Well, I'm not saying that I'm not going to ever share my work again, but it is statements like these...
"It seems it's not enough for you to be overly sensitive to percieved criticism of your own work, now you have to overly sensitive on behalf of others?"
-and-
"I'm not the only one, or the first one, who has noticed that you come across as overly sensitive to percieved criticism,"
... that makes me believe that a conversation on my
work-in-progress isn't mutually beneficial to all involved.
I'm a firm believer that both
friendly suggestions and
criticisms can with stand scrutiny... and just like I was opening up my sketches to scrutiny, I believe that comments on them should also be open to the same, with the strongest ideas surviving. Sometimes my original idea withstood the scrutiny, other times I was shown a better way.
I thought it worked.
But when I ask an innocent question (
why) in another thread, and get basically assaulted with a fierce barrage of attacks (which stem from perceptions made here), that is why I've concluded that this experiment in community sharing has essentially failed. As to why such an innocent question would yield such a reaction, only that poster knows what he was reading into my short post. But the source of the animosity was clearly this thread. And, as he pointed out, he is not alone.
The fact that I scrutinize critics' positions as much as critics scrutinize my work will never change. And the only place I can think of where I tend to get short with people is when they nitpick on sketches while avoiding the content that the sketches were meant to share. There is a time and a place for those types of comments (at the end when I'm arranging the actual final work), but in a discussion of ideas with what I basically look at as
cocktail napkin sketches, those are unwelcome distractions. But I also worry that my critics (the ones I need who look at the details and ask the important questions) may have been driven off.
Again though, I shouldn't have to worry that by opening a discussion with people that I'll (in some unrelated thread) receive the pent up animosity of some other member. And that member feels totally justified in what they did, and frankly (after reviewing this thread) I don't think he is alone in his perceptions (be them correct or in error).
So while I honestly believed that this was a successful experiment, and was a benefit to even those who's ideas I didn't subscribe to, I'm now starting to believe that the greater perception is that this thread has been an exercise in narcissism. And I can't think of a good argument against that type of perception considering that this thread is as long as it is, with as many views as it has gotten, and yet I've effectively produced nothing yet.
I mean consider the additional off topic comment I got...
"... wouldn't better use of your time be spent in bringing us more of your own excellent work?"
Lets face it, I get nothing out of this beyond the good will of the community. And while many have expressed that, I'm getting the impression that others are just looking for the opportunity to express the opposite.
I'm still going to work on this stuff... and I'll still share my sketches with some people (in private), but at this time the community aspect is seeming counter productive. And it wasn't one member ruining it, like I said, in trying to find whatever conflict I had with this person, I came across similar attitudes from others. I just hadn't considered before this that sharing might yield such results.
![Wtf :wtf: :wtf:](/styles/flatawesome/xenforo/smilies/wtf.gif)