The Value of Criticism

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

--
Ezra Pound

I'm not sure I completely understand this quote, but this seemed like the sort of topic that should start with a quote. I think it means you should put your money where your mouth is.

As per a couple of comments I've received from a handful of cowardly, anonymous people: I find it interesting that I can't take criticism just because I choose to delete derogatory comments, only very occasionally, from my site.

As I've said before, isn't that the whole point of virtual reality? Having a little more control, and an alter-ego?

I'm not an anthropologist, I just play one on the internet. So your responses have been very interesting to me. I find it funny that you complain about what I delete, and then you make references to what you think I'm like in the Real World. I can turn that around on you. See, in the Real World, qualified scientific editors would throw out irrelevant, destructive criticisms rather than forwarding them on to the authors of a scientific paper. They might even send the paper out to a different reviewer altogether. Similarly, badly written or illogical papers never go out for review at all. In contrast, thoughtful letters to the editor are usually published where everyone can see them.

Sometimes, in blog-world, it's better to just leave the stupid posts up there, to embarrass the person who submitted them. Sometimes I've thought the posts embarrassed everyone and wasted space, so I got rid of them. I thought, "If I were someone who had never been to this site and I read that post, I would think the people who read this blog are all idiots." I'll let you embarrass yourself up to a point. But I'm less worried about what it says about me than what it says about you.

Having said all that, you're extrapolating, based on absolutely no data and faulty logic, if you propose that anything I do here is related in any way to what kind of faculty member I would make. And since it's not a falsifiable hypothesis, it's about as scientific as people who think that praying for strangers helps heal the world.

Amen.