I posted the information about Alien Skin (see below) to Codex Writers Group, and got a surprising number of sympathetic responses. Several people said they would no longer consider submitting there. Quite honestly, had I known about this public shame board, I probably wouldn’t have submitted there in the first place.
There is another webzine that I come across from time to time while looking for a market for my older stories. This market, the name of which escapes me at the moment, actually publically rips their rejected stories apart on a public board. That they keep the author anonymous doesn’t make it okay. I’ve never submitted to this market.
In any case, the Codex disucssion drifted to the controversial Nick Mamatas at Clarkesworld Magazine. He has a reputation for, er, swinging a knife with people inside what the boy scouts call the blood circle (within arms length). Now, I have had work rejected by Mamatas, and occasionally he will express an uninformed opinion. Case in point, I used the phrase ‘engineering school’ in a story and he ridiculed the phrase. From his response, I know without a doubt that Mamatas is not an engineer. If he were, he would know that some engineers do refer to their university experience as ‘engineering school.’ I know because I R 1.
To be fair, I have found that most of his comments are insightful and Mamatas is a very good critic. Orson Scott Card is better, though.