Codification of critique.

I'm pretty iffy on this, since it would involve introducing and teaching a new system that involves what might amount to a checklist that could potentially take longer than a 10-second skim, 2-minute autocrit. This would also make it more difficult for super-new writers to figure out how the site works (and also potentially leads to some miscommunication regarding what people should aim for. Some authors might be totally fine with something being average, while some reviewers would downvote average stuff).

Boilerplate copypasta!

Yeah, this is super useful. So long as a critique isn't only the boilerplate, it's fine. There's no special points for typing out an entire review versus copy-pasting in relevant bits that you've commented on other drafts with the same issues, especially simple grammar stuff.

Sharing ideas!

This works. I'd also like to see more non-staff getting into the swing of being reviewers as well. The community can't really grow if staff are the only ones in this sort of guidance role.

I fully support putting the Drafts Forum on hold for a bit to allow us to catch up. Also, I'm willing to brainstorm some ideas on how to fix this, and I already have a couple ideas:

1. Codification of critique.
   • Aside from concept, what do we crit? Formatting, SPaG, tone, cliche, and following basic standard site protocol. If we can distill these aspects into some form of points-based system, I think we'd be a step in the right direction.
   • Everything could be on a -1 to +1 range (three-point system) of Below Average, Average, and Above Average.
     • Great SPaG? +1
     • Poor formatting? -1
     • Discovery log in ‘Description’? -1
   • This could help to determine what's worth full crit and what's worth boilerplate copypasta with a little sauce.
2. Boilerplate copypasta!
   • Zyn uses some very well-written boilerplate pieces that we could all benefit from using to help speed things along.
3. Sharing ideas!
   • If we can put our heads together and figure out a way to standardize critique, we could rule the sitefairly quickly knock out incoming drafts by the boatload!

Anyway, that's just my three chips worth.

Honestly I wish someone would have told me about the contest timeslot earlier, but truth be told this happens every time there's a contest. Doomsday was the worst—there were so many similar-premise drafts that were 2k or more in wordcount and pretty much no one wanted to help review them, but eeeeeeverybody was clamoring for a staff-written review.

Personally, I think whipping up the critters into shape is what's necessary, though I do understand the holiday season is a bit of downtime for most of us. This is a tough situation we find ourselves in.

Agreed. It's hard for me to explain how much of a struggle it is every day wondering about if I should bother asking for help in the chat. The reason I wanted Forum Crit to be such a big team is so we could divvy up the work in a way that wouldn't be a strain for everyone… but with so many of the members going inactive or just dropping site activity altogether, it's gotten to be that only a couple people actually help out on a regular basis.

And it gets hard to poke people about this since I know they have families, jobs, schoolwork, and IRL stuff that's more important and should be a focus. I'm kind of stuck. I want the site to be something fun, not a chore, etc.

I've been meaning to write up more of the Crit Tips pages: http://www.scp-wiki.net/zyn-s-crit-tips-i to give an idea of more efficient and time-saving ways to write feedback, but those never happen if I'm getting bombarded with review requests and trying to keep threads off pages 4 and 5.

I feel like given how hard to come down on really low-quality feedback, there's a sense of expectation for all critique given to take a long time to write, be practically a novella in length, etc. Those really aren't the case. Sure, people line-by-line things anyway and that can be pretty helpful, but people shouldn't feel like critiquing a few threads will need to take them over an hour.

Though I understand the sentiment here and agree this would allow us to catch up on the clogged forums, I don't really think it will help in the long run. There's a contest coming up which aligns with the ongoing Winter Break, meaning that locking up the forums right now would likely result with an extreme overflow of drafts the moment they're open. Personally, I think whipping up the critters into shape is what's necessary, though I do understand the holiday season is a bit of downtime for most of us. This is a tough situation we find ourselves in.

I just got done shotgunning 6 drafts that were on Pages 3 and 4, and I intend to pick up a few more soon.

I have no intention of trying to beg people in chat every day for help (honestly, usually only a couple people respond anyway since everyone else is either not there, working on their own stuff, or has IRL things like studying and sleep to attend to) during the holidays.

How does everyone feel about having the draft forum closed to new posts for a week during the holidays? People can still post on current threads, but creation of new threads will be closed so the crit team can get in some much-needed, much-deserved R&R. We'd post a stickied thread notice explaining this and pointing to other avenues of receiving feedback.

I'm hoping that this buffer time will also give staff a moment to address the many other problems with the writing help forums leading up to this. I don't want to point fingers, but something needs to change before next year. In a month my work hours will be lengthened and I will have a lot less time to handle site stuff. It's not fair or sustainable if it's just me and a handful of exceptional, but also overworked Junior Staff handling everything that the rest of the team (and the site, honestly) should be chipping in for.