2/21 We are in the process of updating!

[Nick]

I worried that this article was going to be a stinker. Glad you guys are enjoying it.

I think I'm part of the minority as far as feedback goes, in that I really don't mind the drought. Also, if a poster leaves my articles out of praise I really do not mind. Not one bit. I realize that a large majority of the stuff we write about targets a certain sort of audience, and with this comes a lot of hit or miss work. If an article of mine misses, that's fine. The articles of mine that I'm most fond of are definitely not the ones that people compliment me on.

Ultimately, I don't think any of us are doing this for recognition. We started out very small and I can honestly say that I'm having just as much fun now as I was then. It's just something we enjoy doing. Having people tell us they like what we're doing is just an added bonus. Don't get me wrong, I love reading feedback on my work more than anything, including criticism. If something I wrote isn't that funny then fuck it, tell me it sucked. I like that stuff. If I'm posting things on there that you guys aren't enjoying aren't I just wasting all of our time? The only way we're going to better serve you the reader and thereby ourselves is to know what you want.

Then again if you guys think it's more just going through the motions saying "blah blah yeah it was alright ehhhh" then I wouldn't continue posting it all the time, either. I'm not asking you to make up emotions about articles that are so so, but when you feel strongly about something or if you were moved to laugh let us know. Knowing what's hitting home with you guys is pretty much what we're looking for.


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[Bismark]

[Jon]

oh great three pages of feedback pffff makes you wonder whether we even exist

I really appreciate it, everybody. The last thing I ever want is for you to leave feedback out of a sense of obligation. Nick's right, I don't really write for recognition so much as I write to enjoy myself, but what you guys think means a great deal to me, which is why I'd like feedback to be as genuine as possible. If that means not leaving feedback for an article that didn't do it for you, that's just fine. If you even have active criticism to make about what I write, by all means send it my way.

[dlomyhero]

yay Nick's article is in the RSS feed
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Asked yesterday whether it would eventually release a revised edition of "Opal Mehta," a little brown spokesman declined to comment.

[Randy]

Yeah, I usually don't leave feedback because most of the time I don't have anything worth saying that hasn't been or won't be said. But I think the fact that so many people hang around the forum is proof enough that people like the website. If that starts to not be the case anymore, it's not likely you'd need the absence of feedback in a feedback thread to tell you that.
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[pholby]

[Jon]

Awwwww come on now.

[Jim]

Somebody is a rude Gus. That's all...
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[Randy]

Yeah classy stuff there champ.
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[B]

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[Kirbyoto]

I thought it was kinda funny that Something Awful's thread for today is in defense of curling (when compared to Bass fishing, anyways). I mean, it's such a low-profile sport compared to every other televised thing that, in retrospect, it seems kinda mean to make fun of it. It's like making fun of handball.

[Mike]

I have tried watching curling and it is pretty hard.
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[Randy]

[Justin]

Its not that I'm mad about not getting feedback so much as I'd prefer to be told what I should be doing to better myself as a writer. I mean, saying "haha great stuff" is fine, but I'd rather people tell me what I should be doing better as opposed to what I'm doing well. I'm not going to improve through empty forced praise, so honestly, if I write something somebody doesn't like for any reason I'd love it if you'd IM or PM me to tell me why.
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[quote="Bismark"]Didn't you know? Having uncontrollable shits is wicked scene.[/quote]

[Mike]

I did like your use of the forum "this is an mp3 file" arrow icon. I might go back to some of my older posts like Shiny New Year & do the same.
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[B]

I would like to be told that I'm doing a good job.

I say that jokingly, but honestly, we are all very different as writers. To somebody from the LA Times or something we're all the same, but anybody who reads us and knows us and enjoys us knows that one of our upsides as a site is the variety of writing. I wouldn't want a website full of me, and at the same time the specificity of Jon or Bill is what makes me like them so much.

We're all working from the same feedback pool, so being told by a group of people what we should be doing constructively seems like it would improve us all in the same way, and if we worked to impliment the feedback equally we'd become a lot more similar. Somebody who doesn't enjoy me might like Emily, or somebody who doesn't like Nick might like Fireball. Lots of people read Fireball's stuff and ignore the rest of us.

It's hard to walk that line between "tell us we are awesome" and "tell us the reasons why we suck." I know really bad feedback can really rock my confidence sometimes, because I'm mostly doing it for everybody else. I don't like a lot of what I write, and the reason I keep doing it is to make the people I care about laugh. I like hearing "you did well" well enough, because that's a Breakfast Serious goal I work toward, but I like to hear WHY somebody enjoyed something I wrote. I can learn more from a quoted line that somebody liked or a sequence than I can from "make it longer keep writing can't wait to see your next stuff."

It's a sticky point that I don't want to exacerbate, but yeah. Everything counts. Even if it's what everybody else said. Even a "you did well!" is better than silence. 'Cause I still haven't seen a nickel of our site money in dollars. Feedback threads give me something happy to look forward to, if I can be confident enough.
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