{"id":272,"date":"2016-04-12T11:00:38","date_gmt":"2016-04-12T11:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/?p=272"},"modified":"2017-06-06T20:23:47","modified_gmt":"2017-06-07T00:23:47","slug":"mythbusting-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/2016\/04\/12\/mythbusting-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"Busting Three Common Myths About Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Riki\"<\/a>What is a review? <\/span><\/i>Fundamentally, it is a collection of words. The words form sentences, and sometimes, though not always, those sentences even make paragraphs. The collection of words offers an observation. <\/span>Reviews are that simple.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

So why don\u2019t people write more reviews? Some misconceptions or myths about reviews have created complications. Today I want to address three of these myths.<\/p>\n

Myth #1: A review is homework.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Homework is assigned at school. It\u2019s graded. Nobody likes homework. But reviews aren\u2019t assigned at school, <\/span>they aren\u2019t graded<\/span><\/i>, and they can actually be quite fun.<\/span><\/p>\n

Judging is fun, after all, and there\u2019s no reason that writing about judging shouldn\u2019t be fun as well. We talk about judging all the time, and writing a review simply preserves those ideas in a digital format. It turns out that there are many ways to enjoy writing, free from the constraints of school and grades. Of the many words I\u2019ve written in my lifetime for work, school, or pleasure, the words I\u2019ve written for pleasure far outweigh the work. Articles for Magic sites, blog posts (both <\/span>personal<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>for this blog<\/span><\/a>), <\/span>Tweets<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Facebook posts<\/span><\/a>, online chats, and even <\/span>reviews<\/span><\/a> fit into that category. These are voluntary writing activities that many of us enjoy daily without a single thought of work.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to frame reviews in that light. To that end, I like to take my review-writing away from the formal frame of mind and conceptualize it as a dialogue with a friend. For example, while looking over some older reviews, I found one that I wrote for Toby Elliott that started with \u201cHoly hell\u2026\u201d (Unfortunately, I left off the \u201cBatman.\u201d Hindsight and all.) Another review of Kali Anderson includes the line \u201cKali brings the fun to funda-team-leading.\u201d<\/p>\n

My point is that if you try to write reviews the way you would homework, they\u2019ll feel like homework. Try a comfortable, conversational, or even lighthearted approach.<\/p>\n

Myth #2: Reviews must follow the prescribed formatting.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

The review submission form contains three boxes: Strengths, Areas for Improvement, and Comments. These three boxes can be useful for providing an early framework, but like any framework, they can become constraining. Think of the three boxes as a suggestion, a useful starting point. They don\u2019t need to be the end-all of your review. Ultimately, the single goal of the review is to record observations and feedback.<\/p>\n

Are your observations all positive?
\n<\/span><\/i>Write your entire review in Strengths, and leave the other boxes marked N\/A. <\/span><\/p>\n

Are the judge\u2019s strengths tied directly to their areas for improvement?
\n<\/span><\/i>Discuss your observations holistically in one box, and mark the others N\/A.<\/span><\/p>\n

Worried that your text doesn\u2019t fill up the space in the boxes?
\n<\/span><\/i>There are no minimum word counts because reviews aren\u2019t graded!<\/span><\/p>\n

Myth #3: Reviews are a permanent record of someone\u2019s judging career.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

The idea of giving specific criticism about a judge to Big Brother WotC and\/or the high level judges has created some fear of reviewing in the judge community. Reviews don\u2019t actually work that way. Technically, when you enter a review, the people who can access it include you, your subject, regional coordinators, select L3s who are on projects like the L3 Checklist Verification Committee, select people at WotC related to judging, and probably their web dev team.<\/p>\n

That sounds like a lot of people. <\/span>But those people don\u2019t actually read your reviews.
\n<\/span><\/i>In reality the people who will read your review are <\/span>you and the subject of your review<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s it. All those RCs, high level judges, and WotC employees are never going to read your review, or any review for that matter. They are too busy, there are too many reviews, and the content of those reviews isn\u2019t relevant to their work. So why review? It\u2019s simple.<\/p>\n

A review is part of a conversation between you and your subject.
\n<\/span><\/i>You write it because you care.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is a review? Fundamentally, it is a collection of words. The words form sentences, and sometimes, though not always, those sentences even make paragraphs. The collection of words offers an observation. Reviews are that simple. So why don\u2019t people write more reviews? Some misconceptions or myths about reviews have created complications. Today I want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":275,"featured_media":268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[26,6,94,24],"tags":[23,54,53,95,57],"language":[78],"class_list":["post-272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-motivation","category-riki-hayashi","category-translations","category-vision","tag-edited-by-angela-aliff","tag-motivation","tag-riki-hayashi","tag-translations","tag-vision","language-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/275"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions\/276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}