Hey Urbisites (Urbisians?),

I can’t help but to notice that the poeple I want to be’friend’ and tend to actually do the most chatting back and forth with, are the very same poeple that I DON’T want on my friends list.

That may sound rude, but I’m about to validate it ;)

I like to talk back and forth with the people who I feel give the best reviews. Because they are worth talking to I suppose? Anywho…as soon as I begin chatting with someone, we will soon become ‘friends’ because I don’t want to be rude and turn down their request.

However!! I want my reviews done by these very same people on a ‘blind’ basis. I don’t want to have to go ‘anonymous’, but I still want very harsh and honest reviews from the very same people who might be a bit nicer about it when I can’t hide my face from them. Do they feel me staring at them, judging them? Telling them they better have nice things to say? Hey! Rank me higher, because your ranks will stand out from the rest!!

So…yeah…that just seems a bit weird to me, that the people I will talk to the most I am afraid to befriend because of losing that great review. Not that they won’t still give me great reviews, but let’s face it: 1, you have to wait for your friend to open the review before you can receive credits, so we review each other less, 2, you rank your friends higher (most of the time; I am sure that statistics would prove this to be the more common case)...and I don’t have a 3, but I meant to ;P

Seriously, has anyone else avoided requesting friends for this, these or similar reasons? Has this affected anyone else? Am I a weirdo (because of this, not just because I am)? Does anyone else have thoughts on this, or am I just being ridiculous??

I completely agree. OK, I almost completely agree.

I will always give an impartial review, friend or no friend. The problem I have with the “friend” system here is that a lot of my “friends” never review my work. Maybe they’re not even on Urbis anymore. Maybe they’re dead. Who knows? I think users should get a message after four or five months from Urbis Hey! Still writing? Still breathing? And then, if there’s no response, delete them.

I’m much more interested in the FAN feature. These are people who have shown an interest in your work. I accept friends (because I don’t want to be rude either), but, with a few exceptions, most of my friends on Urbis aren’t “friends”.

Ahem... For the record, I believe the correct terminology is “Urbisonians”. But for informal usage, Urbisites or Urbisians will suffice. ;P

To me, the friends feature has become a lot more useful since the Earned – Friends queue has been implemented. (Implemented? God, has corporate-ese gone to my frickin’ head?) ANYWAY, I’ve been actually reviewing a lot more people on my friends list than ever before because of it. Actually, it seems these are the only people I’ve been reviewing…

As far as friend requests go, if someone doesn’t take the time to send a message along with a request (and a reason for the request helps), it’s a reject.

Yes, Curt is right. We are Urbisonians. It has a more cultured ring to it, don’t it?

An Urbisite, on the other hand, sounds more like something you’d need to call pest control for. Hey, maybe that’s what we need to call the users who commit credit fraud and those users who write reviews like “Wow! I luv this pome. ur grate. I didnt undertand everthing in the poam but i luv it!!” An Urbisite makes one want to commit urbiside.

I would also accept Urbispudlians for our British brothers and sisters.

(I believe the term was coined by reviewer guru DCAllen so we all owe him royalties whenever it’s used.)

“It has a more cultured ring to it, don’t it?”

It do!

Much respect for the Brits.

Ah, Urbispudlians will just not do for us Brits (or expats either).
A pudlian comes from somewhere with a pool. e.g. Liverpool, liverpudlian.

No, just plain Urbrits will be fine – friends would use the soundalike “Herberts”.

Friends are overrated. They are nice to you most of the time. I don’t want nice, I want the truth!
::Jack Nicholson jumps out screaming: You can’t handle the truth!::

Anyway, what Curtastrophe said, if you don’t give me a reason for us being friends – plonk!

Using that logic – logic is not a very fun thing – we can’t be Urbisonians either. That would come from somewhere with a -son, like Robertson. What about Urbisissies?

Or Urbisers?
Or Urbivillians?
Or Urbs?
Or Urbots?
Or Urbists?

Or, shut up, DC! :)

OH NO!!

No matter what the name, I likes me some creative folk.

The friends feature will, in time, be very useful. It could become quite easily a personal workshop. I say don’t give up on it.

I totally agree. One of the benefits of having a person on the friends list is that they can choose the time to review a given piece. Sometimes I read something in the queue that I feel I could give some decent pointers on and the next day I come back and it’s gone. Other times I have a piece out that gets like 5 crap reviews (that might or might not be refundable) and then a week later a person on my friends list swoops in and gives it an incredible review. Yessssss...

But then there’s the downside (because I’m really irritated right now). What happens when a friend gives you a crap review? Don’t you feel strange asking for a refund?

Unless it’s me, then I’d say go ahead! Mwahaha! Seriously, I’ve refunded people on my friends list before. Nothing was mentioned thereafter.

No, it’s not you, silly. I’ve regretted befriending a couple of, uh, Urbisicans before seeing how they review. They befriend me because they’ve read a review or two of mine. Then they turn out to be (swallows hard) poets. Lord, Lord, Lord. I don’t wanna review no poetry. I’d rather put on a Britney Spears cd (not that I have one or anything). God love ‘em, but I’m just not their man.

And then they seldom read anything of mine; and when they do, they don’t understand what I’m doing at all. They keep saying they’re confused. These are my friends.

Well…I would like the friends request queue, but it has had the same two stories in it for a very long time…actually, I think ever. I don’t mean to be rude, I just didn’t get to one of them. Now, it is so old I’m pretty sure a new version is up. I have a real issue with hitting the ‘skip’ button on a friends writing…it just seems wrong. But yeah, if this feature had ever actually worked for me, I might be a lot more enthused about it.

I still give the same reviews and the same ratings to friends as I would to strangers…but I have felt mean about it. Although, I rarely rate anything less than 7…if I put 6, it is because it doesn’t fir the criteria, or in the case of ‘telent’...well…it would be the biggest insult you could get from me. I am harsh, but I always find something postive to point out.

I’ve seen a few Urbisites crawling around here. So I guess it is much like my hometown…no-one really knows what to call it. We have little signs around town that say:

Welcome to
Louisville
Loo uh vul
Louis vul

Oh yeah! We advertise our ignorance here! Welcome to the village of idiots! We have a town graduate :D I don’t know why they find it hard to teach the younger generation that we are named after King Louis the IV of France. In French, his name is pronounced ‘Loo eee’...so that seems the only proper way to say the name to me.

So, I suppose I am saying, we are going to have to call ourselves something that sounds more sophisticated, because we are naming us, not those Urbisites. We’re the…..ones who aren’t clever enough to know who we are? :D Please, I get online to escape this city…

There is an upside! My friends think I am practically a genius! I have a high school education, graduated 12th grade in KY in ‘93, so I guess that gives me at least a 6th (maybe 7th!) grade vocabulary…My son goes to school here; it hasnt gotten better by any means. :( It’s really rather sad, and a touchy subject :*(

We say Loo uh vul in Tennessee. And do you say Nashvul? I’m from Nashville. It’s definitely home, but Munich is home too. London is home too. And New York.

I sometimes rate items less than a seven, but more often I skip an item if it fails to grab me in the first couple of paragraphs.

Most people around here use the ‘Loo uh vul’ and ‘Nash vul’ pronunciation…I am actually one of those rare few that say ‘ville’. Too many negtive things are related to a Southern accent (not that cute, Goargia Belle accent). The one that you see on any tv show or movie that instantly brings to mind the words ‘stupid’ and ‘inbred’ and ‘Brittany Spears’ :O. I do by best to speak without as much of an accent as most.

I LOVE it in Tennessee. I go there (to the Smokies) at least a few times a year.

Embrace that you have so many wonderful places to consider yourself ‘at home’ at :)

One of my characters (Dr. P in Three-handed Bridge) has a Georgian lilt.

On the topic of accent . . .

The best English teacher I ever had was a fat lady with a thick southern accent (as opposed to the Georgian lilt). Sorry, I can’t remember her name. I was in ninth grade. I want to say Powers or Pace or Price.

The following semester I had a different English teacher (a woman whose English was robotically and self-consciously accent-free). Once on a test, we were asked to underline adverbs in a text. Being the smartass I am, I underlined an adverbial phrase just to mix things up. She marked it wrong. When I called her on it, she just kept saying

“Where’s the adverb?”
“Uh, the whole phrase ‘in the corner house’ is the adverbial, Ms. Beard.” I can remember her name. Why can’t I remember the good teacher’s name?
“But where’s the adverb?”
“Uh, the whole . . .”
This went on a few minutes until Ms. Beard told me that I had been misinformed by my previous teacher, that I didn’t understand what an adverbial phrase was. The next day (because I really have a problem with letting things go), I went to the fat lady with the drawl. She explained the differences between adverbial phrases and adverbial clauses, that some adverbial phrases do indeed include an adverb, but that some are prepositional phrases functioning adverbially. Mrs. Slack! That’s her name. But she always pronounced it Suh-lah-yic.

That’s a funny story. You are familiar with the accent though and know people who use it, so you know not to believe the stereotypes.

Ha! In the suburban – yes, I’m sure it was suburban – neighborhood I grew up in we had a farm in the back. It was owned by the Slacks family. We pronounced it exactly as your teacher did :)

Heh, I live in an even more suburban area now, and still have a horse farm at the back of my neighborhood. However, Slack’s farm is now an industrial park :(

I bet they’re related.

No doubt ;)

I know exactly what you mean Karma. I have gone through so many purges over the years to keep the good reviewers finding your work in the queue. Use to be I’d get reviewers saying, “I know who you are” from the blind queue. I think the PRO feature changes some of this. Many of the folks I have currently in my friend list were people I’d dealt with years ago here and on other sites, so I’m happy to have them in my friend list because they’ve been invaluable to me in the past.

For reviewing a novel it’s easier to review from the friend list. I have reviewed one writer’s novel in several drafts from start to finish (150,000 words) plus excerpts of her second novel in progress from the friend list. That was a lot of work but also a pleasure because she wrote so well.