Have you ever been in a writing group where people try to criticize each others' stories while being nice about it? It's awful, and a waste of time.

The best way I know is not to try to be less blunt, but to give criticism in an environment where I also offer my own material up for criticism, so that I'm also vulnerable. In writing groups, this sometimes works very well.

I've largely given up on not being blunt. It takes too much time, and isn't as effective. I feel about it the same way I feel about holding back a class to teach the material slowly enough that the slowest students in the class can understand everything. There are always going to be some students who can't keep up with the class; and there are always going to be some people who can't handle criticism. It isn't fair to the rest of us to water everything down for them.

If this is a gender-specific thing that drives women away, then the obvious solution would be to have users identify themselves as women at signup, and have their usernames show up in pink, so we know to be nice to them. Yet I don't think this would be less offensive to women! If I treat everybody the same, I'm discriminating against women; if I treat them differently, I'm also discriminating against women.

It would be nice if we had something like the player-killer bit (on multiplayer games, something you can set that means your character can kill other players and can be killed by other players), that meant "I can handle criticism", and that would show up next to your name on every comment you posted.

When someone makes a top-level post, I assume they have set that bit.

BUT, I could've said what I said in a nicer way. Vaniver showed me how (below). It seems obvious in retrospect. I guess I wasn't trying very hard to be nice. Sorry - I will make an effort.