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For those (like me) who often "Skip" in reviewing many items because of lack of confidence / experience / training, is there:

  • A more detailed guide to how to be a good reviewer (than the brief text in (more))
  • A way to view some historical examples which would train a newbie (me) in best practices?
  • A list of recommended meta.se reading
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  • I've been meaning to pin this down better, myself. Any queue in particular, or all of them?
    – Jeff Schaller Mod
    Commented May 19, 2017 at 1:38
  • 1
    You can look at past reviews in each queue by clicking "recent reviews" on the main review page and then, oddly, further picking "history" from the tabs in the top-right. It shows you past reviews of posts & what people chose for each one (but doesn't include Skip). It's a bit hidden away, and it's not especially best practices but rather "practices".
    – Michael Homer
    Commented May 19, 2017 at 2:44
  • 1
    @MichaelHomer is rep a factor? I only see my own reviews with your link.
    – Tom Hale
    Commented May 19, 2017 at 5:00
  • @JeffSchaller I'd like to learn best practices for all queues as they'll be different. My guess is that if people were well trained in queue processing, they would do it a lot more. I feel stoopid and leave it to others... probably just like everyone else. Perhaps a badge for completing a tutorial?
    – Tom Hale
    Commented May 19, 2017 at 5:05
  • 3
    Apparently yes - that's unhelpful.
    – Michael Homer
    Commented May 19, 2017 at 5:05
  • 1
    ...so viewing The full history of reviews by all users in any /review queue privilege comes at 10K. Would there be any disadvantages of allowing full history of the earned review queues as soon as they are earned?
    – Tom Hale
    Commented May 19, 2017 at 5:13
  • I'm drafting up an "Answer" based on my own reviewing process, but I'm not sure how to Answer this question, as different people may approach the review queues differently, and I wouldn't intend for my ideas to reflect a community consensus or best practice. I'm wondering about splitting out the historical examples and recommended reading parts as their own meta Qs, and possibly having separate Answers here for each queue -- or even separate meta Q's -- so that a consensus could be reached for each queue.
    – Jeff Schaller Mod
    Commented May 21, 2017 at 21:51
  • @JeffSchaller A discussion, in separate meta Q's by queue, would be most helpful. While a consensus may, or may not, be reached, the discussion itself will help. The very lack of a consensus will even help to show that varied opinions still work to keep the community healthy. :D
    – Chindraba
    Commented May 22, 2017 at 3:54
  • Linking in the "close" meta Q: unix.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4489/117549
    – Jeff Schaller Mod
    Commented May 30, 2017 at 18:53

1 Answer 1

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A more detailed guide to how to be a good reviewer (than the brief text in (more))

I really want to answer this one, but as I've commented, I feel like this deserves a separate Q&A to cover the wide variety of review queues; there are ten ways to close a question!

A way to view some historical examples which would train a newbie (me) in best practices?

One way would be to use the Stack Exchange Data Explorer to see previously-closed Questions. The data there is not "live" -- it is refreshed weekly (look at the top-right of the home page of SEDE to see the actual date of the update). Try a query such as this:

SELECT Id AS [Post Link], *
FROM posts 
WHERE ClosedDate IS NOT NULL AND posttypeid = 1

An indirect answer to this point would be simply to spend time on the site looking at Answers. What kinds of answers get accepted? How in-depth do answers get? What kind of questions generate multiple answers? What kind generate no answers -- are people stumped, or uninterested? What questions get upvoted? Downvoted? I think this awareness gives you a better background for being able to decide whether a given question is on topic and "good" (upvote it, comment on it, answer it) versus a poor one that could get downvoted or closed.

A list of recommended meta.se reading

Here's a "meta" answer (on meta, to meta!) -- some relevant tag searches to see what's been discussed:

On U&L Meta:

On the main Meta:

Perhaps a badge for completing a tutorial

(From the comments). There's no tutorial for reviewing, but there are badges awarded for completing some number of reviews, one per queue:

In the realm of feedback, I would add these following points:

  • watch for, and read, comments that tag you in a post that you voted on (if a future reviewer perhaps disagrees with you, or is clarifying something)
  • don't be afraid to ask (again) here on Meta if something's confusing (though another option would be to Skip that review and watch what happens to it, since we tend to have enough reviewers at this point in time to clear the queues)
  • don't be afraid to ask in chat
  • watch for comments in chat related to an action you took

These are all forms of feedback (or questioning) that I've encountered in my time here.

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