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I don't know if Mark's not including "Hey, I'll give it a try...all I care about is a good read" was trying to push voters to pick a side or just an oversight. I don't think forcing people to pick a side is the best way to go since obviously, an awful lot of whether or not you read something often comes down to "it depends."
Being "that other guy," I guess Ardegee and I are going to have to disagree on what a "serial" means. He has a very narrow definition.
I chose the much broader definition which is historically accurate as per the Wikipedia definition and as is commonly thought of in publishing and other media. Kind of like "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is" from Mr. Clinton lo those many years ago.
Adegee said:
"I never, for one god damned minute, have said anything should be "banned." Stop trying to shove your words into my mouth. The question was "would you buy this"-- not "should we ban this." A "banning" is their own business decision that they will make for their own economic reasons."
Yes, that is true. But, as Mark stated, the poll was put up to decide if such works should be restricted from Smashwords, so banning is on the table.
Adegee also added:
"No, I wouldn't want that. Any idiot can start a story. It takes skill to finish one. I don't conciser a novel to be just a comic without pictures-- I conciser it to be a discrete thing.
With any form of fiction, if you haven't planned the end from the very beginning, it shows-- badly. Take for example BSG as you have mentioned-- after a while, the writers had no idea where they were going, wrote themselves into corners, and had to come up with stupid crap that was an insult to the writing in the first couple of seasons.
Comics and soap operas attempt to stay fresh by having new characters coming and going all the time (and both genre have many, many resurrections from death.) But a piece of prose that rambles on like that without end? That belongs on the bottom of a bird cage."
Wow. Just wow.
Yeah, some serials are trainwrecks...just like some regular novels and short stories and TV series are.
And some serials are brilliant.
It's like condemning rock and roll for not being classical instead of appreciating it as its own genre and for its own merits.
And yeah, BSG had its fair share of disconnect...but what do you expect from a writing crew that was groomed by working on Star Trek: TNG and DS9, the dullest shows in the universe?
Again, just wow.
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