About Quality · 5:49pm Jun 6th, 2012
Okay, here's something I've been itching to say to a lot of people commenting on Poultron's recent rule update.
First though... This is not about the validity of the rules. So don't try to get me to argue against/in favor of them.
What I want to rant about is the attitude of some individuals.
"Oh, yes, you should ban all Human stories!"
"Oh, I am sooo happy, this will certainly get better quality stories out there!"
"Thanks to this real stories will have a chance to get to the top!"
Let's make it clear that banning is not going to guarantee that the stories out there are going to be of "higher-quality" from now on.
Here's what 'quality' means according to the dictionary: "character with respect to fineness, or grade of excellence" how does that apply to even half the stuff out there just by banning something? You really think that removing the 'Human' stories altogether will fix that? That all the 'good' stories out there now have a better chance?
When haven't they? Look up right now. "Fun with Changelings" has absolutely nothing meta in it and it's at the very top. If your story didn't make it there, it's not because a bunch of crap got in its way, it's because you didn't get enough likes/favs/hits. Nothing to do with the other crap. In fact most of the crap gets downvoted so quickly you don't even see it past the time it is on the front page.
That the quality of so many of the stories here is pretty much crap is not because of genre or tag; it's because so many people that have no interest in even figuring out how to write a story simply type away some thing that fits the rules and throw it here. And I'm not talking about having perfect grammar either. I'm not talking about structure of a story or even spelling.
You want a blight on quality? Then let me point you towards the stories that get sent that are so convoluted and messed up that 99% of the time you cannot tell if the author is for real or if it is a trollfic and you almost pray its intentional.
They are not trollfics.
What are you going to do?
If you want better quality stop bitching about how "Human" or "Random" or "Dark" are crap and start writing better stories.
Because "quality" is not defined by genre. It's defined by the story itself. If you cannot be bothered to even treat your own story with respect you have no freaking right to say something else is crap. You are simply not qualified.
Let me be absolutely clear on this: you really want high quality stories? For that we would need a team of pre-readers that would comb through the filth very thoroughly and select what, in their opinion, is not only good, but really good. Sounds familiar? Funny, I read you complaining about EqD the other day and yet here you are, asking for the same system of filtering. If you want, I can do that for you. I edit other people's work much better than my own. I have a freaking relevant degree on it. I own a copy of the 'Chicago Book of Style' and between that and 'Eats, Shoots, and Leaves' I can certainly see if your story can pass a 'higher quality' test. It might take longer than me checking it fits the rules and approving it, but hey, I can pretty much guarantee you will not make the cut.
Here's how things work here: A story gets sent and read by one of us.
They follow the rules, we approve and it gets posted.
So stop trying to be cute. IF you want stories that have passed a quality check go to EqD and by the love of Bast don't you dare bitch to them that they are unfair in their selections because over here, just about anyone has the chance to publish something and shine (or not) and you have already bitched about that freedom here and spat on it.
Wanderer D, logical and intelligent as always!
there's still thousands of ways a story can suck.
Well put!
I concur
Sir, applaud you.
I'm right there with you man. Hypocrisy, its bucking everywhere.
Equal opportunity is in this community, so stop your bitchin', 'cause I'm twitch-a-twitchin', wanting to get on a reading spree!
Well said my good man.
Good said indeed.
I FUCKING LOVE YOU WANDY
I honestly can't believe that people in this fandom can be so stupid. (not to point fingers at the other bronies out there) I mean if they want to complain about the quality then I think they shouldn't even be allowed to comment at all on this site. For me when I write I follow a I'ts not about quality, It's about having fun doing it" rule, and It always worked for me in the long run.
I know I can rant allot when I'm worked up, but come on people it's their site they can do what they want.
Am I right Wonderer D?
NOTE: If you have taken offense to this comment then I appologise in advance, I didn't mean to be rude or anything, it's just that I can be a bit harsh when it comes to talking about seriuse subjects.
People don't realize that this site is for hosting stories, so it just has to follow the rules/guidelines to get posted. If it isn't good, it gets downvoted. Simple as that. Now if people would just stop BITCHING! They could write some of these "quality stories" that they believe should be on the site.I feel bad for you mods at times.
Amen to all this. I've never gotten the hate towards the pre-readers... I mean, alright, I won't lie and say I always agree with everything they post/don't post, but then again it's rare that that happens, and overall I have nothing but respect for them -- it must be such a thankless job in many ways. I always hear the same complaints ('it's an exclusive club and they only post a select few authors'/'the whole system is biased and based completely on pot luck' etc.), but to me, it seems like the ones complaining are almost always people who've had their stories turned down from them, or else they have friends who have had stuff sent back. What's more, when you actually examine the complaints a little further, they simply don't hold up at all. They do everything they can to eliminate bias, and if it really was such an exclusive club, then I sure as anything wouldn't have made it there.
... Sorry, I kind of went off on a big tangent here
. I just want to say, I can feel your frustration; after all the daft complains a lot of ponies make about EqD, it must be extremely irritating to have those exact same people complain about the almost total freedom they have on this site. I hope it's not getting you down too much 
I bet you could find 5 different people and get 5 different answers on what good quality is. a good story should not be defined by genre only by beilievability.
Well, idiots managed too piss off Wanderer D...Again.
Good job! Let me give them a free internet and a cookie.
158799 This is the golden attitude, right here! BROHOOF!
Also brohoof to Wanderer D for that amazing rebuttal to those comments. I didn't even notice people said that. Right as always.
158812 I agree. It's about having fun while writing when you get down to it.
Amen, Mein freund. Amen Indeed. You're right, there no right of Genre.
So people can stop saying HiE is crap, which means that my story isnt crap.
Good to see you stickin it to 'em, bro!
Celestia bless you
What rankles me more to be honest is when stories that are demonstrably awful become popular and praised. Of course it's a wider issue, that is why Transformers 3 is one of the biggest box office hits ever, and yet at the same time one of the worst films ever made.
158821 I honestly can't get why people hate HiE. Some of the best fics I've read have been HiE.
158825 I can only wonder myself. To each his own, I suppose.
Well, I might as well get ready to post my finalized chapter for "Friendship is a Miracle", one of the many HiE fics that actually doesnt get downgraded. :3
Then, ti3m for that sequel. It'll be huge, I can assure you.
158824 ALL the Transformers Movies Stunk. It's because they're not true to it's roots.
158799 Amen to that, man. HiE is fun to write! That's why I made one.
158826 Awsome I can't wait. :D
158825 Elitism... ironically, most of the people who levy such criticisms don't write at all.
Therefore they think it's easy.
158828 I cant wait either. Not meta, It fits everything, It's Adventurous, Suspenseful, and it even has a Moral.
I mean, Morals are RARE in any of these fics.
158829 Are those the people who commented about the quality or are you talking about me?
Sorry if I come off as a bit rude, as I'm socialy awkword on the internet and out in public.
Is it just me or someone else did read this in voice of Ghost?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZSpZGRn0KM
And about post.
Thanks for pointing many things. And calm down, every once in a while people complain about Everything.
If you heard about World of Warcraft, imagine this: x100 server and people complain that it takes "too long to level up, please powerlevel me!". If their 2days char get banned for a week, they complain that it takes "too long to make new clothes". Really? It takes a day.
So relax and don't be angry. They are what they are. They will complain.
Sorry if I said something that you might not like. Sorry.
P.S. Aren't you complaining about complaining?
158839 The people who say those things about quality. come on, now. I know you. I know you write good stories too.
I have submitted absolute tripe to EQD, and getting slammed down hurts. But, it was nothing I didn't deserve, and after a brief... mourning period, I got back up and tried again.
I failed again, as well, but I failed less. And it took less time for me to recover. Now, I may never make it on EQD, but I've taken a genre that I love and has seen all sorts of abuse, put my own spin on it, and put it up for the people to see. And can you guess what happened? I'd improved. I know, I was shocked, too. My writing had gotten, not fantastic, or even good, but readable. A small group of people appreciated it, and now I've got something to do with my free time besides read endlessly.
I went through the process, and I'm proof there's really nothing horribly wrong with the system. It may not be a perfect system, but I ask you to point one out to me. Good luck. I may not be a shining example of writing prowess, but I'm still a fresh writer. I have plenty of time to get better, and I hope to come out the other end just as grumpy and cynical as all the greats.
That's all I have to say. Back to being meek and regretting posting such a strong opinion.
Wanderer D, I love you. Times like now are when I wish I could favorite blog posts.
And I've never really understood pre-readers. The way they selflessly assist a writer in their writing is a marvel, and its the little things like that that make me love this fandom.
Whenever you get advice from anyone regardless, be sure to thank them even if they call it irredeemable crap. I tip my metaphorical hat to you, pre-readers and editors.
I suppose I was somewhat guilty of being gleeful of that revelation myself. Though the metafiction thing was the only thing that was truly troubling me these days, I think 'Twilight Sparkle Earns the Feature Box' while entertaining did ruffle my feathers a bit. And I think the author was trying to illustrate a problem.
Eats, Shoots, and Leaves is awesome. And as long as you're not waving around Strunk and White, I think yer cool.
Seriously if I could remove one style book from the universe....
>>EDIT
After some soul-searching I think in the fairness of artistic endeavor and freedom of expression I shouldn't celebrate the ban of anything, even if that particular thing disagrees with my personal tastes.
158842 On the subject of stories, I'm currently working on anouther one with a user called DevilsMessia (Might have botched the name a bit, sorry)
I won't revieal to much as I only have just an outline, but I will begin writing it once I get more done. IE: research on sertian subjects.
It makes me sad that a post like this is even necessary. Well said.
I like the looseness of this site's approval process. Meet some very easy, minimal requirements, and your story gets put up for others to read and review. Yes, there are a lot of... not very good stories out there because of that. But it gives those with a passion for writing but not the skill the chance to submit a story, get constructive feedback and improve as a writer. That's more than worth the number of less-than-steller quality fics to me.
158857 sertian or certain*?
158861 sorry about that, I tend to be bad at spelling. LINK we sortofe made our own little group. you can join if you want to.
Now I gotta say that Wanderer D Should be voted as the best Mod here, because he takes his precious life to show us our wrongs without acting like an ass.
He is sincere, and makes us laugh. He even gripes about things we can all agree on.
This isnt sucking up, I can definitely say Wanderer D is seriously the nicest Mod in the team.
pinkie.ponychan.net/chan/files/src/133602796360.gif
158824 Yeah, that's the thing that bugs me. When a story that is (this is where I would normally type "demonstrably awful" but apparently our situational vocabularies match up pretty well) ends up in the box for days due to people going "lol, fave" because its terribleness made them laugh.
-----
The whole issue is a mess, anyways. The bizarre truth is that we have too many good things, and, as a community, can only focus on so many of them at a time.
I'm sorta half-and-half on the "famous author's club" idea that keeps getting bandied about (particularly recently). On the one hand, I agree that you see a lot of the same authors, and it can be pretty hard to get dem views (though even EqD is no guarantee of that - I have a story that got EqD'd linking directly here and it has less than 2k views in a few weeks. I've seen 10k in HOURS on trollfics). But, on the other hand, exposure is pretty much by definition exponential. The more people know who you are, the more attention you're going to get.
Still, everyone seems to be doing their best to improve the situation, so I guess I'm hopeful for the unnoticed gems out there. If I get to read more good stories, fair play to everyone.
Good point there. Lots of authors just put random shit together and send it out as a story. Others have a pretty good story but it's not organized in any way. If you don't have any pre readers to check it out, then you have to at least go over it a couple of times to make sure it's fit for publishing.
Haha, cool digs, man. ;D
Not that I'm disagreeing with the main thrust of your argument or anything, but I think the issue a lot of people have isn't so much "There aren't enough quality stories around here" as "A lot of quality stories aren't getting noticed under everything else," which is a subtly different concern. It kind of does stand to reason that for every objectively questionable-quality story that gets up on the featured box, another (potentially better) story ISN'T going up on the featured box.
But the featured box is self-reinforcing, so if you manage to get up there just briefly, the resulting surge of popularity is likely to keep you there.
I guess the big thing here is that popularity just doesn't equate to quality, which is a problem when Fimfiction ranks everything's visibility according to their popularity. Featured spots are based on popularity, Most Popular Stories is based on popularity, etc.
The primary method of getting hits/favorites/likes that isn't based on your story's active popularity is your spot on the front page, and whatever attention your fic grabs there is subject to a bunch of other variable factors that don't necessarily correlate to how good your story is. For example, if your fic gets posted at the end of the approval queue and no other stories are approved for a couple hours after. This happened a lot right after Diablo 3 dropped and most of the mods were busy with that or other big concerns. We had some stories drop off the front page in the usual span of time, and we had other fics that managed to stay at the top of the front page for HOURS.
Regardless of their quality, those fics got a better chance of getting seen/rated/featured than other fics that weren't so lucky.
I think it's fair to say that the system, for any number of reasons, doesn't guarantee you attention proportionate to the quality of your story, and that might be what people are actually upset about. There's plenty of bad stuff that sinks without getting looked at twice, but I guess it'd be reasonable to say people notice when there are good stories that don't get featured and bad stories that do.
The ideal solution to this is complex and probably nonexistent, but I totally agree that "Stop worrying about the other stuff and just get as good as you can get" is a totally cool piece of advice in place of that.
tl;dr: Pizza for everyone! emofaces.com/en/emoticons/p/pizza-emoticon.gif
158920 Good advice. I'll try to do that more often before I submit a fic.
I read the blog post, and immediately thought of Sturgeon's Law. (Warning: TvTropes link!) I then read through the comments, and thought of the TvTropes Corollaries. (See previous link)
For those who don't want to risk a wiki walk, here's the summary:
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crud.
First TvTropes Corollary: The difficulty of getting a group of people to agree on which 10% is not crud exponentially approaches infinity as the size of the group increases.
Second TvTropes Corollary: The other 90% of crud is further divided into "Subjective Crud," "Crud You Like Anyway", and "Total Crud." The exact proportions of this division have never been researched, and most likely varies by the individual for reasons mentioned above.
158932
I always make a chart with story descriptions in it so my stories follow a basic plan and are organized. Makes everything much easier.
Sweet Baby Jesus, PLEASE don't implement a prereader group like EqD has. Seriously, that crap is why I stopped going to that site for fics.
In any case, I don't see why people are all raging about Human fics. I like Human fics. More often than not they fall under the category of 'hilariously bad,' but when they're good they're perhaps some of my favorite stories. Anthropology comes to mind...
Honestly, if I were to suggest a removal of a tag it'd be tragedy, since that sorta spoils the ending. Not the removal of tragedy FICS, just an alteration to the tag. Since, you know... you pick up something labeled 'tragedy' then you kinda know that it's not going to end well. But that's a minor complaint and I don't think it really deserves a fuss made about it.
Really, I don't see why this is that big a deal. I'm a little sad to see the meta fics go, since I've enjoyed some of them in the past, but the 'in-joke' fics I'm not upset to see taken out. Still, none of the three fics I'm actively trying to finish are meta so, again, no tantrums here.
HELL YES! That's what gets me up in the morning! If you don't like the quality of stories get proactive and out-write the other writers or shut the hell up and sit down! That shit gets me energetic right here, I think I'll have something worth posting by the end of the day. GO FOR BROKE OR GO HOME, HOOAH!
Man, when I wrote my crappy self insert, I was just screwing around and seeing what happened. Quality was barely on my mind.
25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnv86gBSU81qmuvd1o1_400.gif
Beautifully put Wanderer, thank you.
158818
BROHOOF
^0^/)*(\^u^
Don't cha know they want you to this?
[youtube=yiJ9fy1qSFI]
.......
This has nothing to do with the content of your post (which I agree with), but I feel compelled to remind everyone as usual that the Chicago Book of Style does not a good story make. Technically excellent doesn't mean compelling, thought-provoking, or relatable. I'm living proof that you can know every rule ever printed and still write stories as exciting as a whitewashed wall.
Soapbox mode disabled, carry on!
Yes Indeed Wanderer D. Excellent philosiphy!
I like the way you put it. It does seem a little weird to me that so many hate HiE fics now. I know there are hordes of them, and sometimes they can get kinda weird(or really weird), but that's no reason to ban the whole genre! There are so many great stories that are HiE, and in all honesty, those kinds of stories are what inspired me to start writing. It just doesn't seem very Brony to discriminate like that.
Also, if HiE got banned, CardsLafter wouldn't be able to update "through the eyes of another pony" here! AND I WILL HAVE NONE OF THAT.
One last thing. if someone thinks a story lacks quality or substance, then why not just not read it? Is it just me, or is it really not that simple?