Horrible Writing? Wasted Points?

There is no excuse for it! It's not as if there are hundreds of forums each with a page or so of rules and terms to read.

Currently there are six forums listed - Took me all of 40 seconds to read them all!

I find it odd how writers with poor grammar and spelling have such a high rank to start with! The one I mentioned above has a rating of 4.2, the second writer today also dumping all their posts within a couple of minutes had a 4.3 rating. No complaints about his/her English, grammar or punctuation but why post their daily allowed limit one after the other? The second writer is a forum owner too!

I just don't get! I have now had to reduce the post limit to 1. Writers complain that there isn't enough forums and/or post limits are too low yet when you increase them they drop all their posts in one sweep!

It's been over a year since I used TFW and Postloop because of this issue. Last time a genuine member asked if I was using content writers due to this issue so I had to stop.

 

I'm trying to be a nice guy, but if people won't proofread the work for good grammar and spelling, and good paragraph indention, then I cannot give a 5.0, even if what they write is interesting.

However, if people would study the rules of grammar and spelling beforehand, then proofreading takes less time, maybe even none at all.

 

Another problem is double posting which I saw twice today on two different forums. In other words, posting the same thing two times, and I know the system doesn't know the difference.

I'm sorry, but these people don't respect the forum owners and want something for nothing.

 

Somtimes double posting isn't down to the writers but down to the software though, like if you're posting from a mobile on a site that isn't optimised for the browser your using it can happen I've noticed. Obviously the writers should check the post as posted properly and if it has double posted either delete one of them (if possible) or contact the owner and let them know.

Again though, you talked about proof reading and not spotting a double post is all part of that process. People shouldn't just be churning out posts, hitting send and then moving on to the next without making sure their post is good enough to actually send in the first place, and when they have actually sent it, double check it again.

It really doesn't take much time to go over what you've written, and if you take some amount of pride in your work (even though you might not be being paid a great deal for it) you'll double check everything anyway just for your own satisfaction and peace of mind.

 

I mentioned something along those lines to @ForumAdmin but didn't know if that would be possible to structure in to the site and even if it was if it would be worth the effort. Now if a forum owner says the post limit is set at 10 in one day, could it not be done in hours instead? Like the forum owner says the post count is 10, but on the writers subscription page it shows 2. Then when those 2 posts have been done, the forum can be locked and unlocked at specific times throughout the day?

(I made that sound way more complicated than it should have been, but you get the idea? haha!)

 

At the moment we get an email to tell us when a forum as been activated and deactivated so could we not also get one when post limit as been reset? On another site that we're familiar with (cough cough) we was emailed a notification when a post limit was reached and emailed again when it had been reset, could that be an option? I don't know about any other writers but I check my emails practically every hour at the least and it's not that big of a deal to be notified as to when you are able to post on a site again.

As for the build, I wouldn't have a clue how hard it is to put something like that in place so I can only comment from my perspective as a writer here, I leave the complicated stuff to you to deal with, ha!

 

Sometimes even writers from English speaking nations like the US or UK, who should know better, still refuse to proofread. For instance, they don't do paragraph indention or they use past tense verbs in a present situation etc...

Also with all writers, it seems like they run together sentences that shouldn't be run together, but rather separated with commas, conjunctions, or periods.

Not being a complainer here, but some are not giving even 80 percent.

However, I still do want a relaxed atmosphere on forums. Can people be relaxed and still use good grammar and spelling?

 

Personally I don't think there's any excuse for poor spelling and grammar, and while sometimes depending on the topic of the forum, I will try and keep my posts shorter and a bit more 'fun' and 'natural', they should still be spelt right at least. Some forum owners don't want posts that sound like they are automated and actually want the poster to be a little looser (if you get what I mean?) with the posts just make them fit in to the vibe of the forum so to speak, but that doesn't mean that the poster shouldn't be doing their best to make sure what they do post is correctly spelt and formatted.

 

The issue with bulk-posting is that some people don't even know it is an issue at all. Some people just assume it all gets lost in the sea of other writers. Since in itself is not breaking the rules, people are just filling a quota, many can be unaware until they read threads like this or become the receiving end at their own communities.

I think there should be some sort of writer netiquette that any writer, especially newcomers should be in contact with. Like, as soon as we approved from the gateway, we should get an email or PM or something that bring us some pointers about this kind of rookie mistakes we should avoid. Maybe having a thread here as well.

For bad practices that hint at cheating the system like posting the same content in different threads, not making an effort to keep the quality and a proper length or outright incoherent posts, there is not excuse at all. We should be receiving ratings according to our performance. If we're not following your instructions, if we are not delivering what you paid for we don't deserve high ratings.

Someone mentioned, I think in a different thread, about how some people to cheat the gateway have someone else posting for them, so that could explain good first rating and tasteless results later on.

Speaking of ratings, I don't think forum owners rate the writers the same way and that can also could be part of the problem, perhaps also the forum owners should get some netiquette to avoid bad deals and how to properly rate.

... Or maybe rethink the rating system so it is less subjective. AT the very least, adding some floaty explanation when you hover the stars to say those things you mentioned. As it is each owner has their own criteria to give and subtract and it seems it doesn't necessarily reflect what TFW was hoping for. Maybe instead of numbers just substitute them with words like terrible, lacking, average, good, excellent. So each rating means the same to any owner.

Expanding that, I think that having a more detailed rating system, where we get rated different aspects would help the writer to understand better how is their work being perceived, what is being liked and what needs work. As @Jason76 shows, it can be difficult to encompass everything in just one global rating. Having two or three fields could help them give a more accurate rating. If you could have that showing in our profile pages so owners know where they stand in each. That way, maybe the restrictions instead of being global they become about the issue they care about the most (or all three if they prefer that, but my point is giving choice).

That is an interesting idea. I just feel it if anyone is actually renting some internet to fill the requests or has a very short window of opportunity to fill them unless that delay is only for the community they are in at the time. So say I post once in 5 communities and then again in 15 minutes, then I can get out more than 4 posts an hour. In addition, I think members watching a poster do one post exactly every 15 minutes around the same time every day will pick up the pattern, which I think is what we're trying to avoid or at least discourage.

How about having a fluctuating post quota? Instead of having owners setting a daily quota have it be a weekly one and then have a script that generates daily quota for each subscribed writer within reasonable parameters.
Example: forum owner instead of 3 posts a day will now say the limit per writer is 21 posts a week with a cap of 5 posts a day.
So the randomiser will generate something like 3,2,1,2,4... for the week. So even if you have people bulk-posting to fill the quota it still will look more like a normal poster that just happens to post around the same time than an actual pattern. If this randomised runs for each subscriber then they would all be posting different numbers.

 

Whenever a strict action is taken against any writers, is it possible to send a notification to all existing writers indicating that these many members have been banned from writing (no personal details are required) because of issues like......

I have seen some sites doing this. It is quite beneficial to serve as a warning to all existing users while you are not directly blaming anybody. You can also add a link like “guide to quality writing” at the end.

 

Ken's new avatar. Awesome. Real face?

 

It's getting tougher to spot bad writing lately though. I can run a lot of stuff thru grammar checkers and it says nothing and I agree.

Possibly the only threats are stuff like ending questions with periods, writing statements that don't end with some sort of punctuation, or maybe run-on sentences, but I don't even see them much anymore.

If some people are still complaining, then I cannot see the cause.