Encouraging Reviews

[Xue Lan]

This is an interesting thread to me for several reasons.

First, it does not contain the usual egocentric blockhead suggestion of “only authors should be allowed to review stories”, and the related disrespecting of the readers like me. I congratulate those who have posted here on this, you are taking time to think out your responses and suggestions.

It is interesting too because it says so much about the psychology of those who write, because he/she is looking for recognition for his/her work. Fox describes himself as “an entertainer who must have applause” and that is a big part of who he is and what he does. It is interesting because he rarely seeks a byline on his real-life work and is always thrilled to see it in print or on television. It is nice to know he’s not alone in this

Your suggestions, some are good, some are bad.

A writer’s strike is foolish stamping of your feet.

Rating the reviewers is also not good for how do ensure that one person’s “6” is less than another person’s “7.5?

Reviewing is very subjective and unless you have a rigid point system, you are going to experience flux in the scoring. In sport, you either score a goal or you don’t. But just because I like Jane’s story and you don’t does not mean I am a better reviewer than you. I like Jackson Pollack, Fox prefers Matisse. Is Pollack better than Matisse? Is my judgement better than his? (Actually it is LOL )

Okay, how do you get more reviews? Maybe the reward system ?. Every time a reader reviews a story complete with written comments, she gets one point. When she gets so many points, a one-week membership in the paid site is given. The validity of the reviews will quickly be evident.

As to messages saying writers work hard, sorry but my response is “pah! My time is important to me too, why should I spend my time reading your story?” You should use sugar not vinegar to attract reviewers.

I will be direct and honest. No matter what, you are not going to significantly increase the number of reviewers, number of reviews, or e-mails you receive. Look at the forums – it is, for the most part, the same people all the time. Reviewers are the same too.

As a reader, if I want to review a story, I will. You cannot persuade me to do otherwise if I don’t want to. I don’t write letters to the editor, I don’t write to Anne Rice or Margaret Laurence, and I don’t go to my local bookstore or video store to say “I like this because”. But I read, all the time. Yesterday we bought a hundred dollars of books.

If I like the story, I read other stories by that author. If I’m in the mood or don’t have other things to read too.

If I really like the story, I tell other people about it.

Fox posted stories here because he could get feedback from others. He never expected to get a thousand reviews for a story, just five or six. He learns something from each one. He got many reviews and e-mails from his own website, but it was too much work to keep replying to them all – a hundred e-mails in a week means a hundred thank yous. Sometimes people reply to that too.

This is a good thread, keep discussing it, please, because it is important.

[EstabanBacca]

The reviewing format on this site, coupled with the forum threads, offers writers more feedback than that of any site I've visited. It is comparatively user friendly.

I personally do not care for a 1-10 rating system. Those little stars are often misleading and readers would be better off without them. Author's shouldn't miss them as they are totally unenlightening.Get rid of the fucking things! The written reviews and the author's ability to respond are all that is necessary. Use those stars for rating restaurants ( where again even with five stars you may often find yourself served flat fare at a fat price.)

As to obtaining more reader response...my own thought is that an author's best chance of provoking the reader lies with the story he or she writes.

[boccaccio2000g]

The reviewing format on this site, coupled with the forum threads, offers writers more feedback than that of any site I've visited. It is comparatively user friendly. I personally do not care for a 1-10 rating system. Those little stars are often misleading and readers would be better off without them.

With all respect, I strongly disagree. Maybe it's my unsophisticated baseball card mentality, but I think the stars provide a useful, easily understood shorthand. One or two "votes" can be misleading, but if a story has half a dozen or more recent reviews, I almost never find myself grading a story more than two points above or below the average score. I think the consensus of reviewers here, on the whole, is usually quite accurate -- and is better now ( the last year or two) than it has ever been. Oddly, some of the stories whose reviews I tend to disagree with most are stories that have been around for quite a while (including one or two of the all-time 'faves'). I think that the grading standards have risen appreciably (and that's a good thing) since Jinn added the 'captions' * that accompany the 1-10 scores on the reviewing page a year and a half of two years ago.

* Marcus' suggestion, as I recall.

Boccaccio

[Aurelius]

Your suggestions, some are good, some are bad.
...Reviewing is very subjective...

As to messages saying writers work hard, sorry but my response is “pah! My time is important to me too, why should I spend my time reading your story?” You should use sugar not vinegar to attract reviewers.

... but suggestions and ideas for getting more reader feedback are not subjective, apparently. You pronounce that most of them are bad! Why not try to be a little more constructive instead of using the thread as yet another platform to boast of how wonderful a writer your Fox is?

[JakBird]

Just what constitutes a "good" review? What is useful to the author, and what helps the reader decide if the story might be worth reading?

It's easy to claim any review is purely subjective. Everyone has an opinion, but not all opinions are equally valid. A review that provides some insight (from someone other than the author!) in the form of reasons for the subjective thumbs up or down is a real contribution to the whole community here, every bit as important as the library of stories. A one liner "this wuz gud" or the all-encompassing "bad" may be the most eloquent expression the reviewer was able to type, but it doesn't really help anyone else.

In a previous post I mentioned the idea of a review FAQ. To elaborate, here are some items I'd like to see addressed in a review (making them up as I go along):

Was the story entertaining? Was it worth the time spent reading? Did it hold your interest, did you think about what might happen next to the characters? Or did it quickly start to drag, too boring and repetitive?

Were the characters believable? Do people really talk that way? Were they completely predictable, cut from cardboard and stamped out in an assembly line? Could you identify with any of them? Did you want to be in their place?

Was there something unique about the story? There are only so many plots, but what about the way the narrative unfolds? Were the events and their outcome easy to predict, and disappointing in their stereotypical blandness?

What about the author's style, the choice of vocabulary, sentence structure, the way paragraphs and chapters break, even the punctuation? Was it distracting, or did it help the storyline?

And most important, did the story leave you wanting more?

That's my impromptu list. Anyone else have suggestions to add to it?

[Xue Lan]

What you suggest is very good. I know it would help me in writing a review.

Aurelius, I am sorry you take what I said so - strongly? I don't know the right word.
I am not making personal attacks, personal criticisms or remarks, just expressing my thoughts. I am sorry you think that all I am doing is promoting one individual - that is not what I said and it is not what I want to achieve - that is the opposite. I do not like everything he writes. I use him as an example because I know how he works and why he does what he does. Someone else said here that writers do what they do because they want recognition, I am agreeing with them.
I do not know you or Boccaccio or any other writer on this site to use them as an example. There are many good writers here, everyone works in a different way. I have never said anything else.

I speak my own mind, and sometimes I am direct. My time is valuable to me just like your time is to you. I can appreciate that, I take that into account. You want me to do something, ask me nice, don't hit me in the head with a hammer.

Last thing I am going to say is to quote EstebanBacca:

As to obtaining more reader response...my own thought is that an author's best chance of provoking the reader lies with the story he or she writes.

[Tiger]

Thank you all for the nice ideas. I think it's time for me to sum up all the suggestions.

1. Add reviews anonymously.
I think it could be a factor to require registration for reviewing. I can allow both registered and anonymous users to write reviews. There is no way to completely stop an anonymous reader to write reviews repeatedly. To avoid the anonymous reviews to overpower the registered user reviews, the final review score for a story will be, say:
60% from registered user reviews, 40% from anonymous reviews.

OR:
Allow only registered users to write reviews and vote, but anonymous users to vote only.

OR:
I can force (free) registration to read the stories. So everybody will be registered. I don't quite like that because I don't want to give readers an impression that this site is going to a pay-site direction.

2. Add FAQ.
It's a good idea to put some more FAQ entries to explain the anonymity of registration, how to write reviews, and how important it is to writers etc.

3. Point system for review rewarding.
I am thinking that too. For every review, you get 1-5 point. For every, say, 50 points, you get 1 month free access. There is just one thing: what's the criteria for getting points? Is every review count as 1? Should a good / long review get more points than a short, one-word review?

4. Associate each story to a thread in the forum.
So authors and readers would have a place to discuss a perticular story there.


What else did I miss?

[JakBird]

Allow only registered users to write reviews and vote, but anonymous users to vote only.

I'd advocate anonymous for everything as an option, with the disclaimer that anonymous carries the burden of dubious credibility. Sure vote stuffers can skew a rating, but the easy way around it is to have two ratings: one for the timid, one for those willing to stand behind their decision. Any large discrepancy would make it obvious there are participants who learned to vote in Chicago (famous for allowing the dead to vote in elections...and as many times as necessary).

2. Add FAQ [...] how to write reviews

I'll volunteer to contribute to it. You can start with the ad hoc qusestions in the post from yesterday.

Should a good / long review get more points than a short, one-word review?

No points for one liners. Negative points for one word reviews. Laziness should be its own reward.

Associate each story to a thread in the forum

Is this a solution in search of a problem? Seems like it would be easy enough to just use the story title when starting a thread.

[littleslut]

I think that in a similar system to the number of stars that a story gets then the readers could give the review a scoring .the higher scoring the review gets the more points the reviewer receives i.e. the review is rated 5 the reviewer gets 5 points. This means the more reviews you write then the more points you can earn .Then the reviewer with the most number of points will receive for example 1 month free membership. I think that this would encourage people to write longer reviews that can help the writers more as it means they are more likely to write longer reviews with a more in-depth analysis as they have a better chance of scoring more points. Well its just a suggestion and I’m not sure how easy to put into operation it will be but let me know what you think of the idea!!

[Xue Lan]

I wrote my first review of a story.

Jinn, thank you for suggestions. Here are my thoughts on what you say:

1. Add reviews anonymously

I don't think that is good idea. The current system, where you must log in, deters people from flooding with positive or negative reviews. It does not cost anything to register, so it is not any trouble. You and the moderators will be able to see very fast if someone is flooding even with log ins.

2. Add FAQ.

Yes! yes! yes! yes! Good idea.

3. Point system for review rewarding.

This was my suggestion I think, it was meant to give an alternate way to encourage reviews. I thought 1 point per review. Even one word reviews must post a score of 1-10, and the writer has a chance to respond, as do others. I think one month free is too much because then you will get people abusing it. One week is enough. Some one posts 50 one-word reviews they are working pretty hard just to get points - they have too much time on their hands, ya? They can always be cautioned for abusing the system, then banned if they continue.

4. Associate each story to a thread in the forum.

That is already done - anyone wanting to discuss a story can start a thread now, so do not make any more work for yourself. Too, if a story has a thread and no one writes in it, the author might feel emberrassed or discouraged and not submit any more stories. Better to let people start their own threads

Good ideas everyone!

[boccaccio2000g]

Thank you all for the nice ideas. I think it's time for me to sum up all the suggestions.

1. Add reviews anonymously.

OR:
Allow only registered users to write reviews and vote, but anonymous users to vote only.



Although I was the one who pointed out the difficulties associated with the registration process, I must say that it did not occur to me that the registration process does have the beneficial effect of limiting each person to one review (which one can add to and revise as often as one wishes, as well as replying to others' reviews.) Human nature being what it is, I think some people would abuse that. How about this -- allow 'anonymous' reviews -- but only count the 'votes' of registered reviewers? That would prevent ballot-box stuffing, pro or con.




OR:
I can force (free) registration to read the stories. So everybody will be registered. I don't quite like that because I don't want to give readers an impression that this site is going to a pay-site direction.


I agree; achieving more and better reviews at the expense of over-all readership would be a self-defeating course.




2. Add FAQ.
It's a good idea to put some more FAQ entries to explain the anonymity of registration, how to write reviews, and how important it is to writers etc.

Couldn't hurt; although I'm not sure how many people read the FAQ. It might be good to couple that scheme with a one-line suggestion at the end of each chapter (or installment), similar to the one you already have, asking people to participate in the review process, adding that they can clink on a link (which takes them to the FAQ) which explains how easy (and anonymous) the process is.



3. Point system for review rewarding.
I am thinking that too. For every review, you get 1-5 point. For every, say, 50 points, you get 1 month free access. There is just one thing: what's the criteria for getting points? Is every review count as 1? Should a good / long review get more points than a short, one-word review?


Again, human nature being what it is, I think that would lead to a glut of not-very-well-thought-out reviews -- and, quite likely, a loss of revenue to the sight. And who is going to grade the reviews? How about a reviewer of the month? At the end of each month, you publish a "ballot" of the ten (twelve? fifteen?) reviewers with the most reviews for the preceding month, and give authors and reviewers say, three (five? seven?) days, to look over their reviews for the prior month and then vote for "reviewer of the month" (judging quantity as well as quality). The winner might get 30 days of free access to the pay areas as well as having his/her name displayed prominently on the Reviewers Page. This would take a little up-front programming (to set up the voting mechanism), but after that would be largely self-generating. You might even want to create a 'hall of fame' for past reviewers of the month, once you got this going, listing their 'names' somewhere on the reviewer page.

Sept 2004 Mr Z
Aug 2004 Ms Y
July 2004 Mr X

and so on. That would give the site a little history inasmuch as reviewers often have bursts of activity and periods where they are occupied with other things.




4. Associate each story to a thread in the forum.
So authors and readers would have a place to discuss a perticular story there.

With rare exceptions, I think the review page is adequate for that purpose; I don't think you'd want to dilute the comments on a story by having them in two places as a matter of course. (There's nothing wrong with starting a thread about a story if one is so inclined, of course).



What else did I miss?

Does anyone have any comments on any of those suggestions?

Boccaccio

[Garmonbozia]

To add a little perspective: I was contacted by a reader only 2 days ago who was very enthiusiastic about the story and she wanted to write a review but there was a "glitch" with the process. I informed her you needed to register before being able to review. She has since done so and given my story a great review as well.

It just goes to show that the process is not clear. And I think a lot more reviews would be written if there was a step by step process on how to write a review. You really need to make things like this as simple as possible.

I don't know but maybe this is the major reason why people don't review, they don't understand the process, go to review, it doesn't work so they say "stuff it then" and don't try again.

Jason

[janie]

I would like to review more but often have felt crippled by the suggested definitions for the scores and have given up rather than try to describe what i really mean, especially since i read so many. Unless i can say something fairly concise, it is just too hard. Sometimes too i feel a little inadequate after more eloquent reviewers have written and all i want to say is "Yeah, what he said." Perhaps others who have trouble expressing things verbally might have the same problem.

Could it be possible to make the score an aggregate? For example, i have wanted at times to give somethng like a 10 for content/originality, a 5 for style/format and a 3 for literacy/readability. The average 6 might seem to me a fair overall rating, but the given "Somewhat enjoyable. Acceptable writing sklls" is actually the opposite of what i would like to say - basically, "loved the story, though it was a bit difficult to keep track of at times and your spelling and grammar are pretty ordinary."

It would actually be much simpler. Even without further explanation such a breakdown of the score might be more specifically helpful to writers, i think, and would help even inexperienced or inarticulate reviewers to be constructive. For instance, with the above example, i could just have given those scores and maybe emphasised with a comment "Please keep writing, but do find a good editor" even if i wasn't up to a more detailed critique.

janie

[boccaccio2000g]

Could it be possible to make the score an aggregate? For example, i have wanted at times to give somethng like a 10 for content/originality, a 5 for style/format and a 3 for literacy/readability. The average 6 might seem to me a fair overall rating, but the given "Somewhat enjoyable. Acceptable writing sklls" is actually the opposite of what i would like to say - basically, "loved the story, though it was a bit difficult to keep track of at times and your spelling and grammar are pretty ordinary."

janie

What you just wrote seems like a fair and helpful review to me. Don't put too much stock in the captions that accompany the numerical ratings. They are meant to guide those that might want them, not to confine those who don't. Say what you think, just as you did above, and your reviews will be warmly welcomed.

Boccaccio