Holly Bella Toschi's picture
Holly Bella Toschi from San Francisco is reading "Dance Dance Dance" January 15, 2015 - 11:29am

Realizing all of us writers are a bit off and some even hypersensitive, I'm curious to know if anyone on LR has dealt with another member "crossing the line" in terms of reviewing your work and/or contacting you privately about a submission, and then consequently expanding into personal insults about your writing.

As strange as this question might seem, I'd appreciate any feedback whether on this string or via PM.

Many thanks!

Brandon's picture
Brandon from KCMO is reading Made to Break January 15, 2015 - 11:32am

If someone is harassing you on here you should reach out to Nathan Scalia who is our site moderator.

http://litreactor.com/user/14783

Carly Berg's picture
Carly Berg from USA is reading Story Prompts That Work by Carly Berg is now available at Amazon January 15, 2015 - 2:03pm

Well, to answer your question it depends on what you mean by harassment, I guess. I don't think I've been on any forum for a goodly amount of time without someone pissing me off royally, if that's what you mean. Over time, I've gotten much better at not taking the bait but still. If we both stick around, I usually kind of "get them" after a while though and then I like them better. Sometimes they'll just have their hot topics they get a bit loony over or else they're just bitchy but they do it to everybody.

And then I've also seen and been involved in instances where someone thought they were being harassed when really they had simply received a serious critique. And instead of appreciating the help, they got snotty with people and threw a fit because they were told the truth rather than flattered. They often would get the same in return because whoever took the time to give them a crit didn't appreciate their lack of etiquette. At the time, I'm sure the critee felt like they were being harassed.

Once I got a critique that said "You are an idiot."

And then there was this time some perv sent me a list of nasty "instructions." Now that was harassment, but it was so weird that I showed it to my forum friends and we howled.

Anyway, yeah, what Brandon said.

Without more details, I can't tell if I'd call what you described harassment or just a disagreement. Did you say anything back to them or did they just keep after you as a one way thing? Also, I don't quite understand "personal insults about your writing" because it seems to me that personal insults and insults about your writing are two different things. Also, there can be a fine line between "critique" and "insults." Sorry you had a bad experience, that's sucky.

Nathan Scalia's picture
Nathan Scalia from Kansas is reading so many things January 16, 2015 - 5:54am

Private message sent.

Harrassment is rare here; we're generally a friendly bunch. However, putting your work out there requires a certain trust of the community, and that trust can be broken if someone crosses the line. Anyone who is subject to harassment on this site can contact me via private message. I have a fairly quick turnaround on issues like this.