NotNoNever

If I'm not much mistaken, was this not a fairly regular way for cocaine users to use their drug of choice when they ran out of nose? Zombie, can you just imagine giving the ... police ... the idea of getting you to fart into a breathalyser ... Now, sir, I want you to put this tube in and wrap your lips tightly around it and blow till I say stop. Does this mean that if you can't fart up to 1 litre of air you could get done for failing to provide a specimen? The mind boggles. Her Majesty v The Prisoner at the Bar "Prisoner at the Bar. You have been found guilty of failing to exhale anally to the required volume at the behest of an officer of the law. How do you plead?" "Hic" "Prisoner at the Bar. You will refrain from using uncouth language or you will be held in contempt of this court. Once again, how do you plead?" "Burp" "Prisoner at the Bar. This is your final warning. How do you plead?" "Pthrwrwrwrwrwblblblblbblblrwrwp" "p" "Prisoner at the Bar. Is that your full plea?" "pooooooeeeeeeeeeeep" "Prisoner at the Bar. hic ... I zhust wanna ... his ... shay, .... eye luv hic luv hic hic luvs you, man. I hink yos g go hic got burp got the best best bestest hic fartsh aroun hic, all intocshic intocshic intocshicating un un and efflu efflu hic effere ethereal. You u yoooo is jusht the an ana anal, brrrrrrp angels share, dude."

hic

One feels one has to point out the irony ... I have three posts above. The first asked for a link, and got a like. The third pointed out that the second seemed to have a lot in common with some of our most respected authors, and got a like. But the second - the substantive one, the one that actually argues for fair and balanced and useful reviews didn't get a like. I don't care about the likes per se. I have had PMs complementing me on the post. But I do find it hugely ironic that when we are talking about only being uber lovely in public, a reasoned, contributory argument does not get a like, but ones which have little or no contributory material do. Another thing that made me laugh was that I posted a balanced, but basically very favourable review recently. It was of a very respected author's anthology piece. That author had actually added me as a friend the day I signed up. The day this very favourable review went live s:he unfriended me. Seems it's not possible to right because one is so fervently engaged in doing wrong. Sounds a bit like akin to the much vaunted review, really. Jussayin

I can't help wondering if this is not some absurd surrealist provocation post! Who on earth, I mean, just who on earth objects to getting personal mail to the point where they actually write to the sender to complain? Does this person have nothing better to do than complain about people being overly nice? Here's an idea. Save up all the money you would have spent on mail - materials and postage - to this person, and at Christmas send them an envelope containing a short explanation along with the a note of the amount of money, and a self addressed postcard on which they can nominate a charity for you to donate it to. Tell them you have so much pleasance just bursting out of you that you have to have an outlet for it, lest it sits in a corner of your heart, and goes off and gets bitter. And thank them ever so much for allowing you to direct your human warmth to a place where it is appreciated. Honestly. Some people have so little to do, and so little intelligence to do it with, they deserve themselves.

Thanks Andy. Funnily, I think it covers a lot of what I said above. Interestingly AQG, one of our Prems, actually made a similar point about the community thing. Great minds think alike .... and I hope nobody is suggesting AQG is a fool because I don't differ!

Anyway, while I agree that there needs to be some care taken, I'd like to point out a few things, as I do a fair bit of reviewing. Firstly, and not most importantly, writing a review helps me work out what I think about a story. It means I can give the author's work a second go in my head. However, to the main point. Let's understand that there are four - well, let's call them classes, for the want of a better definition - four classes of authors here. There are the Hosted and Premium authors. The Hosted are all held in high regard. At least, I imagine that's the point. I've yet to see a Hosted with uniformly poor writing. The Premiums are actually professional, like it or not. I don't know if they get paid by the site, but readers certainly have to pay for their work. Seems to me that should set a certain level of quality. Then there are the Promising Authors. It's a weirdness to me, albeit a happy one, that some of the Proms are better than some of the Hosted. But, be that as it may, the Proms must surely have some level of quality to arrive at before they are (what? made, invited?) to take on that status. And the other two categories make up the majority. These have no formal differentiation. I rationalise them as 'more mature' (i.e. they have been writing for longer, or have developed their skills more), and; 'newer' authors. Why is this important? Well, I've not been a member that long, but I have been around for quite a while before that, just reading. I used to get terribly frustrated when a Hosted or a Prom's work was not that good, but I had invested the time. On the other hand, find a 'standard' author with talent and it's like wey hey! When I became a member I finally got the point. I could see the reviews. Some great writing getting no reviews, and some pretty mediocre getting more gush that a fireman's squirty thing! But honestly very little feedback on quality. Conclusion: if the honest stuff us going on indoors, then there's not much honest stuff going on at all. The round point to this is that I hold different authors to different standards in my reviews. Hosteds and Proms can expect a bit of sharp commentary if their stuff is choc full of errors. They should be expected to know, and be able to perform, better. The other authors need a deal of leniency. But on the other hand, I see work that has been edited or beta'd by high status authors, and it's just not been pointed out. How can a Hosted edit a story, then we find that 'past' is spelt 'passed' several times over. It cannot surely be that it's being pointed out by the editors and ignored by the authors. Can it? I'm afraid that if an author wants to take the rep points in huge abundance, they should be willing to take some constructive and it must be constructive criticism. Let me share something. I've given a fair number of reviews since I signed up. Some have pointed out issues. Some authors have pm'd and asked for further information, which I have gladly given. Nobobdy has ever pm'd complaining they've had an unfair review. The only real time that happened was in public and it came from one fan and one admin. And they were both a bit - well, impolite and uninformed. But I don't edit for two Proms because I harshly hack. Now to the last point, and I think this is easily the most important. There are not nearly enough editors on the site. And an even greater lack of good ones. That's not a criticism of the site. It's all voluntary. There are all too many really good authors working without the help of an editor or beta, which would turn their work from interesting and enjoyable into fullscale must read with no interruptions from misplaced words and repetitive bits that have slipped in as a result of a tired scribbler. Why is this pertinent? It is pertinent because making the criticisms in public means that the learning exercise is there for everybody to benefit from. In a scenario where there are too few editors, I think that's vital. That's why I set up the MuckitList. It's available to all, especially those who don't have an editor or beta. It is absolutely true that review criticism should not be unnecesarily harsh, and should try to point out the good as well as the bad. But remember, a review might be the only edit a story gets. I can tell you for a fact that if every reader was to point out the issues in a pm, either it wouldn't happen, or authors would be deluged with negative pms. Furthermore, anybody who would send a pm would be in dire danger of being asked to edit or beta. And most have no wish to get into that. Thus they wouldn't do it. I certainly wouldn't. I hate the thought of turning down a request for help. Look, this is a community site. We learn from the community, because the community is more than the sum of its parts. Making reviews public with honest and fair critique is part of that. Site admin needs to understand that they do no service to the authors when they try to put the brakes on, just the same as the horrible reviewers do no service when they pile the horseshit on. PM reviews are not gonna happen. I'd love to hear from any author who has had a critical review pm. I bet it doesn't amount to many.

Andy, can you find that original post? I think it might be useful to compare it with what Bill has said in his comments.

There once was a Robster called Yettie Who rose 'bove the puerile and petty To brighten the days Of us scribbling gays So we're forever in debty the Yettie

Review will be on the blog soonish

Review will be on my blog in a week or so. However, I can't disagree with anything said above.

Take it from me, that's too much work to do without some downtime. As soon as you get tired, you'll cock up a code, drop a sql statement and end up going rond in ever decreasing demented circles. And a warning ... if you are one of five statisticians, and the only one doing the coding, juuuuust be sure that you have a couple of wee fallbacks in there in case some idiot thinks you're so clever they can do without you once the thing is up and running. Sure sounds like your manager is enough of an idiot to do it. A wee coding error might just be the thing that keeps you around, and it would serve them right. I don't suppose you're getting paid for twenty eight days straight work? That's six weeks for the price of four, if you count holiday entitlement. Good luck! There's nothing like writing relational databases to drive you clean round the bend ... and I only work in Access. I tried sqlserver and it was beyond me, lol.

A good idea for authors is to click the authors button on the main bar and you'll get the Hosteds and Promising Authors there. After that, have a look on the GA Stories bar, and select the anthologies. They're very diverse, but have around ten to fifteen contributions per antho. You'll get a good idea of who's producing work that isn't 'featured' elsewhere, but who is also producing generally good work. Another thing I've recently found is to click on 'see full list' at the bottom of the Forums page. From there you can see who is on at any particular point, and get a link to what they are reading. I find that very useful to get intruduced to writers and stories I havent' yet come across. Enjoy...!

Review is on my blog http://www.gayauthors.org/forums/blog/475/entry-12862-choices-kingdombythesea/

Gawsh, Joann! If you find a beta that tells you your writing is not worth the time and effort, send them round to mine. I'll kick their arse six ways to Sunday. A beta or an editor is there to help, not hinder or demotivate. Can I suggest that your impulse to find one early is fine, but if you want to concentrate on anything, concentrate on your writing first, and then a beta you can work with rather than one who is arrogant enough to tell you whether to go on or not. If you want to write, you write. As they say in the papers ... 'publish and be damned'. And if people are going to damn you for what you write, well, better to be damned for doing it, than damned for not. Damn them all!

It's a bit funny when you suddenly realise that the relationship is changing somewhat. Having a responsibility to family is normal, but having responsibility for family is rather odd when it's your parents. I'm lucky, I suppose. My 73 / 67 parents are fitter than most people half their ages, and there's no dementia history. But I still feel I need to keep an eye on thngs to an extent. I could live with my father ... but my mother? Oooh noooo, that would be detrimental to both of us!

Dubillyouell, that's very stereotyping of you! I think that's probably very contentious AND very political. Lordy, I think you might get your paws dipped in vinegar and sent to the soapbox with no puppy treats for that infraction of the code!

Reminds me of the maxim that all is politics. Don't want too much sun and over windy weather? Then stop polluting the atmosphere ... that's politics.

It's soapbox material? Lordy. Even the uncontentious is soapbox material now. What's happened in there! Have they all got age or something? Indeedy

Evil! Review will be on the blog, soonish.

Hmmm, a beta's job is not to nurture, but that should certainly be included if necessary, especially for a new writer. A beta's job is most certainly not to gild (MuckitList Misdemeanour ). It's to remove the verdigris, perhaps, to allow the gilding to be brought to visibility. That's important to who's in charge of the story Betas do not enrich. Only the author can do that. Again, it is probable that the beta will suggest the removal of stuff that is lowering the standard of otherwise good work (see Dark's examples above) to let the good stuff shine. Indirectly that will cause the pop and shine. Sounds like Dark loves his beta too. I think I can see why!

Aw, is that it?! I thought I was going to get to see this list where you're fourth! Dang! Thanks anyway.

Can you give us a link for those numbers from Trebs, please? I can't find it

I love that phrase 'ripped him a new one'. Wouldn't it be ironically just, if it were literally accurate! Ah the joys of being anal about not being anal. Unfortunately the fine will have no effect. The outreach work? Well, I'd say that's got a lot of potential. Make him work and interact with those he demonises due to ignorance. It's really much harder to hate people you know.

It's a weird thing, but it's not caring about people that is the difference. Mike's right there. That's only a symptom, or even a proxy. I worked for a god-fearing, lay-preaching, born again christian once. He'd fuck anyone over in a heartbeat. The problem is this: conservatives, no, strike that, people of a strongly uninhibited free market view are far more likely to get into positions of power in employment for a variety if reasons. Let's very untidily bundle that up into market evolution. They will most likely have struggled to do it, and view those who don't achieve it as weak. Most likely those who don't are, again an untidy generalisation, more liberal or socially minded. But I know quite a few conservatives who are very generous with their time and money to needy causes. No. The difference is that those who will elbow every other bugger out of the way are the ones who become visible, and they are largely conservative for the reasons stated. Thus the obvious but erroneous conclusion to make is that conservatives are 'nasty'. They're not. It's those nasty who stand atop the pyramid, i.e. those with sharp elbows, who are visible, who become the shorthand, prima facie case, for conservatives. You want to see some examples? Donald Trump (being a twat here in the UK atm). Mitt Romney (being a twat on video this morning). The real difficulty is not that conservatives / liberals don't understand business. It's that they don't always understand that the concept of family (and, therefore, their predisposition to protect it) is just a microcosm of society and the social. Most especially those who elbow their way to the top. Mitt Romney might be a twat, but he's at least a successful one, in business terms. It sounds to me, W_L, that your employers are not that good business managers, but probably pretty good process and concept managers. Which is why they need people like you to treat their money like your own. The fact that you're doing some good for others into the bargain does not make you a bad person or a woolly liberal, or a socialist. It just makes you someone who understands and respects the interconnectedness of things. It's not fair to assume that you only took proper control of the financial systems because that was what your role demanded, or that you only saved the company from cashflow bankruptcy for the sake of saving the company, its owners, and your own job. It seems you took a very social conservative approach. The problem with most conservatives is that they are very good at the conservative part, but very bad / uninterested / irrationally fearful of the social part. They view any approach which seeks to value people as people, rather than as producer units, as dangerous and ridiculous. They seem entirely unable to comprehend that they rely on those people to do a good job. As to your own position, well, you must do as you feel you must do. However, I'd be bloody amazed if they don't come up with a very much improved remuneration package for you when you do tender the resignation. At which point you'd be well advised to consider this: are you a better asset to society staying where you are and protecting the workforce to the best of your abilities in what sounds like a reasonably small sized business, or; are you better to go somewhere else where the culture looks professionally more competent, but where your ability to affect for the greater good is largely impaired by virtue of that success. Only you can know / decide. And we all need to make reasonable money to live. So good luck in your search.

Sheez, you like your smoked smoked smoke with a little whisky thrown in for piquancy!