I've noticed something pretty upsetting around the site recently, and it has to do with the quality of the reviews that are being submitted. What appears to be the majority of reviews coming in are one or two sentences, poorly written, and look like they took five minutes to write.

The purpose of the reviewing feature is to share insight proper discussion of the article. The author should be able to take away an advanced critique from the review, and approach their next piece with more confidence and strategy.

Users who are using the review feature to hammer out as many shitty reviews as possible in a desperate bid to up their rank in the site ARE DOING IT WRONG. This is misuse of one of the more appreciated feature of the site, and a blatant show of disregard for other writers.

When submitting a review to the site, remember: THIS ISN'T FUCKING NEWGROUNDS WITH WORDS. Writing "LOL your main character was soooo funny," in the "pros" section of the review isn't helping the author at all. And not submitting anything other than "can't think of anything bad about it," does NOT count as a "con." If you cannot think of some honest feedback, both good and bad, DO NOT REVIEW.

If you don't have at least a short paragraph for each of the three reviewing sections, DO NOT REVIEW.

If you cannot check the syntax of your review, DO NOT REVIEW.

And if you're trying to review just so you can bump up your evidently masturbatory "rank" on the site, DO NOT REVIEW. You aren't impressing anybody by showing how fast you can mash those keys in a day.

If this continues, I will personally petition for some reviews to be deleted, if not the entire review banks of some users.

I encourage discussion about this topic, and will keep up with it as much as possible until there is a change.

One suggestion - where the site allows someone to vote if a review is helpful, perhaps this option should only be available to administrators and senior memebrs of the site. I tend to rely on the 'vote' of my reviews to tell me if I'm doing a good job - if people are simply voting 'yes' because the review said 'cool character' then this is also a form of abuse of the 'idea' of reviews....

An additional idea would be to have the ability to edit reviews - if I see one that has 1 yes vote and 3 no votes then I will definately go back are re-do the review..

One further idea - make the BOXES bigger. The fact that they are fairly small kinda makes a 'reviewer' think they are limited to space. If the review boxes were bigger then at least the reviewer knows they have lots of space!

To be or not to be....that is totally illogical captain.....Spock.

http://personalopinionator.blogspot.com

I'll have to agree with you, Manman. Although a lot of the reviews lately have been great, some of them aren't up to par and don't really do much to help the author.

Fortunately if you don't like a review, you can simply rate it "not helpful", and if it receives enough negative votes, it will be "shredded" automatically. The only problem is, not many people seem to be voting on reviews, therefore they aren't completely critiqued. If there was some way to provide an incentive to do this...

I also agree with SimeyCook on the point that newer users don't really know what is good enough for a high quality review, and often base it on the votes (which isn't bad at all, but still doesn't show a standard.) Maybe I should extend the minimum amount of characters per review?

I think everyone should be allowed to vote on reviews, but the administration should be the final authority. Not that it's my decision to make, but I encourage Caleb and Justin to trash exceedingly bad reviews regardless of how many newbies voted them up simply because the review agrees with their opinion.

Personally, I think a review should not only express the opinion of the reviewer and make suggestions to the author; it should also be worth reading. I usually put a good amount of effort into my reviews unless it's late at night and I'm too tired to know what the hell I'm typing (which is my only excuse for the occasional typo since I am a notorious perfectionist). I expect others to do the same (minus the perfectionism). Simply put, if your review has nothing new to say and I have nothing to gain by reading it, I'm liable to vote "not helpful." If all you have to say is a simple "I liked this" or "I didn't like this," then leave a comment instead of a review.

I want this site to move in a democratic direction, but if this starts to become a major problem (i.e. people who review for self-gain, and not for the benefit of the author), we won't be shy in deleting reviews.

Hey, I always support democracy. But the kind of reviews that I'm in favor of trashing are the ones that consist of one sentence (or only a few words) in each section... in other words, reviews that are more like comments, and should be posted as comments. But before you go ahead and start deleting "bad" reviews, we should lay down some specific rules regarding review quality so we don't look like assholes : )

It has always been my hope that useless reviews will be marked as "not helpful" by the community anyway. Although I share some of Manman's frustration, I think we have to wait a bit longer to see how things play out.

I can see now that we should layout ground rules and instructions on how to properly write reviews which we are quite lacking now.

It's been a while since this 'forum item' was opened. What's the general feel of how the 'reviewing' is going now?

To be or not to be....that is totally illogical captain.....Spock.

http://personalopinionator.blogspot.com

Great, I very rarely see reviews that deserve a down-vote. Most reviews are very helpful, great job.

I've been falling into this topic by accident. Playing too many video games, I just love the idea of points too much. But I've been seeing people post reviews after mine that contain a lot more information, things that were in the back of my mind while reading the piece but I was too distracted to pull out of my brain. I had an excuse that I just don't know enough to properly explain my feelings, but I finally realized that was a copout. I want to post good reviews, so I'm going to stop trying to post so many, and focus more on the few that I do. I think it's working...

Wanna go to the moon?