Wouldn't it be something if we could take the BZP population and teach them all how to better review MOCs? Seriously, if you go to the MOC forum and read the comments you'll see that the majority of them are spam. (And this is putting the bad MOCs aside--I'm just talking about the reviews). I've often wondered if it would be a profitable thing if there was some sort of training method to get people to do better reviews: an Academy of sorts. (Admittedly this concept isn't 100% mine. Those of you who listen to LAML Radio know where I got most of this, though that just solidified my ideas).

If we were to make a forum or if a few members would get together and run this I think it may change BZP for the better (And not just the MOC Reviews, but also the Art and Writing Reviews may be affected by this as well). The basic concept is this:

First, you host a sign up sheet in a public forum (We could pin the sign up sheet in the MOC forum) and those who are serious about going through the academy can sign up there. After they sign up they will be allowed special privilege to a Reviewers' Academy forum. Once there they can read all the different Help Topics, ask questions in the Q&A Topic, and once they're ready they will be able to write a few reviews on MOCs. Those reviews then will be critiqued (Reviews on Reviews, Oh My!) by the staff running the forum and after the member gets, say, five perfect reviews under his belt he'll then be able to graduate. The graduation can include a banner and recognition and all that good stuff. After all that they then will be free to review whatever they want, and hopefully they will take what they learned in the academy and apply it to their posts.

I don't know. It'd definitely be interesting. I'm sure it'd have it's bumps and bruises along the way, but overall I think I'd be a good thing for BZP. Send me a PM if you want to try a member based one on the Blogs... or Staff, feel free to take the idea and run with it. Anyway, Everyone has just been Two Cented by me

//.Tek