janet reid wrote:SolN wrote:If authors really want more feedback, then pray tell why don't they offer some opinion on all the comments left in the inline review instead of only a few words in the final comment section. You can agree or disagree with what was said or even offer a totally different interpretation. You can question why the reviewer sees things that weren't intended at all or show why you chose to do something a particular way and start a conversation in which others could offer various points of view. In other words, you've got a forum built into the review process just as Sol envisioned and implemented.
This is the purpose of in-lines but I don't think we are fully there yet. The problem is that there is no notification when someone posts a comments so the author and others have no reason to go back to the in-line. We're working on a new version of the in-line review system that will address this and hopefully move more towards the vision I have for the tool. I do believe this is the place to focus the site's resources as opposed to building out the forum system.
I'm struggling to get my head around the practicality of using reviews, especially in-reviews, as discussion boards.
Reason for my concern is this: A novel with 30 chapters, and an average of 5 in-line reviews per chapter, at an average of 10 in-line comments per review = 1500 in-line comments. I'm not even considering if a writer has more than one novel active. If only one comment every 2 chapters is discussed in more detail, that's 15 discussions spread over 30 chapters and 1500 in-line comments. Not mentioning if two reviewers made the same suggestion, yet one group adds their views to review A and another group theirs to review B - and in the process, you now have two of the same conversations that don't follow each other. From a writer's perspective, especially one that do not incorporate changes as they write on, this would be impossible to manage without going mad or without missing possibly some really good feedback.
So my question is, how would someone manage this? Email alerts will drive me nuts (but that's just me) - traffic light patterns attached to in-line comments would probably work, but it doesn't negate the navigation require to get to this. As already mentioned, having a feedback thread in more than one group is already problematic. And I disagree that it takes the same effort to navigate in-line reviews compared to forums (1500 comments ...) - once you're on the forum page, you're going. (I think the clicking involved with in-line reviews have been covered, so I'm not mentioning it). How would this make it easier?
So although this functionality of in-line reviews specifically would be great, is it really what the intent is? I have seen this many times over where something basic, but really effective morphs into a brilliant system that simply is too complicated and cumbersome to be used for its original purpose. Fixing this would be even more painful.
KHip's proposal to have a "Facebook" kind of interface for each novel, that isn't part of the forums, seems less complex to me (from a user perspective, not necessarily a programmer's).
So, what am I missing here? Sol, or is this what you're working on?
From my perspective, any author can start a forum on any piece of work they wish; you don't need anything special to do so. Now if said author can get reviewers to congregate at this forum, then said author could if they wish to do so get reviewers to leave comments on the inline review. They could even appoint their most prolific reviewer as the central review for others to comment on thus creating an inline forum. As far as thirty chapters go, I for one do edits one chapter at a time, so why would want all those comments in a regular forum mixed up and spread over thirty chapters with no way to know which chapter a given comment was relating to. For instance a reviewer could enter comments on chapter 5 while others are entering comments on chapter 29, etc. I don't really want to wade through god knows how many pages of a forum to find who made what comment on each chapter so would most llikely do it as each chapter was being reviewed anyway if that were my only choice. However, with the inline, it is already divided into chapters so I can edit at my leisure without the ever repeating necessity to fish out those comments from a regular forum.
Now Sol has said he is working on improvements for the inline review process and if one such improvement already mentioned was to be able to scroll through the comments, then that would be wonderful and would diminish even further any need for any additional forum changes. I mean I don't care if forum upgrades are made, I just don't see any need as far as making a special effort for each author's work when they can do that already - I've even suggested that some authors do so for a particular work; still hasn't come about so I'm not sure what the broad appeal would be.
As is, you have a choice to do your own forum or to use the built in forum capability of the inline review (especially with potential upgrades) so I really don't understand the clamor for having a forum for every work posted. Doesn't make sense; the majority appear, get little attention and then are never heard of again, so what would be the purpose in creating all these thousands of feedback forums above what is already available.
But to each their own. Take care. Vern
