Reviewing Pet Peeves

As the creator and an active member of "Reviewing Reviewers"  [E], I spend a lot of time looking over reviews. The group digs through the public review page and rewards the best reviewers we find! We look for the thoughtful, thorough, uplifting reviewers of the site, and we gift them GPs and review some of their own work. Basically, we look for those who follow "Guidelines To Great Reviewing"  [E] - created by the SMs a very long time ago.

While going through these reviews, though, I find some things that I absolutely refuse to reward. See, what's funny, is that I see these reviewers doing it the right way sometimes, and then slipping into those pet peeves of mine at other times. So, it is hit-or-miss on what I will reward them for. However, if you were ever wondering what it would take to get a reward from the Public Reviewing Page from me, I'll tell you what not to do.

These are in no particular order, as they all make me react like one would to fingernails scratching over a chalkboard.

Reviews that quote the entire chapter/short story/article in the review.

Please, don't do this. Sure, it makes your review look really, really, really long, but... I can guarantee that if I got something like that in my inbox, I'd probably never even look through it. It's simply too long. If you want to do something like this, for goodness sake... make it private. That way someone only needs to read the piece if they want to - not because it's posted publicly on the reviewing page.

Not only this, I've seen someone post one of these super-huge "line-by-line" reviews, but have only two comments to make in the entire thing. It'd be so much better to simply single out those couple lines, put only them in the review, and make your comments that way. It's still "line-by-line", you're just not using the lines that you are not commenting on.

Reviews that correct every single typo, grammar, and punctuation error - but don't tell the person why it is an error.

If no one teaches them, they will never learn.

Now, I can see doing this if there are one or two typos in a piece. Just let them know what they are, because they are likely just a mistake.

If the whole piece is covered in them, however, it should signal that something is wrong. The person doesn't know how to correct their own mistakes. While I am sure they appreciate someone going through and just telling them how it should go, I would hope that they'd appreciate someone guiding them through the rules even more! Often, it only takes once, and they can go through and fix every single piece they have - improving all of their items by several stars all in one fell swoop. Not only that, you can take part in helping guide a writer to greatness, instead of being a crutch to create a writer whose work is unreadable because they will never understand the rules.

Often, I either just give them hints myself, or I link them to a handy-dandy website that has the rules and some examples. That way they have something they can always reference back to. Just recently, I also found a great item on WDC! "Handy Comma Rules"   by ~Hannah~ contains all of the comma rules in one convenient place, and is incredibly thorough. It'd be a great item to link people that are having trouble with their commas to.

Now - don't get me wrong. I don't mind people going through and making corrections at all! I'm not one that does it - as I guide them with the rules, instead - but I don't have anything against it. What I am against is the editing without explanation.

Reviews that criticize spelling and grammar, but are FULL of spelling and grammar mistakes.

Stick to what you're good at. If you aren't all that great with grammar and spelling yourself, don't comment on someone else's. There are so many more things you can talk about! Strength of dialogue, characterization, plot, appropriateness to theme or item genres, and whether or not you liked it are only a few in a huge list. One of the strengths of WDC is that we have experts on everything! And not one person makes up an expert in everything - several people combined do. You can get five reviews from five people with different expertise, and you can get five great things to look at for your item.

Being unfamiliar with a genre or item type is different. You can comment on whether you like it or not, and still offer suggestions. Grammar and spelling, though, not so much. "All or none." If you don't use the rules, don't quote them to someone else.

Reviews that say, "There are numerous grammatical and spelling errors," but don't explain where.

It does little good to tell someone that there is a problem, but not tell them how to find the problem. I addressed the exact opposite of this above - correcting everything, but offering no explanation. This offers neither! If the person didn't catch the grammatical and spelling errors when they wrote it, they're not going to catch them just because someone says, "Oh look, there's errors."

Well - what errors? How does the author find them? A single sentence saying that there are numerous errors does little to nothing to aide that author, and often will end up frustrating them if they cannot find a way to locate them.

Reviews that only paraphrase what is in the item.

Maybe you've seen them before.

"In your story, this, this, this, and this happened. Then, this happened! And this, and this, and this. Thank you so much for sharing. I gave you ***** rating."

The author knows what happened in their story - they wrote it. This sort of review says nothing about what the reviewer liked or didn't like; what suggestions for improvement they might have, if any. It says nothing except... that they read it. And what bugs me even more is - often these reviews come with a 3.0 or 3.5 rating - but there is no way to understand why, because all the person did was rattle back what the author wrote.

Reviews that contain only a few good review lines, and then a ton of space taken up with images, item links, and disclaimers.

Again, I'm taking this to the extreme. I have an image in my reviews, and I have a few disclaimers. I don't have any bitem links, but I do have ritem links imbedded in a very short paragraph beneath my image.

However... I also have enough substance in my reviews that these are only a small portion of the text that people receive from me. The nature of item links (I've seen upwards of 5-10 in a review - none of which have anything to do with the review) is that they are large. They take up a lot of space. So when combined with a ton of writingml, and a very large image, the actual substance of the review is only about two to four lines long - even though the review, itself, is very long and takes up a lot of space.

I've also seen hugely long disclaimers of up to three paragraphs! Really, if you have this much to say to every reviewer, you might just want to put it into an item, and say, "If you have any questions about this review, see *link*." Most people that have questions will click it! I have more than one person who uses my disclaimer item in their own reviews, as awkward as that might be when I make changes to it. For an example, though, you can see
"My Ratings"   by SJ♥TurkeyGobbles! .

The fact is, the REVIEW should take up the most space - the words directed toward the author. Not the image. Not the shameless plugs. Not the disclaimers.

Reviews made unreadable by the awful bright color of the text - not just for emphasis, but throughout the review.

I'm not against using color. I'm even not against using bright color. But I'm against using a color that is close to unreadable for the entirety of the review. Even if it is an absolutely great review, it's useful to no one if it cannot be read. All it takes to check this is preview the review - if you have a hard time reading it, so will the person who receives it.

Reviews where the comments don't match the rating.

I've seen reviews that completely gush about how great an item is, and then give a 3.0. I've also seen reviews that point out typo after typo, comma problem after comma problem, plot problems, characterization problems, and many other things, only to give a 5.0. Neither, in my opinion, is fair to the author!

If you're going to give them a 3.0, tell them why. Tell them how they can improve it so you would reward them with a 5.0. Now, 3.0 isn't a bad rating, but it's not the best. If they get anything below the best, they ought to be told why.

If you're going to give them a 5.0, it'd better be because the item really is perfect, not to boost someone's ego. 5.0s should be given out to deserved pieces - that is why the rating is stated as perfect. It is misused and inflated if there are pieces filled with mistakes that are awarded this rating.

REVIEWS FULL OF ALL CAPS!

I've seen reviews where it looks like every fifth word is in caps. It's distracting, and it's frustrating to read - caps often mean yelling on the internet. I'm fairly certain that the person doing the review really doesn't mean to shout every other word. There are other ways to emphasize here. You can bold, italicize, underline, change size, and even use color. There's no reason to shout at everyone.

All of the above is, of course, only my opinion. However, as an active reviewer (and one who receives reviews often enough that I've come to love getting them just as much as giving them), I have my own style, and the things listed above are simply the things that truly bother me for one reason or another.

This does not mean that you have to change your ways, or even agree. You will review as you will, and I will review as I will. I will reward those who I believe do a great job, as will the others within "Reviewing Reviewers"  [E] - we all have different opinions, as we are all different people. As a group meant to reward great reviewers - I have given no guidelines on what should be considered a great review. I leave that up to my members to decide. Some of them might even disagree with what is above, so please realize that this is my opinion, and my opinion alone.

Write and Review On!