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http://waldorph.tumblr.com/post/111844405768/whatre-we-calling-this-theoryofficgate-i-like
So some student-led class at one of my charming local universities has decided to teach fanfiction. This has come to the attention of my circles courtesy of a torrent of really obnoxiously critical comments left on a few select fics.
As an author, one does take on certain risks when posting anything in public online. However, solicitation of people to go and post shitty things in someone else's space is a dick move. I also think that we can agree that college students who have not mastered constructive criticism are highly likely to say shitty things in the attempt to engage critically. Furthermore, some (not all, but quite a few) fannish spaces have a convention of saying the nice things in the author's space in public, and either sending critical things in private, putting them in your own space, or just not saying them at all (at least in connection to the author) unless the author has asked for it.
If you're trying to interact helpfully with fandom and you send a torrent of kids who have been instructed to be "critical" and are likely to poke their thumb in someone's eye by accident while doing so into a fannish space, you, honorable sentient, are being a dick.
1) Don't require your students to leave a comment. If you need to prove they've interacted with the fic, require them to leave kudos.
2) Instruct them to be good citizens when leaving comments, if they leave comments at all. As academics, you are guests in fandom. As the fandom guide of people who have not internalized fandom mores, you have the responsibility to tell the students about things like this, and what sorts of things are unacceptable in this culture. Don't be a shitbrick.
3) By all means, have them interact critically with the text. Require them to either make their own space -- livejournal, dreamwidth, tumblr, blogspot, facebook -- and post the criticism there, post it to an online space reserved for the class, or send it directly to the instructor. Having your students leave it as a comment is like taking all the critical freshman essays on Moby-Dick/Finnegans Wake/The Fountainhead and packing them up into a tidy bundle and sending them to Herman Melville/James Joyce/Ayn Rand, marked "IMPORTANT FEEDBACK - PLEASE READ". Except those authors are actually dead.
So some student-led class at one of my charming local universities has decided to teach fanfiction. This has come to the attention of my circles courtesy of a torrent of really obnoxiously critical comments left on a few select fics.
As an author, one does take on certain risks when posting anything in public online. However, solicitation of people to go and post shitty things in someone else's space is a dick move. I also think that we can agree that college students who have not mastered constructive criticism are highly likely to say shitty things in the attempt to engage critically. Furthermore, some (not all, but quite a few) fannish spaces have a convention of saying the nice things in the author's space in public, and either sending critical things in private, putting them in your own space, or just not saying them at all (at least in connection to the author) unless the author has asked for it.
If you're trying to interact helpfully with fandom and you send a torrent of kids who have been instructed to be "critical" and are likely to poke their thumb in someone's eye by accident while doing so into a fannish space, you, honorable sentient, are being a dick.
1) Don't require your students to leave a comment. If you need to prove they've interacted with the fic, require them to leave kudos.
2) Instruct them to be good citizens when leaving comments, if they leave comments at all. As academics, you are guests in fandom. As the fandom guide of people who have not internalized fandom mores, you have the responsibility to tell the students about things like this, and what sorts of things are unacceptable in this culture. Don't be a shitbrick.
3) By all means, have them interact critically with the text. Require them to either make their own space -- livejournal, dreamwidth, tumblr, blogspot, facebook -- and post the criticism there, post it to an online space reserved for the class, or send it directly to the instructor. Having your students leave it as a comment is like taking all the critical freshman essays on Moby-Dick/Finnegans Wake/The Fountainhead and packing them up into a tidy bundle and sending them to Herman Melville/James Joyce/Ayn Rand, marked "IMPORTANT FEEDBACK - PLEASE READ". Except those authors are actually dead.
