I can think of at least two people with 3+ articles at like….+10, who I wouldn't trust to rubber-stamp a draft.

If we see a trend of the same people greenlighting concepts that result in bad drafts, we can revoke their greenlighting privilege. And if they ignore the staff order for that, we can move on with standard disciplinary action.

Though honestly not many people give forum critique anyway, so I don't know how much of an issue this would be at the moment.

Anyone who would like to pretty this up can definitely do so! It's sort of haphazardly tossed together at the moment as I fill in the gaps.

Offhand, I think it's going to cause problems for people who can't present their ideas very well. The ideas for many successful SCPs sound absurd when stated directly.

I feel like this can be addressed on the reviewer's side, by engaging with the author and asking questions. And I have no problem with reviewers giving "benefit of the doubt" greenlights; I know I like weird quirky stuff myself. Ideally having two perspectives should give a good scope of the potential site community response. Hence requiring two reviewers, not just one.

ETA: additionally, I am good with helping run seminars on Ideas Crit. We've also got a bunch of excellent up-and-coming reviewers in the Ideas forum lately (I've sent thank-you PMs to some) that I am optimistic about.

I cross-posted with Zyn. It looks like my main issue has already been addressed — the live version says "severe lack of clinical tone". Nicely done.

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Some notes.

#1 may be an issue. Offhand, I think it's going to cause problems for people who can't present their ideas very well. The ideas for many successful SCPs sound absurd when stated directly. However, if the Forum Crit team is able to keep this in mind, it should be okay, at least for an extended trial run.

#2 is an extremely good idea and I cannot recommend it strongly enough. I feel that either this or a solution amounting to something similar is necessary for the long-term health of the site.

I want to warn against the phrasing of "lack of clinical tone", though. I think this needs to be modified to "serious tone errors". We have an issue (ongoing for years now) of experienced critiquers, including staff, claiming something lacks clinical tone when it just isn't in the current year's "house style" and the actual tone is fine.

I feel this is an easy tweak, though — and would match the other bars of "10+ errors" and "nonsensical [as opposed to just "iffy"] containment".

EDIT: I cross-posted with Zyn. It looks like my main issue has already been addressed — the live version says "severe lack of clinical tone". Nicely done.

Copypasta are incoming. The forums are still pretty swamped but in interest of fairness to the authors, I'll only be retroactively posting auto-defers and brainstorming notices for the applicable threads that were created in the last 12 hours or so. Older threads will receive the same obligatory first review.

I 100% agree with everything Zyn has said so far. There is only so much slack that crit seminars and a vast array of staff members can pick up, and neither can deal with busy seasons like midterm/finals weeks and holidays.

I&B takes far less time to critique, especially for majorly flawed ideas.

The only real drawback that I can foresee here would be that an author can revise their idea according to crit and then never hear back from their reviewer, therefore missing out on those endorsements they need for draft crit. Staff will likely need to emphasize the importance of PMing critters, since most threads get their one comment and are done. That second review, as well as the endorsement from the first reviewer, will likely need to be solicited via PM.

E: Also echoing Shanor's question of what defines an "experienced reviewer/author". Alleviated in chat.

I strongly agree with this idea. I do realize that this will be putting a lot more pressure on the I&B forum, but the I&B forum is far less work then the drafting one. Plus, with the extra focus on the forum, more staff will be on the forum helping out, which means the job will be much simpler.

I would like to hear what the requirements for being considered an "experienced reviewer/author" would be however. As just being on the site for a long time would not really work, some authors just are not good at explaining themselves, and some "experienced reviewers" have generally given critique that is ok, but not enough that I would trust them to greenlight ideas. I would assume many members of the Forum critique team might have similar reservations, so knowing the requirements would definitely be helpful.

I agree this would potentially be a solution also, but my concern is that it isn’t scalable. Eventually the I&B forums will have the same issues of being swamped- but I don’t know how hard the volume will need to ramp for that to be the case. I presume it might already become the case in the near future based on discussions between administrators. I agree this would be a good direction regardless.

I've made the first proposal twice before with a sort of lukewarm reception (though I think most of the negative responses were from people who don't do forum critique regularly?) so I never pushed for it, but I think now's the time to implement it so the writing help forums flow smoother.

1. Require that all new authors get their concepts greenlighted by at least two experienced reviewers/authors before they can ask for help with a full draft. Draft threads from new authors will need to have a link to the ideas thread with two greenlights, or they will be locked with a placeholder.

2. Auto-reject/Defer all drafts that hit two or more of the following criteria:

• 10+ grammar/mechanics errors > provide links to General Writing Resource thread, spellcheckers, Grammarly (though I hear it's not always super helpful, so grain of salt that)
• Nonsensical containment (SCP-specific) > provide links to containment-specific guidelines
• Lack of clinical tone (SCP-specific) > provide links to college-level writing resources
• General boring/clunky prose (Tale-specific) > provide links to character-writing essays, The Elements of Style, etc.
• Any others that can be suggested

An auto-reject/defer will basically be auto-crit, but with a more specialized selection of resources so the author can improve the draft on their own rather than just being told what's wrong. Defers should only be used on drafts that clearly need a lot more effort to succeed.

I will write up staff copypastas to use for both cases. In the event of backseat modding (which was my primary concern with auto-crit), the copypastas should still be helpful to authors/should guide them to how to use the forums properly.

I hope these measures will:

• filter out the high-error-volume drafts so the high-effort works get priority
• encourage site authors to study on their own to polish concepts and drafts to make sure they're tip-top shape before requesting help
• increase awareness of the mainsite resources available to writers
• establish a general set of requirements for a draft to merit the time and effort of a reviewer

I do anticipate the workflow shifting. We will definitely need staff to focus more on the Ideas and Brainstorming forum, but it should be easier and less time-consuming to tell someone "hey, we already have a bunch of dudes who fight good, read these essays, read the discussion page for these successful articles, and come back with a revised version of your concept" than slogging through a 4000+ word draft about a guy that fights good that also has a ton of basic writing errors.

Thoughts?