Forum: Editors/Reviewers Hangout

A couple of questions:

Would you give straight 10's for a story containing missing words and/or misplaced words thus spoiling the flow of words/reading?

How would you suggest a reviewer is scored/treated who states that as far as they are concerned anything that a certain author writes is outstanding?

Can't really make any comments about 'Gateway' and The Blind Man. ;-)

Perhaps there should be a rating system for the author as well as the story...

Would you give straight 10's for a story containing missing words and/or misplaced words thus spoiling the flow of words/reading?

I think from the tone of your post, you've answered your own question.

That said, I try to take a holistic approach. After most of a lifetime as a journalist, editor, corporate flak, and country newspaper publisher, what you call errors we usually called 'glitches and gremlins.' If you've ever encountered the perfect proofreader, an error-free editor, or a flawless grammarian, get out your white robes and prepare for the last days.

Cut a little slack. SOL is an amateur universe; few of us can afford professional copy editing.

So, is it a good story? Well written? Do the phrases 'sing' to you; do you want to see the next screen, the next chapter?

Yes, glitches and gremlins are like pimples and warts on Cinderella's face. Is yours perfect? So back off a bit, take a more generous attitude, and enjoy the story.

Yes, glitches and gremlins are like pimples and warts on Cinderella's face. Is yours perfect? So back off a bit, take a more generous attitude, and enjoy the story.

Why cut someone some slack on the technical quality?
If they don't get picked up for the errors they make, then why bother improving?

If the plot is only so-so, then grade it a 5, but if you still really enjoyed the story then give it a 8-10 for that Appeal.
If you can't recall any errors, then give it a 10 for Technical quality, If there are a few, then a 9, If there are quite a few, or the ones that are there significantly impact reading of the story then give them a 5.
Give each category the rating it deserves.

Why cut someone some slack on the technical quality?

I've found typos and homonym/synonym errors in dead tree books from major publishers.

Why cut someone some slack on the technical quality?

I've found typos and homonym/synonym errors in dead tree books from major publishers.
Ok.
And?

As I mentioned in my original post, if you don't notice any errors, it's worth a 10. If there are a few, or quite a few but they don't put you out of the story to any great degree then give them a 8 or 9, with even lower scores for more errors/greater impact on readability.

For someone that writes as much as you do, you are a very poor reader. Please read what i have written, and don't try to find hidden meanings or assume hidden agendas.
Take it at face value.

However, you don't write reviews for authors, instead you write them to help readers pick stories to read. Thus there's little sense dumping on a decent story, just because a novice author is struggling with the craft, or their editor is ill.

And why would someone want to read a story, no matter how great the plot or characters, if it's unreadable?
If the errors are numerous, but you're still able to enjoy the story then fine, score the Quality low and the Plot and Appeal highly. If there are only a few errors, but they significantly impact on the enjoyment of the story then score the Quality highly and the Appeal low.
How is accurately and honestly scoring the Quality low- when it is low- dumping or trashing or harrasment or flunking an Author? Seriously?

Your job as a review isn't to hold anyone accountable, you job is to help readers evaluate stories, rather than giving them a grade on their basic skills.

If the reviewer isn't meant to grade their skills, why then is there a score for Quality?
And i know i would be very unimpressed if i went to read a story that had high scores for Quality yet i'm unable to get through the first pages due to all the errors. Being accurate & honest in the score for Quality is necessary.
If someone goes in to a story knowing that the Quality isn't all that great then they can't complain about the Quality as they were forewarned, and if they don't have high expectations then the issues won't impact their enjoyment of the story as much as they would have.

Few readers care that much whether an author uses a serial comma or not, so grading them harshly on your own pet peeve is disingenuous.

And people can always check out other reviews by a particular reviewer & determine if they agree with their scores. Or maybe they can read the written part of the review, and see what it is the reviewer based their scores on?
I've seen stories with high scores for Quality, yet i found unreadable. Others marked down for Quality, yet i found the quality to be quite good.
Reviews are the opinion of the reviewer. And any scores they give will also be based on their opinions, and level of education. Just as the score readers give a story are.

If you're so eager to flunk someone's honest effort, then go back to school and get a $18,000 job harassing students.

Interesting that you consider teachers trying to teach students harassing them. I guess you'd rather let them express themselves but not correct their mistakes as that might discourage them? Of course it would make it easier for people in the future to be able to read what it they produce if their mistakes were corrected early on.

But you're deciding a few errors overrides anything else in the story isn't giving your readers a fair shake

Once again, you need to read what i post, not what you think i'm posting.
I'll say it again, because the previous times i've said it appear to have been ignored or mis-interpreted.
If a story has quite a few errors, but they don't significantly impact on the reading of the story, then score lower for the Quality but up for the Appeal. If there are only a few errors, but they significantly impact on the reading of the story, then score up for the Quality, but down on the Appeal.
Notice nothing at all being mentioned about the written part of the review.

How is honestly and accurately scoring the Quality of a story dumping on or trashing a story? Seriously?
If in the written part of the review (which hasn't been what i've been commenting on, i've been commenting on the Scores in the review but you keep bringing the written part in to it for some reason) they continually harp on about the spelling, formatting etc errors then that's dumping or trashing or harassment or flunking them. But just giving a score that accurately reflects the Quality? Seriously.

Sigh! No where did I ever suggest giving any ten scores, let alone handy them out like lollypops. However, the purpose of a review isn't to pass judgement on a story's 'technical' merits, it's to highlight stories worth reading.

Did you read what you typed there?
You say it's "not to pass judgement on it's technical merits, but to highlight stories worth reading." Yet one of the scores is for Quality. Another for Personal appeal.
Poor technical merits can adversely impact the Appeal. If there are quite a few errors, but it doesn't impact the Appeal, then you score it appropriately. The written part of the review allows the reviewer to say why they scored the way they did- be it use of the serial comma or the fact that it might have been written by someone for whom English is a second or 3rd language. If the Quality is good overall, but there are issues that significantly impact the enjoyment of the story, then score the Quality & Appeal appropriately.

it merely points out your own flaws as a human being

An you, not reading what I type but what you think I I've typed shows one of you flaws as a human being.
I've repeated myself many times in this post in the hope you'd catch one.
Once more for luck.

If there are quite a few errors in the story, but it doesn't affect greatly the readability or enjoyment, then score down on the Quality, but up on the Appeal. If there are only a few errors in the story, but they do impact on the readability, then score up on the Quality, but down on the Appeal.
See, once again, no mention of the written part of the review (till now).

Why cut someone some slack on the technical quality?

If they don't get picked up for the errors they make, then why bother improving?

For the simple reason -- and it should be obvious -- that SOL is not a professional publishing house and the review and scoring standards should reflect that fact.

Another valid point is that virtually every work posted on SOL is a 'first draft' and should be held to a less stringent standard.

Notice I say 'less stringent' and not expecting 'professional' standards.

People normally don't respond well to harsh criticism, which the tone of this thread initiated. So feedback of a helpful, encouraging nature will be much more effective in helping an amateur author improve their work. And I'd really like to say that 'gremlins and glitches' -- the typos and misspellings and homonyms and grammar errors we pounce upon like a hawk on a duckling -- they are the very SMALLEST part of the skill of crafting a well-told tale.

So, goddammit, lighten up, already.

I am and have been a professional. If I were to score, review, and judge most SOL stories as strictly and harshly as has been suggested here, damned few would rate above a "3". The average would be down around "1" or "2". And the "story review" would suggest they smash their computer, snap their pens and pencils, and donate their copy of Microsoft Word to Goodwill Enterprises.

Or, take a year and learn to write.

For the simple reason -- and it should be obvious -- that SOL is not a professional publishing house and the review and scoring standards should reflect that fact.

The review and the scores should reflect the quality of the story.
Since the reviewers aren't professionals either, there's going the be plenty of leeway there already.

Another valid point is that virtually every work posted on SOL is a 'first draft' and should be held to a less stringent standard.

If someone posts a first draft without any editing done on it, I would expect the reviewer to point that out and mark it accordingly.
If it's good, it's good; if not, it's not.

People normally don't respond well to harsh criticism, which the tone of this thread initiated.

You're the only one that's suggested anything about harsh criticism.
The other posts and my responses were mostly about the grading of Plot, Quality & Appeal, not the actual written review itself.
The Plot and Appeal scores are very much subjective, Appeal entirely so. The Quality rating will depend very much on the reviewer's own education levels.

So feedback of a helpful, encouraging nature will be much more effective in helping an amateur author improve their work. And I'd really like to say that 'gremlins and glitches' -- the typos and misspellings and homonyms and grammar errors we pounce upon like a hawk on a duckling -- they are the very SMALLEST part of the skill of crafting a well-told tale.

It doesn't matter how good the plot or characters are if all those typos, spelling errors & wrong word choices make the story unreadable.
The written review is the reviewer's own opinion on the story. It's not about comparing it to a classic piece of literature, nor a modern day best seller, nor something a pre-schooler has come up with. How they choose to describe the story is entirely up the them. And the Appeal to reader score will reflect that. The score for Plot should be much less subjective, and the Quality score should reflect accurately on the impact the spelling etc has on the story.

So, goddammit, lighten up, already.

Hey, you're the one coming on all hot & heavy.

I am and have been a professional. If I were to score, review, and judge most SOL stories as strictly and harshly as has been suggested here, damned few would rate above a "3". The average would be down around "1" or "2". And the "story review" would suggest they smash their computer, snap their pens and pencils, and donate their copy of Microsoft Word to Goodwill Enterprises.

What are you going on about?
I suggest you re-read the thread.
Other than yourself it has mostly been about the scoring reviewers give for Plot, Quality & Appeal.
Then I suggest that you might want to read some of the more highly rated & reviewed stories because many of those ones would rate up there with published works, for Plot and Quality. Appeal to reader is of course purely subjective, not only for stories here, but for ones published on paper.
You considering the majority of stories here being a 1 or 2 if considered professionally only shows your harshness when judging the work of others.

What if the errors are intentional?

For example, they could come in the diary of a semiliterate Civil War soldier, and posted as counterpoint to a much more literate 21st century person - perhaps the diary's discoverer.

In that case, the difficulty in reading would be an integral part of the story.

Such as when people spell for dialect in dialogue. In which case it's not an error.
Of course then that would depend on whether the reviewer interprets the mis-spelling as being part of the story or as errors.

Yaaay Graybird! If the storytelling is great, I can and do overlook the glitches.

I was going to make a similar comment about adjusting reviewer scores. If a reviewer's 10/10/10 got knocked down to 7's because they always give a 10, they'll just lower their average by looking for other stories they could give 6's to.

If I were a reviewer (I'm not, because I can't write), and I gave a story a 10, only to see a machine change the score I gave it, I'd simply stop reviewing. If a machine wants to change the score, let the machine do the reviewing.

Problems:

1 Remove the numerical scoring system and just leave them as written reviews.

The problem there is that while roughly 1% of readers give a score, only roughly 1% of that number do a review - so reader guidance will be very thin on the ground. The 'old' scoring system (which I never saw) apparently had the same three-element format as reviews have, but was simplified because readers weren't using it properly.

2 Reviews can only be made after the completion of a story. How can one carry out a review of a story after, say, a couple of chapters when that story then lasts over fifty chapters.

Reviews can presently be made before a story has completed posting, but obviously they are less relevant. Scores are adjusted as posting progresses and readers award new scores so giving a reasonable idea of the popularity of an in-progress story; without them, you'd have to look at downloads only to get the popularity for an in-progress story
ETA: The biggest problems I can see with forcing a review-only evaluation is that
a: It forces the users to think - a big no-no in user interface design
b: Readers will not use the reviews to select stories - it's easy to glance at a numeric score, but actually reading a review requires effort possibly similar to reading the story itself
c: It's pretty ridiculous to use or even have a review for some of the flash-sized pieces and poems

I had thought of a different scoring scheme which addresses some of the most serious shortcomings of the present scheme (requiring a reader to make a subjective choice involving thinking, the score inflation that the present score adjustment calculation addresses, authors complaining about scores not matching their own calculations due to not understanding the score adjustment, and 'fanbois' and 'unibombers') where readers were offered only a liked/disliked scoring option, but the score applied by a reader vote was modified by how they typically score stories, and a multichapter story which gets fewer downloads of later chapters than early ones gets a downtick in the score - multiposting stories could also look at how the vote distribution changes with updates. It could be run in parallel with the present scheme (using a threshold or two; high scores=like, low=dislike, middle=didn't vote) and kept hidden to allow it to be calibrated against the current scheme (or even just evaluated), until ready for prime time. A chunk of work, but Lazeez might decide it's worth doing to reduce the bitching about scores.

Just before anyone else jumps in let me clarify.

I'm talking just about reviews and the part of the reviews that has a score system. I am NOT talking about the scoring system that readers can input against each story.

I'm talking just about reviews and the part of the reviews that has a score system.

And removing or changing it wouldn't make things better, only worse.

I am NOT talking about the scoring system that readers can input against each story.

- but you said:

Remove the numerical scoring system

Ah, you mean the review-only three-element scores - that pretty much invalidates my reply above. I was going to say it doesn't matter to me either way, but on refection it might be useful to reduce the reviews with little meat, which consist largely of 'this is my scoring scheme' (as if there is always exactly one excellent story per month).

ETA: In case you didn't follow that, I've changed from 'But...' to 'I agree'

PS, from your nym, do you perchance ride a motor-tricycle and hail from Yorkshire?

PS, from your nym, do you perchance ride a motor-tricycle and hail from Yorkshire?

Alas, no longer. The last trike was sold a couple of years ago. Just watching the tour de Yorkshire at the moment. ;-) God's Own County

PS. And, before anyone asks, I'm not willing to proofread any Yorkshire dialect. :-)

Tha' no care, du tha?

Is that Scottish or outback aussie ;-)

Ya wish. It was me pointing out some of us have been exposed to it.

Reminds me of when my teens I was visiting a farmer friend in Upper Wharfedale. We met an old man who rebuilt the dry stone walls and the farmer had to translate for me. When I mentioned afterwards that I didn't understand one word, the farmer pointed out that he lived there and he could barely understand the man. This man could look at a wall and tell you who had built it or repaired it for up to four hundred years before. He could also repair a wall such that you wouldn't see any repair.

.For translation you might need a 'nordmann'. My soninlaw got posted there and brought down a Yorkshire -English dictionary. On random pair of pages one third of the words were mis-pronounced English but I found all the rest had the same English translations as my Norwegian dictionary. Not surprising given the Viking invasions of that area. The main street in York is called .Kirkgate. (Kirke is a church, Gate is a street). Lots of other northcountry words have similar background - fell (hill) from fjell for example

True, even in these days you have places like Troller's Gill and local folklore about Nordic trolls that live in there.

This thread is starting to sound like an authors cooperative in an epic tale through time about Yorkshire.

I'm glad you left the s out of tyske otherwise you would be leftover from the Hanseatic traders. ;-)

1 Why have a scoring system? Why not just the descriptive dialog of the review.

2 Who monitors for updates?

3 Even the Internet doesn't reach that far.

1 Why have a scoring system? Why not just the descriptive dialog of the review.

Because the scores make it easy at a glance to see what the reviewer thought of the story.
The written part lets you see what they based those judgments on.

EDIT-
I guess the reason I like the scores is that on the few reviews i've read where what was written didn't really match up with the scores, I found the scores a more accurate indicator.

where what was written didn't really match up with the scores, I found the scores a more accurate indicator.

Or, vice versa?

#2 The reviewer. I'm suggesting it's the responsibility of anyone reviewing an 'ongoing story' that they'll need to update it if the story changes substantially, at the risk of looking bad if the story tanks later on.

I've actually sent a message to a reviewer who submitted their review around chapter 5 of a story that's now approaching 70 chapters asking if they were going to update their review at the end of the story. Result = no reply.

#3 was a joke, not a requirement.

My reply due to Yorkshire humour. I understand that the underlying problem is the range of Wi-Fi at the moment. ;-)

Incidentally he seems to allow one perhaps two spelling errors per chapter before penalising. A good review example.

Incidentally? I stopped reading the reviews on SoL when I noticed how many of them focus on grammar and spelling and how little they otherwise have to say about the stories they reviewed.

how many of them focus on grammar and spelling

One of the three review scores is Technical Quality. If that isn't about grammar and spelling, what is it about? The other scores are for Plot and Appeal. I suppose a grammar Nazi reviewer could comment on grammar when discussing Appeal, but I think they would be wrong. Most reviews have at least one sentence about each of the scores. If any score is low, perhaps more than one is needed to explain why the reviewer feels that way, or to warn potential readers if there might be an issue for some readers. The ones with high scores for Technical don't seem to focus on grammar and spelling, at least the ones I have read don't. In fact most reviews are mostly about Plot and Appeal.

One of the three review scores is Technical Quality. If that isn't about grammar and spelling, what is it about?

If the technical quality of a story is defined by grammar and orthography it doesn't deserve a score. If grammar and spelling are shit, just say so. If the story is barely readable, warn the readers. Otherwise, it's not worth mentioning.

Choice of words, sentence flow, style (showing vs telling for example), point of view; those are things I'd expect to be discussed regarding the technical quality of a story, not missing commas and spelling mistakes.

No reader reads a review to be told the obvious (ex: "This author can't spell worth shit!").

If you haven't read the tory, how is it going to be obvious? Commenting that a story is or isn't readable isn't being pedantic.
The fact is if the person can't spell, make use of reasonable length sentences and paragraphs then most people aren't going to expend the effort required trying to read it, no matter how good the story itself might be.

If an author can't spell or doesn't understand basic grammar, it'll be obvious in the basic story description and in the very first paragraphs.

That isn't always the case.

What I'm afraid of, in reviews that focus on grammar, is that the reviewer fill ONLY focus on style choices, rather than the actual grammar, and then it becomes a war between the reviewer and whichever author he targets at the time.

I have yet to come across a review like that.
Of all the ones I've checked out, where mention has been made of the spelling or grammar (either good or bad), they've also made mention of the story itself- plot, characters etc.
Although I recently came across a review where the reviewer marked Technical Quality based on the technology in the story, not the technical quality of the story itself.

I'd rather pick my own battles, thank you, rather than having anonymous reviewers fight their own personal battles on my time! Just tell me if the story is any good or not, point out the good and the bad, but don't lecture me about something beyond my control as a reader.

I've yet to find an anonymous reviewer here, and as a reader I like to know why a reviewer likes or dislikes a story. If it's because of the grammar & spelling then I want to know that, and why they have the opinion they do.