Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-25230922-20150704031010/@comment-26007602-20150704035443

Speaking as one of the "regular" reviewers in the Writer's Workshop (Although I've been a bit absent lately), I wanted to add my thoughts to that bit. These are my general observations and "theories" of the workshop.

You're correct in the assumption that the longer stories are usually glossed over. Most users (including myself) don't want to put in the effort to read through and write out a review of a story that's 3,000 words + (Especially if it's not interesting or poorly written), unless the author of said story is one of the more well known users here.

I've noticed that people don't tend to stick around in the Workshop. If a new user posts a story there, they may offer critiques and advice to other users for awhile, but most disappear once their story has been critiqued/posted. I have noticed an uptick in the amount of traffic lately, so maybe there's reason for hope.

As for why certain threads pull in more critiques, that depends on the thread itself. If the author is well known, then more of the regular users here put in the time to review their story. If the story is written incredibly poorly, then a lot of users like to pile onto the story and post what's wrong with it. Some users are more active than others and tend to pull in more traffic as well.

On to the issue of reviews themselves, not all users offer helpful or in-depth critiques. This is an issue because others will pass over the story because it's already "been critiqued" when it in fact has little feedback. Thankfully, most of the regular reviewers offer insightful and useful feedback.

I generally don't see any stories with 3+ reviews on the board. Most threads that have more than eight comments tend to have half of the comments coming from the author themselves. That makes the story look like it's been reviewed a lot, when in fact it's usually a conversation between the author and the reviewer.

When an author decides to bump their story due to the lack of sufficient (or any) reviews, that thread tends to be overlooked, as it looks like it's already been replied to. I think a lot of users see that a story ahs more than one comment on it and pass it over, which generally buries the story further.

I try and review most stories that don't have any comments on them (and aren't already posted on the wiki), although there are some I simply can't offer advice on, so I skip them and review another story. Unfortunately, every time I or another user does that, it buries the thread further until it's eventually forgotten about. If it's possible, there should be a way to organize the threads so that the stories with no replies are the first on the list. Either that or creating a little "availability list" of people who are up for reviewing a story (so prospective authors can message them) might work as well.

Whew, that was an essay. Hope it makes sense. I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but I think there's enough there. As for the Writer's Showcase, yeah, I don't think it quite worked out as hoped. It's hard to gauge traffic however, as we can't look at the viewcount a story receives (can we?), so we're stuck looking at how many comments it receives.