NOTE: I'm breaking netiquette by quoting a two sentence reply to review I've left. If people think badly of me for it - so be it.

I have left the following review to chapter 3 of this story on FFN (no, I don't recommend the story):

And got back this reply from the author:

That's ok, but now I can't review other chapters of this story, because I'm "not authorized" (I'm logged in). Does FFN have a feature that lets authors blacklist reviewers so their reviews look more rosy? If so, when was this introduced? Why do the powers that be at FFN think this will improve the quality of writing and help authors improve themselves?

And BTW, does my review really constitute "flaming"? As in, if it was "reported for abuse" to the moderators of FFN, would they consider it abuse of TOS?

 

Why do you think the goal of FFN is to help improve the quality of writing of their members?

 

No, what you wrote definitely wasn't a flame. You made two very good points, the author's just a wankfest moron.

'Don't like don't read' <- How am I supposed to know whether I'll like it or not without reading it? Meh.

 

He probably felt embarrassed in front of his other fans by your correction wolf.

At one point, budding authors want nothing else but thousands of reviews, all of them glowing praise of the writer's skill. Eventually some will realize that more than half of the reviews posted in their stories are less than sincere, and wonder if they even read the story at all.

The author's been writing stories earlier than me, so by now he should at least be appreciative and welcome these types of reviews. Unless, he really has a big ego and can't take criticism well.

 

I wish there was a way to disable reviews all together. :/

Your first point is very good though, and is one of my pet peeves as well. Spending 50,000 knuts would be next to impossible, time-wise at least.

 

That's a flame? Really? Huh.

Sounds like somebody with thin skin that can't handle even the smallest little criticism, no matter how obvious it is.

And I hardly see what being a work of fiction has to do with the logic of counting money.

Then again, it seems like every fic where they feel the need to show Harry's (usually absurdly large) bank balance, they also do this. I suppose it could be possible that the Gringotts vault could have separate piles of Galleons/Sickles/Knuts so depending on the context (haven't read the story) it's not completely out of the realm of possibility.

But usually, in other fics I've read, it's listed as the total value of the account which is of course just stupid.

 

You know what would be cool.

If we had a thread dissing the fuck out of this fic and then posting the link to it in a review to this author.

 

You know what else would be cool? Not even bothering.

This author's problem is that he/she/it is apparently too much of a wimp to hear an ounce of honest criticism, calling it a flame and blocking the reviewer.

Why give validity to this opinion by flaming Silverfawkes for no reason other than 'you kicked the hive?' And why give validity to the line of thought that DLP is a mob of thugs?

Personally, I feel that authors who ask for reviews, then cry flame when you give the smallest bit of honest, constructive criticism, are ungrateful twats (then again, so are a lot of readers who get free entertainment and can't muster up a simple "I'm enjoying it, good job." for the person using their time to write).

Why spend valuable time fucking with an overly-sensitive author, only to make their argument for them?

 

Well if this author yells flame at an honest review AND blocks the reviewer, imagine how they would react to real flames.

The thing is arrogant pricks like LessWrong and this author really deserve to be taken down a notch. I'm not saying that DLP should lower itself to doing the "taking down" but I think we can all agree that they deserve to be taken down in this fashion.

 

Sesc's post is full of all kinds of awesome.

That being said, I don't think the writer in OPs link meant to write it as such, and simply didn't realise the inefficiency of what they were describing.

Could be wrong, though. Haven't actually read the story and I doubt I will.

edit:

This also doesn't imply that the writers response made any kind of sense.

 

The authors either an idiot, or some close-minded fool. Let'em stew in his own stupidity.

 

Sesc, just to pick your brain about canon: you say that because Gringotts is not a bank but merely a storage facility, goblins won't exchange knuts for galleons so it is quite possible, merely by sane business transactions, to reach a point when one has many thousands of knuts in one's vault?

In your opinion, is fractional-reserve banking prohibited in the magical world by an accord following a wizard-goblin war, or have they never invented it and never discovered the muggles have been doing it for centuries? They have appropriated the wireless (though surely they've never used the telegraph so why call it "wireless"?), why not something even more useful like banks?

 

Wizarding culture is different. Just accept it as such without reading too much into it.

Regarding the OP...meh. How or why you got blocked from reviewing doesn't matter. It happened, nothing you can do to change it, and you can still read fics - so keep it moving.

 

What's the exchange rate between galleons and pounds, anyway? Is it mentioned in canon?

Also: not much to say except that I agree with the other thread posters.

 

I remember some fan calculated the value of wizarding money from when Hagrid bought a Daily prophet from the owl in the first book. If I recall correctly, galleons to pounds came out to about 1:50, and that's sorta stuck in my head ever since I read about it. I mean, they're made of gold, so they should have some value to them. That would make wands around £250, and the prize for the Triwizard Tournament around £50,000 - which is a pretty hefty sum, but not absolutely insane.

It also makes me viciously hate authors who give Harry hundreds of millions of galleons in his vault, since multiplying by 50 gives him enough money to buy damn near anything on a whim.

 

As I said in my post, it depends on the context.

If it was just a statement of the contents of the vault then yes, stating exactly how many galleons/sickles/knuts makes sense. If it's stating the value of of the contents, i.e. "how much money do I have?" then it doesn't make much sense. Many authors that I've read seemed to have failed to grasp the difference.

That said, I don't know the context because I haven't read the story. Nor do I have any interest in doing so, because the word 'Tatum' annoys me for reasons beyond my knowledge.