Work shopping is not my favourite thing to do. But, I can recognise and appreciate the need for it. One of the things I hate about work shopping is the need for positive feedback. Positive feedback generally includes “Oh, I liked what you did with (insert random part here)” when really the person just found a random metaphor to make you feel better. The problem with work shopping is no one really knows to work shop. We all just float around the paper, look for typos, things we didn’t quite understand, etc. One of the main problems is people never really seem to care what they are reading. But you can't really make people want to read your paper about that time you and your Aunt Barb made cookies and that's when you realised you wanted to be a chef, after they've just read how three other people wanted to become astrophysicists. 
I find that work shopping really goes well when the class does it in a group. Like, everyone does the same paper. That generally doesn’t work when you have larger pieces. For larger pieces I find it works best if instead of in class work shopping, you do at home and then discuss in class. I do like the feedback I get on my papers. I like the negative more than the positive because that helps me write a better paper. Don’t get me wrong, positive feedback is good, too, but it doesn’t really help you do much to better your work. I think when a lot of people read or paper, instead of one or two you end up really being able to see the problems with your paper.
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