WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR C&C TO BE "CONSTRUCTIVE?"
It means that the criticisms given don't just point out what's wrong
with the story, they offer ways in which the problems might be
alleviated.

This make it sound like you must offer a solution for the comment
to be constructive, which certainly need not be true; but to be
constructive, the comment must *point out a problem* (general
or specific). "The story is too dark," is constructive even though
it's very general, since the author can make the story lighter (though
it is probably not a very *useful* comment, since in this case it
sounds more like an opinion ... but I digress); "the story is bad"
is *not*, since it offers no clue as to what the problem is.
"I don't like how the boy acts in paragraph 53," is specific but not
very constructive since the author has no idea *what* is wrong;
as opposed to "I don't think the boy should be so rash in pgrph 53".

I noticed that you've avoided using examples; this is probably a *good*
thing, since people would just get hang up on those and then try to
twist said examples to justify themselves when they do something wrong.

Again, what I have a problem here is really just the wording - you can
point out that somebody is doing something wrong *even* if you can't
do it better yourself.

Oh, and perhaps you should add a note somewhere that it might be
a good idea to observe other C&C posts on the mailing list for
example of how C&C can be written.


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