480637
More than anything, demonstrable review experience is key. It helps us get a sense of how you would communicate to authors and how good you are at catching grammatical errors, which is most of what we do. If you've done any work on any of the FiMFiction editing groups, Ponychan, or so forth, that's exactly what we want to see.

Best pony question is placed there just to make you sweat.

As for how long it takes... it depends on how much deliberation we need! The longer it's been, the greater chance we're taking your application seriously and considering you for a position. Any application thats tiepd liek thiz und doeznt hev ane storys oar reeview escperience we're probably just going to send back a "Thanks but no thanks" right away.

I'm only one voice in the process, so I can't speak for everyone, but that's what I observe so far.

Hi there! I only tried submitting once and gave up, totally intimidated. My question has to do with suggestions for pre-readers. I've been told, "oh, go over to /fic/, they can help." The problem is that I can't read or decode /fic/. It's really hard to read, physically, and the Google Docs queue with listings of who is and isn't willing to read things is very hard to understand. After a while, my eyes and head hurt and I stopped trying.

So if I ever do submit anything and the pre-reader suggests, "oh, go over to /fic/," is there someplace to ask for a pre-reader that's just as good and easier to navigate? Would Author Support or the Writer's Group here be all right? I don't want to sound as though I'm not willing to take advice, because I am. It's just that I tried to look at /fic/ and it actually hurt.

635085
In my experience, /fic/ is generally the best place to go, but the groups here on Fimfic are probably an okay substitute. To be blunt, some people who review on here really have no idea what in Odin's name they're doing.

>>Vimbert the Unimpressive-- thanks for the reply! It's a start. /fic/ is so messy and difficult to navigate for an outsider. I just tried submitting something after getting some crit, and we'll see how it goes. This one's a bit of a like/dislike one: I think if the readers don't like it, they'll probably dislike it right away. But at least I know where to go.

635410
Ehh, I think we tend to forget that not all of us came from 4chan, so that's where a lot of our "oh, everyone can use imageboards" bias comes from, I think.

Good luck, and we'll be waiting.

635410
635763

Yeah, it took me about a week:

Of on-and-off clicking around mlpchan.net's /fic/ board before I felt I had a handle on the wheres and hows of posting a review request there. I then posted said request and got a couple very polite responses telling me I'd put my request in the wrong place and directing me to The Training Ground.

So I put the notice there, and everything worked out quite nicely after that.

Mike

635410

There are a couple alternate sites listed on the front page of this group.

Do stories get rejected for the characters not using "Equestrian" terms, like 'somebody' instead of 'somepony', or 'anybody' over 'anypony'?

748498
Ehh... if that's the only issue, no. It might be mentioned if there are other issues if the pre-readers feel it breaks immersion, though.

749119

Hey, question time! Hope I'm not too late to the party. I just got my second strike, so I feel that asking would be a good idea at this point.

Firstly, if a story is approved and taken from the queue for review, how much of said story is the pre-reader obligated to review, if any? After both rejection letters, I get the impression that the pre-reader never made it past the prologue. Don't worry, it doesn't bother me, since you were under mountain of fics at the time, but I would just like to know.

Second, is it okay to send response emails asking for them to clarify some of the points that were made? I read the thread and saw that you would forward thank you letters and such to the appropriate pre-reader, but would it be rude to ask for a bit of clarification?

Thanks for your time!

757013
Basically, the pre-reader reads enough to generally get a sense for the story and collect enough points (grammar, usually) to sufficiently reject on. You're right that we don't always read the whole story, sadly; when we have more than 80 stories awaiting review, we kinda have to rush things sometimes.

We get requests for clarifications all the time! Just reply to your rejection email with your questions, and the fanfiction email (which I help run) will send the question along its merry way.

757024

Got it! And goodness, how dare you not read a full 100K words+ story just for a volunteer position that you're doing for fun! So unprofessional (/sarcasm please don't hit me)

But on a serious note, thanks! I'll happily send something along. Pre-readers have been very helpful, despite their massive workload recently, so thank you all!