neadods | Repeating Myself, with added eyerolling

Repeating Myself, with added eyerolling

There are now apparently six comms dedicated to critiquing the nominees for the Children of Time awards, so many run by sock puppets that the latest stakes its claim to fame specifically as the non-sock comm. (Why does CoT continue to soak up this nonsense? It's not like there are multiple comms SMOFing about

calufrax recs.)

I'm going to take this opportunity to repeat myself: by openly posting reviews under my name, I have gotten work. Semi-professional work. (Reviewing the Evidence, I Love a Mystery Newsletter) Paying work. (Once Written, Firefox News) Even the stuff that doesn't pay in cash or goods (Unreality SF) is adding to my portfolio so I can get more work (and things are being negotiated for future lines).

Four years of negative reviews in Reviewing the Evidence, and I have yet to be spit on or run out of (or even shunned at) Malice Domestic or Bouchercon. It hasn't been six days since I looked a professional author right in the eyes and explained why I gave her next-to-latest book a partially negative review. Mary Stanton was amazingly cool about it. We had a long conversation about those points in her series and her plans.

So frankly y'all, I have LESS than no sympathy for anyone who thinks that they "have" to hide their identity to "honestly" give an opinion.

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In what way is an idea or a series of ideas, such as a review, less open to scrutiny when it's presented without a name/pseudonym attached?

By being anon, the reviewer is not taking responsibility for his/her statements, and the reader inevitably asks why the reviewer saw the need to disown those statements. It raises a lot of questions about motivation, reliability, etc.

By being anon, the reviewer is not taking responsibility for his/her statements

I don't understand. What "responsibility" is specific to non-anonymous reviews?

the reader inevitably asks why the reviewer saw the need to disown those statements.

This reader doesn't. This reader is more interested in engaging with the ideas than the personality behind them.

It raises a lot of questions about motivation, reliability, etc.

The motivation for posting any review in an accessible form is to enable it to be accessed by people who want to read it, no? It doesn't force anyone to interact with the ideas in the review unless they choose to do so.

Why do you believe an anonymous review is usually more or less reliable than a review from a pseudonymous reviewer or a review from a legal-name reviewer? And, if you don't, what question of reliability did you mean?

I realise this comment will possibly appear argumentative to you but it's not intended that way. I honestly want to try to understand your pov because it's so different to mine.

Just to bring an example: When you see one of those full-page ads in the paper supporting or condemning something, you look to see who signed it. If it's a list of people you recognize and respect, you tend to give it credence. If there are no signatures, you might scratch your head and say, "Well, they might be right, or they might be a bunch of wackos with an axe to grind." Yes, you can "engage with the ideas," but you're likely to try to do that by seeking more reliable, non-anonymous opinions and information.

Even if the anon reviewer has no axe to grind, the very act of being anonymous raises the question -- you're starting from a compromised position. WIth reviews, the only way for me to assess the fairness of a reviewer is to go out and read the reviewed fic and then evaluate the review -- which defeats the purpose of a review, which is to guide people toward fic they might want to read. (At least, that's my purpose in reading them, and I imagine many others as well.)

I don't rly agree with your first example. I think I'd be more likely to google for additional facts than take someone's word for X because even acknowledged experts tend to have personal biases that don't necessarily coincide with mine. But I understand that many people are swayed by personalities and rhetoric as much or more than facts and also that many people would dismiss anons in those circumstances out of hand.

WIth reviews, the only way for me to assess the fairness of a reviewer is to go out and read the reviewed fic and then evaluate the review -- which defeats the purpose of a review, which is to guide people toward fic they might want to read. (At least, that's my purpose in reading them, and I imagine many others as well.)

::nods understanding::

I can see how that might be especially true inside a community context, such as fandom, where a reader might know more of a reviewer than merely their reviews.

I have yet to find a reviewer who reliably likes the same fiction as me, in any context, so I tend to favour description in reviews over opinion reviewing if I'm seeking fiction to read although I do enjoy reviews which critique too when I'm engaged with the critique in its own right (whether or not I've read the work being critiqued).

Thank you.

I think I'd be more likely to google for additional facts than take someone's word for X because even acknowledged experts tend to have personal biases that don't necessarily coincide with mine.

I think in many cases it's a combination. You try to inform yourself as best you can, but in the end, some issues are too complex for the layperson to judge. But at that point it becomes a stupid analogy for fic reviewing because fic reviewing is not global warming. So....never mind. ;-)

Why do you believe an anonymous review is usually more or less reliable than a review from a pseudonymous reviewer or a review from a legal-name reviewer?

I believe anonymous reviews are less reliable because if the review is coming from an anon instead of an established name (real or pseud) you don't know if the review is what the reviewer really thinks or if it's an attempt to spike a writer the reviewer has a grudge against/cramp a writer the reviewer considers too tough competition/or is even simply a means of causing wankery in the fandom for the puppeteer's amusement. (The Jundland Wastes reviewer was guilty of the first two, repeatedly. She was eventually outed because people could match her negative reviews to people who'd disagreed with her or edged her out to get published.)

There's also the question of a track record; when it's an unknown number of people using the same sock name/pseud, you have no idea if Review A, which you agreed with, is really tied to Review B, which was judged by a different person's criteria. (For example, there was a Post reviewer who I found an almost 100% accurate barometer for me. If he loved a movie, I'd hate it, and vice versa. After a while it didn't matter if he called himself Tom Shales or Constant Reader; I knew what to expect and how to scale my reaction accordingly. If it had been Tom, Dick, and Harry all writing under the same name, I would have not been able to rely on the reviews.)

Hmm. It can't be judged in the context of the poster's other previous and later words, because it can't be connected to their work under their more common name(s).

That can be a benefit when someone wants just that piece of writing judged on its own stand-alone merits, without readers being affected by their own knowledge of the writer's other work and views and personality. (That halo effect, where people tend to bump up their assessment of how well someone they like does everything and downgrade their opinions of the accomplishments of those they dislike.)

The downside of course being that readers don't go into it with the advance warning that the author is a known dumbass who's expressed some horrendous opinions in the past and who may have learned from the previous resulting dogpiles how to camouflage their own less acceptable thoughts on the matter. Or that they're known to be intelligent people with earned credibility on this topic and others, who may be inadvertently streamlining some of their arguments because they're used to everyone being so familiar with the ground they've already themself covered. Or that they earned a bad rep in their brash n00b days that they haven't been allowed to outgrow even though they've genuinely matured since then.

So... you're saying the main, erm, let's call it a "disadvantage", as you see it, is that an anonymous review would have to be judged on its own internal merits? Cos that doesn't seem a suitable cause for hand-wringing to me... but possibly I'm being obtuse (it has been known)?

That was me thinking out loud, so to speak.

Like I noted, an "advantage" in terms of getting rid of the halo effect -- which cuts two ways, in terms of the unpopular with something intelligent to say getting heard on their statements' merits rather than automatically dogpiled by their enemies, and in terms of BNFs who may have grown lazy discovering that they don't get an automatic chorus of enthusiastic agreement when their name isn't attached.

A "disadvantage" in terms of the reader not having that baseline awareness of the author's known biases and previous statements, and of the author being able to make disingenuous statements under the cover of anonymity. (I think that latter is edging towards the border between true anonymity and sockpuppetry. Not actually saying what they honestly feel and are merely hampered by fear of retribution from speaking under their own name, but rather deliberate manipulation of public opinion through calculated dishonesty.)

That all seems reasonable to me, yes.

deliberate manipulation of public opinion through calculated dishonesty

Oh, I LIKE that! It sums up my opinion quite tidily of socks in general... and it's hard to see what the "good" of a sock puppet can be when you've seen the bad of socks and anons. (Including the anon meme; as far as I can tell from people talking about it, it's not at all mean to people except the people it's mean to, and it's not at all going to turn on the people who love it, except for the times that it does.)

Or, to say it shortly: when posting anonymously is too wanky for Fandom Wank, it is well past what a reasonable fan would consider reasonable discourse.

ETA: The only reason I haven't replied to your comments is I don't want to type IAWTC that many times. :)

Edited 2009-05-07 22:36 (UTC)

I'm definitely playing devil's advocate here -- I don't doubt that you've seen anonymity play out in horrifically wanky ways in fandom many times in the past, as it gets used as a cover for grudges and as anonymice get outed. But I'm also in agreement with the premise that sometimes an author comes with too much baggage for anyone to pay attention to their message if their name is attached, and that anonymity is another layer protecting someone from retribution for their statements on- or offline.

And I'm seriously vested in the premise that a longstanding pseudonym counts as a genuine identity. (I just googled FyrDrakken vs. my RL name again to check my results. That's six pages of FyrDrakken results all of which were me (I got tired of scanning and didn't check the later pages) and nine pages on my RL name that weren't me before I quit reading.) It's definitely worth noting that we all make the distinction between a "genuine" pseudonym/fanname/userID and a sock puppet.

In what way is an idea or a series of ideas, such as a review, less open to scrutiny when it's presented without a name/pseudonym attached?

I agree with a lot of what

stoplookingup says in this thread; it's an accountability issue. Yes, you can look at a statement and say "this is persuasive" and "this is not" - but at the same time, you don't know if a sock is taking advantage of shucking their name to perpetuate a personal grudge. Or if they want to game the fandom because they don't give a damn about what they say; they're going to pop up in another identity and prod in the other direction just to get everyone else to jump. (Via a good friend, I was front row for the Rat Patrol meltdown in which one very dedicated puppeteer created thousands of socks and swarmed it.)

Also, I notice that the people who feel free-est to be vilest in comments are the ones who are going anon, in any blog on the web.

Hang on - I've got a *lot* of reading to catch up on now!

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Repeating Myself, with added eyerolling

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