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I agree that a tweak would be good, but it's nice when the point system is there to remind us of our obligations, not to have us scurrying desperately for points.  It's nice when your have communities of people who enjoy the task of reviewing each  others' work--and care enough about the other to do it conscientiously.

The Glaselle/Lifspynth change will close a small plot hole and give me a way to get her involved in things.  I've been looking for a way to start that since ... well, for a while.  Nothing big.

Old enough that I have to do the calculation!  Just a few weeks older than Sputnik 1, a child of the Atomic Age.

Open a question that gets resolved in the next chapter--but leads to the REAL issue.

Yeah, cheap trick, but if the question seems to follow from what happened before and camouflages the real issue well, it's a good trick bought cheap.

Oh, about twenty years ago, my boss at work called me in.  It seemed that some of my ESL colleagues had complained that I used too many big words.  I said, "Am I being accused of erudition?"

Boss said, "I guess so."

Then there was the time that we got word of a new policy about how we were to develop our software.  It was going to force me to be in the lab in the wee hours every day (it got me a lot of unneccessary OT) and I told my colleagues that "This is going to play merry hob with our development schedule."

For the next two weeks, the phrase "play merry hob" got slipped at least once into every conversation we had.  (Pick your emoticon here.)

As far as the number of comments trailing off as you get to the middle of a chapter:  There are several reasons.  One is that the reviewer is simply getting tired.  Another is that the reviewer has played the same tune in many places, and it is of little benefit to the author to keep pounding.  When I cut off for this reason, I say so and offer to come back if the author wants me to continue.

Another reason is that the chapter is really, really good and the reviewer has stopped reading as a reviewer and is reading as a reader.  In rare cases, this happens.  The author should be pleased when it does, although it does mean that nits get missed.

And, finally, there is the reviewer doing a cheap review for points.  I can only suggest that authors bank some points so they don't have to rush to get points to post their chapters.

Another possibility is to count the length of the final comments.  Just 50 words are needed in an out-line review.  Maybe counting 30 words in the final comment as one inline will allow reviewers to meet the minimum with global analysis.

In your last two paragraphs, I believe we agree.

Let me get serious for a moment.  I suspect I have a couple of years on Amy, and that I'm at least twice EF's age (and maybe three times; I can't tell).  Point is ...

I've had more years to learn vocabulary, to pick up idioms, and generally learn language.  We learn most of our language in our first ten or twelve years, but that's no reason to stop learning.  Once out of formal education, reading is our primary arena for learning, and the best thing is to read a wide variety of authors.  I think I first saw soi-disant in Stranger in a Strange Land.  I'm not sure where I learned to invert 'if he ever' into 'if ever he'.  Maybe it was in Lerner&Lowe's If Ever I Would Leave You, a song, but I probably regarded that as poetry and did not consider it for use until I saw it somewhere else--and that somewhere might have been in an essay.

Good essayists and good history writers are good language teachers.  Note that many essays are position papers on editorials.   You don't have to agree with either Thomas Friedman or Victor Davis Hanson to learn from their writing.  And in fiction, Dorothy Sayers is an education in herself.

With rare exceptions, you won't get these lessons from movies, television, and radio.

I'm blessed with better-than-average language skills: about 70th %ile on the GRE so many years ago.  I suspect this is true of everyone here.  These days I don't read enough--but I do continue to read.  I just wolfed down Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising a few weeks ago--the entire set.  And of course, I read a fair amount of material from authors here.  Even as I argue for someone to move to a plainer, more economical style, I may be learning elegant expression for those times when I need it.

To quote the author of How to Write 240 WPM in Pitman Shortand, you can do it too!

But introducing new words and meaning is not an issue of grammar, but of lexicon.

I seem to recall (am I in error?) that through at least the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries there were people who sought to instruct people in the language as a certain group spoke it.  That certain group was generally the wealthy and powerful, and the instruction included grammar, lexicon, and diction.  These people studied the 'inferior' dialects only for the purpose of reducing their use; they prescribed the 'approved' dialect.  It seems reasonable and useful to call these people prescriptionists, although their activities reached beyond grammar.

In my own time, it seems to me that the teachers who taught me how to know whether to you 'he and I' or 'him and me' (and never 'him and I' or 'me and him')--truly matters of grammar--were prescriptivists, though you might prefer simply to call them teachers.

Anant the review: not sure what flattery will get you, but it's good for something, I'm sure.

Snuggery.  Hidey-hole.  Scofflaw's den/burrow/lair/nest.  Bolt-hole isn't right, since it's for an escape ('bolt') route.  If you have any historical fiction on your shelves, flip through it.