More space for reviewing descriptions?

[blackdragon71]

I don't support this, and this is my reason: It makes for lazy description writers. It tasks the reviewer with telling each and every person who can't be bothered to spell, punctuate, or put a sentence or paragraph together correctly what their errors are and how to fix them. This then slows down the review process, which can create backlog, especially with more players on the scene wanting to describe their dragons. There is plenty of room already to say, "Hey, go read the guidelines," or "Go crack a copy of Strunk & White's Elements of Style." If a person really thinks they have a good, solid description of their dragon, then let them do the legwork and find a proofreader before posting their dragon's story. After all, isn't the dragon special enough to warrant that sort of treatment? If it isn't, then why say anything about it? There is already a description of it in place. Understandably, our players whose first language is not English may need help from the reviewer, but I find few of them actually have a problem in this regard. Sadly, it is English speakers who can't or won't represent our language in their descriptions with proper usage.

 

Edited because I need a proofreader.

Edited August 22, 2012 by blackdragon71

[Herk]

I don't support this, and this is my reason: It makes for lazy description writers. It tasks the reviewer with telling each and every person who can't be bothered to spell, punctuate, or put a sentence or paragraph together correctly what their errors are and how to fix them. This then slows down the review process, which can create backlog, especially with more players on the scene wanting to describe their dragons. There is plenty of room already to say, "Hey, go read the guidelines," or "Go crack a copy of Strunk & White's Elements of Style." If a person really thinks they have a good, solid description of their dragon, then let them do the legwork and find a proofreader before posting their dragon's story. After all, isn't the dragon special enough to warrant that sort of treatment? If it isn't, then why say anything about it? There is already a description of it in place. Understandably, our players whose first language is not English may need help from the reviewer, but I find few of them actually have a problem in this regard. Sadly, it is English speakers who can't or won't represent our language in their descriptions with proper usage.

 

Edited because I need a proofreader.

Comments should be HELPFUL and not "just" snarky. Although I myself am guilty of this from time to time when I see tons of descriptions by the same describer who all share the same disregard for rules.

 

"Read the Rules" is not helpful. "1st person (I/me) is NOT allowed in descriptions, please read the guidelines" is.

 

"Go crack a copy of Strunk & White's Elements of Style." is NOT helpful. "The 3rd sentence *He then... wall.* seems off to me." or "Please use full sentences instead of fragments." are.

 

Ever since the update years back that gave us more space I've been pretty content. In the few cases when I do run out of comment space, I usually point those people to the Descripforce thread ever since the proofreading thread got closed.

[BlueMint]

This would be great! Sometimes, when I review descriptions, the space given to give feedback is simply not enough for me. If the description has a couple of spelling or grammer mistakes, I cannot list all of them.

[Dimar]

I mostly do fine with current space - after all, I can add the rest of the edits later if the description gets resubmitted with the old errors fixed (and if they don't want to fix them based on comments, then would they bother going to the thread?).

 

That being said, I would be totally fine with a larger comment space. It would help when there's just a ton of spelling or punctuation mistakes and I have to list them. It would make it easier to critique the more troublesome descriptions in one go.

[Moonlightelf]

If this is to happen, then I'd like to add little something for this.

 

An ability to answer the critique.

Because sometimes when I have written a description, there comes all the complaints of missing "the", "a" and "an". And I don't have the room to add them at times, and it frustrates me to no end then if the description is going to be rejected because of those.

 

Another option... to show actually how many characters the person has used for the description. Because previously stated reason. I rarely see someone even thinking about description's character limit.

[Obscure_Trash]

You only have a certain space to work with descriptions. Doing wonky sentences isn't a way to get around that. Just like I do NOT like when users stick a period on a sentence that is clearly a question. That is not a good way around not having question marks. While we have the limitations we do, we need to work within those limitations. =\

If it makes sense still, fine, it could be okay, but if it just sounds weird and is confusing, you'll have to find a way to fit that in. You'll have to find a way to shorten or something. There is a suggestion to have more space for descriptions, which I think would help you more. Because if someone omits a bunch of grammar that makes the description confusing, I'm not going to go "oh, well, they ran out of space, so even though this doesn't seem proofread, I'll approve it".

 

However, I do agree with your suggestion for reviewers, or at least mods, to see the character space used/left. Sometimes if someone is just missing a word, I'll stick it in there, but if that makes them go over the character space, I probably just made the description cut off. I have no way of knowing unless I check up on all the descriptions I approve and no way of doing anything about that unless the user sees it and resubmits.