Nicholas Leifker <nightelf@thekeep.org> wrote:

Beyond that, your critique was inappropriate.  You can't be 
DB-the-reader one minute and DB-the-admin the next.  As an 
administrator on this list, your critiques run the risk of generating 
conflicts of interest.  Conflicts of interest are always fun because 
they skew judgment.  (Just ask the former employees and shareholders of 
Arthur Andersen.)  To claim that your work as a critic has no bearing 
on your work as an admin is a false defense.  (BTW, Chris?  If you give 
me that "We're three admins so this doesn't happen" argument, I will 
laugh at you - one team can have conflicts just as easily as one 
person.)

As DB has said, his comments were quite clearly written as private list
citizen, not as admin. His being an admin is a red herring. Admins, when
speaking as private list citizens, have the same free speech rights as
anyone else. Arthur Andersen is an even bigger red herring. The FFML
Admins don't handle our subscribers' money, nor do we audit for anyone
who does. Our job is to keep spam and other inappropriate content (as
defined in the FAQ, which does *not* include negative commentary) off
the list.

If having, and expressing, an opinion constitutes a conflict of interest
then I think we all ought to resign in alphabetical order and leave this
list at the mercy of the trolls and spammers. Otherwise, unless you can
show any evidence that DB's opinions may have affected any decisions
that he (or the rest of us) have made as admins, then there isn't any
conflict of interest. Accusations are backed up by evidence, not just
vague associations or assertions that something like this *might* happen
someday in the future. Evidence. Kindly put up or sit down.

(And Gary?  If you pull out that "practice for commercial writing" BS 
you usually do,

Come again? Perhaps you could provide a quote of something I said,
because I don't know what you're referring to here.

may I point out that DB's critique didn't help Peter's 
writing skills one iota.  If you REALLY want to help the kid, stop the 
beat-down and show him how he can improve.)

It'd be hard for me to give any help to this particular person, given
that I DIDN'T READ this particular fic. I happen to have a strong
dislike for Sailor Moon, so I avoid anything connected with that series
unless it's by a favorite author. (This is mentioned for explanatory
purposes only; I am not suggesting that anyone should refrain from
writing Sailor Moon.) DB *did* read the fic, which makes it his
prerogative to comment on it any way he sees fit. Whether his comments
were helpful, or ridiculing, or what have you, is none of my business.

For my money, the only kinds of comments which are out of line are:

1) Personal attacks against the author. "Dude, only somebody with spam
for brains would've written that last chapter."

2) Anything motivated by something other than the content of the story
commented on. E.g. you criticized my story so I'm going to criticize
yours, or I'm going to lavish praise on something I haven't read because
the author's a list admin. (No, nobody actually does this. Well, at
least not to my knowledge.)

3) Statements that are just factually wrong. E.g. "Your fic shows Ranma
eating at a KFC? In Tokyo he'd have to pay six billion yen for that
three-piece dinner. And it'd be turkey, not chicken. We don't have
chickens here in Japan."

4) Remarks that are just plain unintelligible (I won't provide an
example here, since I think we can all come up with one) or don't really
have anything to do with the fic supposedly being commented on.

Beyond that, in my opinion any honest comment is better than what I
provided in this case, which was no comment at all. I don't know whether
DB's comments were helpful to this author or not. Only said author can
speak to that, and he hasn't said. It isn't for me, or you, to say. I
don't CARE whether what he said was constructive. DB is the one who took
the time to read and comment, so what he says about this fic is his
prerogative, no one else's. You can disagree with what he says as
strongly you want, but when you start trying to tell him what he should
and shouldn't have said then it seems to me that it is *you* who are
trying to beat *him* down.


Gary Kleppe
http://www.garykleppe.org/comics.html

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