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About Criticism.Com
Table of Contents
1 About
2 XML and Amazon Web Services
3 Feedback
4 Contributions

1 About

Developed by Steve Hoenisch, Criticism.Com took life in 1995 as Critical Mass. It became Criticism.Com in 1996. In the beginning, it focused solely on media criticism and political action but evolved to cover linguistics, philosophy, social science, and XML. There is also some random content on skiing and travel.

In the coming months, the site's content will be expanded in the following areas:

Book Reviews
Linguistics
Media Criticism
Philosophy
Skiing and travel
Social Science
Sociology
XML and XSLT

What others are saying about Criticism.com.

2 XML and Amazon Web Services

Most of the site's HTML pages are generated from XML with XSLT. In Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or greater, these .html files may be viewed in XML by changing the file's extension to .xml. Example:

http://www.criticism.com/cc/aboutcc.html
--> 
http://www.criticism.com/cc/aboutcc.xml

If Microsoft Internet Explorer displays a message saying the XSL stylesheet cannot be displayed and access is denied, change Explorer's security setting to enable it to access data sources across domains.

The XML files interface with Amazon Web Services to generate the book listings in the right column.

3 Feedback

Criticism.Com wants your feedback. Send it to Steve Hoenisch, the publisher and editor of Criticism.Com, at

Note: To be read, your email must contain an explicit and relevant subject line, and your email address must be similar to your display name on the from line. All other email is discarded unopened as spam.

Thank you for taking time to comment on Criticism.Com. Your remarks (if they're lucid and not too nasty) may eventually appear in What Others Are Saying About Criticism.com.

4 Contributions

Criticism.Com considers submissions on media criticism, media culture, media theory, sociology, linguistics, philosophy, and social science.

The site's standards are quite general. The most important one is this: The essay should be more analytical than polemical; that is, it should make a critical, not a political, appeal to the reader. Essays with a severe or dogmatic political tone may not be accepted for publication.

Second, the essay shouldn't be too long (a rule I've often violated myself). In a nutshell, shorter is better: On the web, people are more likely to stick around and read the whole essay if it's brief and concise. Criticism.Com may be a suitable place, for instance, to publish the livelier, more piercing part of a long essay aimed at one of the academic journals on mass communications, social science, linguistics, or philosophy.

Third, the submission should contain two or three links that readers can follow to find out more on the subject. The submission should also include a short biography of the writer, between one and three sentences, at the end.

Fourth, the paper should be free of sociological and other jargon, or if jargon is used it should be explained on first reference.

Finally, Criticism.Com unfortunately can't pay you anything for your submission, but you would of course retain all copyrights to your work.

For an example of the kind of content that I seek to publish on Criticism.Com, see http://www.criticism.com/md/film1.html.

Criticism.Com reserves the right to format and design all submissions and to add images, links, advertising, and other sidebar content as it deems fit.

Send submissions to