Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-4750363-20131023020818/@comment-5643552-20131029050607

Danatblair wrote: I would be interested in being a reviewer. I am one of the reviewers over at Index, so I have been doing something similar for awhile.

My only questions would be: Are we only going to judge it based on writing skill? I ask, specifically, because I have encoutnered sites that actively regulate "scary" under a very general boilerplate disclaimer that stories can be deleted if not up to whatever the unknown standards of the reviewer are. It is massively frustrating to write for, as they have a tendancy to rule by making a partial list of exceptions known instead of having a well crafted definition of what they are looking for.

I am all for getting rid of stuff that is about as well written as Sonic.exe. While the original is famous, it is deeply flawed on a technical level. Pastas that are  poorly written should go.

The catch is that concepts like "scary" are extremely subjective. My personal example is that I am unfazed by most paranormal stories. However, I don't reject stories at Index based on if they cater to my personal tastes. As long as it is competent I will generally vote to allow it on the main page. The guidelines are fairly vague, so I expect others have their own criteria. That is just how I weigh a story.

Any guidelines that refer to deleting stories for not being scary enough should be very well defined and published publicly.

Writing ability is the only thing I really look out for when evaluating quality (grammar and spelling are not as important as the writing itself in my book). Often, I'll come across a story I don't find scary, but don't delete because it is well-crafted nonetheless and might appeal to someone else.

I don't typically reject stories that I don't find scary, per sé, but stories that fail on a fundamental level. Say, a story that tries to be scary by being "mysterious" but just ends up being too vague and confuses the reader more than anything.

I will admit that some of them are harder ones to judge on an objective level, like when they use "too much" gore or use "too much" shock value. I think gore and 'shock value' can be done well, it's just that they're often done so poorly. That's where clichés come from — not just overusing something, but using it poorly.

Anyway, I agree that this is something the reviewers should take into account when accepting or rejecting pastas. We will definitely have clear guidelines for reviewers to follow in the future; we're still in the rough draft stage, so we're still thinking of things to include in those guidelines.