Young Writers Society

For the past few days, the moderators (mods + JMs) have been discussing a possible change I proposed in the way your stories & poems are posted.

Currently, when you post a piece, it doesn't cost anything and you get 50 points. However, even though it doesn't cost anything to post a piece, it's expected that you write two reviews for every work of yours you post.

Most of the time, the system works great and everyone who has been here for at least a month generally follows it. However, problems arise when new members join and aren't aware of the rules. Most people who join assume YWS works much like Writing.com when the two systems are really quite different. Writing.com encourages you to upload your entire portfolio online all at once. However, YWS is geared toward getting specific help on specific works, and if you post all your work at once, then it always comes at the expense of others' work.

To solve this issue, I want to go ahead and make it such that you have to pay 150 points to post your work. Since you'll still get that 50 points for posting your work, the real cost comes only to 100 points. That isn't much when you consider that two reviews of around 200 words each will get you 100 points, and you're supposed to write two reviews for every work you post anyways.

Also, points every two weeks will be reset to 300 instead of 500. That gives you three freebies.

In a nutshell, here is the plan:
- Only in the Literary Forums
- Each work you post will cost 150 points
- You still get that 50 points for posting your work
- Real cost is 100 points
- Points reset to 300 every two weeks

I still have not decided whether to implement or not, so comment is appreciated.

I forsee two problems:

1) New members not able to work out why they're unable to post up their work.

2) People 'padding' in their reviews to get the full 50 points.

I get this padding sometimes on Writing.com - I have an auto-reward of around 200GP for everyone who gives me a review of 250 or more characters, and I've noticed some reviewers adding in useless information or just rambling on to get the auto-reward. I noticed this on Urbis.com as well, where you get points for how long your review is to spend on 'unlocking' the reviews you've recieved for your stories.

YWS hasn't had any such padding of reviews here, simply because points aren't all that important.

While the problems pointed out are a possiblity, if the new members read the rules (which should be the first thing one does -before- joining a site), then they'll know why they can't post. By resetting the points to 300 each week, it allows people to still post their work without making the points -too- big of a deal. So, padding may or may not be an issue. It would be something mods may have to watch out for.. but.. Over all, I see more advantages than disadvantages or problems.

You could implement it on a trial basis and see how it goes. If the aforementioned problems arise and can't be easily dealt with, then you could change it back to how it is now.

~Rea

Sureal--

People do that now...pointless reviews. It's part of what we're actually trying to avoid...the spam reviews! Though I do see your point!

I agree with Sureal...making people pay to post their work might just result in people making cruddy critiques just so they can post loads of work at once anyway.

Perhaps we should have a different system...maybe not allow people to post more than one thing per day, you know, just cut it off after one new piece is posted.

As Reakeda said, a trial run sounds like a good idea.

But they would be able to post their work at once anyway; the three hundred points you start with would allow for posting of two literary works. This system would just limit how much someone could post at one time, especially before critiquing.

Well, here's my idea. People can only normally post one story per day but there will be minimum points for it, say 30. Critics will have no automatic points at first. Mods or a new team group will be the one to decide how many points a critic will get based on how good the critics were. Posting a new story or poem will cost about 30. New members will get about 60 points at first to start with. Those with more points can post more but since the points are limited they won't be able to post that much. Well at least it's better than many people posting many works at once and for people to be encouraged to write good critics and stories since the points are limited. The only problem is there will be a lot of people needed to go and read the critics.

Acoustic: And frankly, we don't have the man-power, lol.

Yea, we do wayyy too many crits a day for people to read every crit. Plus rating systems would differ from person to person so it wouldn't really be fair (even with a set rule system to rating, morals change the grade).

Acoustic, keep thinking, but no.

Maybe there's a way to fiddle with the points so that you have to write two full-length reviews before you can post your work?

I mean, I'm all in favour of this idea. I just think that there's still plenty of ways around it (the whole padding critiques thing will always be a major problem no matter what). I think if it's possible to have some kind of system in place where it forces you to have a 2:1 crit-work ratio. Like, some kind of thingy (this web programming stuff is so not my enchilada) that won't let you post your first piece until you have a minimum of two reviews, and then continues to keep that balance in check. Or maybe it could go with the points- like, keep the pay-to-post policy out of the Community forums so that people can still interact there, but start off with 0 points and keep critiques worth a maximum of 50, and make it cost 100 points to start a new thread in the Literary forums. That would ensure that at least 2 critiques would have to be done in order to post some work.

And then there's people (like me) who start one thread for one story and keep adding to it...

Bah. I'm just making things up. But yeah, I'm all for the proposed changes. Just putting in my two cents. *stops trying to be highly computer savvy*

Razo ->> What you said is exactly what the proposed system does but said in another way.

...Er, like I said, I have no idea what I'm talking about. =D [/clueless]

if the new members read the rules (which should be the first thing one does -before- joining a site), then they'll know why they can't post.

Haha, if they did that I don't think the rule would be purposed.

Even if it causes a sudden amount of spamming (which I kind of don't see it doing, only because they have 3 freebies. *crosses fingers*) we can take care of that as we do already, like Via pointed out. A web forum is nearly like gov't; it is either one thing, or the other, and never Utopian. ^_^

It is something to try and if it fails horribly, well then, we were all silly geese, weren't we?

I think that if posts in the Lit forms actually cost, not as mnay people will bother, herefore there'll be less work to critique and the whole system destroys itself.