JX Valentine
Your aquatic overlord
- 3,277
- Posts
- 19
- Years
- Age 36
- Harassing Bill
- Seen Aug 19, 2020
Yes, I know the old thread was in the main forum, but do I really have to select a prefix? :(
It's that time of year, kids! Time to review the crap out of this section! Although the challenge is largely the same, there's been a few minor changes to how things work (just to make it easier on everyone), so make sure you read through before copypastaing your app into this month's database, mmkay?
Do you love the forums? Love writing? Think you can give awesome advice? Then welcome to the Reviewing Challenge! In this month-long reviewing blitz, race against the calendar to submit twenty-eight reviews in a single month. Why? To help the forum? To improve yourself and those around you?
More like because you can, am I right? ;D
How to Play
Step One
Sign up! Sign ups are done right here in this thread. Anyone what wishes to participate only needs to make a post with the following form filled out (except for the last two fields):
[b]Best Way To Contact:[/b]
[b]Reviewing Style:[/b]
[b]Custom Challenge Rules:[/b]
[b]Request Queue:[/b]
[b]Completed Reviews:[/b]
Note! Last month, we included a name field on the form. This month, we're not because we've realized that's rather silly and redundant. So... yeah.
To clarify, the contact field covers PM, VM, IM (with specifics – username, which program, etc.)... basically any information you think someone would need to get in contact with you. Reviewing style is a brief description of how you review (e.g., strengths/weaknesses, areas of focus, that sort of thing).
Finally, custom challenge rules are basically anything else you want to add to the challenge's general rules (which we'll get to in a moment) that make it your own challenge. These could include anything from a word count/higher review count to "cannot use quote tags." Anything you'd like!
You don't have to worry about request queue or completed reviews until after the challenge begins. The first is a handy list for all the review requests people sent to you that you haven't gotten to yet, and the second is a list of reviews you've completed to keep track of how many more you still need to do.
As a note, the deadline for signing up is the last week of April. That's right. You can still join the challenge while it's going on; you just can't join in the last week because that would be rather silly, wouldn't it?
Step Two
From the first day of the month to the last day, it's your mission to submit at least the same number of reviews as there are days in the month to any active story (read: has been updated within the past month) before the month is over is over. Example: If the month is April, that's thirty reviews that month. If it's February, that's twenty-eight or twenty-nine. Either way, you just need to submit one review a day to reach the minimum requirement for the emblem. Easy, right?
To make it easier, people have the option to send you requests to review their story. That way, writers can be guaranteed at least one review, and you can keep a steady supply of things to cover going. To keep track of your review requests, simply edit your profile and slip it under request queue.
If you run out of things under your queue, you still have one other option, and that's to simply review as many stories as you can starting on the first page. The forums have plenty of active stories out there; all you have to do is take your pick!
Do you have to stop at one review a day? Nope! Do as many as you'd like! In fact, doing multiple reviews a day means you'll hit the monthly review goal a little bit quicker, which means you can breathe easier later on.
Step Three
Completing reviews! What defines a complete request? Can you go back and review other chapters? Well, potential participant, the answer is it's up to you! Of course, you can't multipost and write reviews for individual chapters in separate posts without a break in between (see rules), but you can most certainly come back and review the same story later on. The only stipulation? The author has to post an installment between your reviews for it to count. Otherwise, it'll just be lumped all together as one big review of the story up to that point. Sorry!
Once you're done with a review, there's one other thing to remember. Right after you hit submit and are brought back to your freshly posted review, copy the URL in the address bar and skedaddle to your profile. Hit the edit button, paste the URL under completed reviews, and save. That makes it easier for the judges of the challenge to come along and verify whether or not you've written the minimum number of reviews for that month. After you hit that shiny number, you can choose not to add any other reviews to this, but it's absolutely mandatory to do it for the ones that you want to count towards your review goal.
Step Four
Wait! The challenge ends on midnight of the first day of the next month, whenever that would be for your time zone. (i.e., February's challenge ends on midnight of March 1, April's challenge ends May 1, and so on.) If you complete the challenge any time before this point, judges (mods and helpers if they need any) will go through the profiles and mark down every member what wrote at least the minimum required reviews. After that, they'll hand out a shiny emblem to everyone what succeeded as a job well done.
Prizes?!
That's right! Everyone what beats the challenge will receive this dashing emblem:
On top of that, the people what finish twenty-eight reviews will also have bragging rights and the satisfaction of making the forum an awesome place to be.
But yeah, you're probably going to just be in it for the emblem, am I right?
The Rules
Of course, there's a few general rules to keep in mind:
1. Yes, you must submit the same number of reviews as there are days in the month. Because this month is April, that means you'll need thirty reviews for this to count. This is absolutely mandatory to be considered for the emblem.
UPDATE: Potentially edited down to twenty-nine reviews due to april fool stuff.
2. The rules of both PC and the FF&W are completely in effect here. If you're not familiar with them, read them before signing up! The rules of the FF&W are included in a sticky at the top of the main forum; the general rules of PC are located at the top of the site itself.
3. Although it's included as a rule in the FF&W's batch, it's got to be reiterated here, too. Reviews must be constructive to count. What does this mean? A constructive review – praise or criticism – is simply a review that points out specific parts of the story and talks about what the reviewer's thoughts on it.
For a clearer example, this is a one-liner:
This is a great story! Can't wait for more!
Notice how it says nothing about the story? Yeah, we're not accepting those at all. Same thing with this:
It was awkward at times, so maybe you should proofread. Still, keep up the good work!
Notice how this doesn't say anything about what exactly made it awkward or what parts were awkward at all, so it doesn't end up being particularly helpful because the author has no idea what you're talking about? We're not accepting those, either.
There's a variety of ways to submit constructive reviews, though, so long as you point out specifics and go into detail. Answer the questions of what and why with everything you write. The what is the part of the story; the why is your reasoning for pointing it out/why you think it works or needs to be fixed.
For more help, check out these guides to reviewing. They should give you a much more detailed overview of what is and isn't good reviewing, so they should point you in the right direction.
http://studio-revolution.net/summary.php
http://www.suite101.com/content/how-to-give-constructive-criticism-a40316
http://www.dragonflycave.com/reviewing.aspx
4. There are very few instances in which reviews just won't count besides the ones that aren't constructive. These instances include:
- A. A review submitted to a story you know will be closed due to a violation of PC or FF&W rules. If you see a story that violates one of these rules, report instead of reviewing. This is to encourage people to avoid being terrible people to the community.
- A review that violates PC or FF&W rules itself. Thread necromancy (posting in a thread whose last post was made over a month ago) will not be tolerated. Same thing with flaming or posting anything considered not constructive.
- A review to a member on the Black List. The Black List is a pretty harsh punishment that will be explained in further detail below. Let's just say someone made it clear that they don't want to be productive members of FF&W's society, so we're just going to pretend they don't exist until they decide to play nice.
If a member is added to the Black List for any reason after you've submitted a review to them, you may still count your review if you choose to do so unless the fic violated board/forum rules. For example, if you submitted a nice-lengthed review to an author what told you that their writing is perfect and HDU even criticize them, you can still count that review if they're not already on the Black List.
Other than those simple rules, you can modify your own, unique challenge to your heart's content, as explained in the first section. Have fun!
A Last Note: For the Requesters
To those of you thinking of recruiting a participant to review you, a few special rules for you:
1. Pay attention to what form of contact the participant specifies in their profile. Use only that method to ask politely to review your fic. Include a link to your fic and a quick summary to give us an idea of what we're going to be getting into.
2. Do not send us fics that haven't been updated in at least a month. This would mean we'd be breaking the rules to review you, and if we end up doing that, then that particular review won't count towards our review goal. Sorry!
3. After a participant reviews your work, remember to contact them again if you'd like them to review future chapters. Participants will take you off their request queue once they're finished looking at your story, so it's a good idea to get in touch with them in order to be put back on.
4. Remember that you requested them to review. Try to be as courteous to them as they are to you for this reason. Writers what decide to take hostile routes against the participants (flaming, starting drama, et cetera) will be Blacklisted from requesting during this challenge and every other future challenge. So, it's just a good idea to play nice, you know?
Black LIST
The Black List is, as I've mentioned earlier, a group you don't want to hang out with. These are people what violated the rules in one way or another, be it by causing drama (challenge rules), spamming (board rules), plagiarizing (FF&W rules), or anything else that shows they really don't want to be productive members of this society. There's ways of getting off this list. However, it's not as easy as it sounds, and not everyone has this ability. (If your name has the words "permanent entry" next to them, you might as well stop right here because whatever I'm about to say doesn't apply to you. Sorry!) To get off the Black List, all you have to do is show us you're not going to do whatever it is you did to get your name blacklisted in the first place. For example, if you got on here by causing drama, don't cause drama.
In short, if you're a cool member what wants to hang out with us and not cause trouble, awesome. You won't get on this list. If you're the kind of member what wants to cause trouble for one reason or another, yeah… no.
1. MeerFall (Offense: Causing drama in response to a review written for the challenge. Details: Added February 10, 2011.)
2. GirlieNinjaRose (Offense: Plagiarism. Details: Added February 24, 2011. Permanent entry.)
Wait! I have a question!
Any questions or comments can be asked in this thread. Discussion can take place here, too!
Participant List
(Ordered alphabetically. All links go directly to participants' profiles.)
Astinus
Azurne
Bay Alexison
Dialga's Song of Time
EmeraldSky
icomeanon6
JX Valentine
Meinfoo
Mizan de la Plume Kuro
It's that time of year, kids! Time to review the crap out of this section! Although the challenge is largely the same, there's been a few minor changes to how things work (just to make it easier on everyone), so make sure you read through before copypastaing your app into this month's database, mmkay?
PC Reviewing Challenge '11
Do you love the forums? Love writing? Think you can give awesome advice? Then welcome to the Reviewing Challenge! In this month-long reviewing blitz, race against the calendar to submit twenty-eight reviews in a single month. Why? To help the forum? To improve yourself and those around you?
More like because you can, am I right? ;D
How to Play
Step One
Sign up! Sign ups are done right here in this thread. Anyone what wishes to participate only needs to make a post with the following form filled out (except for the last two fields):
[b]Best Way To Contact:[/b]
[b]Reviewing Style:[/b]
[b]Custom Challenge Rules:[/b]
[b]Request Queue:[/b]
[b]Completed Reviews:[/b]
Note! Last month, we included a name field on the form. This month, we're not because we've realized that's rather silly and redundant. So... yeah.
To clarify, the contact field covers PM, VM, IM (with specifics – username, which program, etc.)... basically any information you think someone would need to get in contact with you. Reviewing style is a brief description of how you review (e.g., strengths/weaknesses, areas of focus, that sort of thing).
Finally, custom challenge rules are basically anything else you want to add to the challenge's general rules (which we'll get to in a moment) that make it your own challenge. These could include anything from a word count/higher review count to "cannot use quote tags." Anything you'd like!
You don't have to worry about request queue or completed reviews until after the challenge begins. The first is a handy list for all the review requests people sent to you that you haven't gotten to yet, and the second is a list of reviews you've completed to keep track of how many more you still need to do.
As a note, the deadline for signing up is the last week of April. That's right. You can still join the challenge while it's going on; you just can't join in the last week because that would be rather silly, wouldn't it?
Step Two
From the first day of the month to the last day, it's your mission to submit at least the same number of reviews as there are days in the month to any active story (read: has been updated within the past month) before the month is over is over. Example: If the month is April, that's thirty reviews that month. If it's February, that's twenty-eight or twenty-nine. Either way, you just need to submit one review a day to reach the minimum requirement for the emblem. Easy, right?
To make it easier, people have the option to send you requests to review their story. That way, writers can be guaranteed at least one review, and you can keep a steady supply of things to cover going. To keep track of your review requests, simply edit your profile and slip it under request queue.
If you run out of things under your queue, you still have one other option, and that's to simply review as many stories as you can starting on the first page. The forums have plenty of active stories out there; all you have to do is take your pick!
Do you have to stop at one review a day? Nope! Do as many as you'd like! In fact, doing multiple reviews a day means you'll hit the monthly review goal a little bit quicker, which means you can breathe easier later on.
Step Three
Completing reviews! What defines a complete request? Can you go back and review other chapters? Well, potential participant, the answer is it's up to you! Of course, you can't multipost and write reviews for individual chapters in separate posts without a break in between (see rules), but you can most certainly come back and review the same story later on. The only stipulation? The author has to post an installment between your reviews for it to count. Otherwise, it'll just be lumped all together as one big review of the story up to that point. Sorry!
Once you're done with a review, there's one other thing to remember. Right after you hit submit and are brought back to your freshly posted review, copy the URL in the address bar and skedaddle to your profile. Hit the edit button, paste the URL under completed reviews, and save. That makes it easier for the judges of the challenge to come along and verify whether or not you've written the minimum number of reviews for that month. After you hit that shiny number, you can choose not to add any other reviews to this, but it's absolutely mandatory to do it for the ones that you want to count towards your review goal.
Step Four
Wait! The challenge ends on midnight of the first day of the next month, whenever that would be for your time zone. (i.e., February's challenge ends on midnight of March 1, April's challenge ends May 1, and so on.) If you complete the challenge any time before this point, judges (mods and helpers if they need any) will go through the profiles and mark down every member what wrote at least the minimum required reviews. After that, they'll hand out a shiny emblem to everyone what succeeded as a job well done.
Prizes?!
That's right! Everyone what beats the challenge will receive this dashing emblem:
On top of that, the people what finish twenty-eight reviews will also have bragging rights and the satisfaction of making the forum an awesome place to be.
But yeah, you're probably going to just be in it for the emblem, am I right?
The Rules
Of course, there's a few general rules to keep in mind:
1. Yes, you must submit the same number of reviews as there are days in the month. Because this month is April, that means you'll need thirty reviews for this to count. This is absolutely mandatory to be considered for the emblem.
UPDATE: Potentially edited down to twenty-nine reviews due to april fool stuff.
2. The rules of both PC and the FF&W are completely in effect here. If you're not familiar with them, read them before signing up! The rules of the FF&W are included in a sticky at the top of the main forum; the general rules of PC are located at the top of the site itself.
3. Although it's included as a rule in the FF&W's batch, it's got to be reiterated here, too. Reviews must be constructive to count. What does this mean? A constructive review – praise or criticism – is simply a review that points out specific parts of the story and talks about what the reviewer's thoughts on it.
For a clearer example, this is a one-liner:
This is a great story! Can't wait for more!
Notice how it says nothing about the story? Yeah, we're not accepting those at all. Same thing with this:
It was awkward at times, so maybe you should proofread. Still, keep up the good work!
Notice how this doesn't say anything about what exactly made it awkward or what parts were awkward at all, so it doesn't end up being particularly helpful because the author has no idea what you're talking about? We're not accepting those, either.
There's a variety of ways to submit constructive reviews, though, so long as you point out specifics and go into detail. Answer the questions of what and why with everything you write. The what is the part of the story; the why is your reasoning for pointing it out/why you think it works or needs to be fixed.
For more help, check out these guides to reviewing. They should give you a much more detailed overview of what is and isn't good reviewing, so they should point you in the right direction.
http://studio-revolution.net/summary.php
http://www.suite101.com/content/how-to-give-constructive-criticism-a40316
http://www.dragonflycave.com/reviewing.aspx
4. There are very few instances in which reviews just won't count besides the ones that aren't constructive. These instances include:
- A. A review submitted to a story you know will be closed due to a violation of PC or FF&W rules. If you see a story that violates one of these rules, report instead of reviewing. This is to encourage people to avoid being terrible people to the community.
- A review that violates PC or FF&W rules itself. Thread necromancy (posting in a thread whose last post was made over a month ago) will not be tolerated. Same thing with flaming or posting anything considered not constructive.
- A review to a member on the Black List. The Black List is a pretty harsh punishment that will be explained in further detail below. Let's just say someone made it clear that they don't want to be productive members of FF&W's society, so we're just going to pretend they don't exist until they decide to play nice.
If a member is added to the Black List for any reason after you've submitted a review to them, you may still count your review if you choose to do so unless the fic violated board/forum rules. For example, if you submitted a nice-lengthed review to an author what told you that their writing is perfect and HDU even criticize them, you can still count that review if they're not already on the Black List.
Other than those simple rules, you can modify your own, unique challenge to your heart's content, as explained in the first section. Have fun!
A Last Note: For the Requesters
To those of you thinking of recruiting a participant to review you, a few special rules for you:
1. Pay attention to what form of contact the participant specifies in their profile. Use only that method to ask politely to review your fic. Include a link to your fic and a quick summary to give us an idea of what we're going to be getting into.
2. Do not send us fics that haven't been updated in at least a month. This would mean we'd be breaking the rules to review you, and if we end up doing that, then that particular review won't count towards our review goal. Sorry!
3. After a participant reviews your work, remember to contact them again if you'd like them to review future chapters. Participants will take you off their request queue once they're finished looking at your story, so it's a good idea to get in touch with them in order to be put back on.
4. Remember that you requested them to review. Try to be as courteous to them as they are to you for this reason. Writers what decide to take hostile routes against the participants (flaming, starting drama, et cetera) will be Blacklisted from requesting during this challenge and every other future challenge. So, it's just a good idea to play nice, you know?
Black LIST
The Black List is, as I've mentioned earlier, a group you don't want to hang out with. These are people what violated the rules in one way or another, be it by causing drama (challenge rules), spamming (board rules), plagiarizing (FF&W rules), or anything else that shows they really don't want to be productive members of this society. There's ways of getting off this list. However, it's not as easy as it sounds, and not everyone has this ability. (If your name has the words "permanent entry" next to them, you might as well stop right here because whatever I'm about to say doesn't apply to you. Sorry!) To get off the Black List, all you have to do is show us you're not going to do whatever it is you did to get your name blacklisted in the first place. For example, if you got on here by causing drama, don't cause drama.
In short, if you're a cool member what wants to hang out with us and not cause trouble, awesome. You won't get on this list. If you're the kind of member what wants to cause trouble for one reason or another, yeah… no.
1. MeerFall (Offense: Causing drama in response to a review written for the challenge. Details: Added February 10, 2011.)
2. GirlieNinjaRose (Offense: Plagiarism. Details: Added February 24, 2011. Permanent entry.)
Wait! I have a question!
Any questions or comments can be asked in this thread. Discussion can take place here, too!
Participant List
(Ordered alphabetically. All links go directly to participants' profiles.)
Astinus
Azurne
Bay Alexison
Dialga's Song of Time
EmeraldSky
icomeanon6
JX Valentine
Meinfoo
Mizan de la Plume Kuro
Last edited by a moderator:
