Even if I have accidentally forgotten to do so, after every band/artist biography and album review the user is given the opportunity to post their comments for that particular release. Basically, I post anything the readers have to say about an album or a response to what a reviewer or commentator said (even if it's political crap - not that this is something strongly encouraged though) as long as it's not a blatant offense to good taste or too half-assed. The commentator is encouraged to make their comment as thorough as possible so as to actually add something to the writer's ideas of the review.
NOTE: If you're interested in becoming one of MJA's new reviewers, shoot me an e-mail at [email protected], maybe throwing in a bit of background information (what kind of stuff you're interested in reviewing, or even a 'personal' profile' if you want).
A little over two years ago (June of 2001), I had originally made the decision to stop accepting new reviewers for the site, but as of right now, October 3, 2003, I've finally come to the conclusion that it actually is time to start accepting new reviewers again because of various factors (i.e. the creator/main reviewer is in a really bad rut where he can't get himself to write much and is unsure of what to do with his future, as well as other current reviewers contributing very little probably because they actually have a life - I wish I could make that excuse).
Actually, the reason I decided to do away with outside reviewers in the first place, which many people closely connected to MJA probably know, is that I really didn't want an overabundance of outside reviewers contributing like 10 reviews and then subsequently disappearing off the face of the earth (at least from my perspective they did - I'm not saying they literally have). It'd make the site way more overcluttered than it already is, and I really don't want too many conflicting opinions on the same album or band or anything like that.
But over the course of the last few months, there has been fairly high demand from people outside the site (and even suggestions from staff members themselves) that I reopen the gates, so to speak. So I came up with a few certain guidelines that I'm not exactly forcing you to follow strictly, of course - they're just very strong suggestions:
PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING:
1. I don't really want a whole lot of new reviewers on the site for the reasons I just mentioned (5 to 10, maybe 15 at most), so I suggest that if you're going to be a reviewer for MJA, you should be fairly productive. No, I'm not asking for five reviews a day ala George Starostin or something similarly insane, but it would be very helpful to write enough on a semi-regular basis to establish a 'reviewing personality' of sorts. Something along the lines of the 50-100 reviews contributed would be perfectly fine. More would be even better!
2. When I actually get back in a serious writing mood - which hasn't happened that much in 2003 so far except from a couple stretches, let's be honest - I'm trying to get the site in a more band-oriented direction, so it would be pretty helpful if newer reviewers could follow suit at least a little (man, someone needs to come up with a catchy name along the lines of 'The New Class' or something!). I'm thinking more in the vein of outside reviewers contributing fairly complete artist pages like the Prindle site, particularly for bands/artists that have yet to be covered here (or even better, musical genres that the site is lacking - jazz, rap and electronica are a couple good examples). Sure, single album reviews are still encouraged, too, and if you really want to contribute the 9 millionth opinion on, say, Quadrophenia or OK Computer, that's fine, too, but bear in mind opening people's eyes to a band no one on MJA has written about is always really, really welcome. Especially since there are a multitude of bands I myself will probably never review in my lifetime (a good amount of which I don't really care about covering).
3. MJA isn't exactly a super-professional venture like certain music magazines and guides that you probably already know by name or anything, so my standards aren't very high for accepting reviews. I'm not that good at editing people's work, as I usually only correct basic spelling and grammar mistakes, and I don't even have a high opinion of my own crappy writing style at all. As long as the reviews written aren't blatantly offensive and they aren't totally devoid of any kind of information whatsoever (you'll know if they are if you have any intelligence), they'll be posted.
I guess that's it. Let's hope my mailbox isn't polluted too heavily with reviews. :)
Update (6/19/04): Let's face it - I really haven't been a good site maintainer over the last several months, both in the infrequency of updates and especially in communicating with people about outside reviewing. I wasn't overly thrilled with the idea of accepting a lot of outside reviewers originally last year - like I said, I only did it before because I was talked into it by others, but keep in mind that this is NOT, and I really mean NOT, due to the actual quality of the reviews submitted themselves (I think a lot of them are better than my own writing, really), but by the fact that most of the 'first class' of reviewers have either stopped writing completely or now sent in stuff very, very rarely, and I really don't want to go through that again. Plus, with 11 reviewers added since I opened the doors again, the amount of outside reviewers that have already come in is already kind of enough for my liking.
Also, I'm really not anywhere near as motivated to do work on MJA as I used to be even if I have no problem with updating the site weekly, though several people know that already. I sometimes feel down about my writing and the weaknesses of how I run the site in general, which are my single biggest obstacles - I just don't take a lot of criticism very well, and everything surrounding Rant #1 I wrote on the site a few years, as well as the responses to it, kinda put a bit of a dent in me that I haven't totally recovered from since... it all still makes me feel sick about how stupid my whole perspective was. Not only that - there's also my actual life that may admittedly not be too busy at the moment (I'd estimate I only work around 15-20 hours a week, though that will likely rise a lot in the near future, so I'm preparing myself), but I'm also doing other music-related things like listening back to a lot of albums I haven't heard in awhile to try and eventually compile a top 500 albums list, currently recording an album's worth of songs, as well as countless other little non-music related things I chronicle in a journal I've been keeping the last few months.
I guess having someone else co-maintain the site like Rich Bunnell used to do for Mark Prindle could be a possible solution, but one I currently feel very uneasy about at the moment. The only people I know that could possibly do it I only know exclusively online, and you know how hard it can be to totally trust people within the 'net environment. So because I'm not yet prepared for that, I'm handling everything myself, and with the site's currently already large state, the more outside reviewers that come in, the more updating is going to seem a bit like a chore and the more things might get overcluttered.
The thing I feel most guilty about, though, is not answering the outside reviewer requests lately. It's not that I'm trying to ignore anyone - I usually tell myself, "Okay, I'm going to answer these E-mails", but I always get caught up in something else online and never get back to them, and the same process keeps repeating until more of those requests come in and I feel even less motivated to write back. Again, it's very immature of me, and I sincerely apologize to anyone I've screwed over this way. I guess the idea maintaining an interactive site like this when I have a lot of problems with people socially to begin with (I've got some form of Asperger's Syndrome where I find it difficult to properly communicate with people, and that really affected me in school) is difficult, and maybe my obsessive worries about the site being overcrowded with reviewers and all that goes with it (example: I sometimes get frustrated when someone else on the site reviews something I was going to review in the future before me, even though they certainly have every right to do so, since then I feel like what I have to say about a certain album is minimized) kinda gets in the way. A lot.
In short, I'm not really sure what I'm going to do about the future of MJA and more outside reviewers, since I recognize its' supposed importance to the Web Reviewing Community. I absolutely refuse to say I'm anywhere close to 'retiring' or anything like that (like Cole Bozman and Marco Ursi did) and I still definitely have endless reviewing and rewriting plans as well as possible directions I want to take the site in that I really want to get accomplished at some point, but I'm in kind of a lost state about it right now. I really don't know what to tell anyone interested in writing for the site what's going to happen - I guess those most interested in being really productive writers would probably be welcome, but I just don't know what to do. If anyone has any suggestions on how to get this situation straightened out, e-mail me, and I'll see what I can do. I have no idea if I'm making a bigger deal out of this than I really need to (knowing me, I probably am), but I'm just.... egghhh. I'm certainly not depressed overall (in fact, I've had several very good and often entertaining weeks lately), but just confused about everything surrounding the site in general. Thanks for reading, and again, I really apologize to anyone I've inconvenienced (there are several of you, I know).
--Nick Karn