Young Writers Society

It used to be that Review Days regularly hit in the 600s, and often in the 700s. However, I feel like the last several Review Days have been rather mundane, and the last two haven't had enough activity to clean out the Green Room either.

This has actually happened a couple times in the past. Review Days / Weekends go back to 2008, though they weren't always monthly. Inevitably, it gets a bit stale and we need to change things up to make it more interesting.

Off the top of my head, here are a few ideas to add some pep back to Review Day:
- Ban the losing team from YWS
- Institute mandatory floggings until review numbers go up
- Give out $5 for every 50 words



Real ideas:
- Create your own teams. There'd have to be a minimum number of people (maybe 10?), but the winning team would be decided upon a mix of number of reviews and the average number of points per review. New members (those who've joined in the previous month) would all be included in their own team with a couple JMs as their captains.

- Go back to four teams instead of just two.

- More themes. We do this every now and then, but not a lot. The last big theme we did was the Poke-Review Day in July 2014, and that went well.

- Increase the number of points you can earn on Review Day (once upon a time, you could earn twice as much on Review Days)

- Get rid of it altogether. When we first started it, there were a ton of works that went without at least 2 reviews (hundreds per month). Nowadays, that's just not a problem anymore.

- Change up the site's colors just for Review Day.

- Just keep on truckin' and change nuthin'. It may well be that the current state of affairs is perfectly okay.


These are all just some ideas. Feel free to add your own and/or comment on any of the above.

I don't think we should get rid of review day! But I think it would be good to have four teams, spread out the good and not so good reviewers, that way not all the good reviewers are on the same team

I like the idea of creating your own teams...

I don't think it's so much that it's getting stale, but more of a review burnout in some cases- and I think it will pick up again soon.

But I do like the create your own teams, or just the four teams ideas. I can't seem to think of any suggestions. XD

I like the picking teams idea.. could spice the playing field or something.

What if the winning team got to pick the color of YWS for the next review day? I dunno. Adds some stakes.

I would say to change up the colors/themes on the YWS website and then also what if we encouraged everyone with some kind of sparkling new trophy? The idea of four teams didn't really sound good my opinion, because two is a nice practical number. Picking your own teams sounds very unfair.
I think that you should continue to do it every month, because for me, this is my favorite holiday ever!
Just some suggestions!

I don't agree creating your own team, which involves selecting your own team members. Picking team members that favor you seems like a good effort of team building, but it also means others who are not selected would have to review alone. The current system of picking your team members seems fine enough. At the end at the day, I believe Review Day encourages all members - not teams - to review.

Changing the colour on YWS website seems like a good way to show people that it's review day, a day that encourages people to review more than write (since you can't post your pieces).

Just a quick note to say that I'm really liking the discussion so far. Lots of great points.

Hmm, I want to go with the mandatory floggings.

Fight to the death. Other than that, I like what has been suggested so far.

How about rewarding top 10 reviewers with 2 free reviews to any work of their choice?

I haven't participated in Review Day in quite a while because weekends are kind of family time for us. >.> However! If I was an obsessed teenager who was avoiding my family to spend it on the computer...

DivineFool wrote:How about rewarding top 10 reviewers with 2 free reviews to any work of their choice?

I think that might be difficult because you have to ask, "Who is going to give the reviews?"

I don't like the idea of creating your own teams because then there might be some favoritism involved. >.>

Go back to four teams instead of just two.

Maybe this will be good for a switch up, but not a permanent thing? Like, you can switch back to two teams. Or three teams. So, this wouldn't be set in stone.

Increase the number of points you can earn on Review Day (once upon a time, you could earn twice as much on Review Days)

I like it.

Change up the site's colors just for Review Day.

Yeah!

What if the winning team got to pick the color of YWS for the next review day? I dunno. Adds some stakes.

That would be fun!

I would say to change up the colors/themes on the YWS website and then also what if we encouraged everyone with some kind of sparkling new trophy?

If you do have themes, which sounds pretty fun, make sure the sparkling new trophy reflects that! This sounds fun.

I really like the idea that Snoink brought up of having a variable number of teams, if it's possible. Like, switch between 2, 3, and 4 teams in some random order just so there's a bit more variety.

I'm also a big yes for the themes (themes are always exciting!), because they'll mean there's often something new about Review Day.

I'd like to be a yes for creating your own teams, but—due to reasons others have already brought up (favoritism, being left out)—I'm iffy on it. Situations like that could lead to a lot of sourness between friends and acquaintances.

Other than that, I'm in the vague neutral area for the rest of what's been given, so I'll give it a tentative thumbs up for now.

I would be tempted to make them bimonthly and have more advertisements.

Also, goal setting. I think having "WE NEED THREE HUNDRED MORE REVIEWS" in the banner is inspiring.