[Alphabravo]
(?)Community Member
- Posted: Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:32:58 +0000
I suppose I'm here to express my doubts about the viability of a writing arena. As the title says, writing is not like art or avatars. Both of those, for better or worse, people can get an idea of in about three seconds: long enough for their eye to process some visual data to their brain and then their brain to maybe consider it for a while. It's not terribly work or time intensive. With writing, one has to actually read, which takes time and effort. I'm just not sure how many people would be willing to put in the kind of time it takes to actually read a story, especially with Gaia's not-especially-conducive-to-readability formatting.
The other thing I wondered about was the purpose of the arena. It's not a competition like the avi arena, but... what is it? If it's just for people to read and give critiques, don't we already have the OP/L and the OS/P for that? I actually find Gaia's usual post format more readable than the arena format, which would make me prefer the forums instead of the arenas for reading, and the forums seem more conducive to getting helpful comments. The OP/L especially is pretty good about constructive feedback if a writer asks for it.
I tried to go in the arena and read some stories, but the sheer volume of virtually unreadable stuff made it difficult to stay around long. I think the art arena has some sort of minor vetting process for entries, shouldn't the writing arena have something similar? Especially since it's easier to plagiarize writing than art in many cases. Is there a way to implement minor quality control? I understand that it would take A LOT of time for whatever mod gets stuck with reading the stuff people send in, but... isn't that the root of the whole problem anyway? I just think reading takes too much time (and I say this as a writer myself, not as someone who hates to read) to work in an arena format.
Maybe I'm just Not Getting It, and someone can explain to me what I'm missing (or how to find the good stories on the arena, which right now seem to me like trawling for pearls on a planet where oysters went extinct a few millenia ago).
The other thing I wondered about was the purpose of the arena. It's not a competition like the avi arena, but... what is it? If it's just for people to read and give critiques, don't we already have the OP/L and the OS/P for that? I actually find Gaia's usual post format more readable than the arena format, which would make me prefer the forums instead of the arenas for reading, and the forums seem more conducive to getting helpful comments. The OP/L especially is pretty good about constructive feedback if a writer asks for it.
I tried to go in the arena and read some stories, but the sheer volume of virtually unreadable stuff made it difficult to stay around long. I think the art arena has some sort of minor vetting process for entries, shouldn't the writing arena have something similar? Especially since it's easier to plagiarize writing than art in many cases. Is there a way to implement minor quality control? I understand that it would take A LOT of time for whatever mod gets stuck with reading the stuff people send in, but... isn't that the root of the whole problem anyway? I just think reading takes too much time (and I say this as a writer myself, not as someone who hates to read) to work in an arena format.
Maybe I'm just Not Getting It, and someone can explain to me what I'm missing (or how to find the good stories on the arena, which right now seem to me like trawling for pearls on a planet where oysters went extinct a few millenia ago).