I recently started archiving my inbox/outbox for pythonic purposes. I came across a short (3 messages) exchange between a noder that… let’s say didn’t take good their first writeup being downvoted.
That writeup seems to have been deleted, maybe they didn’t want a negative blemish on their writing record (unlikely, since the other few writeups still up are also at negative reputation). Maybe my almighty logic was so pure and flawless that my mere thought erased the writeup from the database as a show of deference from the Universe. Who knows.
Still, this baffles me. Yes, the stereotypical aspirant writer that can’t take criticism and quits at the beginning makes for good schadenfreude, but it’s still a negative experience for someone1 and a loss for E2. Many of these aspiring writers mention their big aspirations, which apparently are not so strong or even desirable so as to withstand the first hurdle of criticism from a stranger on the internet2
Noon-ish Was I too harsh?
Andycyca wrote:
Hello! I just read your writeup REDACTED, which currently sits at negative 4 reputation. Even though there are many short writeups like yours, they are from ages past when the quality bar was much lower. Now, the E2 crowd expects something a bit meatier, better, well-researched. If you ever expand or otherwise improve your writeup, you will see this trend reverse.
User wrote:
I refuse to argue on what I impact I intended when I wrote my little passage. REDACTED SUPPOSITION, so I mentioned what I thought that mentioning meant. I am not going to defend benign commentaries or anything else. (…)
Andycyca wrote then:
(…) Anyway, good writeups here should include the information you’re giving me. If you know that REDACTED FACT THAT WAS NOT IN THE WRITEUP, you should write why, including your sources. Just saying «There’s uncertainty» doesn’t hold much water around here. We want writeups of high quality and your recent ones could improve quite a bit. Please don’t hesitate to ask the Content Editors for help in this regard.
Afternoon: I also found a message to another user who only wrote one writeup and then deleted it. I’ll mention that one specifically because it started to sound like a bad limerick:
There was once a user called corbynjames / Who wrote about writing essays
Was not received well / it went to reputation hell
And left e2 in search of more praise
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Even worse if that person was potentially a good writer, but I want to believe in a universe where everybody has such potential; so this argument is moot IMHO. ↩︎
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And, let's be frank, that's the norm in lots of places in today's Internet. ↩︎