Reciprocity

[farla]

I remain absolutely fascinated by dragcave. It's similar to the prisoner's dilemma problem without the direct feedback. Also, without the part where there's a workable solution. People are insane.

I've been thinking about the Review Exchange, which has gotten active again. The primary problem with it is it's hard to keep things equal - currently, problems both with people not returning to review AND with people who start reviewing and then drop out before their own story is added, so at least it balances out, but it's still annoying.

There's also the issue that chaptered stories don't work well - people tend to just review the first chapter, which is a problem, but at the same time it doesn't seem fair to force people to read a really long story.

I'm considering a second setup that's more direct - a couple people sign up agreeing to review anyone who reviews particular stories of their own, one for each review. So if they want another review, they go back and review the next chapter. Would anyone be interested in trying that out?

Comments

[negrek.livejournal.com]

tbh I haven't participated in the Review Exchange at all up until now because I haven't had anything I particularly wanted reviews on to put up there, aside from Clouded Sky which is hella long and has hundreds of reviews already anyway. I have something fairly short I've been knocking around, though, so perhaps I'll see if I can get it going to try this out if you're going to try changing the exchange format.

To clarify: this is a reciprocity-within-Review Exchange members thing, right? So if you agree to review anybody who reviews story X and Joe Random, who has not signed up in the Review Exchange, gives you a review, you aren't obligated to give him anything back, right? Or is it more of a pledge kind of thing, "Anybody who reviews this I'll review back, whether or not they've made the same pledge?" Like I said, I'm guessing it's the former, but the latter might also work, to an extent, if people were to simply review non-exchange-members including a line like, "Doing this for the review exchange, see Farla's forums for details," which might help to increase interest and spread the practice around more.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Members only, yes (in part because I want to play, and reviewing everyone who reviews me would be...not good).