Your input needed: what user review upgrades would you like?

DarkShadowBe said:
We simply understood the question wrong that's all .
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Now to the real question, you could use a poll button with multiple choices .
And a button for the reviewer if he wants comments or votes or nothing to be able to be said . That way nobody can start REAL TROLLING or listen to negative comments about there review if they don't want to . Oww and maybe a report button for spoiling or trolling . :)
 
Drahken said:
Perhaps add a seperate agree/disagree function, apart from the love/hate function? (I have no idea how difficult that would be to code.)

"Elite" User Reviews
What about some way to make specific user reviews become site reviews (or something comparable at least)? ie, Some kind of "featured review" (not just a random review nor "top voted" review, but something that would actually get set apart from normal user reviews, either with site reviews or in it's own seperate category).
The underlying concept would be to fill in for the lack of official site reviews by making certain exemplary user reviews take their place.
The idea would be that a given review would get "elected" either by some sort of user submitted nomination or by getting more than {X} votes, then it would get "promoted" to some elite status (probably remove the ability to edit it, to prevent someone from using it as a spam method).
In the nomination method, people could submit someone else's review (not their own, for obvious reasons) for consideration, then a mod could look it over & decide if it's good enough to be an "elite" user review (this would take less time & effort than writing a review themselves, so hopefully some existing site reviewers could do it, even if they don't have the time to submit reviews of their own anymore).
In the voting method, there would be a set threshold, which would be significantly higher than "normal" good user reviews get. (So if the normal vote range is from 0-100, the threshold might be set at 500.) Reviews that get say 120 votes would wind up on the top of the rank list, but ones which get 500+ votes would get bumped up to "elite" status. This "elite" status would remove them from the ranking list, while simultaneously inserting them into the site reviews list.
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This is exactly something I was thinking of when asked for ideas. I'm definitely behind this idea if it can be worked out.

Also, why not work it so that <3 and </3 make one score? Like <3 is +1 and </3 is -1.
 
because as mentioned, people will heavily abuse </3 just to mean they dont agree with the score. plus as a rule, i wont ever have that button on anything user generated, because it's incredibly demotivating to put a lot of work into something and have people downvote it just because they disagree with the score. its a big reason there was so much angst from the reviewers at anidb, as an example. i watched it play out for years
 
I`d like it if people had to read review guidelines before they were allowed to write a review. Just being reminded of the basic courtesies of a review- no spoilers, basic grammar, etc- might make people more likely to submit quality reviews. It annoys me to no end when I see a spoiler in a review, but I think if people were required to read (or at least skim) the rules prior to posting it would make people think twice before saying they didn`t like that part at the end when the main character dies.

Either that, or have a reminder at the top of the submit page saying something like `no spoilers!!`
 
So does this mean the 1 paragraph/few sentence "reviews" that aren't really reviews will be gone? I just see too many of them at times where someone is like "This is my favorite anime, go watch it because it's my favorite anime." without going into anything else. No what's the story is about, no what are the characters like, no what is the pacing like, etc.
 
In all fairness, user reviews have been peddled for a long time as something no one is required to put loads of effort into. There is definitely a guide somewhere that says (paraphrasing) "even a small paragraph about why you liked or disliked it would do" - obviously this still invites some sort of evaluative technique so I would agree that troll reviews should go, but short ones still be acceptable!

I think it's fairly easy peasy to write a review without spoilers but a lot of users love to really let go on their opinions about the anime and there will always be spoilers, and to be fair, we shouldn't discourage this. Some kind of spoiler system is desperately required in that respect, even if a reporting system.
 
1) A latest review comments list. I want to know who commented yesterday on a review that is 2 years old. We can keep the discussions alive if people know which reviews got a comment recently.

2) Some sort of scoring for reviews and a total score on one's profile.

3) Delete all reviews that are bellow 500 words and have a minimum of 500 words.

4) Remove synonyms from the review list

5) Wiki on review tips on the review upload screen. With big neon lights stating NO FANGASMS ALLOWED, BE ANALYTICAL.

And since I own everybody on review count and do a lot of analysis, read here to see what I learned over the years.
http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=userpage&do=blog&uid=251338&blogid=39592
I adressed some of them in my latest podcast too.
http://my.spill.com/group/planettyro/forum/topics/dreamcast-episode-21-roriconfan-returns
 
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yeah, please trust me when i say that putting large alerts or required 'this is what a review is' notices will not improve things, because people never read documentation

take the character mod form - we have the rules clearly linked with notes, yet people constnatly CONSTANTLY still just cut and paste content from other sites. it wastes so much of the char mods' time due to a huge amount of the submissions being that.

the same could be said for other features ive put up over the years - people rarely read things. forcing sections would mean there have to be at least a few sections but i probably wont do it, because people complained endlessly about wanting a free form space they could use creatively. community policing to remove bad ones is really the only way this will work, outside of having an editorial staff system like the site reviewers doing all of the reviews.

i'm also hesitant about auto-promoting things to actual site review status. on basically every big anime site, i've seen the top list of reviewers, and usually it's people who i wouldn't say are site level (meaning excellent grammar/spelling, concise and to the point [could be long though, but still], etc). usually the 'top' people according to the community are the ones that spew out hundreds of reviews in a quick manner - that isn't necessarily (and usually isnt) quality. while i'm sure we miss some, the site reviewers have always been on the lookout for good talent based on the community reviews, and if we see someone we think is close, we generally have them apply and become an actual site reviewer. this maintains the quality level of the 'site' ones and gives people a chance to become a site reviewer too.

if i make things automatically become sit ereviews, i have a pretty strong feeling what will happen is the prolific reviewers will automatically get upvoted based on quantity alone, and we'll have stuff in the section that i don't think should be there.

likewise, if they arent actually promoted to 'site reviews' but are just more like ';featiured reviews', i think the same thing will happen - people will upvote popular people, regardless of quality, due to quantity, and they'll get flooded.

if there's an admin step where we have a team of people (maybe the site reviewers, but probably not as they are generally MIA and i could find a group from the community), where reviews had to be approved after they are heavily voted on, or could be promoted by admins (me) individually, that might work better.

i had actually considered adding 'featured' user reviews in the past, that i could mark, but my only concern with that or any admin step is people might feel pissed off that they arent chosen, since there will be a subjective type of step involved
 
sothis said:
i think the likelyhood of people <3'ing a shitty review is pretty low compared to how often itll be used for the right reason. the reverse is definitely not the case (ive seen this play out on other prominent sites before) - generally people mark thumbs down/disagree/etc if they disagree, way more often than 'this review is bad'
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I agree with sothis. It's more productive that people read a review and feel it gets the point across clearly, versus down voting it because it doesn't fit their own score (which could demotivate people too). Naturally the ones that aren't voted on, are the ones that aren't gaining enough attention and not quite up to snuff.

User reviews are generally free flowing (in terms of what you actually talk about). If you want to raise the quality of them, perhaps in the review content area when you write one, place the labels within the box (labels such as story, music, animation, etc.). So that this promotes people talking about their experience with the most prominent aspects of anime, versus their own rant on a series. Or something similar, something that raises the quality of user reviews (which is better for AP in general).

I think a 'featured' user reviews feature and an up vote button is definitely necessary for making them more visible. Aside from that, all you need is a catalyst to bump up the quality of community user submitted reviews.

So it should go like this:

1) Users write user submitted reviews

2) Either review gets up voted or no voted.

3) Up voted reviews go to the cycle of 'featured' user reviews and gain more visibility.

With that being said, you probably should have some form of quality control crew on the lookout for any unworthy reviews that get up voted, just to make sure everything is going according to plan.
 
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Find some trustworthy people to be review judges. They will have the privilage to delete a review if they find it useless or troll and in the case they find it very usefull or well written they will give it 1000 thumbs up and it goes up in the list of reviews for a specific anime.
 
Raven said:
So it should go like this:

1) Users write user submitted reviews

2) Either review gets up voted or no voted.

3) Up voted reviews go to the cycle of 'featured' user reviews and gain more visibility.
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I second that. Love the featured reviews bit.

I do not know if this has been brought up before or not but the "reviews" tab on the anime pages tends to be really confusing. What i mean is that many animes have alt names and once someone writes a review, his/her review has two links. Now when more people write reviews on the same anime, they all get two links. This creates a whole list of links that makes it harder for others to choose different reviews. Though this may be a small problem, making the reviews tab more organized and appealing might help with the overall image of this site.

As for the review quality themselves, that is dependent on the person writing the review. Focus should be given to motivate the writers to write understandable reviews. I agree with sothis that <3 and </3 buttons will only be abused. The only option is a "review police". Selected people who go around with a set of rules and judge user reviews based on those rules.
 
eh, I was not sure if you all were talking about the review tab on each anime/manga profile. If so id have a few ideas. Well currently I don't think I've ever looked at one of them because it's easier to just scroll down and look at the user recommendations. Besides that each review is linked to different pages so id vote for a secondary tab just for user reviews besides the more professional ones. Maybe have it replace the old screenshots tab sense theres no use for it besides pointing.

anyway the idea was on the tab ud have the user title for the review (i think another post mentioned about theme titles sounded kinda cool) and have the review setup as in a spoiler box so u could scroll down and look at reviews without a fuss...more user friendly

...i hope im talking about the samething as everyone else
 
Make it so "official reviewers" can bubble the reviews up or down yet retaining the <3 or dislike option. You put the power of the reviews going to the top in the end users hands, everyone who rates a review of let's say "Elfen Lied" badly are going to get dumped on because we all know certain fanbases get violently angry if you dare present an opposing view.

Or change the options for "I found this review funny/yada/yada" to include regular community reviews.
 
While I do think that the <3 button is a good idea, having the "funniest," "most helpful," etc. buttons would be useful for people looking for certain types of reviews. Another thing you could do is include a short excerpt from a review. That way it is obvious if a review is a troll or whatever.
And I don't want to sound like a troll or anything, but are you still taking applications to become a site reviewer?
 
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Thanks Sothis, this sounds like a great idea. Finding useful user reviews is always something that I find very hit or miss. Maybe having certain authors rank higher in a "review section" would help too. Anyway these changes sound exciting.
 
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