These guidelines are outdated and retained for archive purposes only. Please use the
current Review Guidelines for your reviews. This article will provide a
description of how to write quality reviews for Age of Kings Heaven that are scored
consistently between reviewers and are helpful to both the file's creator as well as the
potential downloader. At the beginning, my sole responsibility at Heaven was writing reviews. As such, the reviews were very consistent since I wrote them all. However, over time, I took on more and more responsibilities at Heaven and I no longer had the time to write very many reviews myself. So, we got a small team of reviewers together and I explained the system to them in detail. That worked well for awhile but over time, some of the original team left and new reviewers have been constantly added to the team to try and keep up with the immense number of scenarios and campaigns that need to be reviewed. Unfortunately, I have not able to give each of the new reviewers as much guidance as they needed and the reviews have started to become very inconsistent. This inconsistency is very troubling since scores can vary widely depending on who is doing the review. That's not fair to the designer or to the downloader. I know that there will always be some variation in scores depending on the reviewer, but lately, the amount of variation is unacceptable and this document will detail what I expect each score to represent. As the Angel in charge of reviewing, it's my job to ensure that reviews remain a valuable tool for both designers and downloaders. General Guidelines The first thing to always keep in mind is that reviews serve a double purpose. They are written for both the scenario designer and for the site visitor who is considering downloading the file. As such, reviews need to praise the designer for things that are done well and point out areas where the designer can improve. Reviews also need to provide enough information about the scenario so that potential downloaders will know if the scenario matches their interests. Obviously, don't give away the plot or reveal secrets that should be discovered while playing, but let the downloader know what the scenario is about, if it's mainly fighting, or mainly rpg, or mainly puzzles or a mix of everything. Whatever the case, a downloader should know what to expect from a scenario after reading a review. Try as hard as possible to avoid vague statements in reviews. Make sure that your review answers more questions than it raises. Don't ever say something like "The first part of the 2nd scenario was good" or "the part with the wolf could be improved" without providing further explanation. Try to always include an example from the scenario to back up any points that you make. If you are pointing out something to the designer that you feel could be improved, try to provide some ideas that the author could build on. Do as much as you can to help the designer improve his work. All scenarios have good aspects and bad aspects. Try to always say at least one good thing about any scenario you review and never, NEVER insult a designer. They might not be as good of a designer as you but even if you are handing out a score of 1.0, you still should never insult the designer. Be honest about the scenario but make every effort to encourage the designer to do better next time. Always spell check your reviews. I've seen far too many reviews that take points off a rating because of poor spelling yet the review itself is full of errors. Don't embarrass yourself - spell check your work. Lastly, the review should contain a short explanation of why you scored each category the way you did. This does not need to be lengthy, sometimes a sentence is enough but other times, a paragraph for each category is needed. |