My 80th Blog Entry

[Alolan_Apples]

Alright! I made it to the 80-entry mark. I'm 20 away from getting to the 100-entry mark. Every since I joined TBT, there hasn't been a single day in the United States where I have not written a blog entry.

If you want to know why I was on Bell Tree Forums everyday, I'm here to write blog entries. I would like to get to 100 without going a single day without blogging. Of course I will always be in the basement and other forums, but my main focus is getting up to 100 entries. Forget about the chocolate cake or other rare collectibles. Forget about the cataloging (although I finally got the badge I wanted most). They may be conveniences, but there's no day I'm offline until I get 100 entries.

Writing a Good Review:​

Today's entry will be about reviewing in general. You may like criticism, right? In order to write a good review, follow these rules. Some are good for both reader reviews and critic reviews, but others are targeted for critic reviews.

General Rules:

1. The ratings have a maximum value and minimum value. On the star system, you can give no higher than 5 stars or lower than half a star. On the 1 to 10 system, you can give no higher than a 10.0 or lower than a 1.0.
2. Do not rate or review anything that hasn't came out or you haven't encountered yet. You need to try before you critique it. And don't try just to critique it. You should try for other reasons.
3. Do not give good or bad ratings just because it's a sequel, expansion, rip-off, or remake. You should look deeply into what it's about before you can judge.
4. Do not give good or bad ratings because of the popular opinion. Go for what YOU think, not what others think.
5. It's a good idea or okay to judge by what the focus of what you're reviewing on.
   
   • Foods can be judged by taste, texture, completion, and design.
   • Places of entertainment (such as restaurants and hotels) can be judged by design, customers service, price, cleanliness, food, and diversity of options.
   • Books can be judged by plot, character development, and themes. Font is okay to judge, but not as the main reason.
   • TV Shows, TV episodes, and movies can be judged by plot, animation, characters, sound, and themes.
   • Video games can be judged by plot, difficulty, gameplay, graphics, sound, and replay value.
   • Works done by the online community in video games (such as dream towns in ACNL and levels in the Little Big Planet franchise) can be evaluated based on features and design.

Writing Rules:

1. When you write, use proper grammar and complete sentences. Run-ons, fragments, lack of capitalization and punctuation, and weird ways of writing (such as AlTeRnAtIvE cApS or ALL CAPS) are bad for reviews. You should also watch for context errors and spelling errors (unless if some words were meant to be misspelled or made-up).
2. Never ever copy others works and put them in your own credit. This is considered plagiarism, which is taken extremely seriously. Avoid other copyright infringements as well.
3. Do not write spam or gibberish in your reviews. That makes your reviews very bad, and we can say that you're not a good critic at all.
4. Make sure that your review is on-topic. It has to contribute to what you're reviewing about. It's okay to bring up connections, but if your review is less than 90% on-topic, then I can say that it's off-topic.

Content Rules:

Some words and phrases are better off if not written in critic reviews. They are okay for reader reviews, but not critic reviews.

1. Avoid using insulting words or phrases. They are considered offensive because the authors or makers worked very hard on what you're reviewing, and insulting their works is actually insulting them or making them feel bad for having these works.
   
   • Offensive nouns include crap, garbage, etc.
   • Offensive verbs include sucks, blows etc.
   • Offensive adjectives include stupid, trashy, etc.
   • Offensive phrases include "this wasted my life", "I give it a 0 even if the lowest is a 1" etc.
2. Forbidden words aren't necessarily forbidden in reviews. It depends on the context. Here are some examples of using the word "stupid" in a review. Green means okay, red means not.
   
   • "all of the sudden, the Stupid Duck comes in and interrupts the party" - example of forbidden words as character or place names.
   • "The episode 'A Stupid Day' was about four kids who got bored..." - example of forbidden words as names of episodes or what you're reviewing.
   • "When Papa Bear said 'Boy, this show is stupid', it reminded me of..." - example of forbidden words in phrases quoted by reviewer.
   • "I think this TV show is the stupidest show I ever seen" - example of forbidden words to describe what's being reviewed.
3. Do not attack other audiences in your review if they don't agree with you. This is considered trolling, which is bad for both reader reviews and critic reviews.
4. Avoid using profanity, hate speech, or other things unsuitable for kids in reviews. Unless if you're given permission because of the names or quotes, they shouldn't be said in order to show how maturity.

 

[Fossildude747]

Thanks, this helped a lot. I have a section of my blog for rating top 5's and 10's and I give info about why I put it in that position and what I like about it so this can help me! Happy 80th blog entry btw!