Dual Comment Swap Features

@ Aris.
I can say quite a bit about a 100 word drabble, sometimes more than I can about a 2000 words oneshot. I've written stories under 100 words, so would the proportional comment be 20 words? I don't like that idea...

@ dru chases the wind.
I can say quite a lot as well, I am trying to think of other people who may not be able to. Proportional comment characters was just a vague suggestion anyhow, it takes into account too many factors to be practical

I appreciate nearly all comments in comment swap. Constructive criticism is helpful and always needed, but even the general "this is good" is always encouraging. I do, however, expect there to be some mention of a theme, character, plot line, etc, so I know a comment is legit.

I recently had a run-in with someone who copied and pasted a generic comment into not one, but two of my stories that he received through comment swap. Upon looking at his profile page, I learned that many other writers received this repeat comment. It is for this reason that, while I like comment swap, I believe there are issues that need to be fixed or worked out somehow.

@ leecasper17
Well it is still in the testing phase, so it's not expected to be perfect yet. And that kind of commenting is bad, but once its reported, that person will get banned from the swap so those comments will stop being received.

I think the first point you made is going back to the clearer rules issue. If there was a rule that said you have to be more specific and give feedback, then that would help the quality of the comments.

@ darkfallenangel
I did report it; Dujo said he'd be banned. :)

@ leecasper17
Well that's good then. That'll help the overall feel of the comment swap.

I bet you guys have already discussed this, but I really would like more options when starting a comment swap. For example, I started one, with all ratings permitted. But it was a story about vampires and romance and just the few simple things I really do not like in a story at all, and I haven't gotten around to commenting on it because I've been procrastinating. I know this would result in adding more specific genres to stories, but we could really find what we are looking for a lot more easily.

@ water's cascade.
No that hasn't been discussed here, as that's not related to having a more review based comment swap. However, I'm certain that it's been said elsewhere that Dujo will be adding tags (not super specific ones, though) in the future.

@ darkfallenangel

You're right, I'm sorry. I forgot that this had nothing to do with that. Thanks for that, though! I hope this review-based comment swap thing works out. :)

@ water's cascade.
That's okay :)

(On a completely unrelated note, I didn't get a notification for your reply. You have to hit the "Reply" button at the bottom of the message, not just type it out, if you want the other user to get a notification.) :)

@ darkfallenangel

Oh! Okay. xD I wish someone had told me that before, because now I feel like a complete idiot. Thank you for that, though. haha. :)

@ water's cascade.
Haha that's okay. At least you know now! :)

I think the idea of having two different comment swaps is a brilliant idea. It's agitating to get quick, barely thought up comments which sound as if they skimmed through a chapter or two then copied what other people said on the comments. I spend a great deal of time reading through the entire stories I get given and trying to be as helpful as I can be with creative critism and praising what is good.

I only seem to get the same complaints on my stories as well, which is that the writing is too small and that is it which is rather annoying as I know my stories aren't perfect so I'd like to know what to change else where. Maybe there should be some sort of guidelines on what should be commented on such as characters, layout, plot, grammar, spelling, vocab and other good writing essentials.

Since I've got some free time I've done some more comment swaps and I have given fourteen yet still only have received seven which is rather pitiful really.

@ LittleDeath
Thank you :) I agree with what you said, though I only read one chapter, but I definitely take the time out to give some con crit because that's what I want to receive. However, out of the 74 comments I've received from the comment swap, a bare few have actually had some con crit in them, most of them from staff I think... I personally think it's fine for some people to want the short, quick comments, so that's why I suggest two options so everyone can stay happy. I really think having a review based comment swap will be beneficial to multiple users :)

See that wouldn't happen in a review based one. We'd probably just hit default layout or zoom in, shrug it off and focus on your writing. Or mention it briefly but still give you a decent sized comment with remarks about your writing. I think guidelines would be great too. Have you read through the rest of this thread?

I think that will change once the 24 hour rule kicks in.

I'm not sure if anyone's mentioned it yet, so just disregard this if it has, but I know that some people get annoyed when they submit a one-shot and then get a 20+ chaptered story to comment on. It might be a good idea to have swaps take place between similar length stories? Say one-shots submitters get one-shots or up to six chapters to comment on, then six-fifteen chapters get to comment on six-fifteen chapters etc? Or you could do it by wordcount maybe? Just a thought.

@ MistressOfInsanity
I can't remember if it's been mentioned here or not, but I did see talk of a feature like that somewhere... I think there will be an option to choose, or at least people want that, even though you don't have to read the whole story. (But that's a bit off-topic to a review kind of comment swap.)

@ MistressOfInsanity
Since you don't even need to read the whole story (even if it's a oneshot/single chapter), I don't see the need. I think you should get to select oneshot versus chaptered, but I don't think it should be automatic.

---

I actually like the idea of two comment swaps more now. I think the 'review' one should have a much longer requirement, like 300-500 words without quotes. it would be great.

@ dru can fly!
I think an option for drabble, one-shot and chaptered would be nice, but not automatic.

Without quotes would probably be a good idea as well. I don't think that's been mentioned yet... But it would ensure that people don't just use heaps of long quotes to get over the word/character count.

@ darkfallenangel
I know. And I think people are wondering how the word count would know. It wouldn't. But I think if that's the rule, people will make an effort to follow it and if someone is happy with their review, they won't do a check to see if it was 500 words of 467, as long as they feel the person did their job, y'know?

But it would help when people arent...

@ dru can fly!
You're right, it should be optional. I don't know why I didn't think of that last night And yes, for basic comment swap it wouldn't be necessary.

Obviously I can't speak for everyone but, if I submitted a chaptered story for the proposed review swap, I wouldn't want someone simply clicking on the first chapter and writing me a 200 word review (the higher limit you suggested is a brilliant idea, by the way) based on that first bit, which they could do in theory. If I submitted a story with fifty chapters, I'd be happy to review a story of similar length and read a fair amount of it, because I'd expect someone to extend me the same courtesy. But yes, thinking about it, it should be optional. Being automatic or so specific about story length could be a deterrent for some.

It just seems unfair to only review the earliest chapters of a story. It has already disadvantaged some writers of longer stories from getting decent comments in the current swap and I don't see how extending the amount of words to 200 would stop that from happening; you can write a lot about the first couple of chapters of a story, but it wouldn't necessarily be very helpful for future chapters/full editing. Author's styles generally alter throughout the course of a story and plot development exposes more weaknesses and strengths than the opening does. So, maybe it'd be a better idea to have a rule where the reviewer must look at one or two later chapters, and specifically reference them in their review?

But if the higher word minimum, like you suggested, and a genre tag system is implemented then it should weed out a lot of the bad commenters anyway. Just a couple of ideas.

@darkfallenangel

Sorry if it seemed off topic. Maybe this cleared it up a bit?