What if URBIS placed all the PROlific items in their own queue? So there could be 4 queues streaming and the PROlific items aren’t hogging the general earned queue space:

Focused/Earned Strangers/Earned Friends/Earned PROS…

It would give us non-PROlific writers a better chance at appearing the the queue. It would appear that with the extra credits earned by opening a PROlific account, the lower cost to the PROlific account holder to unlock reviews, and this bonanza of PROlific Account holders with 15000 credits in their accounts, those of us slugging away in our Poetry/Short Story nonPROlific genres don’t stand a change in the review queue.

As I stated in another forum topic…I try to keep my credit balance loaded with 800-1000 credits and that is earned by completing 6-10 reviews and averaging around 90 credits per review. I will never be seen in the queue if I have to compete with the PROlific accounts. Even if I bolstered my earnings to 2-4000 credits, in my preferred genre I would have to review 21+ items…this is not my full time job.

Is URBIS still a creative democracy for ALL creative writers or only a place for those who PAY monetarily to participate? Is URBIS a creative democracy for writers to participate in their own time and space or only for those that can ply their trade full-time?

I concede that your items should drop out of the queue if you do not un-lock reviews – I concede that you receive by giving…I don’t believe that ONLY the SUPER CREDIT RICH should be the beneficiaries of that process. My 800 credits are just as hard earned as anyone elses, and I am proud of my 89%-92% review quality score and 25% comment feedback score – why shouldn’t I too be able to receive?

I am pretty certain that the focused queue IS solely for Pro items. See my reply to your other post.

Yes, focused queue is only for the pro items. The problem is that those pro items also appear in the earned queue.
If I make a pro item I want only the people I’ve chosen by the filters to review my item.
What’s the point of making the item pro, let’s say filtering out the reviewers with more than 100 reviews of 90%+ quality, if there’s a possibility that those reviewers will just skip it while the others (with quality under 10%) will give you craptacular reviews. If I’d wanted that I would’ve not made it a pro item.
But that’s my personal opinion that pro items are simply not working and not worth it.
And no matter how many times people explain the inflation and economy to me, I will never accept as a happy fact that you must do many reviews and accumulate lots of points to get the reasonable amount of reviews.

But Jeb, if your Pro item only went to the focused queue, and those people chose to skip it, then you wouldn’t get any reviews at all…

And if you only want reviews from prolific members, then don’t earn credits to unlock reviews until after you have recieved the reviews. This will keep your item from going into the earned queues and your only shot at reviews will be from the focused queue or randoms, unless you turn those off.

Which brings to mind that you can turn off your random reviews as well as your earned strangers and earned friends and only leave the pro review thingy ‘on’ and that should really settle your problem ;)

Blue_Eyes, I feel better not getting what I wanted than getting what I didn’t want. Simple as that.

Karma, wow, this must be your only post ever that I completely failed to understand. Maybe because I fucked up my ankle playing basketball today so I can’t see the color blue from the pain…
I know from experience that when I create a pro item I get more than 20 reviews from the earned queue and exactly 0 reviews from the focused review. So I get what I don’t want and don’t get what I want. Hmm, did I mention this somewhere before?

How would that work, if you turned off the ‘random’, ‘general-friend’, and ‘general-stranger’ reviews on a newly minted Pro item? Would you still get focused reviews without risking the others? It seems like it might actually work…

...but it doesn’t. Urbis won’t let you shut those reviews off until the item has been Pro for three days, as far as I know.

I think it just won’t let you turn off the focused reviews for that amount of time.

Jeb,
You know how when you submit an item the first step/screen is for what reviews you want. They are all automatically on. Turn them off. When you scroll to the bottom (make this item pro?), it is also automatically on, leave that one on.

You should receive ONLY focused reviews.

::slaps his forehead::
Oh.
That just leaves that percentage filter bug that Steve is so elegantly avoiding ;)

That may be something that will be more difficult to fix. I would duck and hide from it to until I could get to it ;)

I think if we got rid of inactive members, those numbers would drastically improve or perhaps be more accurate. But that’s just me pushing to get rid of those who are inactive. I think a vacation button would be useful, so that if someone expects to be gone for a while, a push of that button would keep their account safe while the others who just haven’t logged on in 6 months would be obliterated!! :D

Also; I had a rule on my forum that if you joined, and didnt post anything more than a submission (no reviews, no activity) within 30 days, the account was deleted. They aren’t coming back. They found out they had to work for criticism rather than recieving free pats on the back. They are sooo gone!

Send an email warning: ‘If you wish for your account on Urbis to remain open and active please log on to the site. Otherwise, your account will be deleted in XX days so that we can keep space open for those who are interested in becoming active members of the community.’

Maybe if they would be ‘frozen’ after a longer period of inactivity. Deleting is too serious.
Imagine I slip on kangaroo droppings and hit my head on a guillotine and then spend 5 years in a coma.
Then wake up and realize my computer was destroyed in the Great Nargila Catastrophe of 2032. I go to my vault’s mainframe computer, log online to retrieve the only evidence of my youth geniusness only to find I’ve been deleted!!!
I reach for my 300 TeraVolt electric shaving machine and take a sulphurous bath with Beelzebub.
The world is a less happy place. Did you stop to think about that?!
I bet you feel a little silly right now.

LoL…

I think that’s a great idea. I have suggested ‘freezing’ or ‘suspending’ accounts for inactivity. It doesn’t have that ring of finality to it. Also sounds much less threatening and forceful…but members should be as active as possible when they can.

Try to stay out of a coma.

Karma said
Jeb,
You know how when you submit an item the first step/screen is for what reviews you want. They are all automatically on. Turn them off. When you scroll to the bottom (make this item pro?), it is also automatically on, leave that one on.

You should receive ONLY focused reviews.

Does this really work? If you turn off all three review options, especially ‘general-stranger’, but leave on the ‘Pro’ option, wouldn’t you just have a Pro item that can’t receive reviews? Don’t focused reviews still come up as general stranger reviews when you open them? I could be wrong, as I honestly don’t know exactly how the Pro thing works yet…

I agree with ‘freezing’ inactive’ members after six months, and deleting them six months after that if they remain inactive. If they log-in within that first six months, then everything is reset to normal…

Don’t focused reviews still come up as general stranger reviews when you open them?

Well, my thinking is that they will still come up in the queues of the reviewers that the person filtered them to. So, in theory, only those whose focused queues it shows up in should be able to review the item. But I’ve never tried it personally. We need a Guinea Rabbit…

Jeb,
Because the percentages are practically useless at the current time (I can generally go very broad and only match 0.01% of members myself), I see no reason why to limit yourself so. Do you trust your ‘friends’ to do good reviews? Leave the reviews open for earned friends if so. Do you still want to be able to receive random reviews (that would be from someone like me ;P)? If so leave random reviews on. But if you want to narrow them that specifically, then try what I have said above and let us know how that works for you-or if it works :)

Will try and report results.
Random reviewers are rare (I believe I’ve had 1 so far)
I have few friends (and have been known to go on an unfriending spree) ‘cause I don’t really believe in perfect unsubjectivity in those cases.

Gah, the update button on pro iteming is still not working! Whatever, it’s pro, and with pro you get an on-off button for “Specific Reviews”. I set it ON, all other OFF. Now waiting.

Karma is correct in what she states.

But to address the original issue, it is unfair to blame the PRO feature for the need for more credits to appear in queue. As I also explained in the other thread there could be other reasons.

Another that just came to ming that has a much better chance at being the culprit is the increased membership in Urbis due to Forbes and the Smith Contest. They definitely can cause a need to have a bigger bank to appear.

An the reason the “new” user gets preferential treatment in queue is to hook them into Urbis as quickly as possible. They submit and they get a few reviews and viola they have to earn credits to open them and hopefully they are hooked.

What is the name of the piece, Jeb? Let us know how it works.

I see now. There is a separate review option for ‘specific’ reviews, so turning off the other options should lead to the results that Jebozid is looking for.

Yep, option is there, now we’ll see if my incredible, fantastic, spectac…ugh, I got bored… piece of poetry called “8 a.m.” will get those uberreviews.
::sharpens fangs and waits::

At this rate it might be 6 months before I even get a review. And then you will really shut me up…Yawn! I do like the idea of suspending inactive accounts. I would imagine anyone who hasn’t logged into URBIS the last few has a flood of items loading up the queue. I was down just one month and noticed that 15 items I had turned OFF for reviewing had miraculously been REACTIVATED with the new URBIS changes.
I have messaged Steves-Sister and emailed Contact Us asking them to look at my account and see if it is buggy…but all is strangely quite on the URBIS front…must be off doing a Playboy interview..I give it 6 weeks and if I don’t see reviews in my account I’m outta here.
Jeb, I reviewed 8 a.m. two days ago…wouldn’t have missed it. Any of you want to go in, hit my Avatar – Johnsienoel and review “Pinus Timbre” or “The Fig Eaters” for me? I certainly have accumulated enough credits to unlock whatever it is you have to say…I am looking for ways to improve but am likely to become a crone before I get any feedback. The forums are the only place I see action anymore.

I couldnt find you under Johnsienoel.

Yeah, the items got reactivated when they were doing an update. They should have no problem with resolving that issue for you.

I will keep my eyes open for your items, and try to find your account, because I am very interested to see if you are even going into the queue at all.

!!But I warn you!! I am the worst reviewer ever at poetry; I can get nitpicky and my reviews are quite long. Longer than what most poets are interested in seeing ;) So I normally try to review short stories or novel chapters and have recently began to really enjoy reviewing flash fiction. Just fair warning :)

Pinus Timbre was found, and has appeared in the queue 58 times and been skipped 5. I see no reason that you should not be getting reviews. It is going into queues.

The Fig Eaters has been in the queue 49 times with 4 skips. Again, you should be seeing reviews on these items.

Jeb has been dying for poetry to review, as he says that he is not seeing much of it in his queue and he requests to review poetry…Maybe there is a glitch in the poetry ‘area’ (for want of a better word, but I am computer retarded).