Equally as bad as those who can’t offer constructive criticism are those who can’t accept it. Tongue-in-cheek tips for arrogantly deflecting the views of those who don’t love and adore you and your work:
Alt Text: Genius Strategies for Defanging Web’s Harshest Critics
Among the excellent advice for those who are certain they are geniuses just waiting to be discovered:
“Why bother actually completing something before you let people tell you how great it is? Your genius should be clear from a couple paragraphs, or a handful of rough sketches, or even a vague description of the kick-ass story you’re going to tell.”
and
“It’s possible that you’ll find your work analyzed by someone with genuine talent and years of experience. This is a stroke of luck for you, because you can safely ignore them. After all, they obviously consider you competition and will do anything to discourage you from horning in on their turf. You can also dismiss anyone who isn’t a professional, because if they’re so smart, why are they still stocking shelves at Best Buy? By process of elimination, you can conclude that your best critics are your grandmother and those motivational posters about how dreams are like eagles.”
The overall point of this and my last post: Give good criticism. Take good criticism. Dial down the arrogance on both sides.
Categories: General
Tagged: civility, criticism, snark
Note (3/3/10): Since writing this last year, I have reread it a few times and now have some other thoughts on this issue. I don’t believe in removing posts and pretending they never existed, but I now I believe I focused too much on the negative tactics and outcomes of the critique process and not enough on the effective means that are more commonly used. I have received more helpful reviews than non-helpful and appreciate the effort that people have put into their recommendations. In the future I plan to write a revised version of this post that reflects that. (And by “in the future,” I mean “after I finish my dissertation.”)
Academia and journalism are realms of criticism and critique. We produce work and put it out for the world to consume and (hopefully) from which people will benefit. In doing so, we invite our peers to evaluate what we do, what we’ve found, and even what we think about what we do and what we’ve found. Discussion and criticism is supposed to allow us to improve, set and raise bars and standards, promote high levels of discourse, and form a means of quality control in our professions.
In academia, the criticism and critique process takes place at conferences and other fora and through refereed journals. For graduate students, it’s also the painful process of submitting our work to professors who may unilaterally decide our academic fates. In the midst of all the criticism and discussion, sometimes the point of the process is lost. When debates become heated or a reviewer takes strong issue with a paper, the most highly educated and renowned thinkers in their fields can quickly become as vicious and cruel as a clique of high school girls. Even in communications, where you would (incorrectly) assume that academics are good at communicating, the way criticism is presented often undermines the purpose of helping an individual and the field, in general, produce high-quality work. In short, academics often leave the “constructive” out of the process of constructive criticism and adopt mentalities that render their critiques almost useless for the people who receive them, hurt the field, and don’t really benefit the evaluator either. Among the tactics I’ve seen:
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Categories: General
Tagged: Academia, civility, research
