Comments/Suggestions on the New Story Review Thread

[scouries]

Suggestion

To severusmax, dk, amasterfound, sk, missblack, s-des, rgraham666, sirhugs, redhairedandfriendly, ladycibelle, cawastedyouth, brettj and others– Although not a regular reader of the New Story Review thread, I do look at it from time to time and have a suggestion.

For some reason every reviewer presents their reviews in a different format from everyone else.

I just scrolled through a couple of pages on the thread. Every two minutes you’re faced with a new format; the title, author, category and rating all in a different place (if there at all).

Suggestion : Get together and settle on one format.
Of all the reviewers I saw I found Miss Black’s the best presented and easiest to read, although I would prefer it if she’d also add the rating in bold at the top. Others (amasterfound, and S-Des) also are fine. Why not pick one that’s acceptable to all and have everyone use it. Standardizing the look would make it easier for those visiting the thread.

James R Scouries

 

[Selena_Kitt]

To severusmax, dk, amasterfound, sk, missblack, s-des, rgraham666, sirhugs, redhairedandfriendly, ladycibelle, cawastedyouth, brettj and others– Although not a regular reader of the New Story Review thread, I do look at it from time to time and have a suggestion.

For some reason every reviewer presents their reviews in a different format from everyone else.

I just scrolled through a couple of pages on the thread. Every two minutes you’re faced with a new format; the title, author, category and rating all in a different place (if there at all).

Suggestion : Get together and settle on one format.
Of all the reviewers I saw I found Miss Black’s the best presented and easiest to read, although I would prefer it if she’d also add the rating in bold at the top. Others (amasterfound, and S-Des) also are fine. Why not pick one that’s acceptable to all and have everyone use it. Standardizing the look would make it easier for those visiting the thread.

James R Scouries

Did hell freeze over? *grin*

I agree. Always have.

But alas, this is not a dictatorship...

 

[RedHairedandFriendly]

A format is fine, but how we do the reviews themselves is the thing. . .Some don't want to list what we rate a story, some only want to give what they enjoyed, some want to list what they chose to read and tell whether they liked it or not. . .

Listing Title, Genre, Author, Rating in a set way is workable, but what and how one explains their like/dislike of a story would be up to the reviewer. The Reviews have taken off and for the most part been recieved rather well. . .

So bringing the discussion back to formatting is an option, but unrealistic for it to be followed 100% by everyone, especially for folks doing a guest review.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

A format is fine, but how we do the reviews themselves is the thing. . .Some don't want to list what we rate a story, some only want to give what they enjoyed, some want to list what they chose to read and tell whether they liked it or not. . .

Listing Title, Genre, Author, Rating in a set way is workable, but what and how one explains their like/dislike of a story would be up to the reviewer. The Reviews have taken off and for the most part been recieved rather well. . .

So bringing the discussion back to formatting is an option, but unrealistic for it to be followed 100% by everyone, especially for folks doing a guest review.

obviously guest reviews wouldn't be subject to format...

but I think daily reviewers should be...

when I first started this, my suggestion was to follow the Poetry Review format...

all the stories in one post, story name and author bolded and linked, a rating if you give one, and our announcement about the review thread at the bottom...

I don't mind following "a rating in bold at the top" suggestion from Scouries...

but I don't give ratings

 

[RedHairedandFriendly]

obviously guest reviews wouldn't be subject to format...

but I think daily reviewers should be...

when I first started this, my suggestion was to follow the Poetry Review format...

all the stories in one post, story name and author bolded and linked, a rating if you give one, and our announcement about the review thread at the bottom...

I don't mind following "a rating in bold at the top" suggestion from Scouries...

but I don't give ratings

For the most part I do all my reviews on one page. There are only a few times I haven't, usually when I have to do reviews in the morning and then come back in the afternoon, or if I have done some off-day reviews. I don't believe I've linked Author pages, just stories. I guess I never thought of needing a link for the author page, when I am linking the story, since I have the story linked, if they want the author page they'd just hit it when they read the story. I stopped giving ratings a few months ago.

 

[LadyCibelle]

If I may add my two cents.

I don't want nor feel the need to divulge the rating of the stories I review. I think ratings are personal to every readers, and even though I don't see anything wrong with other reviewers posting their rating, I don't see any good reasons for ME to do it.

I do my reviews in the format I've always done them:

Story title
Author's name
Category

And it's pretty much the ONLY thing that nobody complained about when I had my bout of complaints a few weeks ago.

I don't mean to piss on anybody's parade but if we start accedding to every author or reader who asks us to do something his/her way we'll never have time to do any reviews because we'll always be stuck following somebody else's guidelines.

I agree that a uniform review system would be best and in a perfect world could be easily achievable but we're NOT in a perfect world and every reviewer is a human being with his/her own background and his/her own way of doing things.

Maybe we (the reviewers) should start telling readers how many words they should read per minute?

 

[RedHairedandFriendly]

The biggest key, in my opinion, is we all enjoy ourselves. I love doing the reviews. It gives me a chance to read stories from all different genres, as well as from writers I probably never would have read before.

I'm having a blast. I won't change, if it means I can't have fun. This isn't supposed to be a job. It is supposed to be fun. I can follow a format, that isn't a big deal and I can easily do it. But if I am told how to do a review as far as what I should or shouldn't say about if I like or don't like a story, then it isn't fun for me any more. . .

I'm not getting paid to do reviews. If the group wants a uniformed post then fine. I just plan on continuing to enjoy myself, uniformed or not. If we as a group decide uniformed then listing it as

Story
Category
Author
Comment

Is pretty simple and easy to follow. . .Again, ratings would be up to an individual. I started doing reviews and showing my ratings, but then as I did more reviews I decided I didn't want to put my rating in. My words were going to show how I rated, plus if someone really wants to know they just have to go to the story and read my comment, the rating is there

***

LadyC. . .I don't know what people complained about. -- No one has a right to complain really, they aren't signing a paycheck made out to us. We are all giving opinions, not setting everyone to flame if they don't agree with us. For people to complain about how we do it or who we review, or what category we review is unfair. . .they can review too.

 

[rgraham666]

If we have to do our reviews according to a 'proper format' count me out.

Don't like propriety generally, and like my stories I'll review the way I want, not the way somebody else wants.

 

[LadyCibelle]

If we have to do our reviews according to a 'proper format' count me out.

Don't like propriety generally, and like my stories I'll review the way I want, not the way somebody else wants.

You see why I like you so much, Rob.

You said succinctly what it took me half a page to say.

 

[rgraham666]

You see why I like you so much, Rob.

You said succinctly what it took me half a page to say.

Just what I needed to hear.

Thank you LadyC.

 

[RedHairedandFriendly]

You see why I like you so much, Rob.

You said succinctly what it took me half a page to say.

He's good at that.

 

[LadyCibelle]

Just what I needed to hear.

Thank you LadyC.

You're more than welcome, handsome. I might ask you to take me as a student.

 

[rgraham666]

You're more than welcome, handsome. I might ask you to take me as a student.

Student of what?

OK, no more flirting on this thread. Don't we have a thread floating around for that?

 

[deathlynx]

Served Cold
deathlynx
Erotic Couplings
Wow. A betrayed woman seduces a stranger in a nightclub originally for revenge, but winds up finding something else: Satisfaction. The language of this piece was rather lyrical. I was surprised at the lack of commas used, but it worked well for the story. I found the beginning of the story to be dark somehow (maybe because of the mention of revenge in the tagline), and for that reason I expected the woman to kill the guy. Thank goodness that didn't happen!
I gave this a 5.

Thank you so much for the review! And what a great one it is...I was desperately hoping that it would stick in the Erotic Couplings category...Although I don't remember mentioning anything about revenge iwhen I wrote the decription/story tags...Basically I hoped to keep that as a surprise for the end (not about you Rora, about the tag)...Ah well...

I definately agree about commas...grammar in general, and punctiation specifically, is my greatest weakness as a writer...I hope I'm getting better at it but some of the older stuff I've written (such as this) really need a heavier hand when I'm editing...Thanks for the advice as well!

 

[cawastedyouth]

I don't want nor feel the need to divulge the rating of the stories I review. I think ratings are personal to every readers, and even though I don't see anything wrong with other reviewers posting their rating, I don't see any good reasons for ME to do it.

I'm not always keen on a rating anyway--but the only stories I've ever posted to the Story Review are those that I feel are 5's. Especially if they've been hopped over by another reviewer. I think a rating that could be available when we review is simply: Decline to state.

I'm not a regular reviewer, and I take my cues from whoever posted that day. And as amazing as AB's posts look, I'm not honestly willing to put that much time into formatting my posts. I'm still new here trying to figure out the kinks and such (mental tangent for a moment *weg*).

There are times when I'm taken by a story and I want to have a lead in, the guilt of a marketer on my side. I'll follow whatever gets decided.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

This is why I've never spoken up to "correct" the way people decided to review... when reviews started popping up one after another in individual posts, story by story, whatever... I suppose I could have come out at the beginning and said, "This is the format we should use" etc.. *shrug*... I agree that it would make it look more uniform, it would be easier for readers (who, in theory, we are doing the reviewing for) and I like it... but like I said, this isn't a dictatorship, and just 'cuz the review thread was my idea once upon a time (which was really just stolen from the poetry boards ) doesn't mean I get to play tyrant...

I don't think it takes that much time and effort to link a story and the author and mention the category before reviewing (and rating, if you so choose) ... and I think, really, it's helpful to the reader. It's less analogous to telling a writer how many words they can write, and more analogous to telling a writer they need to have a title, byline, and choose a category... kwim? It's more about structure than style.

That said, I'm not all that invested in it. If I was, I would have said something way back and made a fuss. No biggie.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Aurora for the review of Red Ribbons. You do such an amazing job on reviews. Thank you.

 

[Aurora Black]

DK & Lynx, you're welcome.

 

[Aurora Black]

It has been brought to my attention (my source wishes to remain anonymous) that it looks like we the reviewers are "playing favorites" by reviewing certain stories more than once on a given day. For example, the assigned reviewer does a review of a story and then the same story is reviewed again by another, etc.

What do you make of this?

 

[Darkniciad]

It has been brought to my attention (my source wishes to remain anonymous) that it looks like we the reviewers are "playing favorites" by reviewing certain stories more than once on a given day. For example, the assigned reviewer does a review of a story and then the same story is reviewed again by another, etc.

What do you make of this?

I think people need to understand that there are lots of stories released each day, and when a title/tagline catches one person's eye, it is liable to catch another's.

They also need to understand that the reviewers are doing this for free, on their own time.

Too many people have developed an attitude that it is the responsibility of volunteer reviewers to divulge their opinion on every story released, every single day ( well, actually they probably only care about theirs or whoever they're mad didn't get reviewed )

I've held my tongue on this a few times, but it is really starting to rankle a bit.

Complainers also have the option of doing their own review. It has been that way since the start.

[/rant]

 

[LadyCibelle]

I think people need to understand that there are lots of stories released each day, and when a title/tagline catches one person's eye, it is liable to catch another's.

They also need to understand that the reviewers are doing this for free, on their own time.

Too many people have developed an attitude that it is the responsibility of volunteer reviewers to divulge their opinion on every story released, every single day ( well, actually they probably only care about theirs or whoever they're mad didn't get reviewed )

I've held my tongue on this a few times, but it is really starting to rankle a bit.

Complainers also have the option of doing their own review. It has been that way since the start.

[/rant]

I couldn't agree more with you, Dark. We, as a group, have to realize that there will always be people not happy about what we're doing for whatever reason: Not enough reviews, too many reviews, too many reviews of reviewers' stories, not enough reviews of reviewer' stories, not enough in X category, too many in Y category etc...

It comes down to what I facetiously said earlier. If we start doing what every single reader/author asks us to do to please him/her we'll end up not doing reviews anymore because we don't have time.

Too many red tape to go through to make everyone happy will result in a whole lot of unhappiness on the part of the reviewers.

A big cliché here but one I think that is befitting: if it ain't broke why try to fix it?

 

[RedHairedandFriendly]

I've reviewed stories that sir hugs has reviewed before, not because we "talk" about it before hand and set it up. . .we both start our reviews at the same time and so there is the off chance we will review a story that is randomly picked. I think it has happened 2 or 3 times. Do I think this is bad? Nope. . . I think it is good to have a difference of opinion or even the same opinion.

You know. . .


WE ARE NOT GETTING PAID TO DO THIS!

 

[RedHairedandFriendly]

Okay. . . I've posted opinions on these subjects and said I'm willing to go with what the majority says, but the more I sit here the more I think "FUCK YOU" that are bitching about how we do things via private conversations. I am sick and tired of defending how we do these things. I am tired of coming here and seeing people have "secretly complained" about the reviews we do . . .

That opinion done in secret. . .pfft. . .you hold as much weight as Anonymous and to me that is nothing. If you aren't happy with how the review is done, get your ass onto the board and do a review. If you want them done a certain way, start your own review thread. If you want to one bomb me go for it, I really don't care.

I refuse to lose the enjoyment I get from doing reviews. . .If you don't like them, then you can post here and bitch. . .I believe that is what this thread is for!

 

[rgraham666]

Good one, Red.

 

[Aurora Black]

Oh fucking hell.

*takes off before there's an angry, "kill the messenger" mob*