Hi all,

Today, I would like to present a new type of project, which is all about improvement of the quality of reviews.

The goals of the project are:
1) Improve the quality of reviews from one judge to another
2) Provide articles and blog entries on how to write good reviews at a regular basis

An important requirement for #2 is this: All judges in the review expert group will not be permitted to disclose any of the cases their are consulted upon, except when agreement is given by the author (and an anonymization phase will have to take place).

The project will be split into 2 sub project in line with the goals of project.

Review Consulting
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A group of expert will be on call for cases ranging from:
- commenting on reviews and pointing out improvement possibilities (review the review, basic corrections)
- helping create a review based on keywords (help formulate things for non native speakers)
- helping the creation of reviews about “strong improvements” (help formulate things without hurting someone)
- English corrections and comments (for non native speaker wanting to get better at English)
- Helping lvl3 candidates write a self review

Articles and Blogs
==============
This group will be composed of reviewers as well as writer enthusiasts and the articles and blog posts they will write will be about the following topics:
- Aggregating the problems found with the consulting group and using anonymized snippets to talk about recurrent review problems as well as their solution.
- Helping judges understand what quality is needed in reviews to pass the different judge level requirements as well as establishing some kind of common understanding of review quality
- Writing a methodology on how to write a self review, what are the pitfalls and what is important.

We would like for the list of review Experts to be public and for it to be a strong symbol. We are looking for judges interested in improving the thought that peers can help peers improve. If you are up for the challenge, please send an email with your application to the following address: judge.review.help@gmail.com. It should contain:
- Motivation
- What part are you interested in (Consulting and/or Blog)
- 2-3 Reviews you have written yourself to show your expertise

The scope and ambition of this project here is large (and could get even larger), but I know many of you care passionately about raising the bar for reviews and I'm really excited to get to work with others with the same excitement I'm feeling for this.

Thanks for your time,
Jeremie

Edited Jeremie Granat (Aug. 18, 2015 04:31:54 AM)

Hi all,

Small change :( The email address to send application is judge.review.help@gmail.com

Thank you
Jeremie

Hello Jeremie, could you please give us a deadline for submission of applications, and an idea of when work would start and how many hours a week you would see it taking?

For example, applications before end of August, project full power start of October, 3 hours weekly.

With this info I (and maybe others) can make a more informed decision. Maybe someone is good at reviews but has too many projects on his or her plate: 2 hours per week would work, but 4 would be too much.

Thanks!

Hi George,

I do not have a deadline planed yet. This will depends on the number of review request as well as other project streams we will set up. If we get to a point where we have too many viable candidates, we will add a deadline and work from there.

My plan would be for the work to start somewhen in November. We still have to create some kind of organization between the different streams (deliverable deadlines, availability etc) and of course to publicize our new services :)

The workload will depends on the individual judges. The process will work something like this (work in progress):
- A Judge would like help in a review and send a request to judge.review.help@gmail.com
- I (or one of the admins) read the request and select a judge in the expert group review helper to help in this case. Each review helper will have a post in the project forum thread with current activities (case currently handling: 2, available for more cases: YES) that is updated regularly and I will pick a judge who fit (language, preferences, etc) and is available.
- The judge updates his status and availability and handle the case :)

The idea is to have a flexible system that do not ask you for more than you can give. Some cases will be difficult (language barrier, difficult review subject, etc) and might take all your effort… At other time, you might be able to take a few concurrently. If you are writing a blog entry or finalizing an article, you might have less time for helping with reviews as well. As we are all doing this in our free time, the number of hours spent on this project might also change drastically from one month to the next (exam weeks comes to mind) and I want to allow judges to be in charge of how much effort they invest in this project.

Hope this helps
Jeremie

Let me start with congratulating this initiative for the sheer relevance it banners.

Sadly, I am no expert in producing reviews myself as of current although I have extensive experience in writing.

I will keep myself posted about this initiative while I learn more about the art of reviewing for the meantime. Hopefully I will find myself ready to help soon.

For now, two thumbs up!