Reviews

[Bret]

Question: Can we submit reviews?

Peace,
Bret

[hardcoremoose]

To the best of my knowledge, no.  Ron and Clinton were going to get that feature set up, but last time I checked it was a no go.

I doubt we'll see it anytime soon, either.  The criteria for submitting a review would be fairly strict, and I doubt either Ron or Clinton have the time to exercise editorial control over the review process.  Too bad, though.

- Scott

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Regarding the reviews on the Forge, I have always felt trapped between two undesireable phenomena ...

1) Reserving reviews only for me and Clinton is arguably elitist and mean.
2) Or, if submitted reviews are permitted, rejecting submitted reviews for any reason is arguably elitist and mean.

So far, I have decided to go with #1, in the sense that the Sun-Times has Roger Ebert as its designated reviewer (or the Podunkville Herald has Joe Guy as its) - ie, the Forge does NOT follow the "anyone-does-anything" model of RPG.net, but rather the "staff" model to some extent. Again, since said staff is composed of the two bosses, that smacks of elitism ... dammit, can't escape.

#1 also more-or-less spreads the injustice of rejecting reviews across everybody, rather than turning it into isolated, concentrated instances. (And it is ALWAYS perceived as injustice; no one anticipates that THEY will be the one rejected.) Imagine - say we followed policy #2 in which anyone may submit but I decide who's chosen. Someone (say, you!) submits a review, and I pronounce, "Rejected," which is of course perceived as, "Die, you worthless scum." Disgruntled, you post your review elsewhere and raise a stink about the Forge rejecting you. All and sundry visit your site and everyone is split on whether I was good or bad in rejecting the review, for a variety of disconnected reasons ...

Add to that the simple time and back-and-forth necessary to determine the judgment in the first place.

#1 still seems like the lesser of two evils to me.

Best,
Ron

P.S. The open-policy of reviews, permitting any submission to be posted, is not functional for the purposes of the Forge. Given that all aspects of design and play and enjoyment of RPGs can be discussed at the forums, I think that the positive purpose of such a policy is being served already.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I thought I'd drop my thoughts on this matter:

I agree with Ron whole-heartedly. He has a very distinct and very useful way of writing reviews that really can't be beat for what we're trying to accomplish here.

I would love it if people could submit reviews, but two things need to happen first:

a) We need a well-written, coherent review policy. That is, the document should specify exactly what a Forge review should contain. If written, this would take a good deal of Ron's time (or mine).

b) Each review will have to be edited, obviously. If we open up the doors to reviews, I don't think we should reject them (for the reasons Ron stated), but edit them, and return them to their authors for further work until they meet standards. (This does not mean we'd want to edit the opinion of the reviewer, of course. This does mean that we would make reviewers explicitly tell why they feel a certain way about a game, and point out its good and bad points.) This will be the biggest burden of accepting reviews - taking time to edit each one.

Ron and I will take this offline (we've discussed it several times before), and perhaps someday will accept reviews.

[razgon]

Hi People.
Since there seems to be some interest in writing reviews at this board, I thought I'd drop a line here as well :smile:

We at Lidium (http://www.lidiumonline.com are constantly looking for good reviewers and newshunters.
So, if you think you've got what it takes, send an email about it, whether you want to make one-shot reviews/articles or want to be a member of the staff at Lidium.

I look forward to hearing from you people :smile: