How can we spice up Review Day?

Two words:

Cash prize.

well- honesty is kind-of my thing so I will just say it.

Review day is when YWS encourages people to write horribly fast reviews that contain a lot of words. To be rewarded means 1. you shouldn't be concise and 2. you should rush. In one instance to be concise means that you don't get as many points and you waste time on correctness and precision. In the other instance when you look for criticisms and real examples and analysis you will lose because other people will not do the same. You do not get as many stars, points and if it matters to you, you would probably weigh down the team to write good reviews. You get the same amount of points if you quote the entire thing and give a couple of sentences about how good you think it was then to provide an entire essay of great things the writer can improve on. For the sake of the community you should probably do it but for the sake of integrity you probably shouldn't. Some of the better writers here won't do review day because of what it stands for.

In the past I have been spammed with people for review day, it becomes about winning/losing a meaningless battle rather then having reviews that mean anything at all. That is kind-of the communities fault. Not ALL of the community but some of the community and that is all it takes.

So if you want some of us to participate you have to change the system;

1. On review day have a rating system of stars or points based on feedback of a team of GOOD reviewers that are a third party. Perhaps, there will be guidelines on the reviews and points; as in 1 point if no constructive criticisms, 2 points if only one constructive criticisms ect. The team can nominate themselves and the community can vote. At the end each score is totaled and whoever has more points as in more feedback wins.

WHY THIS HELPS?

The problem is not only people get two or less reviews, it's that the reviews usually mean nothing at all. I would be happy with one review that was sincere over two or even fifty reviews that don't help me at all. Also, I would participate once again and so would some other people and maybe that would make more reviews on review day.


Just saying.

I support the banning, the flogging and the double-point giving. I'd always be up for doubling my profits.

Banning the losing team would be so awesome xD .

Why, with just some chilli powder, garam masala, turmeric and star anise of course.

Spoiler

We're going to have more participation soon anyway- remember, there are quite a few YWSers getting out of school for the summer. It's harder to get the reviewing done when there are five billion other things you need to do and the weekend's the only time to do them.

A suggestion that just came up in a chat discussion while we were talking about the preset names—that is, the names given the teams before they have real names:

Instead of using colors or even letters, why not use "blank" symbols (if it's possible), like •, ◘, ○, or ◙? Or even just blank punctuation combinations such as [], (), or {}? That way, they wouldn't hold a connotation that the team name "should" revolve around the original symbol.

People can get attached to the idea of their team's color, or they can get attached to their team's letter, and I think that by making the preset names "blanker", it could help stimulate more creativity when it comes to picking a team name and theme.

Haha @Arkhaion, I like that. I thought Y, W, and S would be so generic as to deter people from choosing names based on them, but alas...

I was thinking that instead of doing already created review teams, I was thinking about making review day more challenging and relying on teamwork.

We can have small groups of people, about 5-10 people in each group create their own review team. That team can create their own club, with the captain, banner, and avvie, just as every other review day is like. The participating groups can PM @Nate about their team and to put them in the review day.

Sorry if someone has already suggested this, but I think everyone in the winning team should be granted a perk for a month. It could be double points on reviews, rainbow-coloured usernames, or crowns/trophies instead of stars. Maybe the members of the winning team get to publish one work for free, or they get 50% off for the month. Some sort of perk would probably motivate us more.

Spoiler

Of course, we don't want people joining teams and doing nothing on review day. So maybe you have to write 2 or 3 reviews before you can get the perks.

Dracula wrote:Maybe the members of the winning team get to publish one work for free

This is a really good idea; I like it a lot.

I was thinking, that maybe everyone could get their own goal. so, if you do a lot of reviews....your goal is higher than someone who's bad at it or new.

Imagine picking your own goal as you click the join a review team! button. And everytime you do another review, it reminds you of how many points you still need. I know you can do this own your own but, wouldn't it be more fun this way. Other members could see how long you still have to go and everything....just a small idea.

Heads up! There will be some changes to the next Review Day, incorporating the feedback above.

Names: I should've known that Gamma, Zeta, and Phi wouldn't work! So, the names will next be based on @Arkhaion's comment above: meaningless symbols.

Winning Team Members Get 200 Points: This goes along with @Dracula's idea. The members of the winning team will each receive 200 points, or enough for 1 free work. As with badges though, you only get the points if you write at least 1 review.

I think we should get to pick what team we want to be on (before review day)

I missed most of this discussion, unfortunately, but:

You could go by the number of characters typed, but the top typers tend to be the top typers because they quoted large sections of the work.

Wasn't this problem solved in calculating review points? Where quoted parts of the text are no longer considered to have been "typed"?