Suggestion Box

I was speaking only of those reviewers who participate in such contests, and only of the reviews that they do for such a contest. I certainly wasn't suggesting that the site make it mandatory for everybody.


With the Public Review Page, there are other things to be considered, like the reasons it was set up that way in the first place. In my explorations of the site, it has become obvious that The ScaryMaster has given careful thought to how things are set up.

One thing that I have always appreciated about the Public Review Page is that it does not put the author's name on the public review of the piece.

IMO that's part of the incentive to those who read the review to click on the link and take a look at the piece itself. Even if they don't r/r/r, there is still benefit to the writer - the view count goes up, increasing the item's visibility.

Which is why I don't include the reviewee's name in my public reviews.

To my mind, this and other benefits to all the writers who are publicly reviewed outweigh the needs of those relative few who run such contests.


The contest provides an incentive for the participants to do what needs to be done to participate -- if those who run the contests insist on it. Needing to learn and do a few things in order to participate is not a bad thing. In most cases, the time expended by a participant is small compared to the time and labor it saves those who run the contests, and people can relate to that as being fair. Here we are talking 6-7 keystrokes that can even be copy/pasted. Linking skills are also useful all around the site, so it's win/win for them to learn to do it.

The same learning curve was experienced when bitem posting for contests became standard practice. And the same solution for saving space in contests is available for user links as was developed for bitem links: a link to a member-created how-to item. There are several tutorials available for bitems - see "Invalid Post"  .

Another alternative is that you could insist that they use a bitem link in posting in the forum that they have done the reviews, the same as all the other contests. That would also show you who wrote the item, and it wouldn't involve developing any new educational items.




Northernwrites

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