| Author |
 Topic  |
|
Demisemicenturian 
"Four ever European"
|
 Posted - 04/03/2008 : 20:32:38
|
quote:
Originally posted by benj clews
Yes, we have new members
 So it's a special, private, invitation-only club, is it? |
 |
|
|
turrell 
"Ohhhh Ohhhh Ohhhh Ohhhh "
|
Posted - 04/03/2008 : 20:44:52
|
quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
quote:
Originally posted by benj clews
Yes, we have new members
So it's a special, private, invitation-only club, is it?
I think thats fair - for starters this is benj's site so he can do as he do - secondly MERPs should be able to have a consistent standard of quality about others reviews and shown by their own reviews and thirdly they should be someone who is active and easy to get along with as benj oand other MERPs need to work with them - so it should be at the discretion of Benj with possible nominations or influence of the other MERPs.
Now if you just came out and said why wasn't I invited, then you'd get a different answer from me. |
|
|
|
Whippersnapper. 
"A fourword thinking guy."
|
Posted - 04/04/2008 : 00:14:38
|
Wonder if the club is open to Mrs Benj?
Just a wild guess... 
 |
|
|
|
Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
|
Posted - 04/04/2008 : 01:31:46
|
quote:
Originally posted by turrell
benj oand other MERPs need to work with them
I'm not sure where you get this from. They make independent judgments about reviews: there's not really any teamworking, although they may discuss things in their special secret Fourum. When the first MERPs were taken on, there was an open invitation to anyone with at least 500 reviews. There wasn't any quality test, although I suggested that there should be. |
Edited by - Demisemicenturian on 04/04/2008 02:13:58 |
|
|
|
Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
|
Posted - 04/04/2008 : 02:13:32
|
I have to agree that there have been some extremely strange 'Too generic' rejections for quite a while, and especially lately. Here are the most recent cases for me:
"Boarding school prioritises spelling" for the first Harry Potter. What else could this refer to? It has been unambiguously established that reviews applying to a whole franchise are allowed for the first film. There aren't any other magic-boarding-school films that I know of. That only leaves the normal sense of "spelling". Apart from the fact that I know of no boarding-school films focusing on this, a review shouldn't be punished for genericity just because a word in it has a homonym.
"Multi-race land, multi-race plot" for Race, a film set in South Africa focusing on various competitive races. The issue here is simply the last one mentioned in the review above. With the ethnicity sense of "race", this would indeed be too generic, but with the sense being used here it definitely isn't. It would not be reasonable to ignore this distinction, but if it's going to be, I would like a definitive statement from Benj on the matter. |
Edited by - Demisemicenturian on 04/04/2008 02:16:37 |
|
|
|
Yukon
"Co-editor of FWFR book"
|
Posted - 04/04/2008 : 02:36:50
|
quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
"Boarding school prioritises spelling" for the first Harry Potter. What else could this refer to? It has been unambiguously established that reviews applying to a whole franchise are allowed for the first film. There aren't any other magic-boarding-school films that I know of. That only leaves the normal sense of "spelling". Apart from the fact that I know of no boarding-school films focusing on this, a review shouldn't be punished for genericity just because a word in it has a homonym.
I run into this problem too sometimes.
My Spiderbabe review on first glance appears generic. "Web server goes down" can apply to lots of movies about the internet. But because Spiderbabe is a porn version of Spiderman, the phrase has funny, sexual double meaning. (I submitted my review with an explanation, that usually helps.)
At first glance, I, too, thought your Potter review was a completely generic statement that can apply to any movie about a boarding school.
Soon I realized it's a very clever review for Harry Potter so it should be approved.
What I do often is to resubmit with something in quotes or capitals to point out it's a joke. I think it makes the review less generic.
Remember, the MERPS are going through dozens of reviews and may not pick up on a clever review. There are a lot of "see-it, write-it" reviews submitted, so they probably saw yours and hit the reject button without giving it a second thought.
Try
Boarding school prioritises 'spelling'
or
Boarding school prioritises SPELLING.
(P.S. Did you submit it with an explanation?)
|
|
|
|
Whippersnapper.
"A fourword thinking guy."
|
Posted - 04/04/2008 : 03:10:01
|
quote:
Originally posted by turrell
quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
quote:
Originally posted by benj clews
Yes, we have new members
So it's a special, private, invitation-only club, is it?
I think thats fair
Fairness, in the sense of a general agreement, has nothing to do with it. However Benj wants MERPs appointed, that's how it will be. End of. I'm just glad we have some more MERPs slaving away around the clock for our benefit.
I also understand people wanting to discuss their generic rejections, but the point about my two quoted examples, at least as I saw it, was that there is no way that anyone could really believe that either review could apply to a whole bunch of films, and therefore the MERP involved was probably labouring under a misapprehension about what we mean by a generic review.
I'm sure Benj will have already had a quiet word about it, and things will improve rapido.
Incidentally, if that MERP has read this thread I'd like to express my gratitude for the speeding up of approvals to which they have contributed. Thanks!
|
|
|
|
chazbo 
"Outta This Fuckin' Place"
|
Posted - 04/04/2008 : 03:19:52
|
quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
"Boarding school prioritises spelling" for the first Harry Potter. What else could this refer to? It has been unambiguously established that reviews applying to a whole franchise are allowed for the first film. There aren't any other magic-boarding-school films that I know of. That only leaves the normal sense of "spelling". Apart from the fact that I know of no boarding-school films focusing on this, a review shouldn't be punished for genericity just because a word in it has a homonym.
My "Private school prohibits spelling" was accepted for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix not too long ago, so perhaps you just have catch the MERPs on the right day. I, too, think the spelling/school pairing works well, so maybe if you resubmit with an explanation, as Yukon suggests, it will go through.
|
|
|
|
benj clews 
"...."
|
Posted - 04/04/2008 : 14:30:59
|
quote:
Originally posted by Yukon
Try
Boarding school prioritises 'spelling'
or
Boarding school prioritises SPELLING.
My personal preference would probably be either the former listed above or even:
Boarding school prioritises spell-ing.
...but yeah- anything that can be done to draw attention to the fact there may be a double meaning there will increase the chances of a review not being declined as generic. |
|
|
|
Downtown 
"Welcome back, Billy Buck"
|
Posted - 04/04/2008 : 16:05:11
|
| So now we can't even leave the readers to figure out something for themselves? I don't like having to insert "quotes" and (paren)theses and hyp-hens in order to dumb down my puns and word play for people that can't figure them out on their own. Some other reviewers do that anyway and that's okay if they prefer that, but I don't like it on my reviews and this is the first I've heard that we need to start doing that. I have no problem explaining it in the 100-character space for MERPs that "don't get it," but I'd like the option of submitting reviews that require a modicum of thought to appreciate. |
|
|
|
Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
|
Posted - 04/04/2008 : 23:21:50
|
I'm with Downtown on this.
The hyphenation would I think be wrong, since I'm pretty sure that the magical sense of spell is a valid verb. Inverted commas would definitely be wrong, since it is not so-called spelling, but actual spelling. And capitalisation is really a last resort (although worth considering for the future as I could immediately correct it upon approval). Further, I accept Yukon's response about the ordinary sense of spelling and any boarding school, but it is not really valid in terms of films. Focusing on spelling is true of boarding schools, but not true of films about boarding schools. It's possible that it is occasionally shown in passing (though no example springs to mind) but spelling is overwhelmingly more central in the Harry Potter films.
Like Whippersnapper, though, I didn't want to get into the merits of particular cases. It's just that I felt examples were needed, as I have often abstractly mentioned the issue of faulty 'Too generic' rejections without any improvement occurring. I often resubmit with despairing comments along the lines of "What other film could this refer to?!". |
|
|
|
Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
|
Posted - 04/04/2008 : 23:36:39
|
It was unlucky in terms of breadth of examples that both of those involved homonyms - as I resubmit most things, they were the only recent ones I had in my rejected list. I've therefore looked through my pending list for one where I added an incredulous response to 'Too generic'.
"Arseholes are souls?" - I defy anyone to be overwhelmed by choices as to which film about an apparently living rectum this could be. In contrast, the newer and highly equivalent "Anus with an animus" has been approved (and voted on by me). |
|
|
|
turrell
"Ohhhh Ohhhh Ohhhh Ohhhh "
|
Posted - 04/04/2008 : 23:46:18
|
| Aaron Spelling did produce a TV movie call Satan's School for Girls. |
|
|
|
Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
|
Posted - 04/07/2008 : 21:24:17
|
The MERPs are now amusing themselves, right? I have just had some Don't understands wherein (not for the first time) the only thing to not understand was what on Earth there was to not understand.
And could they please look up terms (e.g. on urbandictionary.com in the case of informal terms) rather than just guessing that they are two words? |
|
|
|
Ali
"Those aren't pillows."
|
Posted - 04/08/2008 : 06:56:00
|
When it comes to four word film reviews, qualifiers turn genius into shit.
quote:
Aaron Spelling did produce a TV movie call Satan's School for Girls.
That's not splitting hairs, that's splitting atoms for fuck's sake. It's as if the search is on to make the site as pedestrian as possible. Salopian - I am with you on this spell business.
This might be the only place in the entire world where people actually think something is funnier when it's less subtle.
|
Edited by - Ali on 04/08/2008 06:57:33 |
|
|
|
Topic |
|
Benj - Is there a new MERP out there or something?
