Thank you so much for your thoughts, including the healthy dose of pessimism. Would you mind letting me know which rps comm had the way off base criticisms? I'm interested in seeing what other people have tried. I follow elijahslashdom, a comm that encourages concrit, and it seems like they do all right, though there isn't a ton of traffic there these days. Most of the authors who've received concrit there have been really gracious about it. But it could just seem friendlier to me because I'm looking at it as an outsider and not thinking of posting there. Maybe if I were writing in that fandom I would find the group cliquish, and as it is I'm just a reader who likes that the fic there is usually good quality stuff.

I like the compromises you suggest, like saying we don't insist on a beta reader but maybe we encourage you to use one and at the very least run a spell check. And I think the kind of community where you apply could work. I'd tend to be pretty liberal about letting people in, unless they look like sockpuppet journals or they're obviously fond of putting other people down. I know there are some mean people who have a lot of influence but I really don't think their numbers are very large or that they'd be particularly interested in joining a community with me and my friends, you know? I would want it to be possible for a group of friendly people to set the tone and let new people who want to join follow that model, but maybe it would get out of control, I really don't know.

If people submitted really horrible fic, would it be very hypocritical of us just to ignore them?

Thank you so much for offering to help! I have a good deal of vain cowardice too but I do think this might be worth a try. I always really appreciate your comments in fandom discussion (sometimes I even get jealous of how smart and articulate you are!) and I think we'd get along well and have similar ideas of how we would want things to go.