Review Guide: Potential Periphrasis

What We Do

We write these "reviews" and hope that you will read and consider what we have written. If you agree, then wonderful. If not, then don't listen to us; we encourage independent thinking. So what if we think your site sucks? (After all, we don't write anything that we are unable to back up with reasoning, hardcore logic and "holier-than-thou" opinions.) However, by not listening to what other people tell you, you have character; we like that. It's either that, or you are stubborn and ignorant...

Having said that, your review would just be a collection of comments. Remember the ones you get in your tagboard or guestbook, the "nice site," "awesome layout" and "Im sooooo jealus of j00!!!!" comments? Forget those. Expect "your site sucks," "what kind of trash is this," and "what a waste of space and bandwidth." Asides from those, we will tell you what we like and don't like about your site. (Yes, we do like something once in a while.) We know quality when we see it.

We don't claim to "provide you with genuine criticism that would help your site become the best it can be." It's your job to make your site become the best it can be, not ours. In other words, we only care about what you can do to make us happy. However, if you insist on finding a legitimate reason, you can say that we are looking out for you, too. Think about it this way: you created your website for us, and with our being self-centered, conceited and selfish, we only want the best. Unlike many other review sites, we do not claim to provide you with "honest, helpful, yet sensitive feedback." We can, however, provide you with a healthy dose of mockery that is often mistaken as "pure honesty." And occasionally, if you close one eye and read what we have written at a 45-degree angle, something might spark, and you might realize what we are trying to say.

Why We Do It

June 24, 2005
Veve: I had wondered how many people would subject themselves to our abuse, and [long] and behold, we need to reject people.
Elysa: We must have done something right.
Veve: Well, apparently we're amusing and entertaining.
Elysa: That, too... But even if only one out of five people whose sites I review take my comments seriously, I'm happy with it.
Veve: Meh, I think I'm doing this out of spite.
Elysa: Spite is a great motivation. It doesn't sound as nice and poetic when you tell other people about it, though.
Veve: You can do all that. Make it sound pretty and noble.

So there you have it. We do this out of spite. We are spiteful of review sites that say great things but can't do them, spiteful of people who want criticism but can't take it, and spiteful of ourselves because we try to do too much that we lose track of our spitefulness. We do this not because we have a genuine interest in "improving the quality of the Web—one site at a time"; we do this for ourselves. We do this out of spite.

We do not have rubrics or marking schemes because we do not believe in grading you. You're not in school; this is not a competition, and numbers are meaningless. It's bad enough that we are measuring your site against our preferences, if we start grading it, we need to start ranking your site against other sites as well. That means we need to come up with a fair way to assess your site and find a set of criteria that would work with every site. That is just too much work, if it were even possible in the first place. Every site is different, and there is no way we could come up with standards that would fit every situation. By not limiting ourselves to a rubric, we are free to modify our criteria whenever necessary, and your review would be more thorough and "personalized." You have a more detailed review (rather than an assessment), and we do not have to worry about adding and subtracting points.

How It Works

January 8, 2005
Veve: Are we having one person "reviewing" one site?
Elysa: I'm not sure.
Elysa: Are we?
Veve: How would you like to do it? I don't want anyone to be feeling obligated to review a particular site
Veve: So I was thinking, someone submits a site, and we all just give a thorough comment on it if we feel inclined to do so
Elysa: Well, your idea is very nice. I like it.
Elysa: Though just out of curiosity, what happens if no one wants to review a site?
Veve: *cough* Then we say "screw you, [name], your application was rejected because none of us felt like reviewing you" as we will state in the rules that we have the right to reject any applications we see fit, or feel like.
Elysa: Sounds perfect.

So, when you submit your site, you might get one reviewer, all reviewers, or none at all. If you do get a reply from us, it will be thorough. Either we do a fine job of it, or we don't do it at all. That's our philosophy around here.

Note: This page is full of sarcasm. If you take every thing we say here seriously, you might want to reconsider requesting a review from us.