samiloop wrote:A review, and the responses it ignites, can't be too personal a matter, since they were posted to the Internet with the purpose of changing other people's perceptions.
You speak true in some sense, but not all. A review is (aside of the informing aspect) also meant to voice your opinion of a show, which means it is both objective and subjective. I agree with the 'purpose of changing other people`s perceptions' when you admit that it is meant to give people an impression of what they get. It is not meant to force ideas onto people, but rather to make someone watch (or not watch) it when he has doubts in the first place, imho.
samiloop wrote:To the first point there could be some sort of qualification for the review responses. Forbidding anonymous users from rating reviews is obviously out of the question, so another option would be just to downgrade their value in the final rating calculation. That would mean, if some user had one or some amount of accepted reviews posted, their review responses would have 100% effect, while users not reaching this would have a smaller percentage.
We had a sort of discussion before about this. Let me first point out that anonymous people cannot rate reviews, only registered users. What we discussed back then was that we should have several 'ranks' in users, of which moderators or regular reviewers might be the only different 'rank'. We eventually voted against this because it would prove to be unfair somehow (I cannot fully remember it anymore).
An example would be: How would you prove a review-commenter unworthy when he only watches the anime and bases the comment/rating solely on what the person has said about the anime? There are plenty of people who can write proper comments without having ever reviewed anything themselves.
Or, how would you prove a review-commenter worthy when he has written 200 reviews and almost all of his reviews are crap? Add a mathematical value for his approvedness?
Or what to think of people who can wonderfully read and point out flaws, but are bad at expressing themselves? They won`t write reviews, but will always comment on them.
samiloop wrote:To the second point, I think anyone posting their thoughts for other people to see are possible targets for rotten eggs, tomatoes, and other artillery. But there's of course the point that these responses to the reviews are completely private, so there's a good degree of 'self-moderation' - to appear knowledgeable and well organized in the eyes of others - completely missing.
You mean that a reviewer might show off in his review, while it`s complete rubbish what he writes? That people can throw the tomatoes only when he`s isolated in a review-comment where nobody can see the tomato-throwing?
Isn`t that the entire point of a review-comment system? 5 of them and people can see whether the review`s approved or denied. You don`t need to know what others` said to rate a review, imho, so I don`t see why the comments need to be public.