1. Sclavus

    Sclavus Active Member

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    Suggestion Critique Counter Suggestion

    Discussion in 'Support & Feedback' started by Sclavus, Sep 11, 2017.

    I looked for commentary on this and couldn't find it, so if I missed it, mea culpa.

    Could we get a feature in our account summary or somewhere similar to tell us how many good critiques we've given? My concern is that I'll post something to be critiqued, only to be told I haven't posted enough critiques beforehand.

    I realize "good critique" is approved manually, so I realize there may be a logistical issue with such a tracking system, but I envision it as something like:

    Good Critiques: 3
    Posted for Critique: 1
    You need 1 more good critiques to submit another excerpt for critique.

    Would something like that be feasible?
     
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  2. izzybot

    izzybot (unspecified) Contributor

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    I took the caveman route and just keep my own running tally of how many crits I've done. I don't actually know how many would've been logged as 'good', though ...
     
  3. Sclavus

    Sclavus Active Member

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    Well, by "good" I mean sufficient to meet the criteria outlined in the rules. I've seen some "critique" here that was essentially, "ur stories was gud" or "dis sucked," and I can't imagine that qualifies as sufficient to allow someone to post work for critique.
     
  4. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    I feel like asking anyone to judge "good" or "bad" would be an unrealistic demand.

    But if I pretend that an automated search can be done, what about a search that:

    - Finds all threads in the review room
    - That you didn't start
    - That you did participated in
    - And shows your first post in reach thread

    That would make it fairly easy for the individual to walk through and refresh their memory as to which threads they actually wrote a review for.

    Just today I saw that there's a link to show the threads that an individual has started in the Review Room, but now I can't find it.
     
  5. Sclavus

    Sclavus Active Member

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    Yet reviews must be considered constructive. The rules state that members have to post two constructive critiques for every piece they want to offer for critique. I'm only asking whether there's a way for us to see where we stand. If you post a piece to be critiqued but haven't offered two constructive critiques, your work will be deleted. It follows that mods already have to tally your constructive critiques and the number of pieces you've posted for critique.

    Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like somebody who oversees that kind of thing has some idea of where members are in regard to those tallies. I'm just wondering if we could have a feature that shows us at a glance instead of having to do complicated searches and guesswork.
     
  6. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    I think "constructive" is just a way to say boosting your post count with things like, "I liked it" or "It's good" et cetera, is not considered critique, it's considered post count padding.
     
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  7. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    Or, when I post to say, "No, that's not passive voice," that's participation in the critique thread, but it's not a critique.
     
  8. Sclavus

    Sclavus Active Member

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    I understand what constructive critique is. I'm asking for a feature that keeps track of the ratio of constructive critiques to posts submitted for critique, so members can know whether they're okay to submit something for critique, or if they need to post more critiques.

    Does that make sense?
     
  9. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    I assume there would be a way for the forum's software to keep track of how many critique threads you've made comments on (might be a good idea) but I can't think of one that would separate out the 'constructive' critiques from the others. Unless that's based strictly on word count.

    Surely each person must know whether or not they've kept up with their count. If they're constantly putting things up for critique, they'll be aware of it, and know they need to step up their output of constructive critiques as well. And so should the rest of us. If we see somebody whom we're pretty sure is overwhelming the forum with workshop entries and hasn't been seen much in the critique section, we can alert one of the mods, who can then check and deal with the situation appropriately.

    I suspect the majority of us do a lot more critiquing than we do posting in the workshops. I reckon it's only the occasional maverick who will slip through the net.

    It's actually easy to check, even at the moment. Here's how:

    Your profile page will tell you how many workshop entries you've made.

    If you go to the section (mine is Novels) where you make the most critique contributions, you'll be able to see a thumbnail of your avatar against every workshop piece you've critiqued.

    I just checked mine. My profile page confirms that since I joined in March of 2013, I've made 7 Workshop entries.

    The Novels section confirms that since 30 May 2017, I've made 16 critiques.

    So I'm good to go. In fact, I'm way ahead of myself. I only checked the last two pages of the Novels section. I've been giving critiques since I first joined.
     
    Last edited: Sep 12, 2017
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  10. Sclavus

    Sclavus Active Member

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    Thank you, @jannert. That seems simple enough.
     
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  11. Tenderiser

    Tenderiser Not a man or BayView

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    I get around this by making sure I critique WAY more than I ask for critique. Win win. :D
     
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  12. Komposten

    Komposten Insanitary pile of rotten fruit Contributor

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    This particular thing has been in discussion in the dev team before. Essentially, there are three possible solutions:
    1) Automate it: Would require a fairly specific set of criteria to be filled by potential posts. However, it would pick up both false positives and false negatives. It would also (potentially) force members to use a format they don't like.
    2) Let the Staff do it: That's a lot of work, even if someone was designated to do tbat, and only that (which would probably be boring, especially since there would be no payments involved). For more than one person to do this at once, it would either require a software add-on so posts can be marked as crits, or some external system to keep track of which posts have been checked, etc.
    3) Let the community do it: This could work by letting members mark posts in the Workshop as "Constructive critique", and if enough members do this the member is given a "critique credit". Downsides with this are that it can be abused if the limit is too low (friends helping each other), or it would require a lot of members to read every crit (so we can set a limit high enough to avoid the previously mentioned cheat-problem); and we would need a custom add-on.
    Having a crit-counter for each member would be wonderful, because it would give a very simple and automatic way of enforcing the 2-for-1 rule. However, due to the above mentioned problems, we have never come to a really good solution and thus put the idea on hold.

    Currently, what I do to see if members have obeyed the rule is to go to Search -> More. Click "Threads and posts", write the member's names in "Posted by member", tell it to "Search in Forums: The Writing Workshop", and check "Display results as threads". This will give you a list of all threads in the workshop that the member has posted in (including threads the member created themselves).
     
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  13. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    That - I'm probably about 30 plus to nil on the goodside - I can't imagine I'm ever going to drop down to 2:1

    the other thing is that as far as I'm aware the policing of this is also manual and relies either on the mods noticing someone isn't complying , or on a member noticing and bringing it to mod attention. This means that for usual members who don't tear the arse out of it the likelihood is nothing will happen even if you are slightly delinquent... because a) no one is likely to notice and b) even if they do the mods are sensible human beings (apart from minstrel who is a sensible squirrel :D) and aren't going to make a big deal out of someone who's posted 10 pieces in the workshop but has 'only' given 19 critiques.

    If on the other hand you've posted say 36 pieces in the workshop but have only given two critiques then you can probably expect to lose thread starting privileges until you've posted another 70 worthwhile critiques, and for an eye to be kept non how worthwhile your critique posts are
     
  14. xanadu

    xanadu Contributor Contributor

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    Very much this. Might make me a bit of a broken record to reiterate, but critiquing is often more valuable than being critiqued. Go read critiques. Then do some yourself. You'll learn so much and, by the time you're done, have stacked up a bunch of crits you can cash in later.
     

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