First of all Dawn should read an excellent essay about "How to Review" that a certain JunoMagic just posted and SSPed just about everywhere.
Contents: 1. The Reviewer's Job 2. How to Phrase a Review 3. How to Write a Review 4. The Author's Job
And then... what does it mean if a story passes HASA's review? Nothing much. It means that five to nine people liked it enough to click on "approve". That's all. It doesn't say so very much about the story's quality. The reviews at HASA are not intended to help the author, they are only meant to keep up a certain standard in the public archive. You may get valuable feedback, but that is not a certain prospect.
About the right of the reviewers to judge the quality of a story - well, they have as much a right to say "I think this is a good story, because (xyz)" as every other reader of your story.
re 2: I'm sorry if I have to destroy some illusions there... being part of HASA's staff... the admins care about keeping HASA running and a lively community... the reviews admins don't care about which story gets in and which doesn't get in so much as that people stay civilized about the whole process.
re 3: I have a comparison of three archive sites, FFNet, HASA and TFF. For my published short stories HASA gets me more hits than FFNet, for my long stories HASA and TFF are about the same and not really good. What's more is that I get almost no feedback from the public side. So while I do love HASA, I don't think you have to worry so much about getting published there or not.
re 4: HASA review cannot be compared to standardized admission tests. It's more like a poll. You ask at least nine people to read your story, and they say "Yes, I like it, because..." or they say "No, I don't like it, because...".
And at least HASA has no discriminating, prejudiced and biased submission guidelines like SoA and OSA. The process is anonymous, and if you don't run around telling all your friends "I have just submitted a story for review at HASA", it is unlikely that someone who knows your short story will review it. The reviewer pool is fairly large and you are not that well known in fandom that everyone will recognize your work at once. And even if they do... do you really think that they are not able to say "I like this, because..." without lying?
I really don't understand what your psychological problem with reviewing is - you do beta-work, after all. In many ways that is also passing judgement over the quality of another person's story. You do that with every word of criticism.
And again - would the review by a robot be fairer? By a thing that does not know anything about life as a human being?
Sorry for the rant, but I'm rather involved in the problem of how to review at the moment!
no subject
Contents:
1. The Reviewer's Job
2. How to Phrase a Review
3. How to Write a Review
4. The Author's Job
And then... what does it mean if a story passes HASA's review? Nothing much. It means that five to nine people liked it enough to click on "approve". That's all. It doesn't say so very much about the story's quality. The reviews at HASA are not intended to help the author, they are only meant to keep up a certain standard in the public archive. You may get valuable feedback, but that is not a certain prospect.
About the right of the reviewers to judge the quality of a story - well, they have as much a right to say "I think this is a good story, because (xyz)" as every other reader of your story.
re 2: I'm sorry if I have to destroy some illusions there... being part of HASA's staff... the admins care about keeping HASA running and a lively community... the reviews admins don't care about which story gets in and which doesn't get in so much as that people stay civilized about the whole process.
re 3: I have a comparison of three archive sites, FFNet, HASA and TFF. For my published short stories HASA gets me more hits than FFNet, for my long stories HASA and TFF are about the same and not really good. What's more is that I get almost no feedback from the public side. So while I do love HASA, I don't think you have to worry so much about getting published there or not.
re 4: HASA review cannot be compared to standardized admission tests. It's more like a poll. You ask at least nine people to read your story, and they say "Yes, I like it, because..." or they say "No, I don't like it, because...".
And at least HASA has no discriminating, prejudiced and biased submission guidelines like SoA and OSA. The process is anonymous, and if you don't run around telling all your friends "I have just submitted a story for review at HASA", it is unlikely that someone who knows your short story will review it. The reviewer pool is fairly large and you are not that well known in fandom that everyone will recognize your work at once.
And even if they do... do you really think that they are not able to say "I like this, because..." without lying?
I really don't understand what your psychological problem with reviewing is - you do beta-work, after all. In many ways that is also passing judgement over the quality of another person's story. You do that with every word of criticism.
And again - would the review by a robot be fairer? By a thing that does not know anything about life as a human being?
Sorry for the rant, but I'm rather involved in the problem of how to review at the moment!