Description Force!

[Herk]

Dragon geisha are an interesting concept. I like this one.

Thanks AJ - Look at her mum and grandma you can find two others where I used that same template (yes I use them too).

 

Anyway if you like cahtting* about descrips while reviewing - why not join us in the irc channel (link is in first post)?

 

* - the art of chatting with much ryping*²

*² - mistyping EVERYTHING even typing

Edited June 29, 2014 by herk

[love_HP]

Alright, thank you I guess I get kind of self-conscious about my descriptions when I see Abstains or Rejections with no comments. Like, "Oh geez, was it so bad they couldn't even put into words why they don't like it?"

Abstains without comments often means that the voter finds the description tl;dr. And rejects without comments may come from random trolls.

 

Edit:@Herk , what's cahtting?

Edited June 29, 2014 by love_HP

[Lagie]

What is tl;dr?

[pinkgothic]

What is tl;dr?

An acronym for "too long; didn't read".

[Lagie]

An acronym for "too long; didn't read".

Thank you!

 

I occasionally abstain without comment if it's a decently written description that just rubs me the wrong way. It doesn't happen often.

 

I've seen a few Z Project dragons while reviewing today!

[pinkgothic]

For what it's worth, I abstain without a comment fairly frequently if I don't feel qualified to say if the description is okay or not. That's often when someone writes a description that comes off as a fairly unrealistic personality (think mary sue / gary stu, but not just on the 'perfect' end of the scale... just generally awkward), makes claims about a breed that isn't expressly mentioned in its description and I haven't heard before, or has grammar that looks awkward to me, but I can't find a technical flaw in (keeping in mind that I don't know how to express grammar rules half the time, mind you).

 

Either way, I wouldn't worry about comment-free abstains. I'd view them as someone deciding to read the next description instead, without affecting the description vote.

[Herk]

Just to clarify: I have NEVER SEEN a commentless abstain. As far as I know they are not displayed as they are counted as a 'skip'. The only way I know off to tell if there's a commentless abstain if it's the first commenter to encounter that description, then you will see the bolded "User comments" and nothing below instead of nothing at all if no one has been there yet.

 

So has anyone of you ever seen

Abstain:

on one of your descriptions?

[Denwayasha]

This is moonbult safecare's lucky dragon his favioute food is chicken he mostly like's chicken cooked safecare give's him four peace's of chicken a day that's .Moonbult is lucky because when he was a egg he had trouble hatching it took two year's for him to hatch and he had one day left before... well you know.His behavoir is a bit rough he like's to bully other dragon's he has a soft side though his rough scale's he will protect anyone who can be friend's. he love's sleeping in the morning where other dragon's are awake when safecare get's home he jump's up and goes to safecare. Moonbult the lucky dragon.

 

Came across this one while reviewing and left a comment directing the writer to this thread. As far as the 'story' goes it seems alright, but it needs quite a bit of spelling and grammar fixes.

[Dimar]

Some of us have been working with that author so we'll see how it goes.

 

And I would just like to bring something up in general that Herk and I discussed: if you point someone to this thread for help, it's probably better to wait for them to show up before posting their description and critiquing it. If the person has a forum account and is willing to post about it, they'll come in and do so. But if we write feedback before then, it might get buried under other posts and they won't see it, or they may update their description in the queue and so your post won't apply anymore.

 

In summary, we'd prefer if people wait until the author shows up (but remember they might not!) before quoting their description and giving crit. The gesture is nice, but a few people have done that lately and really it's better to just wait before sharing their description. Thanks, guys.

 

ETA: I would also like to get a response about Herk's question regarding commentless Abstains. I don't describe much, granted, but I was also under the impression that you only saw Abstains with comments, and otherwise they weren't visible. Mystery solved; completely blank Abstains don't show up. Herk and I definitely still have functioning memories. :3

Edited July 2, 2014 by Dimar

[Shelybear]

Re Herk and Dimar,

Nope I don't think I've seen commentless abstain one. However I'm not sure as I don't do much description myself.

 

P.S. Commentless reject really bothers me anyway.

[pinkgothic]

Just to clarify: I have NEVER SEEN a commentless abstain. As far as I know they are not displayed as they are counted as a 'skip'. The only way I know off to tell if there's a commentless abstain if it's the first commenter to encounter that description, then you will see the bolded "User comments" and nothing below instead of nothing at all if no one has been there yet.

 

So has anyone of you ever seen on one of your descriptions?

Nope, I hadn't. I thought someone in this thread had, but looking back on it, it seems it was just a general question.

 

I thought it worked the same way you said, too, I just erroneously figured I must've been wrong. Oops.

[pinkgothic]

Does anyone know if there's another review-a-thon of some sort planned?

 

I'm asking because I've been holding off on writing more descriptions since mine've been lying around unchanged since the 22nd of April - and I do have a few things I'd love to describe , but it's kind of blocking me psychologically that I've got thirteen unapproved descriptions. I guess subconsciously I figure it's not going help if I add more to the pile. Self-made problem, I know, I know, and I know others just keep describing, so it's rather silly of me to have this hang-up in the first place!

 

Nonetheless I'm curious.

 

Any plans? (If not, no biggie, of course!)

[azazelbunny]

It's totally reasonable to get a bit of a description block when you're already waiting on a bunch of unapproved descriptions. I have the same problem

 

I would totally participate in a review-a-thon if we had one. I wasn't here for the last one, so granted I don't know what exactly it entails, but I'm game

[Dimar]

It'd be nice to have a review-a-thon, but I know lots of us are busy so it's hard to plan a time at the moment. Personally, I'm busier during the summer than the school semester, so maybe a weekend in September or October will be a good date even though that's pretty far off. I haven't discussed anything concrete with Herk or Brair though.

 

That's why I'm so behind on the queue right now instead of being 100% caught up like usual... I just don't have enough free time during summer months. >.<

Edited July 1, 2014 by Dimar

[azazelbunny]

Man, I wish I could help you guys more...I'm pretty much home all day all the time, generally bored out of my skull. As is I review like 15-20 descrips a day (usually, not today because I woke up really late and have been avoiding all of my responsibilities).

 

Granted I don't always comment on all of them because sometimes there's nothing to say, but the point of this post is: I have no life so I spend all of my time reviewing and writing descriptions for tiny pixelated dragons and I wish I could help you guys out because you're all busy and I am not.

[Lagie]

The best way to help is to keep reviewing!

 

You can join the group in the chat if you want company sometimes while reviewing.

There's a link in the first post, I think.

[Shelybear]

Yeeppppp, keep reviewing and don't forget to leave a comment will be helpful!

Actually in order to to a review-a-thon we need MODs have time, instead of us. We still can't approve any descriptions by ourselves...

[Dimar]

Of course not, but if we can get a bunch of reviewers to spend a few days working really hard that would still help people. I have something in the queue that has only been reviewed by Herk and I submitted it about a week ago. I don't find it likely that we could get enough mods with time on their hands to really bring the queue back down, but hardcore reviewing would still be beneficial. :3

 

We just really need Description Moderators to keep this massive backlog under control. Things would be so much better.

[Shelybear]

I totally agree with you Dimar.

Description Moderators/Approvers would be no doubt helpful since regular Mods are always busy with their already-on-list works.

 

I don't want to discourage people from reviewing, but... we really need more people with power to approve it.

[azazelbunny]

There was a thread or two talking about getting description mods, are we not making progress on that? I guess TJ is pretty busy right now, though, so it's not exactly the best time to pester him about it.

 

Additionally, while I'm here:

 

Not sure where exactly to put this, so I'll put it here in the hopes they stop by and read it. To the person who commented on this (a two-headed lindwurm male named Eglanion):

 

The Freani-eplith, or Friends of the Forest, are a guild that has sworn to protect the forest and all who pass through it. There are four "divisions" within the guild: The Guardians, The Cloud Guard, The Earth Guard, and The Bloodseekers.

Eglanion is not actually a member of any specific division. Instead, they guard a remote section of the forest known as the Grove where Persephone tends to a massive garden. Because she works with the Earth Guard and is often called away to assist her division, the task of protecting the Grove from trespassers in her absence has fallen to them. They take turns with this, one head sleeping during the day and the other at night.

 

with this (bolded for your convenience):

 

Accept:

Abstain: Your dragon is not a girl

Accept:

 

My assumption is that you read "Because she works with the Earth Guard and is often called away to assist her division, the task of protecting the Grove from trespassers in her absence has fallen to them." and got confused. I was talking about Persephone (female) being away and the responsibility of protecting the Grove falling to Eglanion (referred to as "them" because that's how I refer to all of my two-headed anythings).

 

Should I try to clarify that better? I don't really want to change it, to be honest. I like the way I phrased it and there's nothing actually wrong with it >.> What do you guys think?

[Lagie]

Maybe change the 'she' to Persephone. That would make it more clear.

 

Instead of:

Because she works with the Earth Guard

have:

Because Persephone works with the Earth Guard

 

the task of protecting the Grove from trespassers in her absence has fallen to them.

and maybe put Eglanion instead of 'them'?

[Dimar]

There was a thread or two talking about getting description mods, are we not making progress on that? I guess TJ is pretty busy right now, though, so it's not exactly the best time to pester him about it.

There's a suggestion thread for it, of course (the link is in the third post of this thread). And it's something we strongly support in general, but it would involve re-coding aspects of the description system which would definitely be a bit of work. There hasn't been a lot of feedback from TJ, so there's only so much progress that can be done about that. We just need to do the best we can at the moment with the current system.

[azazelbunny]

The Freani-eplith, or Friends of the Forest, are a guild that has sworn to protect the forest and all who pass through it. There are four "divisions" within the guild: The Guardians, The Cloud Guard, The Earth Guard, and The Bloodseekers.

Eglanion is not actually a member of any specific division. Instead, they guard a remote section of the forest known as the Grove where Persephone tends to a massive garden. Because Persephone works with the Earth Guard and is often called away to assist her division, the task of protecting the Grove from trespassers in her absence has fallen to Eglanion. They take turns with this, one head sleeping during the day and the other at night.

 

Like that?

[Lagie]

That sounds much more clear!

[Shelybear]

It's my hobby to bump it back to the first page when it went down<3