Reviewing with River

This Topic was submitted by Whata WackyBrew


I recently received a review on my opus, my "Just Another Walk in the Rain" . The person only read the first two paragraphs, didn't care for the syntax / grammar, and submitted a review.

Should they have just left at that point, or is submitting a review ok when they read like 1% of the item? I don't normally care about ratings and all, but I think while the opening may be too wordy per se, the rest of the item should weigh in to any review and / or rating.

Whata you guys think?

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What I think after I looked at the two paragraphs and the review.


You said he didn't read the whole thing.
The review doesn't state anywhere whether he did or not.

You said in "Re: Re: July Topic ~ Whata you guys think?"   -- "Had they given an example of their opinion on the first couple paragraphs, I wouldn’t be unhappy with it."
He did give you specific examples.

Ooookay. Maybe we can chalk that up to this:

          Fact: When people are upset, their reading comprehension is next to non-existent.

It's a good review. It's politely worded. It contains accurate observations and useful content. It gives you in-depth comments about the opening (where the emotional stakes should be pretty non-existent) and asks if you want similar comments about the rest. ... That's considerate, considering this is a personal history piece and a lot of people don't really want in-depth comments on that kind of emotionally charged writing. Also sounds like a reviewer who has been burned before over doing a full-length and/or in-depth review where it wasn't wanted, or who is taking a page from a reviewer who did.

And yet here you are, upset enough to complain about the reviewer in public.

So why is that?

Well, here's something else you said: "my ‘wordy-ness’, as my innate speech and love for words were always negatively referred."

Maybe the review happened to push your pre-conditioned buttons because of what he didn't like.

The reviewer isn't at fault for stepping on your hidden landmine.

In my opinion, the piece has a legitimate problem that you're not mentally prepared to deal with, so you're not mentally prepared for this piece to be reviewed or rated. Now that you've been made aware of how you react to review comments on it, leaving this piece set to be rateable and reviewable would be asking for more trouble.

You also owe the reviewer an apology for dragging them through the mud here.


What I think about the discussion question River posted here:

Do you think the reviewer currently being scapegoated in this month's question would find the discussion "fun"?

The fact that this forum is advertised as a place where "everyone" is welcome to participate, makes finding this sort of exclusionary wording and scapegoating of reviewers in so many of the discussion topics that much more distasteful. Questions that claim "that's not a review" do even broader damage. To put it bluntly, it's hypocritical to call this forum a fun place -- bullying is never fun.

In "Re: Re: February 2019 Discussion ~ Topic Reviewing Your P..."   you told ♥HOOves♥ that "These monthly Discussions are not meant to tell you how to write a review." And then you kept right on posting biased and inflammatory discussion questions that disrespect reviewers. Is that due to ignorance of how to write a neutral discussion question, or is it due to some prejudiced notion that reviewers are supposed to follow the writers' preferences?

Obviously you owe the reviewer an apology, too.

"It is a good topic and encourages interaction between members." -- "Re: Re: July Topic ~ Whata you guys think?"  

The idea that a writer's complaint about a review makes a good discussion question for learning how to review better is erroneous. I've investigated a lot of writer complaints about reviews over the years. In every case, the review made valid point(s) that the writer didn't want to hear. That's not the reviewer's problem. That's the writer's problem. Such complaints are off-topic to the stated purpose of the forum.

I also see that several of the forum participants have chosen not to answer the questions that have been asked, and have instead been commenting about what options they've come up with as reviewers for such "hypothetical" situations. Apparently, if you'd care to notice, a good portion of your audience would prefer not to have that kind of question.







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Northernwrites___

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