How to ask for help and discourage it

So I read a lot of people saying that they are not getting feedback on their work, only downvotes, or that people are not taking their work seriously because of the category it falls into.<br><br>First of all, if there something that's just not right with your work, do the best you can to fix it. I've seen tons of "I'm a college student, please critique" essays. You should take your work seriously enough that you will not ask for outside help if you can help it. If you're at the point where you would fail class, fix it.<br><br>Second of all, if you have an idea that you want to take seriously, please take the time to do it right. If you post a "How do I make this better" thing that contains spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, or lack of description... Don't put all the work on the people you are asking for help. Do your part and proofread, beta, and make sure you have something worthy of critique before you ask for critique.<br><br>If you are writing in a parody genre, for instance, portentous fantasy that is intentionally over-the-top, it's not fair to ask people to help you make it better outside of feedback. If you can't do the legwork yourself, you're asking other people to do 100% of the work of getting your piece critiqued. <br><br>I've seen too many things get posted without any outside effort beyond making a chambers post. If someone is going to take your work seriously enough to put in the effort to critique it, they will probably not take it very seriously. But if you have a piece you take seriously that you're asking for help on, please do your part.<br><br>EDIT: Many people are of the opinion that I've spoken out of turn in giving unsolicited meta. If that's your opinion, I will say again that I believe the critiques of new and fledgling authors who haven't yet learned to do their own legwork are neglected and vilified. If you wish, I can delete this post.