Rules for the Blunt Reviews Group:

Before I say anything, keep to the rules of the site!
Now, moving on:

There's a 5-step way to get your fic reviewed:

1. Get a fic.
2. Do you want this fic to be reviewed, or constructively criticised? Here's the difference:

Review: Thread on the consistency of the fic to line up with a grade that the reviewer sets. The grade goes to a
total score of 100, the review is tallied, and placed into one of these groups:

<50-: Needs Work.
51-70: Enjoyable.
71-90: Good stuff!
91-100: Recommended

If the reviewer does not feel it appropriate to make a score (when it's on the 'Needs work' end of the scale) they may leave it out.

Constructive Criticisms: Thread based solely on the consistency of the fic according to the reviewer, with tips and helpful advice to tell the author how to improve their story, or other stories in the future.

3. Find the appropriate submission folder. It'll have the words, 'SUBMISSION FOLDER' written on it, and it'll say whether it's open or closed.
4.Submit.
5. See if it gets done, and if it does, then be grateful to the person who did it. They tried to help you out of their own spare time!

How we go about reviewing, From the Reviewer's Perspective:

1. Decide which type of review you are going to do, and choose from the appropriate submission folder.
2. When finished with the review/criticisms, post a thread, marked appropriately with either [Review] or [ConCrit] at the start. After that, it's up to you.
3. Notify an admin that the fic has been finished, and they'll place it in the appropriate folder.

Don't make new threads unless if you're a contributor or admin. If you have questions, put them on the FAQ thread.

One story per author is allowed per submission folder opening. This means that you could submit a story to either folder, but only one.
Multiple entries after that will result in all stories being deleted.

(Note these rules not being followed won't necessarily lead to expulsion from the group, but they should be considered)

FAQ Section

Ask and ye shall receive. Post questions in reply to this post, and you may well get it answered.
Frequently asked, or important questions to be answered will be marked on this post.

1. How many stories can you post per folder submission opening?
One. As written by Guy below, it'll help to include a variety of authors.

2. As a reviewer, how many words should I read before reviewing/starting constructive criticism?
For reviews, the lower limit is 10000, but wherever you read up to, make sure to preface your review with it.

Due to the nature of constructive criticism, the limit for this should be the entire fic. If you do decide to stop before then, make sure to write the point at which you stopped.
Another point in constructive criticism may be to ask the author what points they specifically want you to help them on via PM, before the fic is looked through, so that you can do the criticism optimally.

3. Can reviewers post stories to the group?
Yes. Just make sure you don't review your own story, 'aight?

4. Can we post incomplete fics?
Yes.

5. Fics displaying real-world politics?
As a general rule, no, but ask me through PM if you think you can explain it.

6. Fics that have been rewritten after a review/constructive criticism being resbumitted?
Notify a member of staff that it has been altered. Otherwise, it will be deleted from the submission folders.

7. How do I find out which reviewer prefers to review which type of fic?
Check everybody's folders (The ones with contributors names) If nobody has a preference on your tag, post down below in the FAQ.

8. How does a reviewer reject a fic placed in their folder?
First: Make sure that the rules of your folder describe against the fic in question.
(You're allowed to revisit these rules whenever. I don't want you to find a fic that you Just realised you don't like, and have to review it anyway)
Second: Tell me what the fic is, and I can delete it for you.

5701568
I like the refurbishment. I was a bit disappointed seeing this group being dormant so long.

Bit of a question in regard to the new rules before I consider submitting anything:

Will you be instigating a one-story-per-author rule, or some other kind of rule(s) in regards to submissions beyond the Criticism/Review divide to help diversify the kind of content the group ends up going over? I feel like with how many review groups are currently attempting to bounce themselves back - and in many cases, share reviewers - a rule like that might be good both for allowing a variety of authors to be reviewed by the group and to help different review groups have a wider variety of their stories in their queue.

5701632 Yeah, it's a good idea.
Due to the submission folders here being limited, it should be (in theory) perfectly accessible to the same author later down the line, when the folder is open again. And it'd stop the folders getting filled especially quick.

I'll mark this on the rules and the FAQ, cheers.

5701568
I suppose since no one else is asking anything, I'll ask a few more things that I see as possible issues before things in this group go into full swing:

1. The call for more contributors talks about "Completed" and "Nearly Completed" stories, but the rules for Submission do not. Is there meant to be a rule regarding the completion state of a story before it can be added to this group, or is this simply a case of inconsistency between thread revisions?

2. What is the opinion on a reviewer who, if they are part of this and a second reviewer group as contributor, claiming the same story in both groups and reviewing it in both? I've seen a reviewer in my feed do this once or twice, with the review basically being identical in both groups. While I can understand the motive to do this from the reviewer's perspective, this seems like it'd be abysmally disappointing to have happen from the author's. This is part of what originally made me pose my question on rules about ensuring this group has a diverse story list in its Submission pool, in addition to the fact I'm sure it helps combat burnout on part of the reviewers.

3. Why have a rule specifying a 10,000 word limit on Reviews, but a "read all of it" rule for reviewers on CC? From my perspective as someone submitting a story, this makes me feel like, if I want an in-depth, honest review of what a reviewer actually thinks of my story, it's actually better to not get it graded, and makes me question why I'd want to submit it to the Review category instead. While I did put my own story in Review despite this, that's because I personally find Reviews more entertaining to read and I imagine a funny review is also more engaging for the reviewer to make. If I were being purely utilitarian, though, I don't see any reason why I'd ever not put all my stories in CC unless its a situation of there merely being no CC reviewers.

(I imagine part of this question can be simplified down to me asking what the appreciable difference between Review and CC folders are here, that would compel me as an author to place my work in the folder where the reviewer is required to read less of it.)

4. Why is the Story Limit for each folder 19 and not 20, and why is that reason to upset people like me who specifically notice the strange choice in number?

5704534 I appreciate the questions!
One thing I'll say; while the group seems to be moving slowly at the moment, I expect will pick up later, just by the posting on the group. However, the group is pretty much in 'full swing'. In fact, I bet a lot of people would prefer it as it is right now, because we're not getting swamped by submissions yet

1. This is an inconsistency with the threads, you can submit complete or incomplete stories. I'll remedy that when I find it.
2. I'm of the opinion that you can post these reviews wherever you want, as long as you preface that you also posted it on blunt reviews. This way, people who see the notification can also see they've already looked at the review quickly, and skip over it.

3. CC folders are a relatively new thing for me, so I may make some mistakes here, we'll have to see how it pans out in the long run.
The reason for how it is set up currently is so that the reviewer can actually see the issues that are there, and speak about how to fix them.

Review-wise, I find that if I had a fic that I knew wasn't great by the first 10k (or less) words, I'd think I had enough material to review it on.
CC-wise, you kind of have to see what works and what doesn't.

However, as noted with the Constructive Criticism, if you want to spend the least amount of time doing it, I'd suggest asking the author personally through PM on what they want criticism on. If they said, 'read the whole fic', then I'm sure you could skim bits which are same-y, and come up with the same conclusion.

4. Those caps can and will be changed. In fact, if we get more contributors, most people may even have their own folders (sort of a similar deal to how PCARG is going to be doing theirs in the near future)
At the moment I'm experimenting with what works and doesn't.

5704720
Yeah, I'm sure not being swamped is a great feeling. That tends to not last long in these groups, in my experience!

1. Alright.
2. Alright, as well. I think it's a bit lame personally that someone could say, claim a story if its in both PCARG and BR, then post the review to both groups and move the story to reviewed as long as it fits both group's standards, but like I said, I understand why you'd not want to forbid that from the reviewer's POV.
4. That question was more or less just me ribbing at the odd choice of 19 as the limit. I figured the folders are in a heavy WIP state right now.

3. For Review/CC, we pretty much agree on the value of each, my point was mainly the letter of the rules as they pertain to Review vs. CC, from the perspective of the one receiving the service. It might be better to require CC to specify things for the reviewer to give advice on (once the story is claimed) as part of the rules for getting CC. This would help CC, from the submitter's POV, be more like a scalpel that can help identify and fix problems over a larger portion of a body of work while a Review is basically an overview of everything as it pertains to what should be the introductory phase of any longer story. (I imagine most people willing to offer CC from the reviewing end would report the problems they note aside from the ones the requester asks for, so I don't think the submitter would be deprived with anything by this sort of rule, just given correct expectation that CC is a more distinct service from a review meant for helping you find your weak points and fixing them.)

5704733 3. It is difficult to do that in a folder format, since all you need to do is submit.
Also, I'd prefer not having a ton of threads which ask about CC, as it would clog up the group.

Getting the reviewers to ask the author is currently the way we do it, and we'll see if there are any issues with that as we go on.
If there is, (Authors not getting what they wanted, reviewers feeling it takes too long), I'll change to something like this.

5701568
Time to be the only person who uses this thread again, since no one else seems to! While I'm not sure I'm actually interested in this myself, the thought came to mind, and I don't see any mention of it either way in the rules:

What's the policy on story resubmission, if that story is given a (substantial) rewrite as a direct result of a Blunt Review? (Pertaining directly to a story given a scored Review and not a Criticism, then being rewritten at least partially due to that scoring, and the author wanting a re-review of the new work.)

Though, I suppose I'll ask the corollary question that stems from the first as well:

What's the policy on a story being submitted for a Blunt Review, after going through rewrites or improvements as a direct result of a Blunt Criticism?

5721764 both good questions, and both have the same unwritten (so i'll write it now) answer:

If it's done without a message to any staff, it's deleted.
You must notify somebody over here that it's gone through changes, or else it will be deleted from the folders.

We should have a rule about submitting to a single reviewer at a time
Also, can we have a blacklist of people not to be reviewed? Because, honestly there have been at least four Saberknight reviews, and Aeluna pushes his story to every single review and review exchange groups, and I feel that's unfair to people who struggle to get a comment, much less a full review.

5806046 I'd keep a personal list, and keep preference over people who haven't submitted.
I know I've got one, but making a blacklist will complicate things... (it'll need to be constantly updated, it will add to the clutter on the main page, etc.)

5806046 also, yes, when the same fic is submitted to 2 reviewers, notify me, I will delete one of them. It shouldn't happen.

5806194
Not like a mandatory one, but sort of a thread where you can look up if a guy is an ass/attention hunter.

5806225 I feel like It could provide a negative connotation, tbh. If it was active, it would be near the top of the group threads.

I'd prefer that sort of stuff to not come up as proper threads. Not because of the authors blacklisted, of course (though they would be annoyed), but more because of new members looking at it.

Knowing individually who you don't want to do reviews for should be alright, as this depends from person to person.

1. Is the "limit" in For reviews, the limit is 10000, but wherever you read up to, make sure to preface your review with it. meant as a lower limit? It seems to make sense that way in context, but "limit" makes it sound like it's supposed to be an upper bound.

and, apologies if this has been answered before, but
2. How does one go about rejecting a story? Since anyone can put something into your review folder, if you don't want to review it, what do you do?

5809884 1, It's the lower limit. We don't want reviewers to not be allowed to review later parts of the story... I'll add that in!

2. if it doesn't correspond to your folder, then tell me about it and I can delete it.
If it does correspond to your folder, and it's not something you want to do, change the rules of your folder, I guess, and go back to part one

I'll write this on the FAQ as well.

Is there something you want me to delete?

5812298

Uh, well – I really don't want to review A Muffin For Muffins, but I don't think I can formulate a sensible rule that would filter it out. I just find the premise super uninteresting, and I'll very likely be bored by the story even if it's well written, so it wouldn't be fair to for me to review it. But I don't mind the tags, and not necessarily the characters, either.

I'd also like to reject stories when I read the first paragraph and find five grammar errors, of if the writing is super clunky. The latter also can't be put in a rule.

So... I'd prefer if we could freely reject stories whenever we like (as soon as we still cover one/month), but I'd understand if you want to have objective criteria.

5812591 Sure. I understand the points presented show strains in the current system, so this is a fine way to get over that.
Message the author and explain the situation, I can delete it from the folder.

5701568
Perhaps it would be worth setting up a master-topic of all reviews and markings?
It's pretty useful in, say, the Rage Review group

This seems like it should have been asked before, but-- can we submit stories we didn't write?

5836051
I'd generally be against it. Getting criticism (especially one negative) you did not ask for, can be jarring and borders on trolling - and not the fun kind.

5836060
But what if you're so passionate about something that you want to hear more people's thoughts on it, even if you didn't write it?

I'm talking about reviews, not criticism, too, since we did differentiate between those two.

5836349
ask the author for permission. Most would be ok with it, I assume.

so how does our admin rule?

5844985 justly

5845004 so can we submit stories from other people?

5845058 of course!
People have submitted their work online, and therefore you have a right to criticise it.

cleared the rules on this thread up a bit, seeing as the old folders are now gone. Also should be a little easier to read.

5812653
Can you make me an admin if I oblige to only use it to edit my own folder? Otherwise I have to bug you every time I want to change something.

Otherwise I'd like to remove Defect from my folder. People usually rely on intuition on how an AI might behave or become sentient rather than doing research and they are usually thoroughly wrong (as is the case here).

5882585 Of course, I trust you with it.

5882736
Thanks!