Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-24486926-20131105024437/@comment-1196539-20131106210828

I agree with Skeletons. Regardless of what connotations you, Calasan, give the words, the simple fact of the English language is that they are synonymous.

Acknowledging, of course, that that's not the issue at hand. But the word "criticism" gets enough bad rap, and too many people mistake comments which are actually constructive and politely suggesting areas for improvement to be flaming or offensive just because they're not praising their writing as the best thing since sliced bread. These comments are, of course, different from the "This sucks" and "Hated it" examples which have been given. Those are just useless smack talk which doesn't help anyone.

The only reason your use of the word "criticism" is an issue is due to the possibility that this might become a site rule, and we don't want to discourage criticism. Criticism is a good and wonderfully useful thing.