Not sure what other Forum to place this in. If the Moderators feel it's better placed elsewhere, please feel free to move it.

I'm losing faith in YouWriteOn. After joining with high hopes in November, I've found the experience to be less than I hoped for.

The last couple of reviewers have rated me solid 0s and 1s -- I mean, really? -- and I've found almost nothing of use in what they offered. To be a part of a peer review site is to hopefully gain from their input, not be at the behest of them rating you abysmally low just for kicks.

Do people consistently down-rate others -- to rate someone 0s or 1s is to basically say they can't write a cogent, comprehensible sentence -- in order to drag down the person's overall rating? Or ... I just don't know.

May decide to chuck this site altogether and take advantage of the other peer review sites I'm involved with which offer me more constructive feedback.

I'm at a loss for what to do.

Hi ccpup

Sorry to hear of your experiences. I think in general with review sites they can be both useful for development but also have their rough spots. Most people we find are constructive, a minority may not be, and I think as review sites are always populated by a diverse range of people this will tend to be the case wherever a person chooses to gets their reviews from. Whether that be constructive reviews, negative reviews, or sites that rely on popularity and therefore a tendency to gloss over any points of development a story may need. Some general words from one of our lit professionals:

Criticism has the potential to be both inspiring and fatal .. I'd suggest some rules of thumb. Spend a few days mulling on any criticism before drawing conclusions. If a criticism strikes a chord with you, act on it. If it doesn't, but if several critics have touched on the same thing, consider very carefully whether to act on it. If a criticism really doesn't strike a chord, and particularly if no one else has picked up on it, probably ignore it. Lastly, you may find critics evenly divided on an issue, as many pro as con. These are the trickiest to navigate: go with what your instincts tell you

.. one useful thing to consider is that opinion from readers, whether here or in the real publishing world will be diverse - the likes of JK Rowling were turned down by a variety of diverse publishing opinion initially including some of the UK's largest publishers - getting a minimum of ten and more like 30 to 50 reviews will start to bring together that diverse feedback to see a collective opinion of work, what works well and what needs development.

The quality of the review almost always matches the quality of the reviewer's own writing. I've only once had a bad review from a good writer, Caroline Clough, who said "I think you are a good writer" and then gave me 1s and 2s!

Bad reviews come particularly from the speed-readers, who always give themselves away. I had one who complained that I didn't describe my magical creature as a leprechaun, nor make it clear the story happened in Ireland. It wasn't a leprechaun and it didn't happen in Ireland: he had somehow missed the words Bodmin, Cornwall and London, all repeated several times in a 2,000 word story.

Generally the most damaging reviews (if it's a Top Ten place you're after) come from the mediocre writers, who regard a 3 as a good score, so think they're doing you a favour giving you a few fours. Do these people ever check up the following morning, and see that they've knocked you down a dozen chart places? Don't they ever wonder if they were wrong in their judgement of your work, when everyone else who reviewed it put you in the Top Ten?

And then there's the merely ignorant … I've had someone "correcting" my Latin - his version makes no sense at all; mine is endorsed by a teacher of Classics. I've had people telling me not to use words ending in -ly. What they mean is adverbs, of course, but the offending words weren't adverbs (lonely, lovely). On the other hand, in six months on YWO I've had some hugely useful suggestions, some major, some minor, together with a lot of much-needed encouragement, almost always from writers whose own work I admire.

It's very frustrating, but there's nothing one can do about the poor quality reviewers, except report the very worst excesses to Ted, who will sometimes delete them for you. And have a really good rant on the Message Boards - that always seems to help!


Athene


Scias te fortasse Romanum esse si animal convivialissimum arbitreris esse caprum (Henricus Barbatus)


my website

Yes, I think you hit the nail on the head. Although one of the reviews in question was written by someone who not only read the piece, but then painstakingly attacked the smallest points in my work -- and then rated my 0 on everything --, the other review was, now that you mention it, a speed reader. Someone who reviewed not what I wrote, but what she thought I was going to write, what she assumed it should have been, how she believed it should have been written and how she believed the main character should have acted, should have talked and what he should have known. How does one answer that?

In any case, the steam has been let out and I'm looking at things more clearly. I appreciate all the feedback.

Axe said: "Why would you have to be a mediocre writer to think three was a good score? Where is the connection?"


You misunderstood me, Axe. My point was that mediocre writers will generally receive scores around the three level, and that means that they think threes are ok and fours are great.
So fours are what they tend to give when they think a piece of writing is very good (and by implication, when they think it should be high up in the charts). They simply don't realise that fours are not enough, because they've never been high enough to see what a bunch of fours does to a good score.
I've seen this in action more than once - for example, a reviewer who praised a piece to the skies, said how much it deserved its Top Five position, and then gave it a score which sent it down to around the 20 level.

Athene



Scias te fortasse Romanum esse si animal convivialissimum arbitreris esse caprum (Henricus Barbatus)


my website