Thanks for shooting my ideas full of holes, I 'll just spend the next half hour picking up the little pieces of my ego from off the floor, ooh there's a bit and i think there's a bit under the table

Well I came up with those very quickly and really as a means of getting the issue out and hoping someone else might have a better and more practical idea.

boccaccio, I had not thought of the fear factor in regards to the contacting of authors or the joining of the site. I haven't any qualms about those kinds of things and guess I do judge a little more by my own example than I should. It's something I will have to think about. It's not hard to create a hotmail account or a yahoo account though. I now use my hotmail account for everything, it is just so much more flexible and user friendly than outlook.

Once again Alex, I try to write a response to each review so I guess I haven't thought about those authors who don't. But to be disappointed that your review didn't get a response you must first have written at least one. So you have to admit there are a lot of lazy buggers out there.

It also comes down to actually what you want to review. This has been covered in another thread but for me: I don't review atrociously written stories, they will disappear on their own; I don't review stories which I found to be uninteresting, usually because subject matter was not to my taste (ie story codes a little misleading); I don't review stories which don't attract me in the first place (snuff, m/f etc) because I simply don't read them, no matter how well written they may be. So the type of stories I will even bother to review is quite limited and I usually use the process simply to rate a story I think is good so other people can see it is good and hopefully enjoy it as well. For most other things (if a story had promise but went off the rails, suggesting an improvement, or simply praising the author) I respond by email directly.

The thread is entitled 'encouraging reviews' but that really encompasses all types of story response. I am personally quite happy with my response/reviews. I don't know why I have attained the response I have, maybe it is because there aren't a lot of stories in that genre, but I am all for helping other authors to feel acclaimed because I know they deserve it.

Jason