Teachers and Camps.

[Simmi]

When YWO was down I decided to go and check out TW. I soon realized that TW has been up longer than this site and has more to offer, I also noticed that instead of only admin and moderators they have "teachers". But, I don't know much about the teachers and how they get that status.
I saw that these moderators often controlled camps. There were camps for: learning how to critique, characterization, plots, poetry, etc. In these camps they had assignments and an alloted amount of time to complete them (turn them in). The teachers then critiqued the work and gave them advice on what to do and what not to do.
I was just wondering if we could add this to our beloved site.

[Alex]

Anything to get people making better critiques. Its been a little sickening seeing so many one-liner and generally uninformed critiques. The one issue that could arise is that there is no one way to teach critiquing, and having someone tell their student what the problems are in a given piece might make a bunch of clones of one style of critiquer (along with their pet peeves and such). Also, stealing ideas isn't fun =p.

Also, who would appoint teachers? Could anyone be a teacher? That is kind of the idea around here, but if they are "official" teachers some might not be qualified to teach, so how would it be regulated? This could either be good or could expand on an issue we already have. Interesting topic of discussion to be sure.

[Simmi]

Anything to get people making better critiques. Its been a little sickening seeing so many one-liner and generally uninformed critiques. The one issue that could arise is that there is no one way to teach critiquing, and having someone tell their student what the problems are in a given piece might make a bunch of clones of one style of critiquer (along with their pet peeves and such). Also, stealing ideas isn't fun =p.
I know you're probably being sarcastic about the "stealing ideas" thing, but I hate stealing ideas. I just wanted to give a suggestion to the site that might help a bit.

Also, who would appoint teachers? Could anyone be a teacher? That is kind of the idea around here, but if they are "official" teachers some might not be qualified to teach, so how would it be regulated? This could either be good or could expand on an issue we already have. Interesting topic of discussion to be sure.

Maybe people who are critique often and their crits are good quality.
Maybe Shaun could appoint the teachers or him and the moderators, or we could just have a vote.

[Mercy]

My main problem with this is how would be pick those who could teach? There are very few on the site with that caliber, I believe (myself not being one of them, for I am not good enough).

[Alex]

My main problem with this is how would be pick those who could teach? There are very few on the site with that caliber, I believe (myself not being one of them, for I am not good enough).

Yes you could... If you dont think you could then we might as well just forget this idea entirely as the pickings are too slim.

[Starry]

I think there are certainly enough critiquers of a high enough caliber to teach--more of what I see as a problem is that the people who need the help the most (newbs, etc.) probably aren't going to want to do it. I doubt the people giving one-liner crits think it's a problem that they do so. While there may be some use for people who only crit stories and aren't really comfortable critting poetry (like me) or vice versa, I don't see this really making enough of an impact.

[ReccyV]

Uh, I'm running the critique camp there, so I'll send my proposed teaching guide to whomever takes it over here.