Review griefing

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Gambit
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Post by Gambit »

Trilandian wrote:Ok Gambit, I see what you're getting at. So, any suggestions on how to reduce flaming and/or unfair voting?
Flaming doesn`t really happen in comments. At least I haven`t seen any. As for unfair voting, if it`s systematic, contact a mod, as rar said before. Otherwise, try PM`ing that person and talk things through. Ask that person why he or she rated you that low if there was no criticism in the comment. Point out which parts you can imagine and when it`s a poor review, I usually point out that it might be worth a 3 or a 5, but not a 1.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn`t. But remember it`s still only an opinion about your review and you cannot forcefully make someone revoke their rating for you. If they believe it`s not worth discussing, you can only accept it.
There is no such way of getting only 'worthy' comments, every now and then there are also shitty comments. Try to live with it and start getting used to (unfair) criticism - it might come in handy IRL ;)
Trilandian
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Post by Trilandian »

Gambit wrote:Flaming doesn`t really happen in comments. At least I haven`t seen any.
FWI, it does. I was once subjected to flaming by review comments.
DonGato
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Post by DonGato »

Trilandian wrote:once
And so it justifies such a complex solution?
Just report it to a mod.
Gambit
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Post by Gambit »

Trilandian wrote:
Gambit wrote:Flaming doesn`t really happen in comments. At least I haven`t seen any.
FWI, it does. I was once subjected to flaming by review comments.
Once. Out of how many reviews and comments?
And what exactly did he say? That he didn`t agree and that you`re a stupid prick for not saying what he wants you to say? Well, big deal. Like I said, there will always be people who don`t agree with you. Either you can talk to them in private and see why, or they don`t want to talk and then you just have to accept them.
I have seen this about 5 times myself, out of, what, nearly 180 reviews now? Twice I got people to up their votes to a 3 and thrice I got ignored. Well, who cares (yes, all of them were either for my Vampire Hunter D review - which is justified, it`s a horrible thing by itself) and two were about my Berserk review by fanboys, I guess. You cannot stop fanboys, but at least they hardly take their time to read reviews ;)
Trilandian
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Post by Trilandian »

Heh, what a coincidence, mine was about a Berserk review as well, and an Elfen Lied review.
In my case I lucked out cuz a lack of votes allowed me to reset them without hurting my average.
pelican
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Post by pelican »

You can't really call any review comment "flaming". Consider it criticism, with more or less tact, and use it to improve your reviews.
Trilandian
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Post by Trilandian »

Well, when a person writes a review-length comment in which he bashes your review from top to bottom it kinda feels like flaming.
samiloop
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Post by samiloop »

Hmm, pretty interesting. Two points I noticed from the earlier posts...

While the reviews have certain requirements to them, the review responses have none.

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.

I'm not exactly driving any sort of change here, but rather pulling out some ideas that are hanging out from my left ear. 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.

One word of warning with systems like this is, that in an online board game server, when a similar system was tried (near-instant blitz games had their rank change value reduced), the whole system went off-balance and had to be restored as it was for everything to function properly.

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. People automatically put in a lot more work when they write something that will be read by other people than just the recipient...

I think the good things in making review responses visible end up greater than the visible negatives of having an additional message-board type environment hovering around. Hard to say about anything serverside.
Gambit
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Post by Gambit »

Trilandian wrote:Well, when a person writes a review-length comment in which he bashes your review from top to bottom it kinda feels like flaming.
If someone writes a review-length comment in where he bashes your review from top to bottom, I dare to say it`s not true. I tried it before and it said my comment was too long Image

No, seriously, I think I`ve written only 2-3 comments where I have explicitly pointed out every single flaw, but that`s only because the review was either 1) very badly structured and he asked me in the review for improvements 2) A person who voted all 10s, but still claimed to back it up (nearly unbelievable, so I took up the challenge) and probably once more, but I cannot check that.

But if someone takes the time to inform you personally that your review sucks by taking it apart piece by piece, I would rather feel flattered. Flamers don`t take such time to spend on something they hate. They`re short and unagreeable, but if he can point out actual flaws, it`s negative criticism and then your claim of a 'flame' doesn`t make sense anymore. It would be nice if you could show it to me though, but since you reset them, I cannot check it anymore.
Gambit
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Post by Gambit »

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.
brd529
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Post by brd529 »

I think all of this is really about culture and the way we get along with each other in the community. That is why I believe every opinion or criticism should be expressed in public.

@gambit: I agree with you, the comment can be valuable information too, as long as it is well-funded, just like the review.

I quite like the idea of building up some kind of credibility/credit as a member of the community, which can be a valuable good, which you would not want to waste too easily.
Gambit
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Post by Gambit »

I quite like the idea of building up some kind of credibility/credit as a member of the community, which can be a valuable good, which you would not want to waste too easily.
Perhaps I should point this out as well:

A comment on a review is something which is a personal opinion on a review. If you first look at other comments on that same review, you might notice either flaws or good parts which you hadn`t noticed before. Those will undoubtly influence your own opinion and I don`t think that`s a good thing. It will probably result in comments like: "As commenter X said, you did this and that good .." and that`s like repeating other`s opinions, or at least basing your opinion on someone else`s opinion. I think that`s a bad thing.
If you have criticism (both positive and negative) you should say it without the interference/influence of other people.

What you could do is publish the nicks & ratings (without the actual comment) of the people who have commented on it. That way you can kind of see which 'respected' people (seeing you talk about community/credibility value; I suppose you mean people who are either active on AniDB/the AniDB/AR-forums and/or people writing/commenting on reviews) appreciated the review (although I`m kinda concerned about the ratings; a 3 = 'needs some improvement', which seems a bit low for something which has i.e. one aspect which I cannot accept, but while the rest is still good).

Of course it is possible to show the comments (not talking technically here) - but I press that those can only become available when you have submitted one yourself, to avoid influence. Besides, I don`t think you should be able to edit/delete your own comment on that review anymore after having posted it. Currently you can still edit/revoke them afterwards, iirc.
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