Thursday, December 10, 2009

Update on the Review System

The following are the guidelines for any review posted on this site, effective immediately:

1). Reviews will be no more than 250 words long, except on extremely rare occasions where the limit may be raised to 300 words. This limit is designed to keep the reviews as cohesive as possible, and to keep to professional standards.

UPDATE: The final sentence of each review (which gives the score of the item reviewed) is not counted as part of the 250-word limit.

Also, video game reviews are exempt from this rule, as they have different professional standards.

2). All items that are reviewed will be scored on a five-point scale, with 1 being the lowest score and 5 being the highest.

3). Reviews will be written in the third person so as to eliminate any personal bias that might occur if written in the first person. Like Guideline #1, this is to keep with professional standards.

4). While reviews do serve as purchasing advice, it is important to remember that it is up to the reader to decide whether or not to purchase any item reviewed on this blog. Thus, the reviews posted should NOT be taken as the sole factor in deciding to purchase something.

Remember that this is only the policy for reviews. Any other topics will have their own format and guidelines.

4 comments:

Ryan said...

"This limit is designed to keep the reviews as cohesive as possible, and to keep to professional standards."

Yeah, IGN. Shorten your reviews, it's so unprofessional.


I, myself, do not like limiting myself when writing a review. I just like to let the creative juices flow.

SteepInKline said...

See, part of the reason I'm doing this is to improve my writing skills. The more strict a limit I give myself, the more prepared I will be when I have to write under such limits in the future. Plus, 250 words is the usual limit for newspaper book reviews, and as I said, I'm trying to keep to those standards as best as I can.

Anonymous said...

And really, "creative juices" shouldn't be flowing when writing a review (of fiction, anyway). It's more important for the review to be coherent and informative. People tend to find those more helpful, and authors and publishing companies tend to respect them more, even when critique is involved.

SteepInKline said...

And so proclaims my English/Creative Writing teacher. He knows these sorts of things.

Though honestly, if I review something like a game, I'll probably do it at Giant Bomb, since they have a system devoted solely video game reviews. Thus, for movies, books, and any other reviews that I post on will follow different policies than my Giant Bomb ones.