NOTE: the "review for a review" thing is still valid, and is thus an exception to everything detailed below. If you take part in it, you get a "free review card," with no conditions on our part.

NOTE 2: This post is primarily for the reviewers, but feel free to weigh in anyway, even if you're not one of them.

NOTE 3: Please use the "reply" button. That's what it's there for. Thank you and have a nice day!

The recent drama at "Twilight's Library" (look it up yourself if you want to) reminded me of a few things. Our own review backlog contains quite a large number of fics that have yet to be processed, and to be honest, I'm starting to feel that a decent number of them have been added "on a whim," with people not fully aware what exactly the purpose of the "ZP treatment" is supposed to be.

This group isn't meant to be an "extra view, extra comment" factory, but a review platform specifically meant to take stories down a notch (and maybe a few dozen more) if they rub the reviewer the wrong way. As such, it should be a conscious decision from both parties, and that should also mean an effort from both. Speaking for myself, it would make the whole job feel a lot more pleasant, and maybe even compel me to do it more often, because at the moment it's like people coming in, filling up an "IN" box for us, and we have to eventually get it all into an "OUT" for them.

No offense to all you guys waiting patiently for us, by the way. Still, we are handing out "free stuff" here...

That said, perhaps we should consider stricter guidelines for fic submissions? My idea was this (which I shamelessly ripped off from RCL): whoever wants a ZP review should write a comment in a stickied forum post, all according to a specific template where they give us a short description of their story and why they think they could use our review style, plus maybe a checklist that they edited/proofread/etc. the thing before handing it over.

Your thoughts?

One search later, I am no more educated on the controversy the wonderful circle jerk having, big headed, smug folks over at TL had.

More relevantly, the suggestion. I don't have much of an opinion. If you want to strengthen it because you feel authors are being babbies over meeting some harsh snark, then cut loose. My only thing is the whole writeup of summary/reasons to review/checklist/descent into the Underworld to convince Hades to release your lost lover is all a bit much. Then again, that's my shitty opinion, again.

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NOTE 3: Please use the "reply" button. That's what it's there for. Thank you and have a nice day!

I'm not sure I can make the text any bigger, but I was hoping it was big enough...

Also, the idea is to make writing these reviews more appealing to those who do it. I have nothing against the people who deemed us worthy of their attention and tossed their fics in for reviews, but at the moment it feels like they can just stop by, drop off a story, get a free review, and walk away without ever having to meet any expectations themselves, beyond just having to join the group and/or have their story end up in here somehow.

Not that we want to be all "hoity-toity" about what we do, but it is already in our policy to send back stories for a rewrite if they have serious grammar issues and whatnot, and a similar thing goes for certain types of "touchy" content as of late. At that point, doing a ZP-style review defeats the purpose of this group. You may have noticed how Yahtzee himself rarely seeks out "fish in the barrel" choices for his reviews. He deliberately picks the AAA titles because those were officially supposed to have gone through a ton of "quality control" and whatnot, so finding flaws in them is far more worthwhile.

All that said, the strict submission system would both help filter stories that should visit help elsewhere first, and those that are the kind we could (and should) help* can get processed more efficiently. The added sense of communication between us and the "victims" would help a lot too, or at least it would definitely make me feel better. A third benefit would be preventing people from using us as a "publicity dump." I'm considering discussing a limit with flutterdash1 on how many stories per author can be in the "pending reviews" folder at any given time.

*Us helping you is never guaranteed to be a pleasant experience. In fact, it tends to be the opposite. You can laugh with us, sure, but we'll still be laughing at you...

3908140

This sounds pretty good in that theoretical place where theories sound good, but I find myself not so sure.

If we are going to expect a certain quality from people who submit, then we're going to have to step up our game. Getting your story rejected from Zero Punctuation or whatever will seem kinda disingenuous with some stories sitting in the "to be reviewed" folder for over a year or in the "being reviewed" folder for a few weeks (Not throwing stones. No judging here. God knows I can't judge. No judgement. Don't be mad at me.). I guess if we're going to make the criteria for which stories we review, then we're going to have to actually follow up with reviewing them.

So I guess my corollary or whatever is -- if we're to demand more quality, each reviewer has to submit at least two reviews a month. There's, what, ten of us? That's at least twenty reviews a month. That'd clean out the back log in seven months.

Still, this isn't a job, and I don't know how'd we go about enforcing such a fun-sucking policy. Not to mention I thought our "don't give a fuck" nature was half the appeal.

TL;DR - If we're going to demand more , we have to give more and collectively decide what the criteria for the giving/demanding is.

3908140 Not to be a total dunce or anything, but how does the reviews here go. I can really give my thoughts because I don't understand how everything works like the ZP review or ZP treatment.

3908140
We'll need a sign. Something like this?
Story must be at least this good to get slammed reviewed. If your story is not this good, then kindly bugger off.

Like twitterdick said, it sounds good on paper. My only concern is how well it's going to translate into not-paper. I think most authors that submit here will fall into one of two categories: they're either (1) looking for genuine criticism, of the worst sort; or (2) attention-grubbers that are looking to cash in their shoddy piece for free publicity. The ideal solution would be to only accept stories from the former, and to tell the latter to pisorf. Sadly, until you or I develop the ability to read people's hearts and minds, à la the Creepy Child, there's not much we can do about that.

Of course, what good would that do if the inbox just got flooded with high-quality garbage stories? Maybe you're banking on the idea that good stories will provoke people to review more often.

Personally, I would just scout around for more reviewers. It wouldn't solve the trash-in, gold-out problem, but it would clear out the backlog. I do like the idea about limiting the number of inboxed stories per author. I don't know what constitutes strict, here in the no-fun zone, but I think one story per author is an okay limit.

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No, that's not at all what I was trying to say, and I apologize if my description was too vague in that sense. By "quality standards", the only thing I referred to is that stories with excessively poor grammar should be informed ahead of time that they'll need to visit a few other groups (pre-readers, proofreaders, editors, etc.) first, and if we ask them to provide a short description and short "why I want you to review my fic" thing, I'm pretty sure we'll be able to tell. This isn't new, by the way, we already do that, except always once the story is actually opened by one of our reviewers. What I offer is a sort of preemptive solution.

As for the "content standards," I was merely referring to that one incident I'm certain of (there might have been more) where the subject was a very touchy one for some of our reviewers here, and they tossed it around like a hot potato. Stuff like that could also be avoided if we know a bit of what we're diving into ahead of time.

But aside from all of the above, no, I do not demand any further "raising of the bar." So if a fic shows decent effort from the author structurally, but otherwise offers shitty plot or characters or morality or all of the above and more, we'll be happy to burn it at the stake...

As for the submission process itself, I'm hoping it will weed out the "attention-grubbers" a little, or at the very least demand a little work for them if they really want that review. Also, in general I'd feel way happier about doing a review if I see just a tiny little thing in return for it. It's like having a contract signed for each job rather than having them pass down on a conveyor belt for us. No need for anything huge, just one or two short paragraphs tops. Look up the recommendations thread in RCL, and you'll see what I mean.

3909240

You send us a story, we have a look at it, mention whatever might be good in it, but spend most of our time finding everything that's bad about it, and follow up with a review where we bash the ever-loving shit out of it for said faults (while making it clear that we're just pretending to be abusive, and it's all in good fun). Google "Zero Punctuation," watch some of his videos, and you'll get the idea...

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Nope. It was a combination of the TL drama, me having this habit of wanting to do trades rather than just accepting free stuff, and seeing the RCL recommendation process (though whether that last one actually works is another story...)

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Addendum to what I said: many of the fics have been sitting in the box for months now, if not years. I'm willing to bet most of the authors have since forgotten about ever submitting them. A more radical part of my proposal would include purging the folder, informing these authors of the new system, and asking them to resubmit. Given the extra work required (beyond just dropping the stories into the folder, which we should probably set to "admins only" from that point onward), I believe most would think twice before diving in, so the backlog itself might end up at a much healthier size.

Also, this would give us a simple way to communicate the story limit to those with more than one or two stories in the queue. We'd ask them to pick their best (if they still want any in here at all) and write up their blurbs for them.

3908140 Wait, we had a run in with Twilight's Library group. Can someone get me up to date, I make sure to read all the reviews we do but this seem to have went under my radar.

While the backlog for us is something even someone on The Biggest Loser show would say is big while I can see the advantage, is a purge the best answer to it? (I do think it is the best option). While sending a PM to backlog story authors would get people who do actually want a review the act of doing it and the wait would makes us look unprofessional, like we were professional to begin with.

I'm not going to repeat what 3909217 or 3909370 said but are authors going to go the extra steps of posting something on a thread to have a chance to get a review. Yeah it would stop bad stories because authors would need to give a summary/plot synopsis of the story before one of us reads the story but I don't thing lots of people would take the extra step since we aren't a big group with 3,000 members.

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Yeah, but wouldn't doing the reviews for the "chosen few" be a bit more rewarding?

Joking aside, I'm not trying to come across as a snob cunt (even though I am one). The idea is simply to make these reviews seem meaningful, beyond just the reviewers amusing themselves (and preferably everyone else as well), and I figured this might be a good step in that direction...

3909820 Nah, nah, you haven't come off as a cunt. If anything the things like this (trying to improve the group) shows that you could be an okay leader.

Seriously what happened with us and Twilight's Library. The only thing I got from re-reading your reviews is that SirTruffles mentioned us at some point in time and space.

3909846

Oh, I see. Don't worry, nothing happened between us and TL. There was a bit of drama within TL that was unrelated to us. I just mentioned it because the incident there inspired me to make this proposal.

3909716
To this, I would not "Purge", I would communicate with each author and give them a period of time (say, 3 weeks? details to be decided) to submit the new requirements in addition to their current story, and their story would get preferential treatment over the newer ones since they've been waiting so long. After the TBD time pass, we do purge.

In addition, if we do so choose the one-story-per-author (at a time) we would also have the authors select only one of their current submissions.

3909920

OUR LORD HATH SPOKEN!

3910305

You're damn right

But that's just my two cents on that particular subject I'm still waiting for consensus to the overall idea.

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You mean the paragraph explaining why the author wants us to rip their story a new one? If I could project my apathy through the internet, you would all spontaneously turn into Eeyore. I just write reviews; whatever comes across the table, and hasn't been claimed yet. I don't spend a lot of time pondering the why's and wherefore's of the submissions. If I did, I would end up harboring a personal grudge against every single author on-site, and a few others that aren't. (I'm looking at you, Dickens!)

As for story content or quality, it's immaterial for me. Quality stories are more fun to pick apart, crap stories make good fodder for the fun-furnace. Again, it's probably just me. That said, if there ever is a story that nobody wants to touch, for one reason or another, I'll gladly tear into it like a starving badger.

Just for clarity's sake, though, what is the ultimate issue - or issues - we're addressing? Are there more stories pouring in than we can feasibly review? Because I can't really tell; I'm still relatively new here, and I just thought the backlog was a part of the system. For some reason.

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The most important reason for the "submission system" is to make sure the group isn't just yet another "publicity dumpster" for fanfics, i.e a place where you just drop off a fic and get at least one guaranteed view and comment. It also makes sure those who pop in know exactly what they're signing up for, which helps us avoid, among other things, the kind of incident that I myself have witnessed here at least once before, i.e the author finding our attitude to be too harsh (which was partly justified because they were "write one fic per day" fics, though in our defense, one probably shouldn't dump that kind of stuff here anyway...)

In other words, the content is, at the end of the day, irrelevant. What matters is that we make sure that whoever submits their story for a ZP review makes it perfectly clear that they want this particular kind of review (and know exactly what that means for their story) instead of just "a review" in general...

3913699
Alright, gotcha. In that case, I'm all for it.

Still, it strikes me as odd that people will submit stories to ZP without knowing what, exactly, we do to them. I guess these are the people we're trying to weed out; to them, we would just be another view.

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I asked the other reviewers to join us, but until then, any preliminary verdicts?

Thus far I like the idea of throttling the incoming, at the very least. Purging is still an iffy subject. Also, figuring out which reviewers are still interested in reviewing would be a help since it looks like we have a lot, but I get less than five "Check this review for me" a month

3908140
Okay, sorry I'm late to the party. I was off on some important... christmasy... family... bullshit, however it goes.

Anyway, after reading over all the comments and getting an understanding of the idea, I think this is a good measure to take. I'm especially all for making sure people know what they're getting into before submitting. I vote yes.

3915375

but I get less than five "Check this review for me" a month

Sowwy about that. I promise to up the productivity from now on...

3908486

Left you out of this comment by accident: 3908486

i am vewy sowwy

3915375
>less than five reviews per month
>from maybe twice as many people
>and my promised weekly's

Mine are just very, very, very late. Sumimasen, flutterdash-sama.

3908140

I'll back this.

3919171

If they're willing to make the effort of writing a small novel so we'll give them an extra view, I'd gladly give them that extra view. As for the "getting angry at us for being harsh" part, think of their blurb as a "contract": if they signed up for it, they gotta face the consequences...

3915375

Our Almighty God... what shall be your judgement?

Everyone looks like they're on board with the general idea.

I guess now its time to write a draft or two of the actual rule(s) to be posted.

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NOTE 3: Please use the "reply" button. That's what it's there for. Thank you and have a nice day!

NOTE 3: Please use the "reply" button. That's what it's there for. Thank you and have a nice day!

NOTE 3: Please use the "reply" button. That's what it's there for. Thank you and have a nice day!

3936465
Or you get off your lazy ass and check this thread once a day like I do.

And, you know, contribute to the discussion.

3937235

And, you know, contribute to the discussion.

Um... forgive me, but I believe so far I've contributed a fairly decent amount, so that was kinda unwarranted. Right now, the only reason why I haven't added anything new is because I don't exactly know what your last reply is meant to suggest. So should one (or more) of us write up drafts of the new rules, or do you want to do it yourself, and maybe we vote on it?

If it's the former case, then here is my (rough) draft:

1) Before any of the rules below are considered, one may circumvent the whole process through the "review for a review" thing.

2) Stories may now be added to folders by admins only. Anyone who wishes to add their story must post a comment according to the guidelines in the submission thread.

3) One story per author in the queue.

4) Guidelines (tl;dr version):

4a) Story name, author, genre, type (i.e one-shot, multi-chapter, etc.), short summary, (optionally:) wordcount/chapter count
4b) Has it seen an editor, or been edited properly by the author? Or is it at least written well enough to be readable? (If it turns out it isn't, we redirect it to other groups)
4c) A short summary of why we should review it. "Wanting a good laugh", or even "an extra comment" is acceptable as long as they write a decent request for it.
4d) Their consent to the assraep we deliver. No refunds.

5) Those currently waiting in line all get a PM each to inform them of the changes. If they have more than one story waiting, we ask them to choose the one they want in most, and they put up a comment. After 1 month, if we get nothing in response, we boot the rest from the folders.

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Booping you guys so you will read this too (hopefully)

3937348

I'm on board, I suppose. I haven't really any reason not to.

3937348 You have my backing, for what it's worth. I suspect it'll be worth little in the near future.

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3938612

Aww, come on! More enthusiasm and cheerfulness plz

3937348
Sorry for being a dick. Yesterday was just a rough day for me but I shouldn't have taken it out on you.

And as for the thingies you thingied, I thingy. And by that I mean I approve.

3939232

No harm done, ol' chap.

3937348

3937348
Fuck it. Let's do it.

3939232

I think we have a consensus... or a majority vote at the very least...

Then let's do it.

3946598

How do we start? PM all the authors?

If you want, I could lock this thread and set up one with the finalized rules, and the PMs could redirect everyone there.

3951456

Sounds like a good idea. Go forth and succeed!

3951960

Don't get too comfortable. I figured you could be the one to send all those PMs out there...

I can write up a template for that too if you want... ;)

Alrighty, if you could write up the template for me that'd be great =)

And if you could go ahead and send the PM's too that'd be swell ;)