>>Introduction: Breaking the Ice

Hey guys, Blankscape here.

So as everyone is aware, the Equestrian Critic's Society has been defunct and a ghost town quite some time now, two years if my guess is right. I myself thought the group had simply moved on without me since workloads for reviewing stories ate up nearly all of my free time come every cycle. It seemed that I wasn't the only one who felt that way, because the small backlog that had been with the group since its founding eventually grew too much for the critics to manage on top of reviewing stories from upcoming cycles. Hence TECS's current state and where we are today.

Recently, Hope pinned a very important idea for the review system that could breathe new life into TECS. I saw some promise in that idea and decided to give her a helping hoof in making this draft. This draft details (to the best of my ability) the specifics of a trial period for the retooling TECS as a review group into a rejuvenated 'Spike's First Glance Review Circle' as so promptly stated in the title of the thread. Read on for the specifics, thank you very much.

>>Review Cycle: Submission

The Submission queue will be open and remain so for the first week of August, or until the queue is full. This will be the first cycle, a water-tester batch, after which the submitted stories will begin undergoing review.

An author is allowed a single story per cycle, and may not submit stories that are not their own. No stories will be accepted after period for submission has closed and during the review process. The submission queue will not open until the current review cycle all stories have been given a first glance reviews by both critics and readers (more info below.) This is to prevent back log.

Once the queue closes, the authors will notified of such, through PM and in the comment section of their story. They will also receive mention that their stories have been included in a cycle thread and will proceed to the first review cycle.

Upon submission, authors may request one specfic character from the show to give their stories a passing first glance. Otherwise it will default to a critic's OC. Critics may write as characters from the show if they wish to do so anyway. But if the character they had in mind has already been written for, they must settle to write a different character's first glance review. 10 stories will be the tentative maximum of the queue for this trial, so first come and all that jazz.

>>Review Cycle: Glance System

The stories submitted will be pooled in a review folder and undergo review. During the review process, authors are not allowed to change the short description, the 1st chapter and the 2nd, assuming any one critic can get that far.

Once in the review folder, a story will be picked up by a critic at random and given a first glance review along with a score from a scale from 0 to 5 depending on the character they choose to write as. Contents of the review folder must be in sync with a corresponding cycle thread and contain the same list of stories. If a critic decides to pick up a story for first glance, they must reply to the thread that they have done so, and mention the character they will be writing the review as.

Review-wise, go wild. The purpose of a first glance is to give quick feedback and opinions on the obvious flaws of a story, as well as notable strengths if the critic can get that far in to notice said strengths that is. No holds bar and anything goes, but don't be too scathing or excessively antagonistic when making first glance reviews. All things within reason after all. Also there is a 100-350 word range for first glance reviews per critic, depending on how far they reach. For now, the estimate sounds reasonable to accomplish within a short amount of time and suffice enough to get the point across. We can't have 'quick' opinions becoming too long now.

Once a first glance by a single critic is complete, it is, in technical terms, considered reviewed. However that doesn't mean it is over though. Until the review cycle ends, another critic may pick the story up and give their own two cents at a first glance of the story. First Glance Reviews will be collected and scores will be averaged at the end of a cycle, that is if a story has more than one review. That means subsequent critics must reply to the notification of the original critic in the cycle thread, to notify the preceding critic that they will follow up their first glance. The process goes on until a maximum number of first glance reviews have been reached. For the moment a story may be passed on to a maximum of 3 more critics.

Additionally, first glances from readers will also be taken into account, even from non-members so long as its reasonable. Once a story has been pinned for review in its comment section, notable comments and opinions that come after will taken into consideration. They will ultimately be aggregated into a separate accompanying reader First Glance review and score. Readers are encouraged to give their own opinions and number scores on the story. Consideration for the accompanying reader review will stop come the review cycle's end. Though this is still a trial period, and there might not be enough active members to help along with this aspect of the Glance System. If it comes to that, then the reader's First Glance aspect will be skipped.

>>Review Cycle: End

Critics should not put up their First Glance reviews in the comments of the story until the cycle ends, lest the author become privy to a process that is supposed to be discreet. The review cycle ends when all stories have at least one first glance review each and the critics deem the cycle over. A proper First Glance review aggregate will be sent to the all authors as PMs and comments in their story.

And once a cycle is over, a few days to a week will be given to Spike's First Glance Review Circle as some needed R&R, depending on the workload of that cycle. After which discussion will be held concerning thoughts and suggestions on the process of the trial period before more submissions can begin. This is the Cycle's End Statement.

>>Final Thoughts: Summary

As the title says, this is a tentative draft for how the retooling of TECS into a review group. How smoothly this transition goes largely depends on participation (duh, it's a group.)

With that in mind, a successful dry-run will mean that critics will no longer be having individual loads of stories to finish over a month or so at a time, as all critics now share the same pool of stories to review. It'll kinda be like a table by a shelf in the corner where you read something, leave your two cents, and some other bloke may come in and pitch two more cents in as well, and so on. And like the draft suggested, critics don't have to soldier on through the rest of the story anymore if they can't get past the 1st chapter.

With Hope's keystone idea forming the basis and taking a few pointers from the M1SFORTUNE's old review procedure, I got to writing this draft down, because I like doing that kind of thing, thinking and designing structure and stuff all proper and workable. And it seems workable and reasonable for a draft, right? It should be fun, spit-balling quick feedback, and even getting in non-members to join in on the process, which would be good if they joined the group as a result.

Anywho, if anyone wishes to become a critic or return as a critic, please give a shout out in the comments. Again, this transition will not budge an inch if there isn't anyone to help it get going. Also suggestions are highly appreciated and point out any flaws if you can. I'd like some thoughts to help make this better before we implement this and begin retooling.

Thanks, guys. Be good.

-Blankscape

Well, it seems like you've put some good thought into this from a logistics standpoint, especially working out the bugs that dragged TECS down, but I still have the same concern that I did with the initial proposal. Depending on the character we're writing as, it's entirely possible that the "advice" we give may not be useful in the slightest, if not outright wrong. How would we deal with situations where the character is completely unsuited to the task at hand?

6030596
Agreed, I'm worried that if critics write the review with a canon character, it'll be a biased review to a certain extent.

6030446
Hmm, I can give it a shot.

6030596
Unless you write as Boulder, I'm pretty sure one can manage as any character. Sure, review by Pinkie or Discord will be different from one written by Cherilee or Sugarcoat, but it may also be useful. All depends on reviewer's skill.

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I said the same thing to Hope in the other thread, but like she had said there, making reviews as canon characters is supposed to give critics more freedom when making reviews. Supposedly, critics can be as blunt and opinionated as possible while also hiding behind the character they wrote the review as. Though if people took awhile to look, I'd say writing as a canon character is just a thin veneer they can just look past. Like realizing Leto is still a great actor and that his Joker is the director and/or writer's fault.

On the other hand, if people write reviews as their OC, then they might as well write as themselves because it's hard to think of an OC as anything else but an extension of its creator. It's basically writing reviews while RP'ing.

Also it's supposed to be fun, and yeah, it is kinda fun. RP'ing is fun. But if enough people come and suggest against it, then I'll have to cut the character bit from the revised review system. I will check in on Hope about this too, in the meantime. Good thing there's still 10 more days to August. I just hope that enough people will volunteer to make first glance reviews. A group of 5 or more would suffice.

6030642
This is also a first try. We're keeping it simple for this first pass, but authors will be able to request specific characters and in the future we might have a more serious option.

There are other review groups, and a lot of them have fallen trying to keep it serious and super helpful. I understand the desire to be constructive and helpful, and I want that too, but with every review group I've seen come and go, the collapse has been because of stress on the reviewers, never a lack of stories to review. I'm hoping to fill a niche and allow our reviewers to have some fun. The alternative is to let the group remain inactive, so I see this as a positive attempt at least.

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Regardless of whether this plan is the full plan moving forward or if it changes, or even if the group collapses, the current story queues are superfluous, and I'm purging them and changing the group info for now. We can then make changes as people point out things we can do differently.

6030782
Good point.

In the meantime I'll hash it the draft down to bulleted form. A gist format everyone can get at a glance. BTW FiMfic looks really good on tablet

6030786
Okay, I've thinned down the forum posts and emptied out the folders (some stories count as being in the group without a folder, not much I can do about that) and the submission queue is technically open!

I still need to write a new rules thread, post a new introductions thread, and check over a few things, and I'm still rewriting the front page, but it's a bit further along now!

If anyone has suggested changes, please let me know.

6030642
I do like the idea of writing the reviews in character, I just want to make sure all the details have been covered before authors start submitting stories expecting one thing and getting something very different when reviews are handed back.

And since we're sticking to strictly canon characters for this, what exactly counts as canon as far as this is concerned? Is it just the show? the show and the movies? All the comics as well?

6030603
"Different" isn't the problem. Ironically, Pinkie and DIscord would be extremely easy to write reviews with, regardless of the story. But if the author requests, say, the CMC, there's very little you can do to make that a serious and helpful review. The characters just don't work for it. And unless we start taking liberties with canon personalities, you'll run into a similar problem with characters like Rainbow Dash that have no interest whatsoever in the vast majority of literary genres. Yeah, if we can interpret the character however we want it'll be no problem to review whatever comes our way with any character, but if we're trying to stay strictly canon to use the character as a mask then it's not gonna work sometimes. The character can review the story, sure, but that doesn't mean they'll be good at it or particularly helpful even if they try their best.

6031146
It's not strictly canon characters. Like it says up there, the critic can default to their OC if the author doesn't make a request for a specific character. And for the most part, canon would likely cover the scope of the show and movies, but if a critic can write as a comic character when a submitting author does make requests for that, then it's fine. All critics will be sharing the same pool of stories to review. No one is being assigned a quota to fulfill or even to slog through the entire story this time around.

6030886
If you want, I can go over the rules for you. I need to hash down the draft anyway, I might as well lend a hand. Also, we will probably need a new application thread for those returning or interested in becoming a critic. Or is having them reply to this thread enough?

Now we play the waiting game

6031246
Oh, ok, I was thinking that the OC thing had changed at some point. Your post made it sound like you were against the use of OCs because they didn't fulfill the purpose of using a character to begin with. At least, that's how I read it. I'll just blame sleep deprivation.

6031255
The rules would be good, and a simple thread saying "Hey, here's what we do, wanna help?" kinda thing for prospective reviewers would be good.

6031258
I'm going to shop around to a few authors, see if anyone has stories they'd like to be in the first cycle.

6032195 I would like to be in the first cycle

6032393
Excellent! To have your story reviewed? You should be able to submit it to the accepting folder.

6033376 It's not open now

6033415
Huh, you can't add any stories to the "Submission Queue" folder? I made is to users could add stories to it. That's the minimum for any stories to be added to any group, are you a member of the group?

6033807 I'm talking to you on here so I have to be.

It's showing 0 stories on my end.

6033996
You're right, you're right, I'm sorry. Let me look into it a bit.

6033998
I've verified that you can add a story as a base user from the story's "group" button.
It looks like only admins and contributors can use the green "add story" button that appears in the folder. You should be able to add to it now.

6034116
OK. I got it. thanks.

6034116 Good evening. Been awhile hadn't it...? Anyways, I noticed that the submission box is open but I'm not able to put anything in there. Just wanted to bring that to your attention.

6221007
Seeing as how the first cycle hasn't been completed yet, it stands to reason that no submissions are being taken.

6221732 Didn't notice that since one of my stories have been reviewed is still in there. I just assumed they forgot to remove it.