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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 3113358" data-attributes="member: 177">You're effectively saying that folks without credentials cannot speak on the subject.  Please keep in mind that these are not professional or academic forums - everyone has equal right to speak around here.  You may get paid for your criticism, but please note that the readership here is not paying you for it - at work there's an implicit agreement that you are an authority, but here you lack that leverage, and so you'll have to convince people, rather than claim authority as a right.Why not try to be a bit more constructive, and work with people to pull the discussion to style and topics you prefer?  You will catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, and telling folks "I'm sorry, but you don't know enough to approch the topic" is very vinegar.  And if you cannot include reader enjoyment as a criteria within your own standards, are you any less limited than they?  When literary standards are not linked to reader experience, you get things like Finnegan's Wake being lauded as a "great work", though nobody can manage to wade though it, or understand the thing without reading a second book to tell them what they've read.  If "good or bad" is defined as matching a particular selection of technical qualities, sure.  No argument there. However, if your technical qualities all say the work is bad, but loads of people like it, it is perhaps time to examine that list of technical qualities, and see if it is missing something.  As noted above, the list of technical qualities ceases to be particularly useful if it becomes too disjoint from reader experience.Just a moment ago, you effectively claimed authority to tell us if it was good or bad.  Now you tell us that you are not infallible.  It follows, of course, that your claim to authority in the matter needs to be questioned.  In essence, you can't have it both ways -  you cannot tell people they are wrong in the same breath as you tell them you may not be right.  Well, really you can, but it's a terribly weak position. If I might suggest, you'll probably find the discussion far more productive if you bill yourself as having an opinion - one based upon academic study and professional work, but an opinion nontheless.  Allow people to decide for themselves how valuable that opinion is.  Honey, rather than vinegar...</blockquote>

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