5 things to watch out for on OS

[LucentTear]

Constructive criticism is something that ought to have its own discussion. It's perfectly acceptable to give IF you get permission first! OBVIOUSLY JHXC and SirGuy have rapport pre-existing where it's fine giving each other feedback but it's totally possible to scare off a newcomer by going in hard. I know this because I'm guilty of it. I scared people away from fanfic, I scared people away from webcomic feedback... I'm trying really hard to not scare people away from fantasy map feedback... and I wouldn't dare give anyone music feedback at this point in time.

If someone's just like "this is le suck" then yeah ignore, but if someone is like "next time you make a song, try to set up a drum pattern to a time signature first, and work the musical elements around the rhythm instead of just dropping in pretty sounding song bits wherever, and limit the instruments you set to reverb to muddy the sound up less. There's a button beside 'draw' for 'select' which will let you copy your drum pattern and paste it" they're probably trying to share with you knowledge that helped them get better and ignoring it because you think you know better will result in you not getting better quite as fast as you would if you opened up to receiving feedback.

But even better than that, you'd see that person could benefit from those tricks and make a thread of tricks, and share that link with them, or you might PM and ask, "hey, would you like feedback on your song, Ti? I listened to it and had a few ideas on how you could make your next song better."

Umm. No? lol. You should not need permission to criticize someone. Criticism is free speech and by disallowing it, you'd be censoring people. So I'll have to respectfully disagree with you on that front. While I do agree that asking someone if they're cool with something before doing it should be highly encouraged, it should not be disallowed or enforced. If someone gives respectful criticism, that is helpful and optimal. It is encouraged to do so, but not asking should also be perfectly fine as long as the criticism doesn't become harassment.

To add to this, I had a personal experience where the other person said that "criticism should only be given if I ask for it, and that it should be common sense to not give criticism at first glance" which I find kind of a bull mentality to have.

From this, learn that you cannot expect people to inhibit their opinions. Sometimes those opinions are innocent and mildly hurtful, sometimes they're destructive. And as Guest said, ideally criticism should be respectful. If it isn't respectful, I wouldn't go ahead as to turn it down immediately.

Consider the backgrounds of the people you're receiving disrespectful criticism from. Maybe they just don't like your style of music in general. Maybe there actually is something wonky, like a flaw in a drawing. Stuff like wonkiness doesn't go unwarranted and as small point-outs as they are, are more likely to be valid than they aren't.