From past experiences, I have learned that peer review can either be extremely helpful or a complete waste of time. When someone peer reviews a paper of mine, I want them to look for the slightest errors and question everything that I've written. If I need some punctuation, tell me. If something that I've written is unclear or just simply ridiculous, tell me. And give it to me raw. I don't need someone to sugar-coat things or stroke my ego, and I think peer review often turns into that.
The goal of peer review is to give others constructive criticism on their papers. However, I think that peer review can be unsuccessful when a bad writer is paired with a good writer. The good writer can find everything wrong with the bad writer's paper, while the bad writer can't find anything wrong with the good writer's paper. No one has a perfect paper. Good writers need feedback too. Maybe if bad writers were paired together, then they could offer each other more constructive criticism. I guess it isn't exactly fair to break everyone up into good writers and bad writers, but maybe if we peer reviewed with two other people instead of just one, then everyone could get enough comments to revise their papers and make them great. With that said, I would prefer that you pick our peer review groups and pick groups that you think could give each other good advice. After all, you read everyone's writing, so you would know best.
As a reviewer, I'd say the only thing that I need is enough time to read through a paper. I hate speed-dating styled peer reviews. It takes me a good 15-20 minutes to read through something, correct grammar, and make suggestions for the overall piece. Oh, and it really helps to have a print copy. I like being able to write on the paper.
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