Dual Comment Swap Features

the dalliance.:

True but if the character count is too high then it might be harder to leave feedback if people before you already summarized just about everything. But then they could always add their opinion about the story. The trick is finding the magical character count number that will be just right for everyone. I agree (and see now) 200 just isn't cutting it for proper feedback and a having a higher min. might just force people to actually put thought into their comment.

It shouldn't matter what other people said before you. I don't read previous comments - I just write what I think as I'm reading the story. But yes, a higher character count is needed, whether it's optional or not.

@ Kurtni
Personally I like to look at a few previous comments before leaving my own just to make sure if someone or more than one spotted the same grammatical errors or something else along the lines that I don't repeat the same thing they have pointed out. I feel like the author has already heard that and will change things if and when they want to and don't need me to point them out again. I like leaving a comment that isn't saying the same thing. It must be some weird pet peeve of mine or something. I do like what you said about, the same person saying the same thing and the author recognizing it as meaning something because it should.

Maybe a bit of a revamp is all that's needed. A higher word count and changing the name to 'Review Swap' could help. After all, you have to question what you want to encourage on a creative writing site; the exchange of comments for the sake of it or the exhange of reviews for feedback.

@ The Rumor
I like what you said. I guess the people who just want comments for the sake of it can get them elsewhere.

Even if we don't do a second feature, I think the 200 characters is what needs to be addressed the most (like other people are saying.) Bumping the word count up a tad more should help make the comments a bit more insightful and might cut down on the people abusing the feature.

Yeah, I'd be happy with something as simple as that to start making the quality of comments improve.

I'd be weary of making the word count much higher, because you have to also consider that there are stories on Mibba that are just one sentence or less than 100 words.

Maybe a character count that is proportional to the word count of the story?

I just read through this thread, and while bumping up the character requirement may be a good idea, for some stories it is extreme difficult to come up with productive things to say as their may not be enough of the story to attain a proper feel.

What I feel would be good would be the presence of people on the site who specialise in review complaints. So if a user feels they have received an inadequate comment that is spam, overly insulting or just a dismissal of a fandom or theme they can report to these specialised users and had it looked over. People who spam etc. will be given a warning and if they offend multiple times they are banned from using comment swap.

I put emphasis on the idea of specialised staff because referencing who has already offeneded etc. would take a lot of time out of other staffs duties and it's simply less confusing/daunting to people who want to report.

Just an idea I've gathered from reading this thread, I admit there are holes but I've quite warmed to the idea.

@ Kurtni
One sentence? Really? Is that even allowed?

Maybe having the option of 200 characters or a higher amount of characters would be best then, if people are entering their really short stories in the comment swap, so they can pick the smaller one.

Sure it's allowed... there are published anthologies of one sentence stories.

The staff specialized to handle comment swap complaints are Story Editors.

@ Aris.
Yeah, there are holes, and hence why I've been wanting lots of other people's opinions to see if there's something to work for everyone, or at least the majority.

The only thing I dislike about having a character count that's proportional to the word count is that if someone enters a really long story (like 50 chapters of a decent length) then instead of simply reading the first chapter (or one random one), I'd probably end up having to read multiple chapters just to get a really long comment, which could be particularly difficult if I'm not fond of the story.

@ darkfallenangel
I mean proportional to a point of course (: like a max of 600 or something alike

@ Aris.
Ok, that sounds a bit better haha so this is just for normal comment swap? Like, not just for a review swap or something?

Making it proportional to the word count doesn't work though because you're not required to read the entire story, especially if it's lengthy. It's not fair to make your comment proportional to the entire story when you only need to read one chapter.

@ Kurtni
So how do we get around people not being happy about the character count being low because it means not very good quality comments, but also how someone might enter a one sentence story?

I think the idea that any word count = quality is the problem. People are mistaking a comment for a detailed critique. As of now, the comment swap doesn't require that you analyze someone's story and provide deep, insightful criticism. The comment swap isn't necessarily a tool to get an editor or a beta.

So poor quality comments will just continue to be encouraged in the comment swap feature?

How are you defining poor quality? I don't consider a comment poor if it shows the user read the story and shared their thoughts or opinions on it. Like I said, a comment isn't the same as a review (which I thought you agreed with because you're suggesting a review swap?). I consider a comment poor if it's not legitimately about the story or generic. Those comments are, and have always been, against the swap rules.

So would it not be a good idea to have the option of doing a comment swap or a review swap? For those who want to give and receive comments that are longer and have more detail and feedback.

No, I didn't say that, I just don't think it's fair to characterize comments as poor just because they're not detailed critiques.

But, because this swap does generate so many bad comments where users are not reading stories, I think we should go to something stricter. I don't think we should keep the swap as it is currently because it does in a way encourage bad feedback