Writers Against Bad Reviews! Forum Why?

.shalynn.009.	Why? 12 Years Ago "I don't do deep thought critizism, I save that for those who feel they are elite" I found this phrase in a review on a friend's poem. I don't understand what the writer meant by it. I mean, is he saying good reviews are written by people who think they're better? Or that reviews that try to understand a piece on a deeper level is annoying? I don't get it. What is it with people knocking quality reviews? Wouldn't you rather have someone who actually analyzes your work, even if they interpret it completely wrong, than someone who just nonchalantly looks at the surface and says, "hey, nice poem"? Maybe I'm just venting, in which case you need not reply, but I just don't understand most writers on here and their philosophies on reviewing.
Weaver	Re: Why? 12 Years Ago Originally posted by Shalynn "I don't do deep thought critizism, I save that for those who feel they are elite" I found this phrase in a review on a friend's poem. I don't understand what the writer meant by it. I mean, is he saying good reviews are written by people who think they're better? Or that reviews that try to understand a piece on a deeper level is annoying? I don't get it. What is it with people knocking quality reviews? Wouldn't you rather have someone who actually analyzes your work, even if they interpret it completely wrong, than someone who just nonchalantly looks at the surface and says, "hey, nice poem"? Maybe I'm just venting, in which case you need not reply, but I just don't understand most writers on here and their philosophies on reviewing. I don't understand statements like that, either. I suspect that it was meant to be disparaging, some kind of 'If you do give deep-thought reviews, you're a stuck-up meanie even if you say you like the writing.' It's the word choice: "those who feel they are elite." Implies that such people are just egotistical posers (unlike the people in the "Elite" groups here on WC - they're all the true elite, according to their own posts) who are showing off to make people think that giving in-depth reviews is better than saying "Beautiful" and nothing more. I'm sure some people tell themselves that we only do long, detailed reviews because we're jealous. Please allow me to go on a further tirade about this topic... On Urbis (the writing site where I made a nuisance of myself as a "mercenary proofreader" before it disappeared and I transferred to WritersCafe), there was one person who declared me an "elitist pig rich boy" who was only good at grammar and thus a top-rated reviewer on that site because I'd had the privilege of fancy private schools all my life. (Take some time to laugh out loud at the irony. I've spent my entire life living well below the poverty line, and all my 'fancy education' was at public schools... in Kentucky.) I think it's rude to actually tell someone that you're not going to do any 'deep thought' in a review because you can't be bothered. This is not Facebook! This is a peer review site for writers. If you don't care, if all you want is the popularity of having a Friends list 8 pages long (even though you never so much as send messages to most of them) and a coterie of people who say "This is really good. :) Puppy33" on every one of your poems, is it necessary to spread that contagion to the people who are here to become better writers? Okay, that was my "cheese-monkeys go home!" tirade for the week. I feel much better now. Feel free to quote parts of it at any fluff-and-cheese reviewers whom you think would benefit from being tiraded at.
A. Bennett	Re: Why? 12 Years Ago To me, the statement came off as, "Only those who think they're better will get harsher critiques". Deep thought criticism is useful to most writers, but it seems like a lot of reviewers see it as being mean. I could be wrong, and probably am, but that's just how I read it.