 My name is Dr. Sumerian and today's video comes to you in two parts first of all I'd like to welcome all of the new subscribers about two weeks ago I had 650 ish subscribers and now I've got 865 so that's a quite an increase in a very short amount of time I'd like to say hello and welcome to the channel and some of you may have noticed also that I have Renamed the channel from SCP foundation to Dr. Sumerian a short history as to why I would do something like that The channel was originally like just kind of a test case to see how many SCP creators out there Were willing to contribute to a YouTube channel as it turns out it was pretty much just me and nobody else really put together any Content and the channel pretty much just became my channel as such I thought it would be good to change the name to something a little bit more fitting I'm also gonna be doing a bit of a rebrand Some of the images will be changing over the next couple weeks probably other than that same kind of content You've grown used to the harsh critique video last week did really well So I'm probably gonna continue to do more stuff like that I'm still gonna do lower videos and probably general advice on writing as well. So that's it for the first half of the video Let's jump into the actual content yesterday I was thinking about how I give critique to people and the problem I have with giving people critique is that a Lot of the times it seems like I'm talking to a brick wall Now, I know that's a given with a lot of people But at the same time I can't help but feeling that if I'm mean to someone I could be possibly turning away a Brilliant writer who later could be way better than I am See that's the thing if you critique as many drafts as I have in the past You'll learn that maybe one out of a hundred writers that come to you who hasn't already posted something to the wiki is Actually worth their salt and if you treat them all the same you're gonna treat that one good writer the same as you Treat the other 99 who are pretty much useless So your best bet if you want to actually help people is to treat everybody as nicely as possible But sometimes it's very very difficult. I'm gonna go over one such basically useless person right now I've anonymized their information as much as possible. You won't be able to recognize who they are They'll be able to recognize who they are. Hopefully they keep it to themselves But you know, that's their decision So the first thing you need to realize when you're asking somebody for critique is that their time is valuable And regardless of how good you think you are you're not the be all end all of their day Now the first critique was based on a draft that was full of spelling punctuation grammar errors The first thing I thought was this English this guy's first language because it wasn't just the basics It was also Really awkward phrasing strange construction of sentences the kind of stuff you see out of people who have English as a second language So I asked is English your first language and he says yes Why and I'm gonna answer to you why without telling this guy why because if I told this guy why I Would have only been able to say it as a complete and total dick The thing is if you give me a draft full of spelling punctuation grammar errors Full of awkward phrasing and you have not gone through it and proofread it Then you do not value my time my experience or my energy and when I ask you is English your first language That's because I'm hoping you say yes and if English is your second language Then it's possible you didn't give me a draft full of obvious errors and mistakes Because you don't respect me but rather because you don't know any better and that is fine because that Is something that can be improved upon but if you don't respect my time Then there's really no reason for me to continue giving you any critique at all However, it doesn't seem like this person was used to communicating with human beings As you can see in the chat log. I'm about to read to you now Which picks up pretty much right after he says that English is his first language and that's when I say Okay, well, I don't want to spend all day going through this for spelling punctuation and grammars It's not a particularly strong skill of mine and it's not by the way I'm I'm good at doing stroke story structure and that kind of stuff But I'm really not that great at picking out the basic grammar stuff It's something that you should do yourself But I make sure and outline this and and kind of explain why what's going on And I say this is full of such errors. Just the first two sentences alone are going to take 10 minutes to go through pointing out all the issues Probably work on that on your own and then get back to me, which is the easiest way I can say Fucking don't put this on me. This is not my job to fix. This is your job to fix Critique is not a matter of making sure that you spelled everything properly That's what a spell checker is for and then I let him know I cannot judge his content Which is what I'm best at critiquing without him cogently presenting the content He doesn't respond at all and then two minutes later goes You still there or and I say I am did you have something else and he says Pictures I let that hang for five minutes expecting. I don't know But something at which point he says hello and I say Yeah If you have something else to say go ahead and then he repeats himself. Yeah I said pictures. This is the part where I just feel like this person doesn't understand how to communicate with human beings And then I lose a little bit of my cool here I'm going to be honest with you where I reply and then failed to provide me with any pictures or context by which You'd like my opinion. I'm waiting for you to do that still which he lets hang for three minutes I just wanted your opinion on whether or not SCPs with pictures have more description in them Which is a very open-ended and vague and useless question And all I can do is basically give a generic response Images are a key component of the scp creation process They can help both you and the audience nail down what the thing is at a glance. They are not however strictly necessary At which point he waits another four minutes and says All right Don't do this Please Don't do this kind of thing to your favorite writer to your least favorite writer to anyone Who you think can help you with your drafts just don't See the problem with a lot of people who get critique is that they don't really want critique They just want approval for what they've written so that they can say yes This is good and post it and a lot of people will simply not listen to you I mean like I'm very clear about this I'm like don't come back to me until you cogently presented your article and instead he wants to go pictures And doesn't give me any context at all like what am I supposed to do with just the word? pictures like how am I supposed to extract any Meaning whatsoever From the word pictures and then he comes back at me Like I'm the one who isn't communicating properly Anyway, that's just an examination of a single instance of somebody who is seeking critique Incorrectly don't be this guy. Don't do this thing If you like the video, please like subscribe and leave a comment and probably most importantly of all Share this video with your friends. Thanks for listening