Yahoo Forum Archive

Hey guys,

Another week has gone by, which means it's time for another admin post.
Last week we talked about how reviewers were affected by their reviews
being displayed on our webpage - review statuses, when reviews could
still be edited, that kind of thing. Now I want to talk about how you
can read the reviews left by other people, either for yourself or for
other authors.

What follows refers to reviews as they're posted at the MEFA website. As
some of you know annmarwalk is also posting the reviews at the mefas
LiveJournal (thanks Ann!) but I'm not talking about that.

**********************

HOW DO I READ REVIEWS?

It's pretty straightforward to read the reviews left by other people. To
do this:

1. Log in to www.mefawards.net/MEFA2009/
2. Click on the "Reviews" link at the top of the page.

This will show you all the reviews entered so far with the "final"
status, provided you haven't marked the reviews. (More on that below.)

**********************

HOW DO I NARROW DOWN THIS LIST OF REVIEWS?

You can filter the reviews displayed using the "Main Category,"
"SubCategory," and "Author" filters. These work pretty similarly to the
filters for stories. Just select an option from one list and click the
"Display selected nominations" button. You can select from more than one
list at the same time (for instance, Author and Main Category) but this
will only pull up reviews that are both by that author and for a story
in that main category.

There is a "short cut" to display reviews for your stories. When you log
in to the MEFA website, if you scroll down you will see the link "Read
Reviews Left By Others For Your Stories." Click on this and it will
display only those reviews for stories where you are the author. (You
can get to the same page using the Author filter, but it will take you a
few more clicks.)

If you find you like what a certain reviewer likes and want to read more
of that person's reviews, you can do that by clicking on the "Read
Reviews by Reviewer" link (just below the "Read Reviews Left By Others
For Your Stories" link). This page has an extra filter for reviewers. So
you can select the name of the reviewer you want to see more of --listed
above every review-- and in this way you can find all of the reviews
written by a certain person.

You can also display all the reviews for a certain story by clicking on
the ID # in the review header. Above each review there are a few lines
of text telling the author, reviewer, story title, and story ID #.
Clicking on the # will show all the reviews for that story.

**********************

I READ SOMEONE'S REVIEW, AND NOW I WANT TO READ AND MAYBE REVIEW THE
STORY. HELP?

The quickest way to do this is by using the story ID #. This is listed
in the story header above the review. Jot it down on a scratch sheet of
paper and click the "Stories" link at the top of the page. Now scroll
down a little bit until you see the search bar. This is a white box you
can click in with a search button to the right; further over there is a
way to see other "pages" of the story listings. (Remember, the story
listing shows twenty-five stories to a page, so it doesn't take forever
to load for dial-up users. You can see more stories by looking at later
pages.)

Once you've clicked in the search bar, type in the story's ID number,
followed by the "#" sign. This will bring up that story and you will be
able to read it, vote for it, add it to your wish or skip list, or
whatever else you want to do.

**********************

WHAT'S REVIEW MARKING? HOW DOES THAT WORK?

If you're looking at the reviews, at the bottom of the page you will see
links to look at later pages. Just like with the story list, reviews are
displayed twenty-five to a page, and you can see more reviews by
clicking the links to see subsequent pages. Unlike stories (which are
displayed in random order), reviews are listed in chronological order -
those reviews that were displayed earliest, are shown on the pages with
the lowest page numbers, and more recently-posted reviews are displayed
on later pages.

You may find that you've read the first pages and are always having to
tell the website to skip to later pages in order to see reviews you
haven't read yet. The "mark reviews" feature helps you with that. If you
click the "Mark these reviews" link at the bottom of the page, the
website won't display you those reviews by default (though you can ask
to see marked reviews if you ever want to).

For example: if you haven't marked any reviews you currently see 1,139
reviews displayed over 46 pages. Clicking "Mark these reviews" at the
bottom of that first page will mark the first twenty-five reviews as
read - those reviews will be hidden until you tell the webpage to show
you previously marked reviews. If you did this you would now see 1,114
reviews over 45 pages, and the reviews that had been on the 2nd page
would now be on the 1st page.

For technical reasons, you can only mark reviews one page at a time, and
you can only do it when you're looking at the first page of reviews. If
you'd like to see the reviews you told the website to mark just click
the "Show marked reviews" link above the filters. You can tell marked
reviews because they will be printed on a red background, while unmarked
reviews are printed on a light blue background.

Think of it like deleting emails. You can still pull up those old emails
if you need to (assuming you don't empty your trash folder), but they
don't show up in your inbox anymore.

**********************

CAN I REPLY TO A REVIEW?

Unlike some archives, we don't give authors the ability to post a reply
alongside the review. This is because our purpose is a little different
from an archive's. The point of MEFA reviewing isn't so much to start a
*discussion* of certain works as to let readers recommend the stories
they most liked. We want those recommendations to be the focus, not the
authors' reply to them, so we only display the recommendations (the
reviews) at our website.

However, MEFA volunteers will happily forward responses to the reviewer
privately, via email. Click the "Reply to this review" link beside a
review for any of your stories. This will open up a pop-up window
telling you where to send an email reply to any MEFA review. Please
follow these instructions and compose the email just as if you were
talking to your reviewer. It will be forwarded on to them, along with
your email address so they can respond if they like. (Some choose to,
others choose not to.)

Special thanks to Elea24, the MEFA member who has generously taken on
forwarding responses to reviewers.

**********************

WHAT IF I SEE AN ERROR IN A REVIEW? OR IF A REVIEW IS REALLY A FLAME?

If you see something that you think is against MEFA rules in one of the
reviews, just bring it to my attention. Reviews involving quotes,
needing spoiler warnings, and that kind of thing are often fairly
clear-cut situations. Assuming I agree that a change is needed I'll make
the change for you.

If you think a review is a flame, the situation is a bit more
complicated, because (while flames are against MEFA regulations) reviews
*can* be critical. The test is whether the review really contains both
critical comments and talks about what the reviewer likes, or whether
it's predominately negative. If you think a review is totally negative
or has only a token complement before launching into criticisms
("Interesting story, but..."), and the admins agree, we can remove it.
The author has to agree it should be removed, and in this case the
author will lose any points from the review.

In all cases: please email mefasupport-at-mefawards-dot-net with the
review header and what you think the problem is. For instance, if you
think a review needs a spoiler warning added, please explain briefly why
you think it gives away story spoilers.

**********************

For more information:

--- Can I include quotes?
www.mefawards.net/MEFA2009/index.php?page=FAQvoting#vot_10
--- Can I include spoilers for the story in my review?
www.mefawards.net/MEFA2009/index.php?page=FAQvoting#vot_16
--- Someone left me a review, and I'd like to reply to it. How do I do this?
www.mefawards.net/MEFA2009/index.php?page=FAQvoting#vot_20
--- Can I be critical in my review?
www.mefawards.net/MEFA2009/index.php?page=FAQvoting#vot_4
--- Can an offensive review be moved?
www.mefawards.net/MEFA2009/index.php?page=FAQvoting#vot_8

**********************

P.S. - Don't forget, we have a poll going about whether reviews should
be posted to anywhere outside the MEFA website. The poll runs until
Sunday. Please vote in it here:

http://community.livejournal.com/mefas/121924.html

Marta (MEFA Admin.)

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, Marta <marta.fandom@...> wrote:

>
> There is a "short cut" to display reviews for your stories. When you log
> in to the MEFA website, if you scroll down you will see the link "Read
> Reviews Left By Others For Your Stories." Click on this and it will
> display only those reviews for stories where you are the author. (You
> can get to the same page using the Author filter, but it will take you a
> few more clicks.)

This is a new feature, isn't it? I like it very much. Thank you for implementing it.

Imhiriel

imhiriel wrote:

>
>
> --- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com <mailto:MEFAwards%40yahoogroups.com>,
> Marta <marta.fandom@...> wrote:
> >
> > There is a "short cut" to display reviews for your stories. When you log
> > in to the MEFA website, if you scroll down you will see the link "Read
> > Reviews Left By Others For Your Stories." Click on this and it will
> > display only those reviews for stories where you are the author. (You
> > can get to the same page using the Author filter, but it will take you a
> > few more clicks.)
>
> This is a new feature, isn't it? I like it very much. Thank you for
> implementing it.
>

You know, now that you point it out... I think it is. Quite honestly
Tanaqui gave us so many new toys this year, it's a bit hard to keep up
with what was new and what wasn't. It's a very useful feature in my
opinion and I'm grateful for it, whenever it was developed.

Marta

I just saw this last night and was delighted... this is one of those
features that I will use over and over and over!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

- Barbara

On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 6:22 PM, imhiriel <Larys.HMF@web.de> wrote:

>
>
> --- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com <MEFAwards%40yahoogroups.com>, Marta
> <marta.fandom@...> wrote:
> >
> > There is a "short cut" to display reviews for your stories. When you log
> > in to the MEFA website, if you scroll down you will see the link "Read
> > Reviews Left By Others For Your Stories." Click on this and it will
> > display only those reviews for stories where you are the author. (You
> > can get to the same page using the Author filter, but it will take you a
> > few more clicks.)
>
> This is a new feature, isn't it? I like it very much. Thank you for
> implementing it.
>
> Imhiriel
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Yes, I discovered it too! So much easier than filtering to find those
reviews! And I was glad to find the "Reviews listed by reviewer" feature--
I did not realize it had been moved, and thought that it was no longer
there!

And it appears that the "reply to review" feature seems to be working for
me-- last year my attempts to use it bounced, but I've had no such problems
at all this year.

Dreamflower

On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 8:31 PM, Marta <marta.fandom@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> imhiriel wrote:
> >
> >
> > --- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com <MEFAwards%40yahoogroups.com> <mailto:
> MEFAwards%40yahoogroups.com <MEFAwards%2540yahoogroups.com>>,
> > Marta <marta.fandom@...> wrote:
> > >
> > > There is a "short cut" to display reviews for your stories. When you
> log
> > > in to the MEFA website, if you scroll down you will see the link "Read
> > > Reviews Left By Others For Your Stories." Click on this and it will
> > > display only those reviews for stories where you are the author. (You
> > > can get to the same page using the Author filter, but it will take you
> a
> > > few more clicks.)
> >
> > This is a new feature, isn't it? I like it very much. Thank you for
> > implementing it.
> >
>
> You know, now that you point it out... I think it is. Quite honestly
> Tanaqui gave us so many new toys this year, it's a bit hard to keep up
> with what was new and what wasn't. It's a very useful feature in my
> opinion and I'm grateful for it, whenever it was developed.
>
> Marta
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]