I have, in general, enjoyed reviewing things online. Pound for pound, a good chunk of this website is in review of something. Even things which are "serious looks" at things are often just a way for me to review some policy, some lawsuit, or some philosophy. Most of the reviews are kind of short, some are fluttery, and some are oddly written rants. This is one thing I want to keep working on while this website continues to grow.
As I was cleaning up (read: deleting) "Dickens of a Blog (version 1)", I came across a write up about Laura Miller's negative review of Chuck Palahniuk's Diary and the negative response she received in return. Comments ranged from, "Fuck you!," to, "While Chuck is a nice guy, some of his fans are weird." We have reviews of reviews. Glorious. I don't mean that sarcastically. It is something that we do need and something that we can benefit from. While looking up reviews, recently, of various John Ringo books I found one with glaring spelling errors, massive logic faults, and something that can only be described as a deep-seated pout because John Ringo did not make a magical book that changed it's content to precisely fit the reviewer's wishes.
Interesting feedback to reviews can help the reviewers.
Miller writes a lot of reviews, and they seem pretty good by my glance. In this particular one, it felt off. She spent paragraph after paragraph talking about 1) how repetitive Chuck was and 2) how wrong about facts Chuck was. Attacking a fictional writer for writing about something that is not the real world, especially when his stuff often has a slight speculative fiction vibe, is just pointless. Doing this over and over again, in a review in which the word "repetitive" is of a pejorative character, seems like playing bad pool.
Moving on from the spark in question, let's expand this outward a bit. This is the day and age of Web 2.0+. Everyone has the power to write reviews. Go and look at Amazon.com.
The Top Reviewers often have thousands of reviews under their belt (and often have thousands of craptastic reviews that do little more than quote the back of the book and go "Was good!" at the end). IMDB.com. Target. Wal-mart. This is not even including the semi-professional reviews of gaming sites, book sites, cooking sites and so forth. There are probably about ten times the number of reviews than there are people to ever want to read them.
There is a bit of a paradox there. We want products with lots of reviews but we do not want to read lots of reviews. Maybe that's just me.
All this is to say, I have decided to try and hold myself up to some standards, a self-review of sorts. I may not always get it right, but thinking about all of this has led me to a few basic ideas. There is no good way for me to back and change all the existing items over, but this something for me to keep in mind for the future.
First, a review is a thing of a moment. Define the moment within the review. Tea that tastes bad in one sitting may be excellent the next. This applies to everything. Fill in the gaps. What books have I read by the author? What sort of mood was I in? How many cups did I drink?
Second, a review should never be too long unless it earns the right.
Third, the writer deserves a review of at least the same rough passion and quality as the original work. No review should be knocked off without a sense of spell check, editorial restraint, and general flow.
Fourth, reviews should not limit the product by restraints not appropriate. Even if fiction is inherently untrue, fictional book can be chided for not being believable inside of its own context.
Fifth, reviews posted publicly on a space like this should aim to be enjoyable even if that varies in specifics depending on the topic.
Sixth, reviews should be transparent. If a review changes due to something, this should be noted. If a review is about a product that was given as a free sample to be reviewed, that should be noted. If the review is about a book tha ta friend wrote, that should be noted.
Seventh, it is a review. Despite the guidelines above, a review is always biased and a outpouring of opinion. This should be controlled, to increase the effect and to make the review worthwhile, but no review should be expected to be anything beyond this. To enhance this, reviews should eschew arbitrary numerical systems of ratings and talk more in natural language.
Finally, a review should always be just as open to attack as the original work it attacks.