Hey, Agent P. here. I have a question. Una pregunta (sorry, I'm in Spanish class).

On of my new works is receiving now crits. Granted, its rather new, but it also has around 30 views which leads me to wonder...what prompts someone to crit something? Is there a relationship between how many crits a piece gets (with respect to number of views) and how good it is?

Do you, O critiquing members of YWO, decide to crit something based on whether or not it interests you? Or based on whether or not it is good. Does high views and low crits mean that a piece is good and does not need crit, or does it mean that the piece is boring, uninteresting, and is being passed by in favor of better work to crit?

In my view, not really. A really good piece of work might look daunting to some people so they might just read it and critique something else. Works with easily spotable problems are generally easier to critique. I read nearly all the poetry and shorts posted on this site, whatever the quality, but I only really ever critique prose on request as I have very little time (I take aaaaages to critique) between all my other commitments and stuff.

Views might correlate more with popularity, to some extent. Pieces of work posted by people who pop in and out once in a blue moon, or hide in the background generally get less views/critiques than older members who are active and have many friends on the site through he chatroom, etc. I'm happier to critique friend's work than other's. But then again, newbies get lots of critiques, so you could argue both ways.

I know that when I have time to critique whatever I like, I'll go for something that interests me, whether or not it has a million problems, thought I prefer critiquing not-so-good works because they need more attention, I think, than ones where the writer already knows what they're doing.

I don't think number of views has anything to do with the critiques you get. When I'm going to crit something, I'll generally critique stuff by members who I know particularly well or someone who has critiqued a lot of my work (which usually means I know them pretty well). On rare occasions I'll be in the mood to critique when none of my friends have posted anything, and in that case I usually go for a newbie who hasn't gotten a real in-depth critique yet (unless, of course, they've posted over 1,000 words).

I can never figure out why some older members never get many critiques, though. I am, unfortunately, in that group.

Also, of course when I'm considering critiquing something, interest does play a part. I'll be slightly more likely to read something that's not really my style if it's someone that I know, though. And when there are too many basic errors, I generally avoid the piece.

(I'm talking about novels/short stories here, by the way. I never do poetry.)

I only make crit comments if I feel I can make a positive suggestion, with teh proviso that the piece interested me in the first place. if the piece is not me, then I certainly don't bother.

If we're going to take the relationship between the quality of a given piece and critique, and ignore any other variables, I think that middle of the range works get the most.

If a piece is extraordinarily good, I'll find little negative to say about it, so I won't bother. I consider purely positive reviews to be similar to spam, because all they do is stroke the writer's ego. Maybe if I interact socially with him or her on MSN or AIM, I might tell him that I love his piece, but other than that no.

If a piece is dreadfully bad, I won't bother either - unless I have plenty of time to dissect it. I usually don't, so I'll probably move on to something less arduous. As well as that, if a piece is bad I won't have any fun reading it. That makes it even more of a struggle.

If we assume that high views means good quality, then no. To get helpful critique, there needs to be some flaw in your work in the eyes of the reader.

Ye boi, it's a conspiracy. Communism. The 'cool crew'. I kid I kid, a catchy title and an interesting introduction post usually helps people decide if they want to read and crit your shit.