My point was not that there's no way you guys could do it - more that, why on Earth should you? Of course I'm not going to stop anyone who wants to, but your efforts could be far better spent. And what reason is there not to just lift the time requirement and write the reviews normally? Even if it's just a review for some mediocre demo, cranking them out mechanically just for the sake of hitting some arbitrary number is going to hurt their quality.

But if one is able to consistently write competent reviews, wouldn't that help the site out as well?

Sure, but the whole point of the challenge makes it artificially difficult to do so. Why impose silly restrictions and try to write quality reviews despite them, when you could just write quality reviews without the restrictions?

Besides, how bad could the reviews be? We have a mod staff to prevent anything bad from getting in.

Honestly I think this kind of 24-challenge is pretty masturbatory, I agree with Corimingul. You can't tell me if you restrict yourselves to starting and completing all 24 reviews in a 24 period that many of them would be any good. Now if you went back and edited them soon after, it would of course be fine; but as the end goal of any challenge of this sort is the bettering of MA's review pool, I would much rather see you guys go for quality rather than sheer quantity for arbitrary (and most likely ego-feeding) reasons.

As good as some of you are, I would be very surprised if that 24th review written in the 24th hour were worth a crap. Why not just write a single review in a 24 hour period and see who can come up with the best one instead? I'd much rather see our best reviewers struggling to really improve themselves rather than having a pointless race.

There should be no harm if the reviews are good quality.

Even if the motive is masturbatory, if it produces good quality reviews than the motives should not matter. Nobody is going to read a review for X album, knowing the processes in which the review was conceived. It's the end product of the review itself, and what it entails, which is the most important aspect of writing reviews, not whether or not it was involved in a competition of sorts.

It's just a condensed version of the challenge we already have really. Besides, how bad could the reviews be? We have a mod staff to prevent anything bad from getting in.

If the reviews are judged the same as any other reviews, I don't see how it would matter why they came about. Sure, the goal would be to crank out 24 reviews but if only 3 of them from one person are accepted that were submitted within the 24 hour period, it doesn't reduce the quality of the website's material. I think the challenge would be less in writing 24 reviews in one day and more in writing 24 acceptable reviews in one day. In a sense, it is more a challenge for the writer to maintain a level of acceptable writing than anything. Its almost more a challenge in quality then in quantity because they would still have to be acceptable reviews.

No, the point you're missing is that the people who would actually participate in this contest would undoubtedly be our better reviewers; people from whom we've come to accept much, much more than the bare minimum for acceptance. I would far rather see our best reviewers challenge themselves to come up with a handful of reviews of superior quality than 24 mediocre ones in one day. If you can't tell the difference between a barely-acceptable 3-pointer and a really good 8-pointer (which many of the people thinking about participating in this challenge have shown themselves capable of), well, I guess I don't know what to tell you.

IAlso, the queue mods have come to know what to accept from certain users. I doubt that a sub par review from them would be accepted and it would be rejected on the grounds that it is nowhere near their level of writing.

In a sense, it is more a challenge for the writer to maintain a level of acceptable writing than anything. Its almost more a challenge in quality then in quantity because they would still have to be acceptable reviews.

Oh c'mon failsafeman, he's got a vaild and solid point.

I submitted a few reviews recently not even knowing of this challenge.

One the day before, one during (here is the link), and one afterwards. The one after hasn't been accepted yet (nor rejected), but there are already reviews up and posted from today...is there a reason mine is taking a bit longer to get posted?

I read somewhere (I believe) that it can take a few days for a review submission to be accepted or rejected, could someone clarify that for me please?

In the past all my submissions were up within hours.

Care to explain how?

It would be silly to reject a review based on a user's previous review quality.

Really? If Napero or OSS or Hell_Unicorn or whoever wrote a review like any number of numerous crap reviews that exist on this site would it be rejected because the author is clearly able to write far better or would it be accepted because it "meets criteria?" The reviewers that submit often are recognized and known for writing excellent material. I doubt that any reviews from them would be accepted if they were written in the same barely legible manner of the 13 year old dyslexic kids who submit reviews and get accepted.

If Abominatrix submitted a review like this:

http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=207#106224

Would it be accepted? I would hope not.

Another idea I played with a few years ago was that we could have a contest on a specific release. A well-known, relatively little reviewed one, with a day or a week to write. A panel would decide who is the winner, and we might even have a prize of some insignificant kind.

EDIT: ah, I misread oneyoudontknow, he meant the same, I believe.

What I quoted, that this is a challenge that some may interpret as "masturbatory" but in a sense it should be about being able to write these reviews in the amount of time while keeping up the standard that is held for writing reviews that people have come to be expected for.

If Abominatrix submitted a review like this:

http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=207#106224

Would it be accepted? I would hope not.

Another idea:
one review written in 24h, but the release is picked by a moderator; hence are the chances rather equally distributed that this one is 'new' to everybody and the challenge would be to write the best one in the given time frame.

It might be best to do it on obscure material, to avoid the problem of knowing it, and the ones who participate will get a download link to this piece of audible art. It is a little like the suggestion made by failsafeman before.

Your suggestion of a longer timeframe might be better than mine; only one day. Maybe a weekend should fit the purpose, starting on friday.

The thing about picking an album though, is that either Naps or OYDK is the way we'd have to go to be fair; either something no one knows, or something everyone is familiar with. Otherwise it could end up being totally unfair; for example if the given album was some obscure NWOBHM album that I happened to already know, while no one else did, or maybe it's some modern death metal album from a scene Noktorn knows well though he hasn't heard that particular album yet. Maybe a small selection of albums from different genres could be picked, and people could choose the one they're most comfortable with?

On second thought, too many releases open to review do decrease the challenge of writing "against" the others.

There would have to be at least a couple, as every reviewer has his/her specialty. Having one album and making it black metal or whatever would immediately skew the challenge in certain reviewers' favor, while making it power metal would skew it back in the opposite direction (more or less).

Honestly I'm not sure exactly how the challenge would be better: obscure albums no one knows, or classic albums everyone knows; the former way seems more fair in terms of leveling the playing field, however the latter kind of album seems like it would have a lot more that could be said about it. I mean, a challenge to write a review for some 3rd-generation Darkthrone clone doesn't seem like it would be a lot of fun, unless reviewers started jumping through hoops to say "this is boring and derivative" in the funniest way possible.