A thought on "show off your blog!" - critique goals questionnaire?

[ChickenFreak]

A thought occurs to me, as part of the "why do you ask for a review if you don't want criticism?" question.

On the National Novel Writing Month, the forums have a section for critiques on people's writing. As part of the process of putting your writing up for a critique, they _strongly_ suggest that you fill out a questionnaire.

The questionnaire includes things like, what are your goals? What's your experience? Are you feeling up for negative comments or do you just want to hear what's good about it? Do you want details or just the broad brush strokes? Do you want comments on the plot, the writing, just certain aspects of the plot or writing, everything? What are the known issues that you don't need to be told about?

Maybe something similar here would be useful. If someone just wants comments on, for example, the visual format and the writing and they don't want any comments on the overall concept, this would give them a chance to say so. If their goal is just to have fun and they're not worried about traffic, that would influence the responses. If their goal is all about traffic and making money, that would influence the responses another way. And if someone just wants to say, "Woohoo! Look what I made!" and they're only interested in positive comments, that's fine too.

Right now, the forum needs to cover all of these needs, and it's hard to guess what the poster wants. So how about a questionnaire? On NaNoWriMo the questionnaire format is stickied to the top of the forum; it seems to me that that would work here too.

[Chrisg]

Soome criticism can be helpful. It has been to me. I understand what you mean, annd remember, nobody's perfect.

[Betsyanne]

I like the idea of asking people what to talk about on a critique. I remember critiquing writing in some classes. We were told, say something nice, THEN something to improve. Balance it out. I think this helps. Maybe when I put one of my blogs up to be critiqued, I will be more specific about what I would like to know about it. I think personally I like it when people say what can be improved - - then I can make some changes that really make a difference.

Chickenfreak: I like your idea. I'm not sure everyone has the time to answer many questions about a blog though. I know I would welcome getting a better idea about my blogs personally though, and I think I would like a guideline sheet like you talk about. It's a neat idea.