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As one of the elite "rockstars" (I quite like that term :p), and in following a couple of the other email chains on the subject, I just thought I would chime in my two-cents about the seemingly increasing woes and calls for action regarding the backed-up queue. </div><div><br></div><div>I know this has been said about a bajillion times, but as long as theme reviewing continues to be done on a volunteer basis, this is just the reality we are going to be faced with. That being said, I think there are a couple of things we could try to help dig ourselves out of the whole and get the queue back to a more manageable state. </div><div><br></div><div>How about we organize some kind of theme review day (perhaps make it a weekly thing) where we try and get both full-fledged members and people just starting out to commit to do one or two reviews that day. We could probably get the number of themes reviewed in the past 7 days back up to the 100+ it used to be instead of the roughly 40 it is now. If we can keep something like that going at a steady rate we can eventually chip down the queue back to a manageable level. </div><div><br></div><div>I don't know if this would come in the form of an email campaign, a blog post, but some kind of public service announcement would probably get the job done. I don't know if something like that would truly catch on, but I know for my part at least that if there was a day of the week that was a dedicated theme review day it would certainly encourage me to participate. </div><div><br></div><div>Another idea I had would be sponsored prize giveaways. Perhaps every month some simple things like iTunes gift cards could be rewarded to help encourage more participation. Maybe every 5 reviews gets a person 1 online raffle ticket and at the end some winners will be picked at random. This would obviously require some volunteer donations (or perhaps a small grant from the WordPress higher-ups), but I would certainly be willing to chip in a bit to contribute to something like this. </div><div><br></div><div>I have always tried to commit a certain amount of time per-week for reviews, but like everyone else a full time job and a life can easily get in the way of that. However, maybe with some creativity we can encourage more participation so some of the people that have been contributing the most don't have to as much. </div><div><br></div><div>P.S.</div><div><br></div><div>I just wanted to point out that Emil Uzelac truly is a rock-star. He is such a helpful and humble guy and he really deserves some kind of medal or trophy for being so awesome. </div><div><br></div><div>Everyone on the review team is also extremely awesome, and everyone that helps with reviews (even if it's only once or twice) is doing a great service to this community that we all love so much. Thank you to everyone on the team and everyone else that lends a helping hand. </div><div><br></div><div><!--?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?-->
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: medium; "><span style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Times; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; "><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: medium; "><span style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Times; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">Regards,<span><br><br></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><div style="font-size: medium; font-family: Arial; "><span>Tyler Cunningham </span></div><div style="font-size: medium; font-family: Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(160, 160, 168); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; "><br></span></div><div style="font-size: medium; font-family: Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(160, 160, 168); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; ">On Friday, January 27, 2012 at 7:07 AM, Rankin, Matthew W. (Student) wrote:</span></div></div>
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<div style="direction: ltr;font-family: Tahoma;color: #000000;font-size: 10pt;">I'm going to shoot for 5 to 7 a week ( about one a day ). I have just been very busy lately so I haven't had as much time to review.<br>
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<div style="direction: ltr;"><font color="#000000" face="Tahoma" size="2"><b>From:</b> <a href="mailto:theme-reviewers-bounces@lists.wordpress.org">theme-reviewers-bounces@lists.wordpress.org</a> [<a href="mailto:theme-reviewers-bounces@lists.wordpress.org">theme-reviewers-bounces@lists.wordpress.org</a>] on behalf of Kirk Wight [<a href="mailto:kwight@kwight.ca">kwight@kwight.ca</a>]<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Friday, January 27, 2012 10:02 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> theme-reviewers<br>
<b>Subject:</b> [theme-reviewers] Some stats from the last 90 days<br>
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<div>I crunched a few numbers based on reviews done in the last 90 days. A few interesting notes:
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<div>37 reviewers did 405 reviews in the last 90 days.
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<div>Emil Uzelac, Reigning Champion, did a whopping 107 reviews, 26% of all reviews.</div>
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<div>The five Rock Stars were responsible for 62% of all reviews.</div>
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<div>30% of reviewers (the Worker Bees and Rock Stars) did 10 reviews or more, accounting for 82% of all reviews.</div>
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<div>Rock Stars (30+ reviews):</div>
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<li>emiluzelac (107)</li><li>chipbennett (43)</li><li>sabreuse (35)</li><li>saymar90 (34)</li><li>SeizedPropaganda (31)</li></ul>
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<div>Worker Bees (10+ reviews):</div>
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<li>nofearinc (21)</li><li>garinungkadol (16)</li><li>mercime (13)</li><li>kwight (12)</li><li>mattr123 (11)</li><li>reviewWP (10)</li></ul>
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<div>Clearly, most of the heavy lifting is done by very few... It woud be nice, as Chip suggested yesterday, if all reviewers could pitch in even a little bit on a semi-regular basis; it would bring things under control quite quickly, and spread the load around
so that if a Rock Star reduces their rate (or walks away - a possibility at any time for volunteers), we can keep rolling.</div>
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<div>A final interesting point: approximately the same number of reviewers did 740 reviews in the 90 days previous; that's kick-ass. </div>
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<div>I'll commit to 3 reviews a week for now - how about you?</div>
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</div><div>_______________________________________________<br>theme-reviewers mailing list<br><a href="mailto:theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org">theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org</a><br><a href="http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers">http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers</a><br></div></div></span>
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