One of the most basic aspects of growing as an artist/writer is learning to evaluate your own work, or someone elses, in such a way that it offers positive help

First of all, what not to do: Comments such as "Yeah, I like it." or "Awesome, man." do not in anyway contribute anything useful, and usually get buried so your not going to get the post count your after anyway.

It offers nothing to the artist/writer except your personal taste, which doesn't help them a bit. In other words, 95% of the comments you folks post here about someones work are completely a waste of everyones time.

Ok, so if that's not helpful, what shall we do that is helpful, you ask?

Positives
First of all, think about what it is you like about the piece, or other creative effort. Now, ask your self WHY you like what you do about it. You should be able to give a concrete reason. Not just that it's pretty, or cool, but what is it about the thing that makes you think that. What did the artist/writer do well? That goes into the first part of post in response to someones work.

Negatives
The second part that goes into a response is what, if anything, you didn't like about the piece. Where could the artist/writer have done better? WHY do you think it could have been done better? How do you think it could have been done better? Remember, this is purely your opinion, but you're trying to offer helpful opinions. Also, you're not commenting on their choice of subject matter, or vehicle of expression. (That is, why did you choose that poetry form or that graphics program) One thing you should seriously evaluate before you make a comment about what you didn't like about a piece is: "What makes me think I know enough about this creative form to offer suggestions?" Anyone can offer an opinion, but offering an informed opinion is a lot harder, and an uninformed opinion just shows your shortcomings.

One last caution: you are commenting on a person's work. You are not commenting on the person himself/herself, and personal comments or insults are not appropriate

Sadly anyone that has botherd to read all this probably already has a fair idea on how to CnC, All the same i hope you found something useful out of this

If you do post short comments such "cool" "bad" I don't like it"

Your posts WILL be buried/deleted, those posts will not count towards your total post count, and you may face a ban and possible reset of your post count!

You have been warned.

Nice work Spooky, hopefully people will listen

I am going to re-name and sticky this as everyone needs to see it.

spooky<3

i think most people will give good criticism after reading this

the people who will have read this, are those who have an attention spam exceeding 27 seconds, so unfortunately most people who will read this already are offering helpful CnC for peoples work, whilst majority of the GFX trolls/BKs will not read this and carry on with ******ed responses, how ever even if 3 or 5 people start to post correctly in the GFX forum this thread will have achieved something

Very well done spooky

i can make a sig and i know the tools and i get tell when somebody has used them. i give advice proper advice, of what i think and maybe what they should do to make it better. i am no where near as good as anybody at GFX is this wrong to give my opinion. Moderator Panda.

relevance of the quote train?. as long as you have some understanding of what your criticizing and you think the op could gain something from it

this isnt to try and stop people CnCing its to try and get people to post something constructive rather than whoring the post count as it seems some people have taken to doing and offer some useful advice

PLEASE READ THIS!!!

DO IT

done

bump kids. cracking down

Never saw this thread till Infamous reffered to it in another thread. Well done on the write up and giving proper CnC should be common sense people.

thanks for that