has been going on for some time already.
I do think fanfiction.net's biggest problem-yet-biggest-saving-point is it's lack of quality control. There are countless amounts of "bad fics" with a sprinkling of "good fics" and it takes a dedicated reader to fish out the good vs the bad. On the other hand, this is good because new writers, who might not be so good at the beginning, need a chance to get their writing out there, so the lack of a highly rigid system is good.
Yet from what I've read about CU and what I've seen on their forums, they appear to operate on a purely witchhunt/hate basis, posting fics for the entire CU community to be aware of and post flames on. They have an entire thread dedicated to fics that are breaking ToS and "need to be reported immediately". While this is admirable that they are grouping instead of haphazardly going around throwing reports around, this just seems so...militaristic?
I approve that they are currently trying to purge all the chat fics and such off the site, along with "MA fics" (eyebrow raise at my recently deleted fic), but they are only users: they are not fanfiction.net the law themselves. For them to be taking such dramatic action (while being occasionally rude and forceful) is also not allowed.
This is like watching a little uprising on fanfiction.net, I'm not sure how I feel.
I'm sort of glad they haven't found my Ask Shaman King characters fic yet whew, that was a long time ago and shouldn't count against me!!!!
While I am not a major user of fanfiction.net anymore, nor do I particularly like it or agree with it, I do have some history with it, so I think it's only reasonable for me to have some feelings about the whole CU business, which apparently has been going on for some time already.
I do think fanfiction.net's biggest problem-yet-biggest-saving-point is it's lack of quality control. There are countless amounts of "bad fics" with a sprinkling of "good fics" and it takes a dedicated reader to fish out the good vs the bad. On the other hand, this is good because new writers, who might not be so good at the beginning, need a chance to get their writing out there, so the lack of a highly rigid system is good.
Yet from what I've read about CU and what I've seen on their forums, they appear to operate on a purely witchhunt/hate basis, posting fics for the entire CU community to be aware of and post flames on. They have an entire thread dedicated to fics that are breaking ToS and "need to be reported immediately". While this is admirable that they are grouping instead of haphazardly going around throwing reports around, this just seems so...militaristic?
I approve that they are currently trying to purge all the chat fics and such off the site, along with "MA fics" (eyebrow raise at my recently deleted fic), but they are only users: they are not fanfiction.net the law themselves. For them to be taking such dramatic action (while being occasionally rude and forceful) is also not allowed.
This is like watching a little uprising on fanfiction.net, I'm not sure how I feel.
I'm sort of glad they haven't found my Ask Shaman King characters fic yet whew, that was a long time ago and shouldn't count against me!!!!