Review Cycles

Cut to the chase? See "The Proposal".
The Problem:
Here I discuss why the Green Room is essential and awesome, but not a full solution.

Spoiler

Recently I've noticed that it's consistently been 300 points to publish. Now that's a good thing, seeing that the max is 500. In the green room, there's pretty consistently about a total of 45 works at any given moment (Majority with 1 review! ; Good thing).

But, previously I've noticed that I only ever get about 2 reviews per work. Now that's helpful, surely, but shouldn't the ambitious writer expect a higher turnover (because reviews are profit for the brain! ;D)?

Most pieces that reach the front page only even have 2 reviews, with the majority being comments (And at two reviews, it's no longer in the green room). The green room is great because it works to ensure we get reviews. Okay, the green room could be expanded to say x reviews, but now the main list get's longer, with more tabs to sort through.

Plus, the more reviews a work needs to be pushed from the green room, the longer it stays in there. The longer it stays in there, the faster the list grows, and the slower the works with no reviews get reviews.

Neither does the green room ensure we get good reviews, nor plentiful reviews. The green room's effectiveness will also decrease as number of reviews required increases.

The Proposal:
So the green room is AWESOME at what it does (ensuring we get reviews). But it should not be the only way we review. I propose "Review Cycles." It would be like a kind of perpetual review day.

The idea is that we split up into groups in "ordinary time." Each group consists of two teams, A and B. A Cycle could be, say, a week. In the first Cycle, team A posts, and team B reviews. I think you can see where I'm going: On week 2 / Cycle 2, team B posts, and team A reviews.

Review Cycles would be a club. When members join, they are assigned to the team with the least members. When a member posts a work, they can submit it to the club ("Featured Works"). Only the current posting team is allowed to have "Featured Works." The non-reviewing team's job, although individual members do not have quotas, is to make sure EVERY, and I mean EVERY, Featured Work has target reviews, T. I think 5 would be a good number.

Review Cycles would not, and should not, be mandatory (not like we can really enforce it, anyways). If you post a work during your review cycle, it just won't be added to the current featured works.

We could also use the club to formalize reviews, if that's your thing, and to discuss what "is" a review? Only if you think reviews are a science, of course. (Like should every review talk about the purpose, theme, spelling and grammar, etc? Are quote and comment reviews good?)

In Short:

Spoiler

We have a Review Cycles group, split into two teams. One team reviews, while the other posts. The goal is to guarantee each posted work has 5 reviews. After a week, a "cycle", the jobs switch, so if team B was posting, now they're reviewing.

There are no quotas for reviewers, and no limitations or flaming if they post work during their review cycle (it just won't be featured).

Devils Advocate:

So what are the ramifications of such a system?

-How would it affect your writing time? (You can still write in a review cycle )
-How many reviews can you do in a week?
-How would it affect YWS if a lot of people participate?
-What would review day be like if every work already had 5 reviews?
-Would it be good or bad for YWS?
-Would it affect traffic stats?
-Do featured works have length limits?
-Who can post a work? What if there's 30 works, and 5 members?
-What if you don't review then post ten works next week?

Please post your feedback and comments, thoughts and suggestions!
--SK15

Ah, so I went ahead and created a club, what with all these likes. Tell your friends!

Also, I need some help with the about page. I want to make it as concise as possible. If anyone has any interest in helping moderate the club, let me know!

I think we can use the club forum to keep people posted on the current featured works. Somewhere we also need to keep a list of who's on what team, and what the current cycle is. I also want to make it clear that *all* your works don't have to/shouldn't be submitted to the club, only the ones you REALLY love, just to make sure everyone can get reviews.

The term "featured works" is also confusing with YWS' featured works, and "submitting" and "uploading" "works" with publishing pieces to YWS.

Here's the link to the club:
clubs/1724

I called it "Review Cycles Alpha" so someone else can eventually start and run their own spinoffs if it gets to be too big (or one club dies).