What happens if you can't get a critic to see your show? Most theatres would probably shrug and move on. But the new Swiss website TheaterKritik.ch thinks it has a different answer. According to a news article at German theatre blog NachtKritik.de, the website plans to fund itself by having smaller theatres take out subscriptions to be reviewed. But this won't be a matter of buying a favourable opinion. Oh no. For their money, the subscribing theatre will get two professional critics attending, who will then record a podcast discussing the show's merits or otherwise.

Are theatres really likely to pay the equivalent of £500 and risk being dissed not once, but twice? The site's co-founder Ursina Greuel thinks so. "When you have an interest in serious discussion, then it makes you look a serious organisation. A well-written slating is always more interesting than a badly written, well-meaning review." It's an interesting model, and I'm fascinated to see if it takes off.

Over in Poland, meanwhile, Paul Wodzinski has written an amusingly sarcastic attack on self-assessment forms for E-Teatr (you can get an idea in Google Translate). In a piece immodestly entitled "The Best Column in the World", Wodzinski suggests that artists aren't perhaps best placed to evaluate their own work. Which is why, of course, we have critics. Yet, over at Mark Shenton's blog for the Stage, London's busiest reviewer is discussing one of the greatest occupational hazards in criticism: expecting too much. As well as intriguingly revealing that he reads other people's reviews of shows he's going to see himself (many critics avoid doing so), Shenton (reflecting on a tweet by our own Lyn Gardner) points out: "It's only human to have expectations; even theatre critics can never be entirely blank slates."

On the importance of keeping an open mind, though, it's worth reading Jake Orr at A Younger Theatre, who has written about a modern sort of Sunday morning: iPad on lap, TED app at the ready. First he watches a talk by TED's Chris Anderson on web video, then picks up on a reference to Australian theatre – and goes on a voyage of theatrical discovery in the process. He concludes: "I've managed to begin with a video, be influenced by a tweet, directed to a blog, led to a conference and had my opinions questioned 10 times over." Time was, we got information about theatre through a newspaper review, poster or word-of-mouth recommendation. No longer.

"If these discussions are being had on a global scale," he asks, "then how do we connect them, and allow them to develop and influence us?" It's good question. And what's inspiring is Orr's sheer enthusiasm for continuing debate.

Orr also suggests something else: that the conversations he and other theatre lovers are having are presumably being echoed across the world. Which may provide consolation for Pilot theatre's associate director Katie Posner, who has written a short piece about how her research for a forthcoming production saw her "becoming immersed in my own world". She was even "starting to worry about whether I would articulate my findings" when she talked things through with her associate artist Tom Bellerby. It sounds obvious, perhaps, but problem solved. I rather like her "thought of the week", which has a pleasing simplicity: "It is always refreshing," she writes, "to share ideas and to be challenged by new ones." Bravo to that. See you next week.