I'm writing this to counteract the fact that I have recommended Scribophile to people for years. I wish to correct this because I've seen first-hand how it fails the kinds of young writers I've mentioned the site to.

On the face of it there's no reason for a writing and critiquing community to be particularly bad: it's as good as the community is, right? And therein lies the problem.

First, crits from the main spotlight are close to universally poor. It's very common for people to be desperate to post their own endless novel chapters to the point they will hit the precise number of words for a crit (of the top of my head 300, this might be wrong because my crits were from 800-2,900 words and I never tried to stick to the minimum so it's not something I remembered). These are nearly always inline crits, so comments stop wherever the hit that minimum. You then get a copy-paste closing section with something like "well done for being so brave to post this! It's really good!"
Now, to be fair, this is not a dealbreaker. You can join a group, find critbuddies and get out of the standard crit economy. That does take a premium account, though, as if you are on free you're locked into the standard offering.

Second the community is heavily skewed towards older people who are often quite rude. Their viewpoint is generally accepted within the forums and people disagreeing are dogpiled on. This is something that other users remarked to me as having happened to them (in PMs, on the scratchpad, directly on the forum -- presumably before their post was silently deleted).
I've talked personally with a young disabled writer who felt turned off from the site by how ignorant that older userbase was about disability issues. The level of wilful ignorance definitely shaded into insult. I would say this is also true for issues like BLM etc., where discussion of it seemed pruned from the forum. You'd expect writers engaged in human issues to talk about BLM a lot, but very few posts directly addressing it existed. I am quite sure this is because people talking about it had their posts silently removed. Someone recommended Chick-Fil-A sauce to me, I pointed out I'm not interested because of their history on LGBTQ+ issues, and my post was removed.
Even innocuous posts are removed. An older user remarked that I'd insulted them and I apologised. My apology was removed.
Again, to be fair, this is not a dealbreaker. You could use this site without using the public forums. But I think that this site will never suit younger authors until there's a massive Zeitgeist shift in terms of userbase, moderation and where the money comes from. Currently it's skewed so far in favour of certain values that open discussion just isn't possible.
You can work around this issue. Still, I know multiple wonderful authors who just fell off Scrib because they felt belittled on the forums. I know people still very active in writing and publishing who still have accounts but otherwise just don't use it as being there is so draining.
Censorship of perfectly civil opinions is definitely a massive step too far for me. When that censorship is completely unexplained and your only evidence of it happening is a feed with "X reacted to a forum post", "Y replied to a thread", the identifying info having been removed by the deletion, it's more than a little creepy.

Overall it's not ideal for open discussion. You can entirely sidestep Scrib and the benefits it offers by getting a group of writers together and simply committing to commenting on each others' work, e.g. through using comments in a Word document, or simply writing your own comments in a different coloured typeface. That might be why Scrib works so hard to prioritise its ageing userbase: someone younger and with a little knowledge of simple stuff like Google Docs could easily sidestep it completely, as long as they have a group to share writing with.

I'll never recommend Scrib to anyone ever again.

I am a long-time member of this site, but there are drawbacks. I am actually one of the authors who has been published, thanks to Scribophile. However, I can't stand by and let the bullying continue. It's just too much, and the only way to end bullying is to take a stand against it.

I was in this forum, and there were five so-called writers who really lambasted a complete stranger without knowing her at all, without speaking to her, without meeting her. They decided to pick on her because she is also a literary agent, but she did not ever advertise her agency on the website. She is a real professional who simply sought to participate in the writing community. She never once mentioned it when I worked with her.

In one fell swoop in one thread, they completely discredited this author. At least two pages of judging a complete stranger, all invalid. Jerry Quinn, for example, didn't even know that Predators and Editors have not been running for at least three years now! So uneducated!

Just to let you know, the author had won an international award and is widely published over a span of thirty years. She has a lot of credibility, while these newbie pleebs have none. I know her on a professional level, and she did not ask me to leave this review. I have been bullied, so I know how to end it: take a stand.

It's really such as shame when people have to spoil what would be a great platform for writers, but it's such a negative place! She has tried to speak her mind and protect herself, but the owner and all his moderators have done everything to suppress her voice. This poor woman! She has actually been nominated for by several people to hold a Tedx talk on her experiences with bullying! She's a mental health professional who has been published widely on mental health and parenting. She's one of the real ones, unlike the jealous posers who sought to completely ruin her reputation.

She's trying her best to fight the bullying on the platform, so I decided to post something here to let other users know exactly what you're in for.

Five of the "writers," strangers to the person I know, all decided to call my acquaintance a fake and a phony with no knowledge. When I say strangers, they were literally strangers to each other. My colleague had not known these people at all. Yet, they all called her a fake, phony, fraud, predator, dishonest person, and even compared her with a drunk driver without knowing her or her situation. When she woke up, she literally saw an entire thread covered with libel! That's just not right!

She has been trying her best to work with the site, but unfortunately, the site's owner and his moderators all work to silence and censure her.

Good thing they cannot control everything. Thanks, Sitejabber, for providing me a voice to protect an undeserving person from abuse and to let the general public know what they're in for when they deal with Scribophile.

Well, a good, honest professional who has spread more good and light in the world was abused at the hands of these trolls: Song Magrew, Ann Wellington, Caroline Mack, Jerry Quinn, and Don Logan. I did some research about these posers, and they are known across social media by different names. This is usually what con artists do. My experiences in corrections tells me so. By contrast, the author I know is consistent across all platforms, showing her honesty and genuineness. Song Magrew is a nobody because I found this person nowhere else. It really shows how invalid their abuse was toward this loving, kind woman.

Not only was I upset when these people picked on her, but also, she told me the moderators are all deleting her posts! All of them. It doesn't matter what she posts now! It's outrageous, like living under a Nazi regime or within the novel 1984. It's really awful! The site left libel and slander up for over twenty four hours! Yet, she posted simple things to address the bullying, and it was deleted within minutes! Awful, awful. She did nothing to deserve this type of treatment! The trolls' posts should have been deleted instantly. It's like the owner and the moderators are sending the message, eh, bullying and libel is okay on this site, but go off topic, and oh, no, they can't allow that to happen even for a moment.

The abusive posts were deleted, but nothing was done to the bullies! They are still all on the site, ready to abuse everyone else they come into contact with. This is why I provided their writer names for everyone to see. People should be warned that when they deal with these people, they are open to be abused. It just goes to show that people can abuse others there and not be penalized at all, which says volumes about this site.

There was nothing fair about this situation, and you can expect that if you suffer at the hands of trolls, you will be treated the same way. The woman who runs the biggest beta swap on the site told me that it has been a really big problem for years. She told me that this one troll was so bad, the person would abuse everyone who was just starting out on the platform, so she and a group of others would make it their mission to go around and send kind messages to the troll's victims to make them feel better.

There is only one way to correct people's unprofessional behavior: Don't tolerate it. It's not rocket science. These transactions are in writing. They should have never been allowed to be left up for over twenty-four hours to spread the libel of these individuals. These individuals should have been banned for their behavior. The owner should revise his policies to clearly state that trolling and abusive behavior will result in the closure of their account.

I'm calling out the owner of this site to make it better and safer for upcoming authors. If you tolerate abusive behavior on the site, people will keep doing it. I hope the lightbulb goes off in your head. Revise your policies and mete out appropriate penalties and consequences for trolls, and they will no longer exist on your site. Suspension of their accounts for a certain amount of time is the very least penalty people should experience. Then I will leave a review of five stars, because despite your antiquated ways of tolerating trolls and bullies, it's a great platform! I really love it, but something has to change.

UPDATE: The owner is really just unreasonable. My friend just contacted me and told me that she was banned from the site because she tried to stand up to her bullies. So disappointing, Alex Cabal! But, these latest actions completely prove my point. It's a place overrun with trolls and bullies, and the owner is the biggest one of all, and keeps all the trolls on the site and bans nice, good people so all that is left is a pit of abuse. Also, I hear people complain their work is stolen from the site. Fakers from other countries use the site to steal others' materials and publish them in other countries. Then, you have little recourse to go after them. It's totally not worth it. Everyone should just leave and find a reputable writer's circle to join. There's better ways to get feedback than this. No reason why you should be subjected to bullies, con artists, and thieves. I'm going to go close my account now.