Sandra

This story has just been accepted into the Mechanics Institute Review. Randomly named journal, but I’m pleased it’s found a good home. 😊

OK yep that all sounds good 🙂

Yeah, I’d agree, i think the comp works best as a pressure-free place for people to dip their toes in the water or play around a bit. Nice, encouraging comments are a great way of supporting that, but more critiquey comments, although a wonderful thing would perhaps be more useful in the critiquey Forum, or direct posting/messaging, and of course…[Read more]

I think this discussion is clarifying things. We want the monthly/bi-monthly/whatever frequency competition to be somewhere where people can post unfinished/half-finished/incomplete/never going to be finished/trying-things-out bits of writing as well as more finished and considered things. As such the tone of comments should be positive. If a…[Read more]

Compliments are what comes to mind when I consider the definition of positive commentary. Stating what you liked about a piece to encourage its writer. If someone specifically wants a critique they can ask for it plainly when posting their entry. But I think the general consensus is that this won’t really be the forum in which to offer…[Read more]

It is a tricky one, Jonathan, and I don’t have all the answers, but the monthly competition is IMO intended to be an encouraging place where writers at all stages of learning the craft can enjoy a challenge, try things out and so on. Or at least I think that’s what it should be. I’m not sure it’s the right place for full on criticism especially as…[Read more]

I know it’s always a tricky one, but what is the definition of positive commentary? Is constructive crit within that purview? What do we want to allow? I ask because in some instances it could be useful to see where a piece went wrong, though of course then again some entrants might not be seeking any kind of feedback. Going back to the point…[Read more]

THanks for the interesting post @richardb. 🙂 I did laugh at Harry critisising the very services that JW offer! I guess their taught courses are less in depth than an MA, but it’s the same principal. As someone said (@janeshuff?) I love that the SE course attracts a wide range of writing genres/styles so there seemed no gravitation towards some…[Read more]

Sorry for absence … Yes, I like the idea of (positive) commenting within the comp thread, and if sub-threading isn’t an option then tagging people is a fair second best, I guess. So yes please do jump into the current comp if you wish to comment. It will be a nice way for people to get a bit of feedback regardless of the comp results. As @daedalu…[Read more]

Thanks Squidge and Woolleybeans – really interesting.

What would be ideal is an option to indent and insert replies following an entry so that they were clustered after the entry to which they refer. I haven’t seen enough of WordPress or BBpress etc. to be certain, but I think that reply threading only introduces indentation to nest replies, in the same way that replies are handled for “updates”. All…[Read more]

I think you have to activate reply threading, but I don’t know for sure.

Unfortunately, AFAIK (which may be completely wrong) WordPress and its plug-ins only allow a single chain of posts, the idea being that you have a Topic followed by Replies to it. So the thread might go something like ENTRY1 – Comment on ENTRY1 – Comment on ENTRY1 – ENTRY2 – Comment on ENTRY1 – ENTRY3 – Comment on ENTRY2 etc. which is likely to be…[Read more]

Absolutely agree with you Daeds about the caveat.

But is it possible to keep the comments linked to the entry. The way we do it now won’t let that happen, as Jonathan showed. Is there a way round that? Having a master thread for each comp with threads within it for each entry?

I think you’ve explained that really well, Squidge. That ‘trying too hard’ can detract from what the writer actually wants to say, and often kills ‘voice’ too. Speaking from experience, many of the sentences I’ve laboured most over are the ones that end up being cut when I go back and edit!

Yes, I like all of those. I never really understood the Cloud thing of ‘comment on the person’s wall but not on the thread’. This thing is pretty informal anyway. So Perhaps we can allow, indeed encourage, comments, with the slight caveat that people don’t go heavy on crit or be negative.

^ I agree with that Jane. And to keep entries clearer, maybe put something like

ENTRY

at the top if you are posting a story. Or comment as a reply to an entry, and let the forum software handle the nesting of replies (testing that here to see if it does indeed do that!). I like the idea of comments being right in alongside with the stories as it…[Read more]