Discussion Forum
Discussion: Editing Reviews
It is important for us to capture that first impression. Just like when someone walks into a book store. They pick up a book, glance at it for a moment and make a buy decision. Errors are a differnt thing. We have been dicussing how to handle situations where people have made errors in their review. Stay tuned for what we come up with.
For now, don't worry about a typo in your review. The points are the key and they come from the stars.
Gary
uh hu, that's what I'm worried about. The reviewer I'm talking about made a mistake wiht the stars (or they didn't work) either way, there have been two of mine now with no stars at all which brings my average way down. Perhaps just a message saying 'make sure you are very careful when adding star ratings'? or maybe there could be a contact button if a review goes wrong.
I TOTALLY understand that first impression idea. It's just that right now my rating isn't reflecting my comments. One reviewer didn't seem to hit any stars (their comment seemed to reflect they enjoyed it and the writing was good) Perhaps stars could start at one instead of none to protect accidents?
I don't know, I'm just throwing ideas out there.
Jennifer Mills's active submissions:
How to Create a Super Hero
Hmmm I've been lucky enough not to have made any serious typos yet but I would like to be able to re-review revised versions of a book when I think they deserve a better score.
Elspeth--
I hear ya. This was actually something we argued over for a while when we were putting this process together. In the end we decided that we want to encourage quality and discourage people from submitting works that really aren't ready for prime-time.
So on the one hand we do make it possible for a writer to hide a submission that got bad early reviews so they can go back and fix it, but on the other hand they'll still have to live with those first reviews. Otherwise, we decided, it would be too easy for people to game the system by hiding and then re-showing their submission (perhaps after making only a trivial or token change) just for the purpose of clearing out reviews the writer didn't like.
Getting bad reviews for work that isn't up to snuff is part of the game. Writers who post half-baked material shouldn't just get to clear the slate for free.
We looked long and hard--again--at this during this latest round of site improvements. We're still of a mind that writers really shouldn't submit work that isn't the most polished they can make it, and to that end, reviews need to be static once they're submitted. But, as a semi-compromise, you can now save a review in draft form before you submit it for real.
This allows you to bounce back and forth between your review and the excerpt, until you're satisfied that your review is what you really want to say. Then you can publish it for all to see, at which point it is locked for all time. Naturally, unitl you do publish it, neither you nor the excerpt earns any points for it.
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Will it be possible to edit reviews? I made a typeo in one that I'd like to fix, but a friend also commented she had trouble with the stars and wanted to fix that up. Or would that just cause trouble?
Jennifer Mills's active submissions:
How to Create a Super Hero