Writing.Com 101

Public Review Rewards

In addition to rewarding those reviewers who send you personal reviews, every Writing.Com member has the opportunity to reward reviewers on the Public Review   page (Reviewers in the left navigation menu).1

If you see feedback that you found useful or if you appreciate the time spent helping another Writing.Com author, you can recognize and reward the reviewer for a job well done. Rewarding reviewers for their constructive criticism, not just criticism, encourages them to continue reviewing.

Through Public Review Rewards, every member has the opportunity to reward public reviews according to their own opinions of what makes a great review, and the entire Writing.Com community works together to determine what the community collectively regards as the best reviews, and to reward those reviews!

How to Award Gift Points to a Public Review
To award "Gift Points"  to a reviewer from the Public Review page, choose the number of gift points you wish to send from the options in the drop menu at the upper right of that particular review's header and click "Send!" This will open a small pop-up window where you can include a comment with your awarded Gift Points, and set additional options.

If you have access to spend gift points for a Group, you can choose whether the Gift Points will come from your own funds or from a Group's funds. The default when you start rewarding will always be your own Gift Points. If you change the selection, the system will remember your last selection and use it as a temporary default for your current session only. This is session-based, and not an account preference that can be changed permanently.

If you would like to send the reward anonymously, click that option.

Restrictions: You may only award each public review once, but you may award multiple public reviews from the same reviewer. Similarly, you may award Gift Points to various reviewers of the same item. However, if a reviewer has reviewed the same item more than once, you may only reward one of those public reviews.

Reviewing Credits
When a member awards a reviewer with Gift Points using the Public Reviews page, Writing.Com also assigns 1 to 9 "Reviewing Credits"  to the recipient of the Gift Points. The amount of credits assigned is based upon the size of the Gift Point award and other factors. The number of credits assigned during the past 31 days determines the placement of reviewer on the Most Credited Reviewers   page, which lists the top 100 reviewers and includes links to their Public Reviews as shown in their Reviews tabs.


Frequently Asked Questions

How long must a Public Review be to qualify for being awarded Gift Points and reviewing credits?
The Public Review must be at least 250 characters in length. [Note: When writing a review, it is best to go at least a few characters over that in case of potential variation between the counters. Once sent, reviews cannot be edited.]

How long can a Public Review be awarded Gift Points and reviewing credits?
For 14 days from the time it is sent. [Note that it's a nice courtesy to reviewers to leave their reviews public for those two weeks.]

Does rewarding an anonymous review on the Public Review page disclose the identity of the reviewer?
No, the system will maintain the reviewer's privacy throughout the process.

What if the recipient does not like my review and Hides it, removing it from the Public Reviews page?
The Public Review will still be visible through its review link, and can still be awarded Gift Points and reviewing credits that way, as normal, by anyone who can access the item and who has the review link.

I sent a Public Review, but I (or someone else) cannot find it on the Public Reviews page. Why not?
Your content rating filter could be set lower than the content rating of the item you reviewed.
The item's access setting might be Group-only access, or Private with a Passkey. In these situations, Public Reviews are not included in the Public Reviews listing or in any of its sub-listings, such as Group affiliated Reviews or Reviews tabs in the reviewers portfolios. Only other members of the Group used for a Group-only access restriction will be able to view the Public Review of such an item, and only through the review link. Public Reviews of items set to Private are in effect Private Reviews [unless the item owner changes the access restriction on their item].
The access restriction on the item might have been changed to exclude you. You can only see Public Reviews for items that you have access to view.
In the case of someone else, they may not have access to the item, either because the item is set to an account level restriction or a paid membership restriction (this restriction is visible only in the Advanced section of the item's edit page, and does not show on the item header) which excludes them.
The Public Review might be more than 31 days old.
The item owner might have Blocked/Ignored you.

Can a reviewer reward themselves in order to receive more review credits?
No, the system will not allow a member to award their own public reviews. Attempts to cheat the system will not be tolerated.

Are reviewing credits awarded when a review recipient sends Gift Points in a review reply or email?
No, only Gift Points sent from the Public Reviews page or one of its sub-listings result in reviewing credits.

The site does not feel that the author of a work is in the best place to objectively judge a review from the community perspective. In fact, we tend to feel that those who give honest feedback, point out mistakes, and give well-rounded reviews and less-than-perfect ratings are less likely to receive credits from a large portion of authors--in comparison to those who send nothing but praise and high ratings. While we don't prevent the author who receives a review from rewarding on the Public Reviews page, our goal is to make sure that the majority of rewarding of reviews comes from "3rd party" viewers of the reviews. So to keep things a little more fair in terms of review crediting, we feel the community overall can do a better job rewarding reviewers for the public crediting system than those directly in receipt of an individual review.

Are reviewing credits awarded for Private Reviews?
No. Only Public Reviews can be awarded reviewing credits.

The reviewer chooses whether to send a review as Private or Public. The majority of reviewers who send private reviews don't wish to compete in an open forum. They most likely have other priorities and place no priority on competing at all, thus keeping their reviews private.

While Writing.Com uses the competition aspect of the public review system to increase participation in reviewing and overall review skills around the site, Writing.Com is really about writing! The most important aspect of reviewing is that it improves the writing skills of the reviewers themselves, while at the same time it has the potential to help other authors improve.

Since reviewing credits cannot be awarded to reviews for Private items, how can I compete for reviewer attention if I need to keep my work private?
For work you plan to publish, secure your work with access restrictions and/or passkeys. You can use the Review Request system and a passkey to invite individual reviewers to review your work and/or use the Group-Only access restriction for a review-exchange group and request reviews there. Since those reviewers won't be receiving credits or GPs from the WDC public, you can offer your own incentives directly to reviewers to entice them to help you out.

Recommended Reading

1. Gift Points
2. Public Reviews
3. Reviewing Credits

Footnotes
1  Updated by northernwrites; written by The ScaryMaster