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When I told you, as your editor, that I want to keep the story, publicly, you don't go run to Green Reaper and whine about it and make him take it down, because that's humiliating to me.

For the record, while I did unpublish that story, it's always been within an author's power to delete it unilaterally - and ultimately Diamond Man did so.

I think you took his decision too personally. As an editor - or journalist - it's natural to be invested in your work. But you have to be able to let go as well. After all, you are not responsible for someone else's decisions, and a new story will be along soon enough. In this particular case, the decision was based purely on the author's own insecurities, not because of anything you did or didn't do. In fact, he didn't mention you at all.

You may be interested in my response to Diamond Man; the immediate context was the assertion that the "purpose and end results" of Alpha & Omega were of overriding importance compared to any "objective" measurement of its animation quality:

The problem is that it's not a fact. It's an opinion - one which many people disagree with.

[Reader comments on news websites] are there in part because site owners think the views of the public are an important check on the views of their writers, who might otherwise have undue influence, or be seen as representing the fandom's own opinion.

Community news sites are for people who are willing and able to accept public commentary on their work. This is especially true for opinion pieces, where your views are up for debate. If you are not, you should publish it in a more private venue, such as a personal journal. This will make you happier, and will save editors the effort of putting your work into a publishable form.

While the star ratings can be questionable in terms of quality, they're fairly accurate in terms of whether people agree with your argument. Put simply, a lot of people think you are wrong, at least in part; although many are willing to allow that reviews could be improved. This is borne out by the comments, in which people attempted to explain their own position, at length.

You don't have to agree with them, of course. But you should understand that honestly holding a different opinion to you (and speaking and voting in accordance with that) is not something that can just be dismissed as "bias". Nor (I think) is it a crime for a reviewer to tell people that other works are more deserving of their limited time, if that is their honest opinion. In fact, for many, that is the service which many people expect from a reviewer: to tell them what not to pay attention to.

Reviewers exist because of opportunity cost - it's better for all concerned if a person skips a work they probably won't enjoy and spends the time on something else. Good reviews, which convey both stylistic and technical issues, as well as any redeeming factors that may make a deficient work still worth looking at, can help them do that.

I think that once you truly understand why people both read and write reviews, you will have fewer issues with the concept. Of course, that is merely my opinion, too. :-) But I urge you to read carefully the comments that you have received.

Sadly this advice was not taken to heart; but I tried.

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