So, it appears my Warstory has been locked. I'll still ask why, even though I have a feeling that the answer will be similar to the reason for locking a similarly controversial Warstory,
"The Wrath of God":
Lee said:
Okay, this is getting a bit mean-spirited now and there hasn't been any actual Pokemon-related posts since the OP. ... It was obviously well-received and was a nice break... but I'm closing it before we get any more hostility or post count+++
Three and a half hours, 17 Luvdiscs, and then locked. I have but one thing to say: Joan, I win.
Honestly, though, I have no idea why this happened. I definitely used "The Wrath of God" for inspiration, but I attempted to avoid a total shitfest by omitting extremely controversial and almost certainly inappropriate content—learning from Joan's mistakes (or truimphs), as I saw it. I see my Warstory as wholly better—there's still the "fun, not SRS BIZNS" element; there was actually substance to the battle; the ending was a nail-biter; the formatting is superb; and the commentary is insightful and, most importantly, appropriate.
To quote an article in Issue 14 of The Smog:
The Art of War(story) said:
To the readers of both The Smog and Warstories: I would like to remind you that all work and contributions on Smogon, and this includes warstories, is completely voluntary. It is an unfortunate reality, but the expectations and criticism of warstories has become increasingly toxic, bordering on outright disrespectful flaming at times. In fourth generation, this led to a near complete extinction of warstories from Stark Mountain. There is a reason that the most recent archived warstory is from last June, and the story before that from January. It is not due to people not writing good stories. It is due to intolerable criticism and complete ingratitude by the community causing warstories in general to disappear. Writing a warstory takes a lot of effort and hard work. Respect for this effort is why we don't allow people to just post logs as a thread with some scanty comments thrown in. However, respect for this effort should also mean genuine gratitude for the stories and writers—even if not all of them are perfect, awe-inspiring masterpieces. ... Please, let us appreciate the writers and encourage them to continue writing. It would be great for the whole community to continue to enjoy warstories in the future.
While this may be me selfishly ranting, the mixed reaction to my Warstory says something about the community as well (which, admittedly, I am not familiar with, so maybe this isn't news to you). I just feel that I sunk way too much time and effort into this to have a few intolerant people ruin it for everyone. 23 of the 32 comments were praise (or at least non-negative) and the other nine came from only five separate users, so those who did not approve were definitely the minority. If one actually reads "The Art of War(story)," as I did before writing this Warstory, it is clear that my Warstory is in accordance with the general guidelines. Hell, it even gets two out of the three bonus points. Aside from the obvious hax, it's near flawless—even the haters acknowledge this. What I find most amusing is that I pointed out numerous times in the introduction that this was not going to be a standard (boring) battle, and yet people still bitch at me. Is it too much to ask that people refrain from posting if they have nothing but hate? This leads to my second question in all of this (lol), which is: is there any chance that the thread can be re-opened if we somehow come to an agreement to lower the hostility?
I think a superb example of this kind of peaceful response can be found in
this Warstory, which also showcases unusual Pokemon and sets. This was another very successful Warstory that I looked at while in the process of writing my own. I have no idea how my Warstory became a complete clusterfuck while the one I just mentioned got civilized comments of disagreement like
Not the best battle but I have to admit that this was funny.
That was literally the full extent of the hate, despite the two battles being almost identical (save for mine being haxier).
In the end, I don't have much of a say in this, if any at all, but I thought that I should voice my opinion seeing as I am the source of all this chaos.
Due to the two questions I posed being fairly simple to answer, I feel this is the correct place to pose said questions. I also don't think that this deserves its own thread (and it would get locked anyway).
/endrant