MNFF
Yep. It's full of writers, all right. Capable of seeing high drama and potential plots where there were none, capable of reading way too much (or way too little) into post tone, capable of holding grudges in mind as long as a plotbunny or longer...
Okay, look. If you're going to bitch, take a good long look in the mirror first. WHAT DID YOU FIX?
( Read more... )
I'd say that in hindsight, even Rosie might have seen that the book would have pushed this brewing frustration to the - ahem - brink of war, if you will. If it wasn't this, it would have been something else.
I tend to stick to my SPEW forum, and I'm happy there. I'm a validated author, so queue waits don't affect me. I will fully admit to being immensely unamused by the Twitternet joke - due to it's many, many facets, and it's occurence in the midst of the seemingly eternal wait for the QSQ's.
I will also admit to not being impressed with the book idea one little bit. I'm sorry if I don't think the users should feel grateful to pay ten dollars for a secondary school student's tips on creative writing. I think the idea started off well in spirit, but - I can't see how, if they'd pictured the end result at the beginning, they can't have seen a major flaw. I certainly wouldn't have even imagined gratitude if it had been my plan.
I would have gone in the direction of a forum challenge for original fiction resulting in a anthology of the top ten-fifteen entries; this would have given all forum members a chance to participate, rather than exclude them; it would also provided aspiring writers a chance at exposure, or just seeing their words printed and bound, and maybe provided a small profit to help cover some site costs. I think more people would have been willing to put in orders for their own work, their friends work, their children's work - or just for the fiction itself. But, how many people are really going to want to pay money for Rosie's tips on creative writing. I'm not being mean, I'm being realistic. Other than the excitable ones that can convince their parents to let them use a credit card, who would have done the same for an anthology.
And I think as an admin with a high turnover rate for mods (which is inevitable for a site made up mostly of high-schoolers and a fandom which has officially hit the end of it's era), it's essential to try and get back to basics. That's only my opinion, I'm not a mod, I gave that up long ago, so my opinion holds no water now. And I'm okay with that. I feel for the mods who are responsible enough to try and do their job in spite of the random disappearances of others, but I also fully understand the frustration of the non-mods.
That said, I don't plan on fighting with anyone over anything.I think it would be nice if maybe the admins tried to come to terms with the feelings being expressed rather than brushing them off as angry rants, and the angry ranters expressing their displeasure in a rational way. I don't see it working like that. But it's nice to dream. :)
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If the original organization had gone smoothly and everyone who'd said "I can do suchandsuch" actually had, according to the first plan, I'd be okay with the complaints as they now stand.
If Rosie were a sloppy researcher or had truly done this altogether on her own, with no supervision of anyone else and no collaboration, then I'd be okay with the complaints as they appear to stand at present.
But, you know, it was requested. Plans went the way committee plans tend to do. She isn't sloppy, and she did this with a passel of English teachers looking on. And, contrary to some of the singularly most nasty flames I've seen in some time, she did it to be nice and accomplish something that other people claimed to want done, rather than let yet another project slip through the cracks and disappear in the middle.
I really like the anthology idea, really really, and rather wish it had happened along back in that other brainstorming idea -- can it happen along now, perhaps in the celebration thread, as a proposal for the next really cool project to support the site?
And frankly, though I've seen a lot of call for "back to basics" lately, I have NO idea what that would be at this point. Basics as of when? Basic what? Basics such as trying to get members to produce better fics? I think that's what pretty much everything on the board is aimed toward, aside from the blow-off-steam spam that keeps popping up. Basics such as producing better writers, not just better fanfic writers? Well, most of the boards seem to be aimed thataway as well, but the fact of the matter is, for that you can go to Absolute Writer or any of the other already-established origific and general writing sites. For every member saying there's too much going on around the boards, there's another saying there isn't enough.
The problem is, it's time to do some serious thinking about MNFF in general, and the other problem is, who's ever been good at doing that? Where there is serious thought there is conflict. We have a huge pack of highly opinionated, combative, thin-skinned writers here. Problem.
And everything is always so much easier when we can just do things _my_ way, you know... ;) Funny how nobody seems to have dared to suggest that I was the power-mad mod quitting out of sheer frustration.
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