Suggestion Box

I think this suggestion has been made before, and - if I remember correctly - the real difficulty was in finding categories that fit every kind of item here on Writing.Com. A single star rating is universal and the scale is clearly apparent, whereas different categories may or may not apply, depending on the item. For example, "storytelling" wouldn't be a category that's necessarily applicable to a forum or group item. Similarly, "vocabulary/language" wouldn't be applicable to an image or a word search. It would be incredibly difficult to come up with a set of multiple rating categories that would apply equally to every item, and I can only imagine that The StoryMaster 's head would probably explode at the idea of individual items having different rating categories that can be toggled on or off at will, all needing to be calculated and indexed item-by-item...

One alternative suggestion, though, would be to create the categories you want in a template you can use for your reviews. If you have a paid membership of any level, you have a Review Tool that allows you to store review templates, but if you don't have a paid membership, you can always save the templates in your Notepad, or even an offsite document, and then copy and paste them as needed. I took this approach for several years, where my reviews were broken down into different categories (for stories, I had entries for concept/premise, storyline, character, dialogue, structure, etc.), and I've even seen some users develop a rating system of their own, where they'll include a star rating or numerical rating next to each of those categories to give an author an idea of the strengths and weaknesses of a piece, much like you suggested.

I think the big thing, though, is that we want people to review, not just casually check a bunch of boxes. It's so much more meaningful to an author to receive even a few personalized words about their work. If someone has thoughts on the presentation, vocabulary, whether it interests you as a reader or not, if it has potential, if it needs to be polished, etc. ... all those things are exactly the kind of stuff that writers love to receive as reviews in their inboxes. Even a few personal words can mean worlds more than even the most complex and detailed of rating categories.

I hope this helps!

Jeff


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