New review team page

[ALynnPowers]

Oooh!! Good question! I don't know!

But my GUESS would be that they would change to reflect the new system. Eep! Sounds like a lot of people are going to have some scores going down!

[TammyO]

Yes. There are a lot of people whose scores will go down quite a bit with this new formula.

[ALynnPowers]

Get ready for new threads to pop up with questions/complaints about this! Save the date. March 12.

[TLGabelman]

Ill be the first to admit that im not happy about the score changes. I have on average waited 2 weeks for my reviews to get published without being able to select a new book to review. I JUST made level 3 and no longer have to 'wait' based on the current scoring. Now, once these new changes are set into place I will be a level 1. I have 5 published review. I have all possible points for posts and bookshelves. I have very little comments being made on my reviews (which I see happens to others not just me). so I have no way of acctively boosting my own score, just have to wait around and cross my fingers people will look at my review and comment on it. I have utilized the 'share' options for FB and twitter in an effort to increase my views as well. There is simply no other way for me to help my score and its incredibly discouraging. I have 2 rejected reviews costing me -4 pts each. There is no opportunity to 'fix' a rejected review and I was attacked for personal opinions in my review reflecting in a lower score for me.

I have (currently but not once the changes are in place) access to low paying books for review but have not chosen to be paid for a few reasons.

1. I signed up to be a reviewer to read books and provide my opinion not get paid
2. None of the books for pay have interested me
3. I do not have great grammar and I dont want to chose to be paid for a review with errors.
4. I use the 'criticism' to be a better review and work on my writing skills

With this change Ill be interested to see how long my reviews take to be published. This is not the experience I had hoped it would be, standards keep changing, people are inflating their posts on reviews by asking for people to post more on their review (IMO it doesnt seem right but there is nothing in the rules which discourages this).

[bookowlie]

Ill be the first to admit that im not happy about the score changes. I have on average waited 2 weeks for my reviews to get published without being able to select a new book to review. I JUST made level 3 and no longer have to 'wait' based on the current scoring. Now, once these new changes are set into place I will be a level 1. I have 5 published review. I have all possible points for posts and bookshelves. I have very little comments being made on my reviews (which I see happens to others not just me). so I have no way of acctively boosting my own score, just have to wait around and cross my fingers people will look at my review and comment on it. I have utilized the 'share' options for FB and twitter in an effort to increase my views as well. There is simply no other way for me to help my score and its incredibly discouraging. I have 2 rejected reviews costing me -4 pts each. There is no opportunity to 'fix' a rejected review and I was attacked for personal opinions in my review reflecting in a lower score for me.

I have (currently but not once the changes are in place) access to low paying books for review but have not chosen to be paid for a few reasons.

1. I signed up to be a reviewer to read books and provide my opinion not get paid
2. None of the books for pay have interested me
3. I do not have great grammar and I dont want to chose to be paid for a review with errors.
4. I use the 'criticism' to be a better review and work on my writing skills

With this change Ill be interested to see how long my reviews take to be published. This is not the experience I had hoped it would be, standards keep changing, people are inflating their posts on reviews by asking for people to post more on their review (IMO it doesnt seem right but there is nothing in the rules which discourages this).

I seem to remember you complained that you might be making the same mistakes again with new reviews, if you continued reviewing new books before having a review published. I thought Scott make an adjustment to accommodate your issue. Now you are not happy that you have to wait to read and review a new selection? Hope this doesn't sound too critical, but you can't have it both ways.

[TLGabelman]

Ill be the first to admit that im not happy about the score changes. I have on average waited 2 weeks for my reviews to get published without being able to select a new book to review. I JUST made level 3 and no longer have to 'wait' based on the current scoring. Now, once these new changes are set into place I will be a level 1. I have 5 published review. I have all possible points for posts and bookshelves. I have very little comments being made on my reviews (which I see happens to others not just me). so I have no way of acctively boosting my own score, just have to wait around and cross my fingers people will look at my review and comment on it. I have utilized the 'share' options for FB and twitter in an effort to increase my views as well. There is simply no other way for me to help my score and its incredibly discouraging. I have 2 rejected reviews costing me -4 pts each. There is no opportunity to 'fix' a rejected review and I was attacked for personal opinions in my review reflecting in a lower score for me.

I have (currently but not once the changes are in place) access to low paying books for review but have not chosen to be paid for a few reasons.

1. I signed up to be a reviewer to read books and provide my opinion not get paid
2. None of the books for pay have interested me
3. I do not have great grammar and I dont want to chose to be paid for a review with errors.
4. I use the 'criticism' to be a better review and work on my writing skills

With this change Ill be interested to see how long my reviews take to be published. This is not the experience I had hoped it would be, standards keep changing, people are inflating their posts on reviews by asking for people to post more on their review (IMO it doesnt seem right but there is nothing in the rules which discourages this).

I seem to remember you complained that you might be making the same mistakes again with new reviews, if you continued reviewing new books before having a review published. I thought Scott make an adjustment to accommodate your issue. Now you are not happy that you have to wait to read and review a new selection? Hope this doesn't sound too critical, but you can't have it both ways.

Yes I voiced a concern regarding having reviewed 3 books back to back(2 of which were rejected). I had just started and was over eager and wanted to read and review, it was exciting. There was no waiting period, and as a newbie I would have learned a lot after reading the critiques given by the editors that I wouldnt have made the same mistakes again. And I have not, all my reviews since those first 3 have been published. However, I still fight with the penalty points which drag my score down, and with the new scoring will basically return me to a 1. Do I expect anyone to care, no. I was stating an opinion and at the same time voicing concerns that there do not seem to be a way to "gain points' once certain criteria are met. I will not beg for comments on my reviews.

[Scott]

I have noticed that there are going to be changes made to the scoring formula. Is this change going to affect old and new members of the review team?

Yes.

Will levels and scores drop due to this change?

The main change is that the book of the month part of the score was cut in half. So those who had the full points for book of the month could see their score drop up to 10 points if they do not score well on some of the other metrics in the score.

Please explain about the editorial analysis points, I am really confused about it. Does it mean you either have the full 25 points or it's 0 or -25?

No, I have made slight changes to example to make that clear.

It means that instead of being scored on a scale of 0 to 25, it is actually on a scale of 0 to 50. Since that is only 25 points of the score, if the score is below 25 it's actually a negative number. (Reviews below the rating would also almost certainly be rejected.).

The biggest reason I want to do it like that is I don't want it to come off as an insult to someone when their score for that metric is--for example--5 out of 25 or 10 out of 25. Those numbers sounds bad. However, because we have strict guideline standards that eliminate bad reviews (and even decent reviews that just don't meet some of the standards in the review team guidelines), the bottom is actually good. Very few active reviewers--or really none--should find themselves in that negative area. Am I being clear?

Okay. So everyone else whose not at level 6 will keep the points they have or will that be changed?

The formula will change to allow a bigger more steady scale. It may or may not have a significant effect. It will be different for each person. It will likely have much more of an effect for members with very low editorial scores and very little effect on members with better scores.

Get ready for new threads to pop up with questions/complaints about this! Save the date. March 12.

Yes. I have posted the changes ahead of time to try to make the changes less frustrating for those will not like them. This also allows me to answer my questions and improve the score explanation on the score page prior to the new formula going live.

I have on average waited 2 weeks for my reviews to get published without being able to select a new book to review.

This is not acceptable. For paid reviews, there can sometimes be special delays, but for the free book reviews there is no reason for it to take more than a week. The fault is mine. I am very sorry. I have recently taken steps to ensure a much faster decision and publishing process for pending reviews. If you have to wait a week for a review to be published again, please let me know and I will personally make a meaningful comment on the review. If after waiting over a week the result is that the review is not published, then I will make one of your old other reviews of your choosing sticky for a week to get it more views. This compensation is not automated, you will need to tell me to do it.

so I have no way of acctively boosting my own score, just have to wait around and cross my fingers people will look at my review and comment on it.

I am working on developing new ideas to make it easier for you and the other reviewers to boost this score up.

One idea I am thinking is to add a way for people to subscribe by email to a reviewer. This would mean that any time the reviewer has a new review published an email would be sent to all that reviewers' subscribers.

Another idea I am thinking of is adding a filter to Bookshelves custom sort page that enables one to look only at books that have an official review. This could help bring more views to everyone's reviews.

Another idea is to add a link to the mini-profile next to a reviewer's posts or in the reviewer's signature to the reviewers most recently published review. Perhaps the display of this link could be optional.

I have 2 rejected reviews costing me -4 pts each.

With the new formula, I can reduce or eliminate that penalty as it is essentially covered by the increased range of the editorial analysis part of the score.

people are inflating their posts on reviews by asking for people to post more on their review (IMO it doesnt seem right but there is nothing in the rules which discourages this).

I don't have a problem with that as long as the comments are of a certain quality. Namely, the commenter must actually read the review and make a meaningful comment. As long as they are doing that, then it seems like a great service for members to provide each other. It also is good for authors who are getting exactly what they want: people to read reviews of their book.

A similar issue always has existed with post count being a factor for certain privileges. Some bad apples would come on the site and falsely inflate their own post count by making a bunch of meaningless posts. The moderators have always been very good at spotting that and deleting the posts. A previous change in the scoring formula helped bring any similarly inflated scores back down when for the post count portion of the score I stopped counting all posts and only counted "eligible posts". This is one reason I will always be making slight changes to the formula: to make it more difficult to try to falsely inflate scores by gaming the system.

***

Thank you all very much for your feedback and questions!

-- 07 Mar 2015 05:07 pm --

I also want to add this: I understand the changes to the score can be frustrating. This is especially the case since the changes tend to always make the standards a little higher. I ask the review team to understand that literally over 3 thousand people have joined the review team. Without the levels and scores, and without making the standards reflect the ever-growing demand to be part of the review team, there would be no books for anyone to review. If I just carelessly handed out books to anyone in those over 3 thousand people, we would run out of books. Obviously, we do not have 3 thousand people actively reviewing books. Those of you who have made it this far really are the cream of the crop so to speak. Again, I understand the changes can be frustrating. I understand it's tough to not be a level 5/6, especially when the ladder seems to keep growing while you climb it. I am very sorry about that. I will work hard on using the quality service we provide--as guaranteed by the ever-tougher standards I have implemented to find the cream of the crop that you all are--to bring in more books to review and more funds to use to pay the higher level reviewers.

[bookowlie]

No worries Scott! I appreciate that you are always analyzing the impact of the scoring system upon the availability of books spread across the active reviewers. I think you have a good handle on the big picture. It will take a while for people to settle in to the changes. I am still getting used to the new look of the Review Team Page, although it does look nice!

[TLGabelman]

Thank you Scott for always being objective and listening to everyones concerns. I appreciate you having already thought ahead about ways to help improve our score once the new changes are in effect. I was curious if possibly a reviewer could 'work off' a rejected review so eventually it wouldnt show on their score? Also, I will let you know if a review takes as long to be published.

[bookowlie]

Thank you Scott for always being objective and listening to everyones concerns. I appreciate you having already thought ahead about ways to help improve our score once the new changes are in effect. I was curious if possibly a reviewer could 'work off' a rejected review so eventually it wouldnt show on their score? Also, I will let you know if a review takes as long to be published.

I do have to agree with you that when a review takes a long time to be published, you run the risk of it "falling off the radar quickly". I had this happen a few times a few months ago. Anyway, there does seem to be a quicker turnaround for publication lately, so that's a good thing. Initially, I seemed to have bad timing when posting a review. Either I would post a review, and then the system would go down for several days, or the author would take an unusually long time to reply to the blurb ending. In case any of you see me in line at the grocery store, go on a different line. Whatever line I go on becomes the line that gets backed up.

[Scott]

Thank you Scott for always being objective and listening to everyones concerns. I appreciate you having already thought ahead about ways to help improve our score once the new changes are in effect. I was curious if possibly a reviewer could 'work off' a rejected review so eventually it wouldnt show on their score? Also, I will let you know if a review takes as long to be published.

When I implement the new formula, I will make it so the rejected review penalty is not permanent.

[TammyO]

Scott, you have answered all of my concerns as well as a few other questions I didn't think to ask. Thank you, for clarifying things.

[TLGabelman]

Thank you Scott for always being objective and listening to everyones concerns. I appreciate you having already thought ahead about ways to help improve our score once the new changes are in effect. I was curious if possibly a reviewer could 'work off' a rejected review so eventually it wouldnt show on their score? Also, I will let you know if a review takes as long to be published.

I do have to agree with you that when a review takes a long time to be published, you run the risk of it "falling off the radar quickly". I had this happen a few times a few months ago. Anyway, there does seem to be a quicker turnaround for publication lately, so that's a good thing. Initially, I seemed to have bad timing when posting a review. Either I would post a review, and then the system would go down for several days, or the author would take an unusually long time to reply to the blurb ending. In case any of you see me in line at the grocery store, go on a different line. Whatever line I go on becomes the line that gets backed up.

I usually the one who causes the back up

-- 08 Mar 2015, 01:45 --

Thanks @scott. I think thats a great idea!

[PashaRu]

@Scott, thanks for taking the time to answer everyone's questions and concerns. Reminds me of the old saying that starts, "You can please some of the people all of the time..." Review team members will, no doubt, be paying close attention to see how this all works out. And I'm sure there will be more questions, so we'll all just need to be patient with each other. I'm glad that metrics are in place to ensure that the reviews are of high quality, both in content and style. This will attract authors who, after investing a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in their book, can be sure they'll get a quality, well-written review for something that is very near and dear to them.

[ALynnPowers]

So far, everything seems to be running smoothly. At least, as far as I have seen...