New Beta House - Planning

[bobandbill]

As mentioned in the other thread there was an old beta thread but after three years (man that's a pretty long time!) it's become rather old and purple_drake has said it is fine to make a new version of it, so this thread is for any comments you want to give in regards to what the new one should be like. In a few days/a week at the most I'll go and remake the thread so give your suggestions now.

The previous Beta House thread in question!


Personally... the General Rules part looks fine to me as well as the specifics for mentors/mentorees. The types of beta readers available seem fine to me as well, but I do feel a neat addition to consider is that to apply to be a beta reader/mentor, one should supply examples of reviews they have already done, or even betas they have made if they happen to have those and are willing to show as an example. With the old version it was only examples of their own writing that was necessary to supply.

[Breezy]

I think the old rules and setup worked fine as well.

The types of beta readers available seem fine to me as well, but I do feel a neat addition to consider is that to apply to be a beta reader/mentor, one should supply examples of reviews they have already done, or even betas they have made if they happen to have those and are willing to show as an example. With the old version it was only examples of their own writing that was necessary to supply.

I would say showing an example of a review is highly recommended but not necessary. Reasons why is because not every beta reviews (likewise, not every reviewer betas), and betaing can be vastly different from reviewing.

I think P_D did look at reviews and the applicant's responses to his/her reviewers when judging whether to accept or reject them, though I'm not sure what weighed more (the writing excerpt or the reviews/response to other reviewers).

[purple_drake]

I did look at reviews, yep, though I did that mostly through the profile and finding them myself. I don't know why I didn't think of asking for them outright. XD

I weighed them basically the same--the reviews told me about attitude and whether the applicant knew what they were talking about, while the writing told me if they knew how to use what they were talking about. So bit of A, bit of B, really.

[Draco Malfoy]

There should be an additional screening process to becoming an official mentoree. I noticed that in the last beta house, there were too many fics wishing to be mentored, too much that I think prospective mentors were being discouraged and the current mentors overworked or more reluctant to do the hard yards. Some of those fics could have easily been improved with a simple visit to Zephyr's thread.

In order to prevent the discouragement and procrastination of the mentors due to an influx of mentorees, another member of the Beta House team should very briefly skim each prospective fic as a quality check. Only when the fic is ascertained to have a basic grasp of characterisation and beginners' scene-setting should it be allowed to be mentorred. This would be just a very minor quality-check to exscind the fics which could be easily helped by reading the Zephyr thread.

I know that this is a controversial idea, but I saw all those unmentored fics and just thought that we needed to stop that to prevent the death of this beta house. :P

[Breezy]

That's actually not a bad idea. The last beta house was definitely unbalanced with too many mentorees and too little mentors.

I am wondering if there is a way to attract more volunteer mentors. I know it's a tiring job at times but lots of people really needed betas back then, and there were only so many mentors to pass around.

[bobandbill]

Ok, posted the new thread. If a fanfic mod wants to sticky it they can.

Added in the reviews bit for the mentor application as optional but recommended, and mentioned that if the quality of their writing sample/story for mentorees is not up to standard it will not be accepted. Tell me anything I might have missed!