The Review Club Forum Late reviews

Hey everyone,

We're noticing a bunch of reviews come in late. Now were not going to point fingers, but we just want to know why? What isn't working for you? How could we improve the system?

The Admins

What do you mean by late reviews? Past the deadline? I had to a couple weeks ago, because of going out of town. I hope no one minded.

Ok none of this is directed at any one person. Just to let people know. But we'd rather not wait until it does become an issue. That's why we did this.

Now some ideas that have been tossed around
- expanding out the deadline (perhaps we could combine both weeks into a two week period)
- having less reviews during the week (although this would cut down on the number of reviews that people get)

Or whatever might work for you. Please let us know.

The system works fine for me. If anything, I'm anxious to get input so doing more reviews and getting feedback everyweek instead of every other week would be what I want. But I know not everyone has the time to do that, so I can be patient.

I'm at work so I'll probably make some suggestions and share some Ideas later on. But when I started I though we would review one week and be reviewed the next. So there would only be reviews once every other week to do. But then I saw nope it is an every week deal on reviews. It is not a big deal to me since I get such great reviews from people but I do know it is hard to find the creative time to review and then work on your own writing. So that is my suggestion one week on and one week off. One week we post and one week we review. Quality and not quantity.


PS Fun suggestion: We need to do one of those rolling story threads too. Where each person writes 100 to 150 words at a time. The next person has the right to do a little editing of the previous post if needed too. Saw it on Stephen king forums and it looked fun.

I'm with Anthony here. That was my impression. I find that if we focus on quality of reviews that would be best; I'm finding the quality of my reviews suffering a bit. I go over reads a 1/2 dozen times before reviewing but I don't think I'm doing the best reviews I could. Maybe that might be better. I predict there's going to be an issue as we slip into summer.

Rob

Quote:

I'm with Kim in thinking the pace is perfect. I'd rather read, and have read, as much material in the briefest time possible.

Assuming the majority like the present pace, I would suggest that those who find the pace too quick take off two weeks at a time, that is one full round. And those who do like the pace continue as we have, so that in those rounds where there are fewer participants we will simply have fewer reviews to give and will receive fewer. Also, the addition of a few more members would likely lift the participation even when others are taking off their two week stints.

I can't imagine that cutting the number of reviews in half is going to increase review quality by even ten percent. I know what I know about a story with first impression and then another careful going over, and the hours I put into reviewing will not increase at all no matter how much time I'm given.

Paying readers are only going to read it once. Thus, my first reading is as if I were a paying reader. That is probably the most important read to the author, cause if it doesn't work one time through, then it isn't ready.

I color code as I go the first time, then address the problems and delights the second time through and most times that is the end of the review.