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Requirements on homework’s
Over the last reviews, I got two impressions which we should discuss, I think:
Length of homeworks
I got lots of reviews which are way longer than half a page per paper (I am not talking about using font size 8, no margins, and such cheats ;-), but homeworks’ length of about 1 full page per homework).
I tried to keep this half a page limit in mind. And, of course, in my summarize not every facet and detail is covered like in a summary which has double the length of mine. But, in my opinion, this half a page is a requirement and therefore, it is not fair to penalize (at least) my try, because the less you have to think about what is relevant, what shall be in my summary, the easier the task is.
Of course, this post has a stumbling block: the homework #4: Of course, it is very (!!!) hard to summarize more than 40 pages of continuous text in half a page. I would try it, but I already know, this will be penalized in the next review. So we should talk about it. 
Own words
Some reviewers think it is necessary to paraphrase the text in your own words. I am neither a native English speaker nor I think this is the task. In my opinion, it is more important to get the points, and if the author has a short and apt phrase, why should I reinvent (maybe worse) the wheel? But I do not insist here, that I am right! Let’s discuss!
Good that you wrote that because I was just about to start a thread 
Personally for the book pages I try to keep my summary to the main points.
The main points are maybe 4-5 and I try to give a brief overview on what they are.
I will i.e. mention „the assumptions“ but not go into great detail about them nor do I
expect that from the summaries I will review next week.
True. However, great details will just not be there. You eventuelly have to write / expect a rather
high-level summary (less details) than a lower-level (which would provide more details).
Homework of 1/2 to 1 page is fine; only if it goes beyond a page you should take length into consideration.
As for this coming week’s homework, we sad that chapter 1 and 2 should be separate homeworks.
Thank you for you answers, Prof. Riehle and pr0wl.
My bad, but actually in the Homework Summary Q & A (NYT A2 SLD - Course Homework pdf), you were talking about „half-a-page per paper“ twice. But I found where you wrote:
What about own words?
Hello everyone,
I updated the homework slides to make my intentions clearer; thanks for pointing out any inconsistencies.
I think the half-to-full page guideline is just that. You can violate it, but at your own risk.
Dirk
Maybe, I am a bit upset after reading the gradings (which are quite inconsistent on the same task ranging from 4 to 10 points?!?). As this seems to be a very subjective form of grading, or somebody does not understand what abstraction and leaving out the really unneccessary stuff means, I have lost faith in this form of students grading other students.
In my opinion, there is always a reason to complain. You could always say, “huh too much abstraction” and tell likewise “not detailed enough” as we are dealing with those half-pagers that simply cannot contain the same amount of information without leaving the unneccessary stuff out.
Please be kind and fair to each other, as you would like to have your summaries graded in a realistic manner, too. Otherwise, this down-scaling madness of other students’ summaries will continue until the end of the semester… summaries are highly subjective as topics get abstracted, so be glad if the main points are covered and don’t search for tiny missing things for downvoting if the overall message of the text is presented clearly. Critic is welcome, but being overcritical is ambiguous…
I have the same opinion like crzndx!
I also think that it would be good to spend more time to show students, how to approach a review and how to write it. For example, when I’m writing a review it is not a one liner, and I try to say what was good about a summary, before I critic.
The reviews I got, reach from 3 - 10 points, too, and the critics are strongly contradictory… actuallay they don’t help me at all. The one and only review that helped me so far, was someone who pointed out a spelling mistake I made since years.
Another point is, that the rule “don’t correct bad english” is hard for me, while reading summaries which such a bad grammar and expression that it is hard to understand what was meant by the writer.
In the end, I guess, we only will know if our summaries where good, from our module-grade.
Yeah, I think that would be a good idea. It seems that - sadly but true - it’s not enough giving some advice on how to make a table and checking which points of it are contained in the summary. I’m often missing the usage of some techniques like giving an example or quoting one or two lines from the text to make it clear what.
Especially when giving a bad rating someone should take the time to write about the reasons so the writer can improve in future. And maybe it should be told that reviewing takes some time - for me casually about 10 Minutes per page (that contains just 50% text), writing the review included. I’m afraid that that’s not the time spend by some, when getting reviews including all kind of ratings and the best are those that contain more than a single sentence that tells you nothing.
Also I’m afraid we are interpreting the rating scale and what „Meets expectations“ should mean very differently. One example: When just rating the content contained (and that it’s in the range of a half to a full page) and taking our compare list (that we expect to be contained), than someone could think all points met = expectation met = 6.0 and it would be hard to give someone more points in that case.
Someone else could think: expectations met = many things from the list mentioned = 6.0; all mentioned = 10.0
Or someone else could thinkg: expectations met = all points from the list = 6.0; and the shorter the summary the more point’s he gives;