I disagree with this idea. The last thing we need is less people being allowed to critique. Critique is something that people do out of the kindness of their hearts in order to help their fellow site members - it's not exactly something everyone on the site is racing to do.
No, but it's something a lot of new users race to do, and usually with the result that they need to be corrected by more experienced critiquers. In addition, this has led and will lead to new authors posting their subpar entry on the site, seeing it get downvoted and then quitting the site because no one helped them out when they were asking for feedback.
Anything we could do that would in some way discourage critique (in this case limiting it to a subset of users) is going to decrease the amount of critique available.
That's kind of obvious, yes, but you're ignoring the fact that it mostly decreases the amount of useless critique. I.e. "I like this, but you shouldn't use a number for the SCP. Use XXXX." or "This just needs a little bit more work on your tone." Does it guarantee that all critique thereafter left on forum threads and articles is going to be superb and impeccable? No.
Just the other day someone was complaining to me about how it seems to them to b harder and harder to get feedback - if people are having concerns about the amount of feedback available to them, then the best option probably isn't to decrease that amount across the board.
Getting feedback isn't harder because there's not enough people giving feedback, it's hard because there is a shitload more competition than say 2 years ago. On any given day, the fora receive at least 3-5 new threads.
You might say that this plan of yours would only get rid of bad critique, but I'm relatively sure that at least some amount of the critique given by people who have yet to post articles on the site is pretty useful. At the very least, it can give the person receiving the critique the opinion of someone representative of a very large portion of the userbase.
And what portion of the userbase would that be? If it were representative of a very large portion of the userbase, said articles would then not be downvoted once posted. This is, however, exactly what happens in most cases where feedback came mostly from non-contributors.
Additionally, the idea that a user who is good at writing is going to give good critique, or that a user who is bad at writing (or who doesn't want to write) is going to give bad critique is something I don't believe to be fundamentally true. The two skillsets, while they do have plenty of the same components, are not the exact same.
We agree on that, and as I said, I'd take it further and make a distinction between writing a tale and an scp article. But by and large the successful author's going to have more experience to back up their critique than a new arrival (excepting those who don't write themselves, but have been around long enough and have learned enough to be able to give at least the basis of useful feedback.) So the issue isn't a black-and-white depiction of "successful author" vs "experienced non-author", but the grey area that exists between those two. Something I believe is fixed when people are explicitly given permission to critique other people's drafts. I also believe Site and Forum Crit Team Members (or if need be their Captains) are mature and wise enough to know who is and who isn't able to provide decent feedback.
And from there, how do you even define what does and does not qualify as giving critique? To me, critique is any evaluation of the article beyond just saying 'good' or 'bad' - it's any feedback provided to the author to let them know what one thinks. If you look at the comments sections for any given SCP, a good deal of what's going on there is people telling the author what they think of particular elements or themes or ideas that they made use of in the article. Would these users simply not be allowed to express their opinions of the articles that they're reading? Would that not stifle their own creative ambitions by denying them the ability to fully explore and discuss the different things they like to see in pieces of fiction on this site? Sure you could argue that useful users could be given passes - but how would they even go about proving themselves to be deserving of these passes? If you're barred from critiquing, how should we know whether or not you're any good at it? I feel that such a splitting of the userbase - between those who are allowed to critique and those who are not - would only serve to limit creative expression and growth of the wiki.
First and foremost, the larger problem I'm seeing exists mainly on the forum. While posted SCPs get some feedback in their discussion threads, those giving out bad critique are doing that in the forum too. Secondly, if the distinction between "I like this, but you've got an awful lot of spelling errors." and "This isn't bad, but it needs work." isn't clear, then I don't know what to say. One is critique, the other is a user giving their personal feelings about the article.
Beyond just what such a policy would do as far as the selected group itself, you should look at whether or not such a policy would actually have the desired effect of increasing the quality of critique given. I can say from personal experience that the majority of what I would consider to be bad critique I see coming from very experienced authors - ones who are very ingrained about what they see as being correct and incorrect on the site, and as a result of this are overzealous in their pursuit of their own lofty standards.
You seem to be under the impression that I believe all critique will henceforth be superb if we stop new users who've never written anything for the wiki from giving out feedback before they get more experience under their belt. I don't. Yes, there are a number of authors who simply throw out incorrect shit like "Don't just list 2 dimensions, use 3", "You can't use a number for the SCP in your draft" or "Don't redact ANYTHING in the containment procedures." Yes, they need to be corrected more often. They're usually not right now because staff has their hands full staffposting on new users going "Cool. You should post this."
I can also say that for someone just starting out on the wiki, critique is a great way to learn more about the writing of SCPs and tales, and encourages people to be better authors. I know from my own experience on the wiki that the type of close-reading and analysis of themes and other elements that is seen in the critique of articles is a great way to grow and learn as an author - it requires you to really look at a work and understand why it works or why it doesn't.
Critique is a great way to learn what's what and how things work. However, that's not what most new users do. They read an article and apply standards and rules to them that are fundamentally wrong for this wiki, and then provide feedback based on those standards and rules. Sometimes even parrotting other users if they've seen a particular (incorrect) meme banded around often enough. Anyone can learn to critique if they handle it like you outline above. I know I did. But I didn't post critiques of other people's drafts until I was certain I wasn't just being overly enthousiastic and - above all - incorrect in my opinions on their work. I read other people's critiques and identified which ones showed actual investment by the critiquer.
If certain individuals are not doing that when they critique, or if for whatever reason it is not working for them, then that is something that needs to be addressed on an individual basis - not with sweeping restrictions on user activity.
And I'm telling you that is not feasible. Yes, this is happening, every day, and more and more, because we are pulling in ever more members. At some point you have to stop policing individuals and start filtering or you might as well abandon the idea of the forums working as any sort of author tool.
I think the best solution to the problem you say we are facing is to simply be more thorough in the pursuit of getting rid of bad critique. Most of the stuff that people give as feedback is fine - it's useful to the author and mildly fun for the people giving it. If you want to get rid of the portion of feedback that isn't the best, the easier solution would be to isolate and correct that behavior and those users - rather than barring the participation of the entire class of users that supposedly provides the worst feedback.
As I said, this is not feasible. As large as the number of staff members currently is, we can't keep up with this trend, especially not since this is still all a hobby, not a full-time job.
