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Okay, I don't know if this is the right subforum, but I was going to ask opinions on something writing-related so I thought here would be best. So here goes...

In your opinion, should a story that's passable but not polished ever be released, or should only perfect writing be published?

If you can make it close to "Perfect", do so. If you can't, let it be critiqued by people who have some idea of how to improve it.

Keeping something that's finished locked up forever doesn't help anybody, though. Unless it's really, really bad, but usually there's straightforward ways to clean up unpublishable shit.

Eh. I prefer reading a piece of writing that's been written with the author's full potential, but either is fine. I mean, you should write a story with all your effort. I don't like bland stories.

I'm going to go with Sentinel here.

It also depends on the time you work on it. Like, me, I'm a really fast writer. But that does not mean by any chance that it's going to be good. But here's a tip:

Write as much as you can, or look at already existing work. After writing as much as possible in short time, look over it. If you're sure it's ready, sleep on it and look at it with new eyes. Maybe get a proofreader.

If you only publish "perfect writing," you'd never publish anything.

I'm not saying you should rush to get something out there at the expense of plot or characters or proofreading.  But you shouldn't spend all your time revising the same story over and over.   

Plus, if you post it and the top comment is "you should spend more time doing (x)" or "next time, put more effort into (x)," then your next story will improve.

No story is perfect, and everyone is at a different skill level, but there's a world of a difference between something flawed an author still worked to their fullest ability on, and something flat out lazy, and it's usually an obvious one. If the writer didn't care, it shows, both in the soulless, low effort, error strewn garbage they crapped out and in their response to valid criticisms.

That said, seeing that even a reasonably intelligent nine year old could manage a story in the three star range without too much difficulty, it would please me if the writers of the one or two star crap could have just that tiny bit of self awareness required to be honest with themselves about the quality of their work. There really is a threshold where the first reaction to a story is just, how on earth can anyone look at this and go 'yes, this is a good and ready for publishing?'

If a story is crap and you know its crap, don't click the publish button.