Generic Format for Review Exchanges

A Generic Format for a Review Exchange Forum

Have you ever wanted to create an easily managed forum where a group of authors can exchange reviews? If so, you're in the right place.

The Crosstimbers Author Consortium has developed a family of genre-based Roundtables to accomplish exactly this task. We're making our format freely available to the Writing.com Community. If you use it, we only ask that you place an acknowlegement on your forum page with this graphic: {image:2309375-70%}

Here's what the generic format looks like: "Sample Author Roundtable" . It's fully customizable--for example, you'll surely want to create your own custom banner. You can create your own if you wish or, for a small donation to the Crosstimbers Author Consortium, we'll customize one for you. Contact Max Griffin 🏳️‍🌈 for details.

You can also customize the text that drops down in each tab to fit your own forum. You can either write your own (hiding our suggested text) or add to our text before or after our suggested copy.

This template is suitable both for an open roundtable, where anyone may request and post reviews, and for a more conventional closed workshop, where visibility of the forum, requests for reviews, and forum posts are limited to a select group of authors. It's all up to you in how you set up your forum in your portfolio. The code we provide is just for the front-end of the forum and serves as the body and management too for your forum.

How it works.

What makes this easy to administer is that authors manage their own postings. Each author creates a file in their WDC portfolio that lists links to the items for which they are seeking reviews. They send the LINK to that file to the manager of the forum. The manager then uses the WritingML {insert:###} tag to insert the contents of the link as a

{dropnote:"<NAME>"}
{insert:####}{/dropnote}

in the forum, where <NAME> is the author's name and {insert:####} links the author's list in their portfolio.

The result is a drop-down list that exactly matches the contents of the file the author created. Whenever the author updates or annotates this list in their portfolio, the {{{insert:####} displays the updated file. This makes the author's review requests self-managed, reducing time and effort in managing the forum.

The code for the forum is documented and includes examples how to produce the above links. You will see six such links, in two rows of three, in the example forum

FORUM

Sample Author Roundtable  (E) Sample format for message boards used as a roundtable for authors to exchange reviews. #2309366 by Max Griffin 🏳️‍🌈

. In a real forum, these would of course all be to different authors.

The code also makes use of the WritingML {insert:###} command to avoid clutter in the basic template. The text under each tab is also saved in a file which is then inserted into roundtable. The inserted text can't be edited by users, but can be replaced by hiding or commenting out the insert tags like so:

{hide} {insert:2309384}{/hide}or
{-- {insert:2309384} --}

We recommend hiding or commenting the tags out rather than deleting them so you can recover them later if needed. You can retain the suggested text while adding your own, above or below the {insert} tag for the suggested text.

The Code.

Here's the code that produces the generic forum.

                                       Code starts here                                        

{center}{image:2309367}{/center}{-- INSERT YOUR OWN BANNER HERE --}
{-- EXERCISE CARE WHEN EDITING THE TABS PART OF THIS FILE
MAINTENANCE EDITS ARE ALL BELOW THE REVIEW REQUESTS BANNER --}
{size:4.5}{c:red}{b}{center} DEMONSTRATION ROUNDTABLE ONLY
NOT FOR REQUESTING REVIEWS
If you want a review, please visit {item:1848419}{/center}{/b}{/c}{/size}

{center}{dropnote:"{image:2309368-60%}"} {-- ##### PURPOSE ###### --}
{left}
This is a place where authors can meet, discuss their works-in-progress, and exchange reviews.
{insert:2309384}
{/left}
{/dropnote}{dropnote:"{image:2309369-60%}"} {-- ##### How to Review ###### --}
{left}
{insert:2309383}
{/left}
{/dropnote}
{dropnote:"{image:2309370-60%}"} {-- ##### How to Get Reviews ###### --}
{left}
{insert:2309381}
{/left}
{/dropnote}{dropnote:"{image:2309371-60%}"} {-- ##### Roundtable Linkes File###### --}
{left}
{insert:2309379}
{/left}
{/dropnote}
{dropnote:"{image:2309374-60%}"} {-- ##### Managers ###### --}
{left} {-- BE SURE TO PUT YOUR USERID HERE!! --}
{USER:MATHGUY}
{/left}
{/dropnote}

{-- REVIEW REQESTS BANNER STARTS BELOW THIS LINE --}
{image:2309372} {hide} ##### REQUESTS ###### {/hide}

{-- #### Put up to three links per displayed line by stopping and starting dropnotes on the same line with
a tag {s:10} in between to separate links by ten spaces. The tags will be centered since themain page is centered.
After three conseecutive links, start a new line.

The example below shows how to do that, although it repeats the same link six times. #### --}

{dropnote:"Max Griffin"}
{image:2309217}
{left}
{insert:2309101}
{/left}
{image:2309217}
{/dropnote}{s:10}{dropnote:"Max Griffin"}
{image:2309217}
{left}
{insert:2309101}
{u}{s:30}{/u}
{/left}
{image:2309217}
{/dropnote}{s:10}{dropnote:"Max Griffin"}
{image:2309217}
{left}
{insert:2309101}
{u}{s:30}{/u}
{/left}
{image:2309217}
{/dropnote}

{dropnote:"Max Griffin"}
{image:2309217}
{left}
{insert:2309101}
{/left}
{image:2309217}
{/dropnote}{s:10}{dropnote:"Max Griffin"}
{image:2309217}
{left}
{insert:2309101}
{u}{s:30}{/u}
{/left}
{image:2309217}
{/dropnote}{s:10}{dropnote:"Max Griffin"}
{image:2309217}
{left}
{insert:2309101}
{u}{s:30}{/u}
{/left}
{image:2309217}
{/dropnote}

{/center}

{image:2309375-70%}



                                       Code stops here