Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

How about another Review Format?

What we need her is another review system

I have been thinking about a review format better suited to my quirky (jerky?) disposition. “Not another review format!” Screams the resident muse from deep in the writing.com labyrinth , raking her cup across the bars of her binary dungeon . Talk about a dead horse, why would anyone want to beat that old nag any more…?

The reason is that the formats I have seen are ill suited to my anal temperament. If I were a doctor I would be a failure due to my appalling bedside manner.

I know this is heresy but I do not value writing.com for its social benefits but rather as an opportunity to refine my writing skills. I don’t need a support group to say nice things when what I need to hear are the bad things. Most of the reviews I see spend ninety percent of their energy trying to avoid hurting someone’s feelings….and heaven help the writer who writes with a fatal flaw….Nobody is ever going to point it out for fear of inciting their ire or being labeled as insensitive. Spare me another repetition of the dreadful….”How dare you….”

One of the ideas I have been considering is doing a review like they score figure skating in the Olympics. There would be a score for presentation and one for technical merit. The first would be the “Wow! Factor and the second would deduct for typos and other shortcomings in composition.

So you ask…how would you objectively score the “Wow!” factor.

Good Question…I would begin by reviewing contests and rank order the contestants on an order of merit list (OML). Say there are 10 entrants. The best would receive a score of ten and so on down the queue. To the winner I would say…For presentation I give you a score of 10 based upon your standing on the OML. Then I would go to technical merit and deduct a point for each typo or other mechanical flaw or shortcoming.

I would do this for all 10 and they would all be given a score…albeit it might be a minus score. The one with the highest positive score would be declared “The best in show…”

Like many great ideas I fear this would be too traumatic for some and many of those who weigh the social benefits of the site would be appalled. I suspect I would get booted after about a week for being the insensitive nincompoop that I am.

However it would provide empirical evidence as to the quality of a work, vastly superior to any system I have seen demonstrated here-to-for. Hmmmm, let me give this matter some further thought.