Scribophile is a site where writers can post their work and receive feedback from others. I used it for maybe three months last year. I am bringing it up now because I want to make a case for the usefulness of such a tool, hoping that someone might build it, and point out the curious choices this site is humbled enough to stand by.

I’ll explain why I wanted to use this site, and why it appealed to me. I wanted some place to solve the problem of getting my work out there that was friendly to experimentation and development, where I could enjoy a little blissful separation from my identity (no one I knew in real life had ever heard of Scribophile). This is why I wouldn’t use other more obvious platforms like Medium with thousands of regular people where my work would get lost in the quagmire, or worse, remembered forever. Scribophile seemed to be used by writers representing all kinds of interests and along various stages of notoriety on the site. From the home page I could see the activity of anyone from first-time posts to long-standing group forum discussion. Its layout was interesting and wordy, but simple enough to get started quickly.

After logging off of Scribophile for about a year, I came back to 150 new messages! They’re not actually messages to me, they are notifications from groups I joined. Don’t love that.

You’ll notice all the tabs along the top. The writing page is useful because that’s where I’ll find my own posts, as well as writing from other users who are also earnestly trying to learn how to write. I’m gonna say that all the other pages are not useful.

From my activity on the site, I have earned the “Pencil Pusher” title. It is not clear how many titles there are, or what the final boss is, but they float around the site behind user’s names. I don’t get anything from that, personally.

Then there are attributes I’ve collected from posts I’ve made across the site. After spending a week or two here, I started to learn how the game worked. My forum posts were an attempt to get any engagement from others, because you have to meet them in the forum first for them to find your profile and read your stuff. You also have to majorly suck up to them, follow them, favorite them, message them, send them gifts, all the stuff you would be forced to do in real life replicated online where you want it to be easy. I soon found myself tangled up in all kinds of notifications from the plethora of attention-seeking behaviors everyone is engaged in. I was notified any time someone gave my post any of the five attributes (insightful, funny, interesting…) or when anyone added to the discussion. Don’t love that either, because it seemed like new users were traveling the same avenues I had at first and posting on the same forums and joining the same groups, so that there was a continual wave of people not really understanding what they were doing there, but just trying to have fun. These were easy to find because the homepage would feature posts directed at new users all the time.

You will see that on my profile the critiques I have given other writers are then judged by them to be thorough, enlightening, encouraging, constructive, or just generally liked. The “like” can be taken as acknowledgement that the original poster read your critique of their work, but did not like it.

Here’s where it all gets interesting: the critiques. A critique is a necessary function for developing an artist. At Scribophile, the critiques are the currency. Take a look at my menu:

I have three distinct metrics for my profile. Karma and repuation points, and critique likes. Karma points and reputation points. See, this is what I mean. Imagine how great something like this could be if we could use money, money that was sophisticated, smart, integrated, well understood, instant, easy to transact, quick as lightning…

So I quickly found out the currency game without an upgrade to premium is a stupid game with stupid prizes. And it’s because the ability to post new work is only given once the critiques you write for others have earned a certain score. You spend karma points to post your writing.

It is an interesting incentive loop, right? I get critiqued if and only if I do the critiquing. That makes sense, I like it. But what exactly are karma points?

The critique you write has to be done in one of three format choices: template, inline or freeform, and there are strict rules to be followed for each. If your critique does not follow the rules, it is void, and you do not earn the points. You begin earning points once your critique exceeds 125 words. I wrote two critiques and earned a little over 1 point for each. To post my next piece on my profile, I will have to spend 5 karma points. So that’s about 5 critiques for every one post. It took me half an hour to read someone else’s work and give them thoughtful feedback. So I’m investing near to three hours of my time on other’s work in order to earn the ability to post and hopefully, by chance, receive feedback on my posts from others who are playing the same game of earning points in order to post. That’s three hours I lose from time spent writing, which is what I’m here for in the first place. The trade off, it isn’t worth it.

Writing critiques on Scribophile quickly became more like filling out paperwork for the starved masses in order to get my little piece of bread.

If it were possible to transact with other writers for the value of our up-and-coming developmental and experimental work over the lightning network, I would be waiting in line. But, hey, that’s exactly why we’re here at stacker.news. And really, I think stacker.news is just about as exceptional as any platform could get. The people I want to talk to are here, and there's no bullshit.

I hope you enjoyed this expo on Scribophile, I hope you never had the displeasure of hanging your artistic hopes and desires on it. Here’s one last thing I hate about it, no night mode for free loaders.

For anyone interested, I am going to post the same short dream-like story that I posted to Scribophile in the comments below. Feedback is welcome.

I’m plebpoet and I’m a writer. Say what’s up on Twitter.