Review Blitz 2022
Welcome to Thousand Roads' fourth annual review blitz, our biggest feedback event and your opportunity to catch up with the fics you've spent the past year meaning to read. If you've participated in a review blitz before, you should find this one familiar! Be sure to check out the "What's New?" section below--the biggest change is that we'll be using a web application to log reviews and track scores! If this is your first blitz, take a look at "Getting Started" and the FAQ, then refer back to this thread if you need to find something specific--no need to absorb everything at once!
Feel free to post any questions you might have in this thread! To discuss the event in general, give or request fic recs, or otherwise chat with other participants, please use the general chat and hype thread! To redeem your points for prizes, please visit the prize claim thread instead. And if you'd like to get the word out about your stories and arrange review exchanges with people, the self-promotion thread is there for you!
Getting Started
If you're new to Review Blitz, it might seem overwhelming--things are certainly busy during the event. At its heart, though, Blitz is a pretty simple event. Here's how to approach it:
1. Set up your account in the Thousand Roads Companion app. This is the web site we'll be using to track reviews through this year's Review Blitz. Visit the registration page to create an account in the companion, then follow the instructions to link the account with your forum identity. Once this is done, you're good to go for the event.
2. Read and leave a review for a story on Thousand Roads. Any story posted to the Thousand Roads forums will do! Your review should be at least 250 words long and abide by any feedback guidelines provided by the author, but other than that, any kind of review is fine! If you have trouble thinking of what sort of feedback the author might appreciate, you can find tips and potential prompts here, or see if the author has posted any story-specific prompts in the comprehension questions thread.
Not sure what you'd like to read? We have an index of stories posted to the forums with summaries, tags, and information on completeness, as well as a number of threads for recommendations, such as the Master's Eight or Seven-Day Fic Challenge. The self-promo thread is a great way to get a taste of what fics are out there, as well as arrange a review exchange with their authors. Feel free to ask for recs in the general chat thread, too!
Note that there are some stories where the author has posted some chapters to Thousand Roads but has yet to bring over everything published so far. You can still review chapters published on other sites for points so long as at least some of the story is posted on Thousand Roads. Your review should be posted to the forums, although you can also crosspost it elsewhere if you'd like.
3. Log your review. Visit the review submission page of the companion app and enter the link for your review. You can get the link either by clicking on the number that appears at the upper right corner of your review and copying the url of the page it takes you to or by clicking the share link at the upper right corner of your review and copying the URL from the box that appears. Then enter the number of chapters you covered with your review. (If you reviewd a one-shot, the number of chapters is one!)
If your review qualifies for the weekly theme (see the Scoring section below for more information), you can check the box for the weekly theme, and if you reviewed a long one-shot or chapter (6500 words or more), you can enter a link for as many of those chapters as apply for your review.
Once you hit submit, your review will be sent to the approval queue for one of our Blitz volunteers to look at. As long as everything looks correct, your review will be approved, and you'll earn points!
4. Get prizes! Check out the prize claim thread for information about all the different prizes you can redeem your points for, as well as how to do so! You don't need to write many reviews to earn a prize; if you can write 3-5 reviews in a month, you'll probably be able to pick something up for yourself, and the more reviews you can manage, the bigger you can win.
After that, repeat steps 2-4 as often as you'd like! If the thrill of competition motivates you to spread more reviews around, you can try to hit the top of the leaderboard and claim the biggest prizes. If you want to take a more relaxed approach, that's more than welcome, too--even one review written for the event is one more than would have existed otherwise, and one more author happy to have gotten feedback on their work!
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What fics can I review for points during Blitz?
A: Any fic on Thousand Roads during Blitz is eligible, with the exception of fics that the author has requested be ineligible for Blitz. You can find a list of those fics below in the "Scoring" section.
Q: How does scoring work for fics that are partially on Thousand Roads but have more chapters available on other sites?
A: As long as a fic is partially posted on TR, you can review it for Blitz, including chapters not yet posted on TR. Keep in mind that in order to count for Blitz, the review itself must be posted on TR in that story’s thread.
Q: Can I review drabble collections? How does that work for scoring?
A: Drabble collections are counted as a oneshot—you can review as much of the drabble collection as you like, and it will count for 1 point total. A drabble collection is defined as any thread containing multiple drabbles -OR- any work with an average chapter length of 500 words or fewer.
Q: What about a single drabble? How many points is that worth?
A: To be eligible for any points in Review Blitz, a review must cover at least 250 words of material. Therefore a review on a drabble or single chapter less than 250 words long is not worth any points.
Q: How do one-shot anthologies work in terms of scoring?
A: One-shot anthologies are treated like chapterfics in all respects.
Q: Can I participate even if I don't have a story posted on the forums?
A: Of course! This is a reviewing event, and you can review and win prizes regardless of whether you have stories up on TR.
Q: How many times can I claim the weekly bonus?
A: You can claim a specific weekly bonus once per fic. If, for example, a fic qualifies for two different weekly bonuses, you can claim the bonus for the fic once in both of those weeks, for a total of two times.
Q: If I post my story after Blitz is started can people still review it for Blitz?
A: Definitely!
Q: Are reviews on April Fool's Day chapters eligible for points during Blitz?
A: Reviews on April Fool's Day or joke chapters count as normal reviews for the purpose of Blitz, unless the author has excluded that chapter from Blitz via opting-out. Previous reviews on April Fool's Day chapters also qualify as reviews for the purpose of weekly themes (i.e. "an author you haven't reviewed before").
Q: How do offsite reviews factor into the Week 3 theme (review a fic with fewer than X reviews)?
A: For the purposes of Week 3 theme eligibility specifically, offsite reviews are not counted. This means that 1) a chapter posted on TR that has X or more reviews across several different sites but has fewer than X reviews on TR is still eligible and 2) offsite chapters are not eligible for the Week 3 theme if the chapter is not also hosted on TR.
Q: How do offsite reviews factor into Week 1 theme eligibility (review an author that you haven't reviewed before)?
A: For the purposes of the week 1 theme this year, only reviews on TR count--so if you have previously reviewed an author's work on another fanfic site(s), but have never reviewed them on TR, you can still claim the bonus for reviewing their work here!
Q: How do contest reviews factor into Week 1 theme eligibility (review an author that you haven't reviewed before)?
A: If you judged a contest on TR and wrote a review for a fic as part of it, then you're counted as having reviewed that story on TR, so you should not claim the Week 1 theme bonus for any further stories you review by that author.
Q: Can I re-review chapters that I've already reviewed before, but that have undergone significant edits or that I've had new thoughts on?
A: Yes. If you can write a new review that still meets all other Blitz review requirements and isn't repeating your old review, it would be valid for new points. Bear in mind that this will be up to organizer discretion.
Blitz Scoring
The heart of Review Blitz scoring is simple: one point for every one-shot or chapter reviewed, as long as that review is 250 words or longer. For reviews covering more than one chapter, the point value is either the number of chapters reviewed or the number of words of the review/250, whichever is lower. (Review length is determined automatically by the Thousandroads Companion app.) However, there are a number of ways to earn bonuses if you'd like to spice things up a bit:
- For every three chapters of a story that you review, you receive one bonus point! Get caught up on a longfic you've fallen behind on, and you could find yourself with a big bonus to your score. Keep in mind that this is subject to the constraints of the point calculation formula. So a 500 word review covering three chapters of a story will not net you a bonus point, because the formula only counts that as a review of two chapters. However, if you reviewed again with a 250 word review, you would receive your bonus point for having reviewed three chapters.
- Each chapter or one-shot you review that's 6500 words or longer is eligible for one quarter of a bonus point! Get rewarded for that extra time spent reading.
- Finally, Review Blitz has four weekly themes that award an additional one half point for qualifying stories during the week that they apply. These can each be claimed once per fic per theme. This year's themes are as follows:
- New Faces! Review an author you haven't reviewed before. If you've reviewed them on a site other than TR, but not on TR itself, they still count for this bonus! (Week 1 starts when Blitz does!)
- Short 'n' Sweet! Review a one-shot. (Countdown to Week 2)
- Spread the love! Review a chapter with less than four reviews. (Any chapter with less than four reviews at the start of week three qualifies.) (Countdown to Week 3)
- Free-for-all! No theme bonus awarded this week--go all out to review whatever stories are left on your hit list in the final week of Blitz! (Countdown to Week 4)
Please also note that authors may choose to opt their stories out of Review Blitz. If you review that fic during Blitz anyway, you won't receive any points for it. The list of exempted fics is below:
"Hell Eternal" by Torchic
"Head Over Heels" by Pen
"Swamping Ground" by Flyg0n
The April Fool's chapter of Continental Divides by Wildboots
"Head Over Heels" by Pen
"Swamping Ground" by Flyg0n
The April Fool's chapter of Continental Divides by Wildboots
What's new this year?
- The first and most obvious change is that we'll be handling reviews differently this year! To make life easier for everyone, we'll be using the Thousand Roads Companion web application to handle review logging and leaderboard tracking. I recommend that you get your account there set up and experiment with submitting reviews before Blitz actually begins so you know how everything works before you need to submit reviews for real and on a deadline. To start, register an account, then follow the steps on the verification page to link that account to your Thousand Roads forum account. After that, you're free to try out the review submission form and make sure you can get it working. There's a "beta blitz" running right now that will not count towards your actual blitz score but lets you submit any review posted in 2022 to try out the software. Have fun!
Huge thanks to @Dragonfree, @kyeugh, and all our beta testers for their hard work pulling this app together. I hope everyone enjoys the new software, but if you run into trouble, please post in this thread or on Discord so we can help you get things straightened out.
- This year's review scoring is almost identical to last year's, but there will be one significant change: reviews on long chapters now earn a point bonus. Specifically, each review you make for a chapter or one-shot that's at least 6500 words long will earn an extra 0.25 points.
- Please note that outstanding Catnip reviews do not qualify for points this year. If you have Catnip reviews you owe that are several weeks old, please try to get these done as soon as possible!
- This year, writing a fic rec of at least 100 words for a story you reviewed for Blitz and which satisfies the weekly theme earns you 0.5 bonus points in addition to entering you into a raffle for additional prizes at the end of Blitz. You can claim this bonus up to once per week--one rec every week of the event will net you two points total!
- Finally, just a formal note that we'd like all reviews submitted for Blitz to be complete--that is, please don't submit a review that just passes the minimum length requirement with the intention of coming back to give that story or chapter a more complete review later. Reviews that are submitted incomplete but qualifying based on length that are later amended will have their points revoked.
Have More Questions?
Feel free to post any questions you might have in this thread or ping the Blitz Questions role on our Discord server! You can also send a message to @bluesidra, @Dragonfree, @kyeugh, @Negrek, or @Pen!
I'd also like to take a moment to thank everyone who's volunteered to help out with this year's Blitz. We couldn't run this event without all of you! Thank you so much for your time and generosity. I'd also like to give a shout-out to @kintsugi for first bringing this event to TR, all her work hosting for our past three blitzes, and for writing the vast majority of the event documentation, much of which has been blatantly plagiarized for this thread. Thanks for all your hard work and dedication to making the community better.
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