Originally posted by Moggy
How peculiar!
I'm often struck by
1) how generous many writers are in their reviews. (Witness the recent Tom Justin story, 5 reviews, 9.5 rating, all from writers)

During the recent story contest, Fox, the chief justice as it were of our panel of judges, told me that the scores of the judges for the three prize-winners were almost identical. Which is a good sign, I think -- that most reviewers are trying to evaluate a story based on its merits rather than solely on its erotic appeal to them personally.

2) how little tit-for-tat reviewing there is between writers.

Do you mean tit-for-tat as far as exchanging favorable reviews? Or regarding responding to unfavorable reviews? The latter practice is not unheard of. The only negative review I have ever received here was submitted by a very well-known writer on this site (under another nom de plume) just a few days after I had given one of his/her stories a tepid review. It is of course possible that the author genuinely didn't like my story, but the timing of his/her review, coupled with the great disparity between his/her rating and that of all of the other reviewers of that story) gave me about a 98% certainty that it was a retaliatory review rather than an honest one. (Later on that author inadvertently used that same "reviewing" nom de plume on the site in another context which made his/her identity clear to me)

3) How few malicious reviews there are, even though there are some truly awful stories posted.

I think there's a world of difference between 'harsh' and "malicious". I've awarded lots of '1's and '2's to authors who didn't bother to proofread their stories, but never out of malice. Someone commented to me recently that my reviews have been, on the whole, more generous in the last six months than they were formerly. I don't think that's really true. What I think happens is that after a time one doesn't even bother to open the stories of authors that have disappointed one in the past -- thus weeding out a lot of the lower scores one might otherwise award.

Happy holidays to all!

Boccaccio