A question about the review rules

[Yrmellyn Cole]

I'm wondering if the thread length rule of a minimum of 1500 words per players have been changed.

Reading a recent review of a excellent one-post solo thread I started to wonder. When I looked at the thread it seemed unusually short.

I'm personally not against giving precedence to writing what feels right and relevant and not have to "add extra filler text" in order to flesh out a post just for the sake of it. I'm fine with giving people full rewards for threads shorter than 1500 words, if this is an option and we all apply the same review system the same way for all reviews.

I need a clarification though.

As we currently have the 1500 words minimum rule, I wonder how we reviewers should do when we can see that a thread is way shorter than required (The thread in the example I posted is only 895 words.) I understand that I as a peer reviewer should check the total wordcount per player in a thread because we have a rule about the wordcount, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do if a thread doesn't meet that requirement.

Should I give them the full rewards, or part of the rewards, or what?

The self review guide gives no information.

There's also no information in the peer reviewer guide.

[Rumour]

Hi Yrmellyn,

Yes, the 1500 word minimum rule is still in effect. Reviewers should be checking the threads to ensure that they meet this minimum before awarding points.

I agree that the guide needs an update with what to do if the thread is shorter than 1500 words. What I've been doing is dividing the amount of words by 1500 (ex. 890 / 1500 = 5.9) and rounding down to give points. In this case, I would give the writer 5 points, rather than 10, since they did not meet the minimum word requirement.

I'm not sure what the rest of the team is doing, so I'll check in with them to make sure we're all on the same page.

Great point! Thanks for bringing this up.

Thanks,
Ru

[Rumour]

Hi Yrmellyn,

Just following up on the review rules. Jade has clarified the rule in this announcement post, so it looks like that's what we'll be adhering to going forward.

Hope that helps! Thanks again for bringing up the question.

Cheers,
Ru

[Yrmellyn Cole]

Thanks for the answers Rumour!

I think we also need an instruction in the reviewer guide to give Rewards= 0 if there's less than 1500 words, in case that is what the announcement means. As I see it the reviewer in the example was responsible for checking the request and when finding mistakes telling the player this so they could get a chance to expand the thread with more text. If that had been done, the thread wouldn't have turned up as an example here.

Personally I prefer the idea of giving people a percentage of the rewards. It would be a softer requirement and make it possible to sometimes (only sometimes) write a well crafted post which is shorter than the 1500 words, and get a lower reward level. I actually don't think people would do this so often. We are all prone to write more. So I think it could be interesting to test a % rule for a limited period of time and see what happens.

It will be intersting to see what the outcome will be for the review mistake I posted as an example above. My own solution would be to let the player keep the rewards they have been given, or part of it, as compensation for their thread having been used as an example of reviewer mistakes.

[Pegasus]

Hi Yrmellyn,

Just to clarify - after you raised this issue and Rumour picked it up yesterday, we had a staff discussion, then put out announcements on the front page, another in the new features

And I've updated the Peer Review Guide to include:

If there are not 1,500 words then the thread grants no rewards for that player, although the reviewer might well pm the player and give them the option to add another post if appropriate.

Hope that clarifies things!

[Yrmellyn Cole]

All clear and good !

[Rumour]

It will be intersting to see what the outcome will be for the review mistake I posted as an example above. My own solution would be to let the player keep the rewards they have been given, or part of it, as compensation for their thread having been used as an example of reviewer mistakes.

I wanted to to address this comment so there's a bit more closure. The solution for the thread in question is to allow the player to keep their rewards, since it was an accidental oversight. The player was PMed as an FYI.

Going forward, we'll be using the rule that Pegasus and Jade highlighted.

Hope that clarifies!
-Ru