The rule is, offer honest, potentially useful comments as often as you are willing to do so, and let the recipient worry about what he or she does with them.

Some people say a lot of things. That doesn't make them absolute, definitive rules. You have mentioned this previous "thought there was a rule" notion many times now, and you have been told as many times that there's not. Read the guidelines of each forum to determine what is expected. For instance, the posting philosophy at TDE, as expressed on the main page, is:

The description for Metrical is not quite as detailed, but there are still guidelines. But the guidelines at Eratosphere are very basic, and they're not really "rules." This place has always been largely self-policing, and as with the crits themselves, you just have to distill the essence of what everyone says and find your own way. Every critic will have a different critiquing style. Some will be harsh. Some will be gentle. Some will be brief. Some will be verbose. Most will fall between these poles. No words, save for Alex's, and to a much lesser extent, the moderators', are "law."

The spirit of this idea is that you (speaking generally, not specifically) should post work that is in the (admittedly broad) ballpark of being "finished." That is to say, if you think it's something that could eventually be publishable, but needs some kinks worked out, then sure...that's something worth workshopping. If there's something that has a solid core idea, but you're having trouble fleshing it out, then sure, some good critique will probably do it some good. If you post something that most critics say is terrible, or "beginner's work," then regroup and try out another poem. If the reaction to that work is similar, then wait another week and try again. If this receives the same reaction yet again, then you might have to consider the possibility that your poetry really isn't very good. But hey, the critics might be wrong. Seriously -- they might! But what it should tell you is that this workshop isn't the place for you, in that instance.

Post stuff that you feel is "good" in some way, but needs improvement. Or post something you're not sure about. You'll get comments either way, and distilling the essence of those comments should give you an idea of the poem's relative merit...but no matter what, it's going to be subjective. Most critics were (and are) effusive in their praise of Milton's "Lycidas," but 100 years or so later, Samuel Johnson came along and gave it a famously scathing critique, saying (among other things) that "its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting: whatever images it can supply, are long ago exhausted; and its inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction on the mind." Does that mean that Johnson is right? Maybe, maybe not. It's subjective. I've personally never been fond of the Mona Lisa. That doesn't mean it's not worthy of its nearly universal acclaim.

The bottom line is that you have to take comments here with a grain of salt, while respecting that people bothered to comment at all. There's a tacit assumption that all critics here know what they're talking about, so at least some respect and credit is due, but you won't see such things enforced, because that's just not possible.

Edited to add: I plan on this being my last post on the matter, as I truly think that, to quote Robinson, "there is nothing more to say."

I'm not actively trying to disagree. I've seen members criticized for not following the rules. I'm just wondering what the rules actually are.

Apparently, Elise, you do not know how listen to any voice but your own, or you would not be able to repeat yourself over and over and over again like you do in the context of this and other threads. A discussion develops! Someone poses a question, someone responds, and then a response is made to that response. You, however, eschew response, and merely go back and repeat the question again (and again) (and again) (and again) (and again). That is not a response! That is not discussion! You have so little grasp of the basic art of conversation that I question why you even bother to engage in a public forum to begin with.

I don't think, like some others, that it is because you will only be satisfied with the positive response, or some sort of agreement. Event that seems beyond you. I think it must be simply that you are mesmerized by the sound of your own interrogative voice—a tone of voice which, after the fifth or sixth repeat, begins to sound like a numb whine rather than a sincere question. Are you perhaps addicted, psychologically, to being misunderstood?

If this discussion has become circular it is because you have not let it develop, even though you initiated it. You keep bringing it back round, by ludicrous repetition, to yourself and and your own self-imposed cluelessness, when indeed your initial question has already been explored numerous times and with great nuance by a great number of people. Roger is correct, it is rude to pay so little attention to what others spend so much time trying to say patiently in response to your relentlessly parroted question. Go on, repeat it again—I know you will.

It is better not to speak if you can't (or won't) hear.
Writing is as much about ear as it is about voice.

(exuent.)

Nemo

Nemo -- I'm trying to make a point, and trying to explain myself, that's all. I'm trying to find out what the rules are here, because I've heard varying things. I've agreed with you on several poetry comments, but you have yet to agree with me on a single thing.

Funniest thread in recent memory. Most aggravating thread in recent memory.

Elise: There is likely near the upper-left of your browser window a clickable link: "guidelines." Perhaps you'd like it better if we got Alex to change it to "rules," but close enough, right? Anyway, click on it. There's pages of info there; it should answer your question.

Fair enough, you're right that there are unspoken rules like social mores in any community. But approximately 75 people have explained approximately eleventy billion ways to you how they see those here. They all seem in agreement with each other (you know, approximately) to everyone but you. I guess I think you're the only one who can answer your original question "workshop or not?" (For myself, it's almost always an emphatic YES whenever I write something new and feel OK or better about it...) I would suggest that if there are kinds of feedback you're looking for beyond WELL DONE!, then go for it. I would further suggest that if you are polite and thoughtful in response to the feedback that you get, then you have fulfilled that part of your obligation. Would you really want a forum that OBLIGED you to incorporate into your poems revisions that you thought wrong?!

As to the beginners thing, I think that stricture is designed and functions to protect us from a lot of wasted time. In practice, beginners who come to learn and comport themselves well (and I don't mean anyone should have to grovel) have been welcome from what I have seen. Arguably that was my experience. In fact, I think there's a lot to be said for the philosophy of remembering that we are all, in one sense, beginners together stumbling toward the occasional poem worth keeping--although, in another sense, for many of us this is manifestly not true.

Your internet pal,

--Simon

Elise, this is mere vanity on the part of the people who say this kind of thing. The truth is we're all inexperienced, we're all beginners. Nobody knows anything. Some people pretend they know.

You say you wish for rules. But the rules are vain and silly, developed with all the wrong motivations, in a process which was questionable at best. It would be much better to look for a 'sense of the community,' which is stronger than any rule.

People get awfully silly about this. One simple idea: post what you're testing. You know the old saying about test pilots: if you're not crashing, you're not testing hard enough. But everyone tests differently. Some people endlessly revise *before* they post. Me, I usually just type things straight into the window here. Both those approaches are extreme. They're both equally valid.

And guess what? People object to both approaches. They say 'you shouldn't do this,' or 'you can't do that.' Since you're going to be criticized either way, you may as well just go ahead and do what you do. It may be the path that works best. For you. And do you really care what works for someone else?

Best,

Bill

Perhaps this will be a helpful way of looking at the subject of rules.

On one of the autism sites on which I lurk, there is a thread hundreds of pages long discussing "unwritten social rules" that neurotypical people all seem to have picked up on, and will penalize you mercilessly if you violate them.

For example, there is no official rule against answering honestly and in excruciating detail when someone asks me about my plans for the weekend. However, the unofficial, unwritten rule is that I should keep my answer brief and uninformative, because the ugly fact is that most people who ask questions don't really care about the answer.

Such questions usually gets asked only because a lot of people feel uncomfortable standing next to another human being in silence, each thinking their own thoughts. "Doing anything special over the weekend?" is regarded as a good opening ambit for neurotypical people's favorite type of conversation--the vacuous, mindless kind that is not about the content at all, but about assessing whether the other party is making the right eye contact and facial expressions to successfully impersonate a "nice" human being. There's a whole non-verbal thing that's supposed to be going on simultaneously with the small talk, to strengthen the weak social bond between two people who barely know each other.

Or, in my case, between myself and someone I've sat next to in the church choir for twenty years, but for whom I have no glimmer of recognition whatsoever when I bump into them in the grocery store. (I'm so faceblind, I didn't even recognize myself when a picture of me and my daughters appeared in their school newspaper last month. I assumed that the adult in the photo was a teacher. And I only recognized one of my two daughters, before I read the picture's caption, because she has since changed her hairstyle. Yes, I really am that bad. And if I ever meet you in person, don't expect me to remember that we've ever met, if you walk away and come back a few minutes later.)

Anyway, the unwritten rule is to keep one's answer to small-talk questions as brief and uninformative as possible. Even a dishonest non-answer like "Oh, not too much" is preferable to an honest, lengthy reply. Because, besides providing ample opportunity for the other person to notice and dislike weird quirks, like my failure to fake good eye contact and appropriate facial expressions...the fact that my actual weekend plans involve nerdy obsessions with niche subjects is not going to go over well, either.

It would therefore seem counterintuitive for someone like me to prolong the conversation by asking them about their weekend plans. Oh, no. How wrong that would be. (Has been.)

See, there's an even more important unwritten rule: No one really cares about the minutia of anyone else's daily life--how they're doing, how they'll be spending the weekend--but they care immensely about anything relating to their own wonderful selves. So questions of this sort must always, always be reciprocated. Always. However little they care about my weekend plans and however little I care about theirs...if someone asks me about mine and I fail to ask about their plans in return, it's the end of the friggin' world, socially.

A lot of life has unwritten social rules like that. Unfortunately, the only way to find out what they are is to break them, and then try to figure out what went wrong.

And, yes, sometimes other people seem to be able to break the exact same rule in the exact same way, and somehow get away with it, due to another whole layer of unwritten rules about who is allowed to break certain rules, and under which circumstances.

It's all very mystifying, and unfair, and frustrating. But that's life in this social species. Even neurotypical people can't figure it out a lot of the time.

Elise, here's a selection of some of your comments on the thread so far:

#4 "I thought there was an Eratosphere rule about accepting crits."
#6 "I thought there was a rule about accepting crits on Eratosphere"
#9 "I guess I'm wrong about there being a rule about members accepting crits. I don't know where I got it from."
#13 "I just wish I knew why I thought there was some particular etiquette/rule about accepting crits."
#21 "What I don't understand, then, is why I've seen poets get scolded for not accepting crits."
#24 "I thought there was some rule about members accepting/not accepting crits,"
#36 "I'm coming back on to say, yet again, that I thought there was a rule about accepting crits"
#47 "I actually, really thought there was a rule about not dismissing your crits. "
#49 "I actually don't know what the real rules are at this point."
#53 " I'm just wondering what the rules actually are."
#55 "I'm trying to find out what the rules are here, because I've heard varying things."

At this point I'm beginning to suspect that you really thought there was a rule about accepting crits on Eratosphere. Am I correct, or am I unfairly reading something into your remarks?

And here are a few more of your comments:

#4 "What's the point of an accomplished poet posting a poem here if he/she never intended for it to be critiqued in the first place?
#6 "I'm also wondering why I, or anyone else, should spend the time critiquing if the writer merely says, "You didn't understand my poem.""
#9 " I still don't understand, though, why members post their work and then don't take any crits into consideration. "
#15 "My main question is why post a poem at all, if you don't want help with it, if you reject all help, all responses?"
#18 "It only feels as though a lot of members don't accept any crits at all, and I wonder about their motive for posting in the first place. "

Let me get this straight. Is it your contention that it's hard to understand why a poet posts a poem if they are unwilling to accept critiques?

To paraphrase someone I once knew: It only feels as though you are not accepting any answers at all, and I wonder about your motive for asking your question in the first place.

I appreciate all the responses. I guess I was merely confused, because there seemed to be certain written rules -- like don't respond too often and bring a certain thread back on top; someone had said that that wasn't good etiquette and had scolded another member for it. I suppose I should review the written rules; I was just going by what other members said. I apologize for the thread. Time to let it lie.