I’ve nearly 4000 credits.
Posted 8 chunks of my novel A Comedy of Murders
no reviews yet.
How long should I have to wait?

Weekends are slow. The more pieces you submit and open for reviews at the same time, the less reviews you’ll get, in my experience.

Listen to Jebozid. He is pink but he is wise. I am currently his designated stalker.

Yes… drop seven of those eight pieces. Having one chunk at a time with 4000 creds means you’ll be in the queue all week almost. If you have multiple items, you don’t stand a chance.

Jebozid did just say that, didn’t he? We treasure his words. He is pink, but he is wise.

Your review of my thoughts was beautiful, Claire. I would just want to mention the slight logic/grammar error you did in your last sentence. “He is pink, but he is wise.” is wrong. Because it breaks the flow. ::giggles::
Try: “He is pink; therefore he is wise.”

BTW, your post was sent for a refund, so expect to have one less post here and a bunch of people pointing at you and laughing.
I won’t laugh with them. I will laugh with at you. ;)

PS. I still believe that 4000 points ain’t that much for posting larger pieces.

8 chapters of a book – how long are the chapters?

Silly Rabbit is right about the more pieces you have the less reviews received for each piece.

4000 pts would not be enough to receive more than 5 reviews for any piece under 1000 words in my Experience.

My standard bank is 15000 credits for any pieces I submit under 2000 words and then refund all bad reviews. This usually earns me about 5 or six reviews a day at least.

This has changed from the good old days before the Pro accounts
It was two chapters but it received no reviews so I split them into 2×4 chunks.
Never mind. It’s a place to store them. You could review them if you went to owl_light. Or not.

:)

How do you get 15000 credits?

Reviewing… Weaver has at least 3x’s as many as I.

Also, having active invited friends help (though mine have not been active lately.) Oh and I earn points in other mystical ways ohhhhhoooohhh

Jebozid…

I bow to your pinkish wisdom. I previously associated all things pink unfit for intellectual scrutiny. Until now, that is. You have shown me the error of my ways.

I won’t worry about the humiliations. You will protect me with your trusty pink shield of peace.

owl_light…

Steve can be bought. All he needs is a calculator, a wrist watch and a bootlegged DVD of the 1993 ice-skating spectacular The Cutting Edge starring the marvellously talented D.B Sweeney and Moira Kelly.

Squarehopper…

This is wise, but also magnificently insane. One day I hope to achieve at least 5000 credits to catch a mere whiff of the review success you display. I am also willing to swap you some credits for a pair of brand new Reeboks.

I have over 5k credits now;
still no reviews;
I have decided not to bother.

Did you turn off reviews on all of your pieces except one? No? – do it!
Is your piece longer than 4000 words? The longer the piece the harder is to get a (decent) review.

That seems odd—your items all say they haven’t appeared in the queue at all and have never been skipped, owl_light. Plus you’ve done reviews recently. Sound a little odd.

Perhaps that genre is just a bit quiet at the moment? I notice the new opportunity includes crime fiction, so maybe the writers in that area are concentrating on it?

Have you tried making one of the items pro? It will have a different review route then.

Anything long and also that’s part 2 or above tends to get much less attention—some stuff I’ve submitted has taken weeks to get its first review. But then it needs to appear in the queue first for anyone to see it :/.

If what Tris is saying is true, and you do have 5000 Credits, then you either MUST have unopened reviews, or there is a bug somewhere. With the new reviews received queue, I found 6 reviews that I never opened – four ended up being refunded, and they were counting against me.

Check that route.

Then follow Jeb’s advice.

Then, if it still doesn’t work, PM Steve or Lori.

Thankyou Jeb for your advice.
Thankyou also Squarehopper. The reviews received queue says 0.
all pieces deleted except 1 which is now pro.
Credits down to 4756 after most unjust refund which I have challenged most strongly. grr. snap. witter.
IDEA
Did I mention Feet Away from a Murderer by owl_light or did I forget to mention Feet Away from a Murderer by owl_light? I can’t remember if I mentioned Feet Away from a Murderer by owl_light or if I didn’t mention Feet Away from a Murderer by owl_light. Do you think that if I were to mention Feet Away from a Murderer by owl_light here it would do any good? I mean would anyone see the title Feet Away from a Murderer by owl_light and feel moved to see if they could find Feet Away from a Murderer by owl_light and review Feet Away from a Murderer by owl_light or is that not possible?
By the way, the only piece left on Urbis wot I have writ is Feet Away from a Murderer by owl_light. I have made Feet Away from a Murderer by owl_light pro. Please can you review it for me? Thankyou very much.
Was this a bright idea or was it particularly stupid?

I don’t know why but I’m getting a strange desire to go and read a book about owls written by someone called ‘Something Feet’. Must go….

While it may have been a ‘shameless plug’ in most instances, I think this case is an exception. It seems that you are having a problem with that item appearing in the queue, so it would be reasonable to ask people to at least check if it is open for reviews.

However, if it is tasteful to beg for reviews from the forum users, I am first in line!! I have been waiting patiently for months to get a review from all of them. I wait for them to happen upon me; and naturally they find my worst pieces, but whatever ;P I finally got one from avedis today. I thik that leaves me needing one from only a few more of the consistant Forumites and Forumians (I am a Forumite I won’t even argue that logic ;P).

I want to get in on this action, too! Review me! Review me! ;)

The problem with getting reviews must be to do with credits in the bank. I didn’t submit to Urbis for 4 months or so and built up 20,000 credits. Two weeks ago I submitted a 10,000 word monster of a short story and accumulated 25 reviews very quickly, and it would have been more if I’d not left a load locked. In fact even with 6 locked reviews I was still getting a couple a day and so now I have turned reviews off because I can’t review fast enough to unlock them all what with each one costing me over 600 credits.

Credits is the key. I am down to 10,000 now and I’m still getting reviews.

However this does seem a little unfair on your poets. I write long items (obviously) and I write long reviews of other long items, therefore I can build up credits quite quickly. I avoid poetry, not only because poets seem so damn touchy when it comes to hearing my opinions, but also because the rewards are so small for something that takes so much time to read, assimilate and analyse.

Not sure of the solution to this though. Give poetry items a credit bonus to help bolster the bank accounts of Urbis poets?

The system seems just as fair on poets as it is on anyone else to me.

Trismugistus I would disagree for the very argument bravis stated in his post. Our items offer lower credits to the reviewers and we poets tend to earn less credits because we are typically reviewing, well other poems. The average poem will have a credit start score of 15 while the average novel treatments will have 160. Do the math! My typical review lengh earns me 90-125 credits at that rate I would have to review 109 poems to get to the 10,000 credit level bravis says is still getting him reviews. I do occasionally stray to review the novel treatments an bolster my credit value but it is not by genre and I really don’t want to waste the creators credits if I can’t fairly critique an item. Also, as bravis states many URBISites prefer not to review poems – and he touches on two very valid points. So – no the system is not fair and seems to favor the Novel Treatment/Sci-Fi/PROlific writers. Writers are finding a way around the system by sending a message that includes a link to their piece asking for a review…this may be the way to go until URBIS figures out this new credit system sucks. I have been reviewing my little heart out building my credit account to what is now a paltry 1500 and I average 1 review a week.

I don’t know what’s going on with your account, but even BEFORE I went ‘PROlific,’ as long as my average was right around 1000 or so, I was getting 6-7 reviews a week. My average piece was right around 500-1000 words, mostly short story.

While they may offer more credits, they also take longer to read. For example, if I’m keeping up with a member’s novel (which there is one that I am), it has taken me right around 4-5 hours to read all of the chapters so far. That’s not including the reviews that I have left for him. In that same amount of time, I could’ve reviewed countless poetry/haiku/quotes/etc. It’s not the number of items that we (novel/short story) reviewers do, it’s the amount of credits that seems to be the problem.

But, unless you’re planning on pulling out an Edgar Allen Poe poem or something equally long, then it’s not going to happen. It’s not favoring the novel writers/reviewers in any way. We receive more credits, because there’s more for us to keep up with. As far as I know, with poetry, it’s a matter of keeping up with each stanza. Maybe a piece as a whole. Which is relatively easy to do with 100-200 words. However, with stories, some of them are at or past the 2000 mark.

PROlific has gotten me nothing as far as reviews, to clear that up. I am only able to submit more items for PROlific pieces, which means that they’re showing up in the focused review. These items (again, as far as I know) do NOT show up in the regular review queue. There’s a special queue for the PROlific pieces, so that shouldn’t be an issue as far as your pieces are concerned.

Also, when I review, I typically stick with the focused review queue. I (normally) don’t go over to the regular queue to review, because there are so many items in the focused review. So, if you have even an 1/8 of the Urbis population doing this, then nobody is going to make a dent in the regular queue.

It’s not a matter of the credit level. That’s been evened out. It’s a matter of people not reviewing the regular queue and typically sticking with the focused queue. But, that’s just my opinion.

Yeah, Pro hasn’t boosted my review level either. But still, I do go to the earned queues a lot, solely because they earned the reviews ;)

I think that many prefer to do it this way as well. But, you may have a good point, especially considering that Johnsie is appearing in the queue, but still not receiving reviews…

And, yes Johnsie, Tnd is correct about the credit issue. By submitting longer pieces, we really need to have more credits, not only to appear in the queue, but to open our reviews. I can still earn a few reviews on a 6,000 word piece with only 2,000 credits though, so something does seem amiss with your lack of received reviews.

Johnsienoel – The fairness I am referring to is what tnd & karam said—that if you submit short pieces the reviews you receive will be cheaper to unlock. If you submit long pieces your reviews will be more expensive to unlock.

And in terms of earning credits, if you do short reviews of short pieces you receive fewer points, but you can do them quicker. If you do long reviews of long pieces you get more points, but it takes you longer to do each review.

The point-per-item cost system is therefore pretty balanced. Giving pieces in one genre free points would be unfair. I know many users here work hard on doing reviews of long pieces and for various reasons it can take considerable time to do them.

Issues about needing a “bank” of points and relative positions in queues are separate issues and most of what the forum users suggest is pretty speculative—I would imagine only the people in charge really know how it all works (if we all knew the exact details we might be able to fiddle the system).

It’s also worth bearing in mind there are several recent threads where people have pointed out that the various queues seem to be a bit broken. If you’re desperate for some specific issue to be addressed, you’re probably best off sending steve a message directly.

Well, her stats do say she is going into the queues, just not receiving reviews for whatever reason I cannot even imagine. I’ve read one of her pieces and thought it was quite beautiful, but I am just not good at reviewing poetry and don’t want to waste her credits.

Anyway, I do have a point: If she is going into the queue, but Jeb says he can’t even get poetry in his queue wouldn’t it seem probable that he would have come across one of her items and reviewed it by now? I mean, he is complaining of not being able to find enough unless he goes to random reviews, where he says there are plenty of new items, but none of which are appearing in his queue.

And for the length of Johnsienoels peices and amount of credits she has she should be receiving reviews by going into the queue. The items stats say she has been in the queue approx. 50 times per item (exact stats on another thread). Wouldn’t it seem reasonable that with that amount of times appearing in the queue, she should defintitely have received more than two or three reviews on this version of that item. So, I definitely think there is something to all of this and perhaps someone should justify Jeb’s statements in bug reports, or create a new thread with this topic. If it is a problem, then it is a serious one which should be addressed as such.

Well, her stats do say she is going into the queues, just not receiving reviews for whatever reason I cannot even imagine. I’ve read one of her pieces and thought it was quite beautiful, but I am just not good at reviewing poetry and don’t want to waste her credits.

Anyway, I do have a point: If she is going into the queue, but Jeb says he can’t even get poetry in his queue wouldn’t it seem probable that he would have come across one of her items and reviewed it by now? I mean, he is complaining of not being able to find enough unless he goes to random reviews, where he says there are plenty of new items, but none of which are appearing in his queue.

And for the length of Johnsienoels peices and amount of credits she has she should be receiving reviews by going into the queue. The items stats say she has been in the queue approx. 50 times per item (exact stats on another thread). Wouldn’t it seem reasonable that with that amount of times appearing in the queue, she should defintitely have received more than two or three reviews on this version of that item. So, I definitely think there is something to all of this and perhaps someone should justify Jeb’s statements in bug reports, or create a new thread with this topic. If it is a problem, then it is a serious one which should be addressed as such.

double post

If the piece appeared 50+ times in queue and skipped 5 times, then people are reading it, at least 10% of the people that see it.

Maybe it is the title. People will see the item in the queue and not choose to read it because it doesn’t sound interesting enough.