The Telepathic Kid wrote:I don't really agree Ian, but I'm sure you could tell.
I ultimately feel under your suggestions, the thread would become a self congratulatory-fest, with people just patting each other on the back and no one learning.
But I'll heed your advice, and I assume you're talking on behalf of a lot more people who aren't willing to say anything, in that you don't post there because of me.
If that's true, I'm doing more harm than good.
I will refrain from posting in that thread again, even with my own music.
I don't want to contribute music if I can't contribute thoughts and discussion.
I will try to keep this brief as I don't want to waste another two hours of my life carefully writing something for you to completely misunderstand it. What I (and others) were saying is that we want you to keep contributing to that thread but that an element of self-editing is required to keep everything harmonious. I tried to give plenty of examples of how you could potentially manage it without sacrificing your personality or integrity.
I've avoided bringing age into this but… I'm twice your age and I've been in a lot of situations where people and their work has to be criticised. I can say, hand-on-heart, that positive criticism absolutely helps people to learn and grow in whatever area is being critically assessed. It doesn't automatically make people complacent. Straight negative criticism almost always causes damage. Constructive criticism is really difficult to get right (arguably I'm failing at that in this thread right now) and you really have to know the person you're directing it towards if you want to get the tone right.
That's still taken me 20 minutes to write as it's important to me to try and get this right and make this constructive. I'm sorry if I've failed in that.