Contructive Criticism[]
Constructive Criticism should include the following:
a) Thourough reading of the work before comment
b) Thought before speech
c) Care in wording of critique
It is often assumed that it is acceptable to chew up and spit out other people's work. In a television culture where we are exposed to blipvert ultrafast ultraviolent advertising we are prone to think this way. We have to stop and think before speaking though, and realize that there is another person on the other end of the terminal, and just like we do, they have thoughts, feelings, and emotions, and often have put a lot of time, and effort into expressing them in their work.
Things that are always helpful and supportive : Motivating words : Good effort, Nice Work, Looks Promising.
Things that are not helpful at all : immediate dismissal of the work as garbage, incompetent, or juvenile.
Remember - We are on the internet - we have no way of guaging the relative ages of our peers unless they specifically say who they are. And anonymity is a sort of common mode in cyberspace.
That doesn't mean that you can make an anonymous person an easy target for vicious remarks or ruthlessness.
I Guess the best way to describe what you should do is - try to motivate others, as you'd hope to be motivated yourself. Otherwise - there really is no reason for you to participate. No one forced you to join Wikia Poetry, and no one will force you to stay, so if you aren't happy with being civil to others, you might want to find a different place to lurk in cyberspace.
Unlike in "everyday" usage, when the word "criticism" is used in a literary context, it means a critique. That is, the positive as well as negative evaluation. It is generally more constructive to make suggestions about how something might be improved than to just say that it's bad. Try to be helpful by explaining what the specific problem is and why it is a problem. And don't forget to be explicit about what is good.