A Rant about Feedback

[CWatson]

‘Pleas join the world in use of common items, it will make your stories far better reading. Leave the ism's of local knowledge home and insert world terms. Here is what the world uses and understands:

Hee. Ahh, the language fascists. That reminds me of an edit war that was preserved on Wikipedia for the lulz, where some British matron went on a crusade to convert the entire English-speaking contents to the Queen's English. The general guideline is, whichever country the article's subject is based in, you follow those rules; but this lady was insistent that we all switch, because British English is correct and American is wrong. Yeah, we had fun with her.

I just got an e-mail about a story that starts in medias res, with two characters at dinner talking about a third. This reader complained, "It took several whole paragraphs before I could figure out what was going on. Oh, and, when you switched to flashback to give the back story, it was boring, so I skipped it." And I was like, Buddy, the problem here is not my writing.

 

[lance gt]

Hee. Ahh, the language fascists. That reminds me of an edit war that was preserved on Wikipedia for the lulz, where some British matron went on a crusade to convert the entire English-speaking contents to the Queen's English. The general guideline is, whichever country the article's subject is based in, you follow those rules; but this lady was insistent that we all switch, because British English is correct and American is wrong. Yeah, we had fun with her.

I just got an e-mail about a story that starts in medias res, with two characters at dinner talking about a third. This reader complained, "It took several whole paragraphs before I could figure out what was going on. Oh, and, when you switched to flashback to give the back story, it was boring, so I skipped it." And I was like, Buddy, the problem here is not my writing.

I never worry about comments on which English format is used. It seems most readers on Lit. concern themselves with cunt, cock, tits, ass, cum. If it gets them off they're happy, if there are words longer that two syllables and require them to think during jerking off, that give bad comments and scores. I mean Hell, you ruined a perfectly good rubbing out session for them

 

[bronzeage]

In Germany we use the " for speech and the ' for thoughts. We also start speeches with a lowered " btw, so a sentence in German looks like this:

„Hello, do we know each other?" he said, adding in thought: ,I wouldn't mind getting to know you much better'.

If you send this to Lit it gets rejected btw, I always have to change the „ to " before I do that.

If English grammar had this practice, it would eliminate a lot of tortured internal monologues.

 

[Teloz]

You know, now you're probably going to get a lot more criticism when you post a story because people will remember you were "ranting" about the feedback. Maybe more people will read your stories, but you'll def. get more negative feedback if people see this thread.

Wikipedia has stats on who visits this site from what country. There's an amazing amount of non-English countries represented as percentage of visitors. I'm sure the statistics are pretty accurate, they probably come from the site owners.

Edit: "Literotica, though a United States based web site, only receives 47% of its web traffic from the United States. According to alexa.com, other countries with the greatest impact on web traffic are: India: 10%, Germany: 6.8%, the United Kingdom: 5.8%, and Canada: 3.2%."

UK is number four? I guess the Indians would have preference over style before the British.

Would those figures include the non-English language parts of Literotica, perhaps? - E.g. German Literotica, Roumanian Literotica, and so on?

I'd guess the Indian traffic* into Literotica would mainly be for English language stories, though. And there are certainly a lot more Indians in the world than there are British people.

*NOTE (a couple of hours later): I've just done a quick search and I find that there's a Hindi section of Literotica. Some of the stories seem to be in English, but a lot are in Hindi or Tamil or other Indian languages. So that may account for the relatively high proportion of traffic from India.

- polynices

Nobody's saying that anyone should have preference, and definitely not us because we're British, just that people should be allowed to write as they normally write. If stories were posted with German punctuation I for one would still read them, but sadly, they're filtered out by the site. It would be incredibly arrogant to say that one system is better than another, they're just different and it doesn't take much adjustment for anyone of reasonable intelligence to get used to them.

 

[driphoney]

. . . and it doesn't take much adjustment for anyone of reasonable intelligence to get used to them.

Ahh. And there you go then. Most readers around these parts are thinking with the smaller head to begin with, so intelligence just might not be high on the reader requirements.

 

[Elianna]

I think I pointed out earlier that when someone is occupied with "other activites," the blood flow to the brain is limited. Therefore perhaps a reader would struggle with simple concepts such as single quotes and an extra u in some words.

Just sayin'. Confusion is common when the brain is blood-starved.

 

[sr71plt]

Guess "we" aren't going to stop thinking we can tell the readers what opinions they can have about the stories and what they can and cannot post on stories, are "we"?

Can we say "pissing in the wind"? Altogether now, with feeling (and maybe a British accent) . . .

 

[Elianna]

Guess "we" aren't going to stop thinking we can tell the readers what opinions they can have about the stories and what they can and cannot post on stories, are "we"?

Can we say "pissing in the wind"? Altogether now, with feeling (and maybe a British accent) . . .

You're in good form tonight.

 

[driphoney]

I think I pointed out earlier that when someone is occupied with "other activites," the blood flow to the brain is limited. Therefore perhaps a reader would struggle with simple concepts such as single quotes and an extra u in some words.

Just sayin'. Confusion is common when the brain is blood-starved.

Oh yes, you did. Felt like a good time to repeat. The set-up was just too good.

 

[driphoney]

Guess "we" aren't going to stop thinking we can tell the readers what opinions they can have about the stories and what they can and cannot post on stories, are "we"?

Can we say "pissing in the wind"? Altogether now, with feeling (and maybe a British accent) . . .

Now, would that be the Royal "We" (or would that be 'We'?)

(I just couldn't resist. :caning::caning

Now, this is a rant thread, and if you can't rant here, where can you?

 

[moonlitclover]

god save the queen

i would just like to say that I happen to think that everything British is awesome and love love love stories that utilize different words and phrases - so even if some people provide you with negative feedback, I never will!

 

[Epmd607]

Guess "we" aren't going to stop thinking we can tell the readers what opinions they can have about the stories and what they can and cannot post on stories, are "we"?

Can we say "pissing in the wind"? Altogether now, with feeling (and maybe a British accent) . . .

Actually, since we can delete comments posted on our stories, in a way we can tell readers what they can and can't post on our stories.

 

[driphoney]

Yes, that's true, but you can't control how they vote.

I agree wholeheartedly with moonlitclover, by the way.

I'll now leave 'you lot' to your rant. Everyone deserves a good one now and again. I just wanted to help you have an understanding you might not otherwise have and make you feel better, but I forgot the purpose and nature of a good ol' rant.

 

[oggbashan]

...Wikipedia has stats on who visits this site from what country. There's an amazing amount of non-English countries represented as percentage of visitors. I'm sure the statistics are pretty accurate, they probably come from the site owners.

Edit: "Literotica, though a United States based web site, only receives 47% of its web traffic from the United States. According to alexa.com, other countries with the greatest impact on web traffic are: India: 10%, Germany: 6.8%, the United Kingdom: 5.8%, and Canada: 3.2%."

UK is number four? I guess the Indians would have preference over style before the British.

This is the link to the source of the Wikipedia statistics: alexa

Note that participants in the forums are a small minority of the users, and that US residents are less than HALF the total of site visitors.

Og

 

[sr71plt]

US residents are less than HALF the total of site visitors.

That's sort of misleading for any application here, since the next largest group is only a tenth of the total. (and Brits only one/seventeenth).

Surprising that Canadanian readership is so low, though.

 

[lance gt]

That's sort of misleading for any application here, since the next largest group is only a tenth of the total. (and Brits only one/seventeenth).

Surprising that Canadanian readership is so low, though.

I guess more of us are doing it, instead of reading about it. Might be a valid reason for it. Although, we are Canadians.

 

[driphoney]

I think it's a population thing. According to Wiki, the Canadian population is <34 million; the UK population is roughly 61 million (est.); US population, 290-ish million. Texas, for example, has 24 million and California, over 36 million. California has more residents than Canada.

It's just a numbers thing.

Personally, I'd like to thank the Canadians for doing their part in population management. The condoms must be really working up there! A warm fire, a mug of something steamy and a hot romp beneath the comforter on a long, long, long winters night. Who needs porn, ahem, I mean erotica?

 

[polynices]

I seem to be starting a collection.

The following piece of stupidity wasn't a comment on one of my pieces - it was offered as a consummately trivial response to what is, to my mind at least, a very competent story by WilliamShakespear, titled 'The Commuter, Ch. 01'. Here's the comment, as posted:

'wrong format
09/28/09 by Anonymous
The proper format for time is 7:06 not 7.06 which was used.'

That's it. As I remember it, the so-called 'error' (and I don't know or care whether it was really an error or not) occurred in about the second line of the story. So Mr Anonymous clearly seized on the first excuse for nit-picking pseudo-criticism he could lay his eyes on.

I'm glad to say that there are at least three subsequent comments taking issue with this fool and telling the author not to be bothered by him/her.

I wonder if this is Mr. ' instead of " on the prowl again? It wouldn't surprise me.

- polynices

 

[Epmd607]

Maybe there's some young American out there who's fighting to make the British write American. Wasn't George Orwell into re-taking British English from foreign influence? Not only should the British conform to American grammar and usage, but the world should drop the metric system in favor of whatever system we use. The gallons and inches system... I can't remember what it's called. The ten yards to a First Down system.

 

[WilliamShakespear]

I have just started posting stories after having read 100's on Literotica for years. I was amazed at the comments made on things like the time issue mentioned above.

Following comments made on my first story I now submit my stories to an editor before submitting them, but with the best will in the world, I bet there will still be some errors.

My view is that, at the end of the day, the stories should be enjoyable, easy to read and if there is the odd error, its not done on purpose. It probably doesn't ruin the flow of the story and for Gods sake (or should that be god's sake LOL) get a life !!!!

I appreciate the positive comments and comments that tell me to ignore the idiots and in the meantime, I will continue to try and write more stories that create enjoyment for the majority.

There are currently about 4 or 5 more parts of the Commuter in the pipeline.

Regards
WilliamShakespear

 

[York]

I have just started posting stories after having read 100's on Literotica for years. I was amazed at the comments made on things like the time issue mentioned above.

Following comments made on my first story I now submit my stories to an editor before submitting them, but with the best will in the world, I bet there will still be some errors.

My view is that, at the end of the day, the stories should be enjoyable, easy to read and if there is the odd error, its not done on purpose. It probably doesn't ruin the flow of the story and for Gods sake (or should that be god's sake LOL) get a life !!!!

I appreciate the positive comments and comments that tell me to ignore the idiots and in the meantime, I will continue to try and write more stories that create enjoyment for the majority.

There are currently about 4 or 5 more parts of the Commuter in the pipeline.

Regards
WilliamShakespear

I think that stories with grammar and punctuation errors are fair game for (constructive) criticism though. You should submit a story for an editor to check because with the best will in the world, it's ever so easy to miss mistakes in your own texts. It's lazy not to care about good grammar and punctuation in a submitted story (I'm not talking about things like styles of quotation marks, but basic errors). You should be striving to submit as technically good a story as possible, not just saying, oh that'll do.

 

[Handley_Page]

Maybe there's some young American out there who's fighting to make the British write American. Wasn't George Orwell into re-taking British English from foreign influence? Not only should the British conform to American grammar and usage, but the world should drop the metric system in favor of whatever system we use. The gallons and inches system... I can't remember what it's called. The ten yards to a First Down system.

Oh Dear. What a contentious idea. Going back to the 17th century ?

I'm quite happy with "modern" English usage (American English has a different path all together), but why change the measurements ?.
Admittedly, the Metric System (blame Napoleon), isn't perfect, but the rest of the world manages it quite well, so why not the USA convert like we English did ?.

It will be a very long time before we forget the Mile and the gallon (4.54 litres, as opposed the US gallon of 3.77 litres), but I reckon 27mm is a lot easier that 1 inch and 27 64ths or whatever).

Even that last bastion of Imperial measurement, the Aircraft industry, has stopped using feet of altitude and is using meters, with distance in Km.

Come on in and join us, Yanks. The water's nice.

 

[driphoney]

There was this huge push a long time ago, but honestly, most Americans are (whispering here) afraid of the change. Re-tooling everything would be the hard part, but pretty much everything could eventually be re-outfitted, however, that's the big excuse. If Americans could get a realistic visual of what it looked like, it wouldn't be a problem, but they don't.

Maybe someday.

Oh Dear. What a contentious idea. Going back to the 17th century ?

I'm quite happy with "modern" English usage (American English has a different path all together), but why change the measurements ?.
Admittedly, the Metric System (blame Napoleon), isn't perfect, but the rest of the world manages it quite well, so why not the USA convert like we English did ?.

It will be a very long time before we forget the Mile and the gallon (4.54 litres, as opposed the US gallon of 3.77 litres), but I reckon 27mm is a lot easier that 1 inch and 27 64ths or whatever).

Even that last bastion of Imperial measurement, the Aircraft industry, has stopped using feet of altitude and is using meters, with distance in Km.

Come on in and join us, Yanks. The water's nice.

 

[CWatson]

I wonder if this is Mr. ' instead of " on the prowl again? It wouldn't surprise me.

Oh, undoubtedly it is. He pretends to be an editor, but what he's really here for is to get his rocks off... by looking smart and making you look stupid. He's a bully, pure and simple, and bullies never forget a useful victim.

 

[bronzeage]

Oh Dear. What a contentious idea. Going back to the 17th century ?

I'm quite happy with "modern" English usage (American English has a different path all together), but why change the measurements ?.
Admittedly, the Metric System (blame Napoleon), isn't perfect, but the rest of the world manages it quite well, so why not the USA convert like we English did ?.

It will be a very long time before we forget the Mile and the gallon (4.54 litres, as opposed the US gallon of 3.77 litres), but I reckon 27mm is a lot easier that 1 inch and 27 64ths or whatever).

Even that last bastion of Imperial measurement, the Aircraft industry, has stopped using feet of altitude and is using meters, with distance in Km.

Come on in and join us, Yanks. The water's nice.

We tried to convert to the metric system back in the 70's, but as soon as Ronald Reagan became President, he told everybody they didn't have to.

If a person buys a General Motors vehicle in Canada, built with a metric instrument cluster and speedometer, and then moves to the United States, they have six months to have the cluster changed for a standard US part. If the change is not made, warranty repairs will not be performed after that date.

This does not apply to vehicles which are supposed to return to Canada.