Reviewer's Guild Forum An open letter to new members

These are a lot of good questions that I was hoping to wait to answer.  I don't want to set things in stone and then have to change them as the group gets bigger.  I'd like to sit with the group and hash out whatever rules we think fit the group.  I was thinking at the beginning, we'd select friends we already have to review, just to get a feel for how we wish to review and if there's a certain type of review we want to do or even a certain genre.  So, please, everyone, throw some ideas or questions out there, they both help.  I'll be posting a list of guildlines which I hope all the reviewers of this guild are willing to follow, and it won't be anything extravagant.  Just things like, "Only positively reinforced reviews, No trashing." or "No less than 100 words per review", you know, whatever it is that we think will help us as well as others with their artistic talents.  Hope I answered your questions.

I like your idea of a reviewers guild. There are some things that you need to consider.

1. Most of the top reviewers are also some of the top writers. The top writers have a tendency to look down upon anyone giving criticism that doesn't have the credentials to back what they are saying up. I believe that this group would be best to target writers that are either new to the Cafe and are asking for opinions and help in their profiles or are writers that do not have their top writers badge yet.

2. Since we have already agreed to rate all that we review at 100%, it creates a unique circumstance to occur. Any author that has all of their writings review by the guild and rated as such will end up getting a top writing badge regardless of their skill. Just happens to be how the system works.

3. Most writers on the cafe are broken into three catagories. One being writers that specialize on age old poety style with precise syllable count ect.ect. They would have to be reviewed by those of the guild that know and understand that type of writing. Two, Emo/Free form writers. These write from the heart, don't really care if it's got perfect form, and don't really want to get tons and tons of grammerical and spelling or word choice advice. Three, story writers. These are again another type of author that would need a sepereate style of reviewer that looks for content, story flow and discriptions, ect.ect.

4. The guild would also have to take into consideration that it's members have responsibilities outside of the cafe and guild. Whether it's work, or just spending time writing their own works. It's an issue that would have to be adressed. Perhaps a system of rotation or specific time slots, that authors know they could review in. Some members might only be able to jump on every once in a while, or be called in for certain specific things.

5. Overall I feel that you've got a great idea here. It just needs to be worked through and idea's bantered to flesh out what you want the guild to be able to do and by whom, meaning it's members.

6. One idea that comes to mind is having authors that want to have a good review that gives them good feed back submit one piece at a time by invite only. When it's done then another invite could be made.

Just some things that came to mind. :)

I'm glad that you've said something.  These were points that I wished to go over but didn't quite understand the dynamics of what I'm trying to accomplish, so didn't quite know how.

I agree that there is a certain degree of responibility that I want all the members of the guild to recognize, however I'm not quite sure how to deal with it.  There are certainly a great many genres of poetry, not to mention every other genre of writing that this site supports.  It presents an extraordinary task for a membership of only 20 people, so I was thinking that for now, we could focus a certain genre or genres of writing, utilizing teams of five that operate on different areas on different time schedules.

As for chosing who gets reviewed ... I was thinking maybe holding contests.  Feet, your idea of focusing on new writers is great.  As for the paradox of becoming a top writer by our reviewing, that's interesting.  We'll have to think out some way to get around this.

In any case, I'm really excited about this.  I really hope this can become what I eventually want it to be.  Anyway, I'm really going to need all your help to generate membership.  I don't get reviewed too often (and sadly, I don't review enough), so I can only bring so much to the table.  This is only the beginning of an idea that I was hoping we could all shape together.  Invite some friends that you know give great reviews.

Maybe we could also publish small articles in the forums about writing, and of course, feature authors and pieces.  I know, this sounds really big and like a super amount of responsibility, and it very well may be.  I wonder what kind of impact this will have on this site, if any at all.

Sorry, anyway, Let's try to address the first question.

How will we choose who gets reviewed?

Hey thanks for letting me join. I'm looking forward to this. I love reading all kinds of stuff, but I have had very little exposure to poetry of any kind. So I expect that I will be doing a lot of learning here my self.

Nature's Feet said, "2. Since we have already agreed to rate all that we review at 100%, it creates a unique circumstance to occur. Any author that has all of their writings review by the guild and rated as such will end up getting a top writing badge regardless of their skill. Just happens to be how the system works." Is this something that was discussed some where else? I don't see anything about that in this thread. The only thing close is something that was said about a 100 word count review. I'm not contesting the idea just looking for clarification.

With regard to Chris's question about how to choose who to review I suggest we each nominate some one (one of our friends?) and then we can work our way through this short list one at a time and then each nominate another individual for the next round.

Well that's my input for now.

Dianne

I am not interested in editing, really, I don't think that is the groups intention, is it?  I mean, I don't want to do grammatical/spelling corrections at all, unless asked specifically, then maybe.  Before all this other complicated how to choose who to review stuff gets swirled around,  (I admit to feeling overwhelmed by reading the latest stuff - I'm so new to the cafe!) can we figure out just what the review will entail?  Perhaps we should get to know each other as group members, what our strengths are.  How do we complement each other?  (somebody already suggested this - I like it) I would like to get a feel for what the impetus is:  So I ask you, Chris, and all group, what is our reviewing purpose?  I also confused by #2, because I haven't been around the cafe for long....haven't picked up on that stuff yet...glad someone knows it so well.....(Nature's Feet - amazing info!) 

I enjoy being reviewed if the reviewer notices stuff I didn't even know I did.  I also like to be caught in the act, I like praise for achieving a word picture that impacts just the way I intended it to impact.  Those are a couple things I would like to give back to other writers.  It seems to me there are many levels of the review.  1) The emotional response  2)  the noticing of metaphors and word combos that take reader to new places  3) the rhythm and pacing, the beat of the thing, 4) I'm sure there's much more, I am too tired to keep going on here.....interested to hear what is important to you (all) in the review process......I like hearing what other members are thinking about - thanks..... 

So, I notice we've only got 6 members so far, and you mentioned that you wanted 20...should we wait until we've got all 20 before "nominating" the people to be reviewed?

This group seems like a good idea, and I'm interested to see where it goes. If only the people who join are all actually serious about it, I think it could accomplish something.

I am eager to get right into something, feeling stupid about the last paragraph parameters, Chris.  Would you be willing to bullet out some steps for me?  It sounds like we choose a friend to review, post them here, right?  but after that, what?  We all look them up and just review ramdomly, or review all their work?  I'm just not yet clear - my bad.  Do we all look at one piece and do a multi-review?  I'm not sure how to proceed, and eager to begin.....maybe you could start it off?   If we were all gathered in a room, say, and wanted to review someone's work, I see our options as 1) all reviewing one piece, this would give superb input to the writer, plus let us get a feel for each other's strengths.... or 2) selecting one author and each of us choosing one of thier works.... which would be using our energy to accomplish more, maybe or 3) each of us choosing different writers to review......I must be dim this evening....I just don't know how to go about it yet...thanks (in advance!) for encouraging me with advice.....  When I was sniffing about trying to get a feel for what this group was about, I read through a few of your works, Chris, and did a review on "Wounded Words" if anybody is interested in checking that out.......

And yeah, I feel serious energy toward this endeavor, want to get going on it!  Nice to hear new voice on the forum!

I'm really eager to just let this thing go as well, but there are things that must be considered.  For example, as intriguing as the idea of all discussing one piece of work at the same time, it creates the task of needing to schedule a time in which each of us need to be online at a certain time.  Although this level of commitment is optimal, I really don't expect this from any of us but won't limit members of the group from doing so if they chose.

     I can understand why we're all confused about how to chose a poem or poet.  We haven't come to any conclusion yet.  So I think that, for the next few days. we should all  review each others work, until we generate enough members to really make decisive actions.  This gives us a chance for now, to generate reviews for each other, and then have an open discussion about the reviews that we received, sort of a review of the review, know what I mean?

     What makes positive reviews?  What makes negative reviews?  Are there insulting ways to make polite suggestions?  These are only examples of a few questions that we should be examining while we review the reviews we are given.

     I've also thought about how people will know it's our group that giving the review.  Should we have a cheesy catch phrase at the end of each review?  A graphic (anyone know computer design?)? An icon?  Open review (i.e. This is the Reviewers Guild, and I think blah blah blah about your poem.)?  How do we utilize this site to generate not only reviewers, but feature writers so that others know of brilliant but overlooked talent?

These are huge questions that I really don't expect to answer anytime soon.  For now, we still won't be reviewing anyone outside the group; I mean, feel free, but outside the group, you know?  Anyway, stupid business, sorry.  I'm still trying to figure out the dynamics of this site.  But I'm feeling a really great energy about this.

In summation, nothing is set in stone yet, we'll wait until more members join.

Review each others poems, then review the reviews you receive.  Try not to pull anyone outside the group into this and if you feel you have to, leave names out (we're a decent group, no finger-pointing).  Remember, just as the Cafe is helping others approve their writing talent, we should gear ourselves toward helping those who chose in bettering their reviewing skills.

Another thing I think we should do is lay out on the table what each of our interests are (in a different forum) so that we can better understand the areas we can prepare in reviewing.  We'll call it Interests.  It will list the genres that we want to review individually.  Is it short story, prose, epics, form, free form, what?

This should be interesting.