1 Review. Thats ALL?? What's up with YWS these days?

Yep, you're right Nutty! There was once a limit on how many literary works you could post. The history of work submission is a rather convoluted one...

But I'm not sure requiring points to post literary pieces necessarily works. For example, January 2011 was one of our biggest reviewing months ever. We had over 5,500 reviews in one month, and there's only two other months that ever managed to top that. Yet at that time, all literary works were free to post, although you were limited to two per day at most. I forget the review ratio that month, but it was above 4. Anything above 4 is great.

At any rate, I'm testing out a system now that allows users to post one free work every 48 hours. Works past that amount cost 150 points each. Thus far, it seems to have had no impact on the number of works submitted per day, but it does seem to have had a positive impact on reviews. That's the mix we want, so if it continues, we'll probably stick with it.

Anyhoot! Points are still around, and can be used for gifts or hoarding.

Also, things are on the upswing. Reviewing activity is up by 4 times over November, and we'll beat December's total even without a Review Day.

I was thinking incentives, not requirements o.o Like some stuff that will get people really enthusiastic about reviewing, and not reviewing just because they have to review a certain number of works to post their own stories. That way the reviews are poorly done and consist of only a few sentences.

I know there were a bunch of problems related to the greeters and instructors groups, and that they were removed with good reason. However, if there was a way to perhaps address the issues while still having the colored username (or equivalent flashy reward), then perhaps that might work. The reasoning is that people are proud creatures, and they like to be recognized for their hard work, especially in a way that lets everyone-- even strangers-- know that they've done a good job. The downside to this is that pride was exactly the problem when we did have the colored usernames. We almost work with this via the star system. The problem with the stars, however, is that people also have short attention spans, and also tend to err on the side of sloth. Stars get progressively harder to earn, so the space between rewards becomes longer and longer, to the point that when a new star is added, the event passes with little fanfare. It is an event easily missed, even by the reviewer. Wait a long time for a small, not very noticeable reward that doesn't really stand out against the crowd. Perhaps if the space between stars were the same, they might work better...? But then things would probably get crowded fast.

Anyways, back to the colors and the problem of pride.

Spoiler

To combat this, perhaps we make the name color a temporary status that resets every so often. Maybe you need to have a certain number minimum of reviews that meet a certain length in a given month. If you meet those requirements, your name could be automatically submitted, like with the old system of applying. Not sure if it was the GMs, JMs, or Admins who reviewed the applicants before, but perhaps the same group or combination could be the quality control -- skimming through the critic's reviews enough to make sure they're not cheating the system. If they're A-Okay, give them the colored name for a month or a couple weeks or whatever. Then take it away after whatever the time period is is up. Assuming they keep doing a good job, let them continue to earn the color. To protect against clique-like mentality, we could have one of the requirements be respect. If someone starts to get too high and mighty due to earning the color however many times in a row, they could have the color stripped and be banned from earning it again for a decent amount of time. The fact that the color is also a very temporary thing could also probably help with this. Another problem from before was that, once people earned their purple, they felt like now they had to review, like it was their job. When they didn't do it, they felt guilty, which made them continue to not review, avoiding the forums altogether. Again, the fact that the color would be temporary could help with that.

I'm pretty sure we'll never do colored usernames again, but the concept is still a good one. Give them something that's an obvious change when they earn it, and make it something that not everyone else has. Make it temporary, so that they feel a need to re-earn it, so they continue to keep up the good work, and also to avoid a holier-than-thou mentality from forming long enough to stick. If it does form, block them from qualifying for whatever the flashy reward is for a decent amount of time (perhaps three months for the first time, and then six months for every time after that -- long enough for the message to be clear and for a personality adjustment to take place.)

Point and review count bragging rights are some of the ultimate prizes here.

Hey LowKey! It's been a long time

The point about stars is a very good one. 100 reviews between earning stars is clearly too much.

The problem with the colored usernames is that once people earned them, they tended to stop. This wasn't true for everyone of course, but it was true for most. Plus, after we got rid of them, there was no discernible impact on reviews.

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Everyone

As I said above and as LowKey pointed out, 100 reviews between stars is a lot. But, adding more stars would be very difficult. However, what do people thinking of stars slowly appearing?

That is, right now, a new star only appears after you've done 100. But what if instead, the star slowly appeared over time? After you've done 10 reviews, 10% of the new star would be showing. At 50 reviews, half of the new star would be showing. And so on.

Something also that really did help a ton was an event Snoink did a couple years ago called "Snoink's minions." It was just a group of new members who reviewed like crazy, and they did a good job.

Along those lines, Shino and BenFranks are running a weekly review race:
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=96489

If you want to help with boosting reviews, then join in!