Criticism Settings

The Enchiridion - Your Guide to Belletristica.

About Criticism Settings

In the course of the 2.0.20 update, we introduced a couple of settings for criticism in comments, which the community had previously agreed upon in our city hall.

With these settings you can decide for yourself, which kinds of feedback you wish to recieve for your works, from the peaceful hobby mode all the way to the flaming fires of the forge. You can even completely deactivate the comment sections under your books, if you wish.

These settings apply to everyone and must be respected. Disregarding them might lead to warnings or, in repeated cases, even to exclusion from the communtiy.

To avoid misunderstandings and unjustified warnings, every comment automatically remembers, under which setting it was written. So if someone leaves a negative review on a book marked as "Professional", and later the author changes the book to "Hobby" mode, our mods will understand what happend.

The Five Criticism Modes

Comments are deactivated

As the name implies, comments are completely deactivated for texts with this setting. If you don’t want to receive any comments whatsoever, no matter if positive or negative, chose this setting. The entire comment section will automatically be hidden in this case.

Hobby

Whoever choses this setting, has no ambitions to further refine this text. Maybe it was just a one-time experiment, maybe it was just written out of fun, maybe it is just a spontaneous vacation diary. No matter the reasoning, if you chose this setting, you only accept positive or neutral comments, but you don’t wish to receive criticism. Your text is protected from negative comments, but this settings has a few limitations. At the moment, there ar two exceptions:

1. If a book claims to be of scientific nature or a non-fiction guidebook, criticism must automatically be allowed.

2. The text can not be protecte if it itself is a harsh commentary on something else - if you dish it out, you must be able to take it.

Belletristica Standard

If you haven't chosen any setting, your texts will automatically fall into this category. Positive as well as negative comments are wanted, but it has to be constructive. Just a "This is a terrible book" or "you can’t write" without any real explanation, will be deleted. Comments can be negative, yes, but it must be clear that they were written with good intentions, to help the author improve their writing.

Professional

The gloves come off. This work will be treated as if it were placed in a book store. Whoever comments, should leave a fair and honestly review based on quality, from a consumer’s point of view. This can be both good or bad criticism. The comments are not longer primarily meant as a way for the author to improve their work, but for other potential readers, who think about starting to read this.

Fire of the Forge

Harsh, honest criticism is not only okay, the author is explicity requesting it. Authors who chose this setting are not afraid of devastating feedback and are basically saying: "Please rip everything apart and show me every single mistake I made. It's gotta be perfect!" We recommend to only use this setting while a work is in progress and change the setting to "Professional" or "Belletristica Standard" after completion.

How and where can I set this?

In your profile settings under "criticism settings" you can choose a criticism mode, which will then be applied to all books published under this profile.

You can still override this profile-wide settings for every individual book, under "criticism settings" in the book settings pages of each book.

What about Freedom of Speech?

Freedom of speech means, the government can’t pursue or arrest you for your opinion. It does not mean that platforms like Belletristica aren't allowed to set up rules on which behavior is okay here and which is not. This whole issue is a very difficult one, which is why we want to base the decision on the will of our community. If the community agrees, that people have to respect it, when someone does not wish to receive any feedback, then this is what counts for us.

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