Timeline for Can Writers Graduate? Correlation between voting and progressing?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 17, 2017 at 0:33 | comment | added | Monica Cellio | SO and Writers both require that you say what problem you're trying to solve. "Here's my stuff; please fix it" gets closed on either, but "why am I getting this exception?" or "how can I make my dialogue less stilted?" doesn't. This is the line we try to walk with critiques; open-ended "review my stuff" questions don't work, but "help me solve this problem, which I will demonstrate by showing you some of my work" fits. | |
| Jan 16, 2017 at 16:32 | comment | added | Standback | I kind of agree! But a code snippet is much more manageable, and the issue is MUCH more clearly defined, than an entire short story :-) So code snippet is "fix THIS problem," fiction feedback is "tell me everything you think about this." Two very different forms of "review"... | |
| Jan 16, 2017 at 14:36 | comment | added | user5645 | @Standback "I'm trying to do X, here's my code, why isn't this working?" is a code review question. It is the same as "Here is my short story, how can I improve it?" | |
| Jan 16, 2017 at 14:21 | comment | added | Standback | I just want to point out that SO is not a "rephrase my code" site. It has many requests to review and fix code, but much more it has "I'm trying to do X, here's my code, why isn't this working." Questions that don't manage that, get closed and ignored. If they didn't block out all the "please fix my code for me, kthxby" questions, they'd never have gotten to where they are today. | |
| Jan 16, 2017 at 1:56 | comment | added | user16226 | Like @LaurenIpsum, I disagree on "there are no right or wrong answers on Writers." I think there are lots of wrong answers. The problem is that there are very few testable answers. You can definitely do wrong things in writing: fail to sell, fail to communicate, fail to convince. If you can do wrong things, then there are wrong answers, at least relative to a given aim. But proving that an answer is wrong is very difficult. | |
| Jan 16, 2017 at 1:51 | comment | added | user16226 | @LaurenIpsum, I agree that "Mere disagreement doesn't merit a downvote," though I am pretty certain that every downvote I have ever received had been an expression of disagreement, mostly with my non-mainstream views on "show don't tell". I don't think I have given more than a couple of downvotes in all the time I have been here. But this points to a problem: because the vast majority of the answers here are essentially non-testable, there is very little grounds of downvoting anything. | |
| Jan 15, 2017 at 22:25 | comment | added | Lauren-Clear-Monica-Ipsum | I think sometimes there are genuinely wrong answers on Writers, but they are very few and far between. I have less than two dozen DVs out of over 4900 votes cast, and I generally save those for "Boy howdy, this isn't just bad advice, it is flat-out incorrect." By way of example, I disagree with your statement that "there are no wrong answers," but the rest of your post has some good points. Mere disagreement doesn't merit a downvote. | |
| Jan 15, 2017 at 16:30 | history | answered | user5645 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |