This was originally going to go under Incognito's post about how it's important to give appropriate feedback, and not just beat people down for mistakes. I dug around in my own collection-o-reviews to double-check my own opinion on how I handle these, and I figured a peek might give a little insight into what kinds of things Team Area works on with new authors. All of the feedback below is unedited, except for blanking out a couple of details at the asterisked points, to better anonymize the reviews.

An area author typically gets 2 or 3 documents like this from the desks of other Area Team members, along with shorter suggestion lists from people. There's a "Summary" up top, followed by 2-10 pages of specific detail. If you've done your job right, that number is closer to 2 and further from 10. I'm usually last in line, so by the time something hits my desk, it's already reasonably "clean".

One of the areas below sailed right through reviews with minor tinkering, one needed a little more work, and one went through quite a bit of change before appearing live. The devil, as they say, is in the details, which aren't listed because it's too much of a pain to edit out the key info about what's in the area. They're all very recent- I'd have to dig through backups of my old hard drive to find older ones.

As usual, the details probably don't make as good a story as whatever (*insert favorite source of rumors*) told you, but they are what was sent, and the first formal feedback a new immortal sees from me on their area. I think I've done about 30 or 40 of these as an Immortal, and I've returned a "no" review exactly once. (And even then, I ran my findings past two IMPs before sending the bad news, to verify that my opinion wasn't off base. Their response cannot be printed on this family-oriented website.)

Review #1
Summary:
- I like the overall area and style. It has a feel that separates it well from existing areas, and the climate/etc. descriptions mesh well given the proximity to *nearby area(s)*.
- Descriptions are generally solid. Rooms get repetitive- see notes below. Language is consistent with few errors, though your sentences tend to be somewhat long and complex.
- Each object is balanced well by itself for the most part. There's nothing I can pick up and say "This is broken."
- The main problem is that there are too many objects that are "good". Since this is a ranking spot, they'll pile up fast if 5 or 7 good-quality objects are on many mobs. The number of resets needs to come down, or some of these items need to be replaced by less impressive ones. This is the major obstacle to approval right now- if it's solved, the rest is easy.

Review #2:
Summary:
- This area looks quite good. With some small fixes, I don't think it will be hard to have this ready to go live once the progs are written. I have no major concerns.

- I get the impression you're shooting for a ranking area, for either good or evil. It looks pretty solid for that, with a few notes I've made below.

- Thank you for the careful editing. This area is nearly typo-free, and the descriptions are fun to read as well as grammatically accurate. The description work, especially the day/night contrast, shows a good eye for detail and a lot of effort and creativity.

- You use a fair number of contractions. This isn't the worst thing in the world, but it often looks informal. Consider revising where appropriate.

Review #3
Summary:
I was impressed by this area. It is well-written, meticulously edited, and there are no major errors of judgement. Once the minor changes outlined below are taken care of and confirmed, it has my stamp of approval. You've already submitted a *snip* request, but please go down the other checklists (*snip*) and get those things ready while *snip* is worked on. Very nice work!

General note:
You frequently transpose "it's" and "its". Go through the document top to bottom and replace all instances of "it's" with "it is" or "its". Contractions are informal in any event, and it will catch mistakes that I probably glanced over.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

nt

(subliminal message) Wear your underwear on the outside. (/subliminal message)