Here’s the conundrum I see.

On the one hand, totally anonymous submissions are the fairest. Ideas get voted up or down for their merits (or because the voter is a jerk) without involving personal feelings towards the author or klan. Klans can’t throw their weight behind totally anonymous ideas, thus keeping big klans from forcing up crappy ideas that a member posted, or good writers from having to join huge klans just to stay competitive.

On the other hand… writers/designers don’t really get true feedback. If I post an item and it hits -5 in an hour, while I can generally bumume that I suck (or the voters suck), I don’t get any specifics as to why it sucks. Am I misunderstanding what people think the forum should be about, or is it too close to something already posted? Is my joke too subtle, too obscure, or too stupid? There are a lot of reasons things can get downvoted, and it’s hard to improve my submissions with my only feedback being “voted up” and “voted down”. (Which often leads to poor or flawed ideas getting re-submitted because the author bumumed “well, the voters sucked last week, so maybe this week it’ll be better.” )

So I’d like to actually get detailed criticism. The problem is, the best way to do that is to pbum it around via Tubmail or post it in my Klan forums asking for feedback, but at that point I seem to be dangerously close to breaking the rules on Klan voting.

Is there a good way to handle this? I’m asking both Crotch Zombie members for boundaries, and submitters for their ideas on what’s fair and reasonable. I’m not sure that there’s an absolute policy that can be come up with; like obscenity, this may have to be something where we know cheating when we see it, but can’t really set an official policy.