I can understand how Klazart feels. I joined Authonomy after the whole mess blew up and there was still a lot of residual bad feeling that I didn’t understand at the time.Having read this interview I am a lot better informed as to why people are so touchy over the incident.

I think it depends on how you use the site as a writer.

If all you can think about is getting to the Editors Desk to get the Crit, then what Klazart did is fine. If you want to get honest feedback and help with your writing then you *have* to work the forums because you have to find the more professional members to crit your work. And they are hard to spot anywhere else. It goes by word of post mostly.

On Webook the forums are not as active as on Authonomy. Instead the activity is clique based and when the votes happen (every few months rather than every month on the dot) there is a lot of popularity voting that goes on. I’m not there for that. I’m there for the feedback and help that I get.

Both forums are good places to make friends. And that’s important too – networking doesn’t work unless you know a few people.

Under those circumstances, anger is understandable. Some people lashed out in hurtful ways, and in a few cases with crude stereotypes. That’s not acceptable. On the other hand, it is important to note that a number of Authonomy veterans did speak out against that behavior, and some of them left the community because they did not want to be associated in any way with those kind of remarks.

As to Authonomy: I think most people who have been on Authonomy for more than a few weeks end up holding two somewhat contradictory views on the site. First, there is the ideal: That Authonomy is a meritocracy where people who are good at spotting promising books gradually become more influential and good books rise in the ratings. But there is also the dark side: People swapping support, mediocre books rising in the ratings because their authors are able to spend inordinate amounts of time on the site.

So which view reflects the reality of Authonomy? Both to some extent. There are people on Authonomy who carefully weigh every decision on whether or not to back a book. Good books do rise in the ratings. On the other hand, far too many people do try to figure out a shortcut, some way to avoid all of the tedious bother of producing a good story and helping other aspiring authors do the same. Some of those seekers of shortcuts are subtle. Some are nearly as blatant as Vineet was. All attempt to take more from the community than they put back and inevitably diminish the community by doing so.

I will simply say that Vineet is a gifted manipulator of both social interaction and of the truth. His responses to your questions paint him as a wide-eyed innocent in this incident and that is very very far from the truth of the events.

Some books in the top got there with a lot of efforts and pushing. Others might be better written but it still took a little effort to get them to the top. I don’t think a bad book will rise to the top five no matter how much pushing.

Vineet, I really hope you keep your book up there and finish this out. I want to see where it goes.

I’ve been an active participant at authonomy since last November. While it is true that some books in the top five rose to that lofty state by somewhat sneaky means (though nothing approaching the underhandedness of the Klazart scheme,) a preponderance of the top five have been worthy books that rose strictly through merit and through the active participation of their authors. Klazart’s wheeze made a mockery of that. Many of us hoped, and have been working hard to ensure, that in time all the books in the top five would be works of high quality, vetted by conscientious readers and authors. Klazart is interested in himself and his own book, nothing more. He is not the only writer on Authonomy who could be described this way, but he is by far the worst, and his activities are an insult to those of us who have been playing by the rules the whole time. I condemn his dishonorable scheme and I condemn everything he has said here; most of all, I condemn his failure to understand what he did wrong.

I just disagree with the general conception, that Ranking = merit. That of course, does not mean that one can’t be both highly ranked, and have merit.

I’d venture that all of us feel that our works have merit, and deserve to be published and read, if not, then why are we writers?

Of course, Edith Wharton’s ‘The age of innocence,’ was considered to be vapid, superficial and pointless when it was first published. Henry James was considered to be over-complicated and wordy. Many people even today consider Ulysses to be unreadable. The list goes on.

Ultimately, I suppose, like all other things, History will decide merit. Though I’m still a little unsure about the true meaning of the word.