I like to check a reviewers stats before opening their words on my pieces, so I want to help quality reviewers with their numbers. After submitting my own reviews, I like to read through the other reviews and vote them as quality or not, especially when I find a writer who ranks any reviews that are critical in any way as poor quality. They need to be reminded that the question is not “did you LIKE this review” but was it QUALITY.

I mark poor quality when folks say nothing more than “I liked it” or simply did a lot of copy and paste.

If I personally find a review neither good quality, nor terribly useless, then I don’t vote on it either way.

How do you vote quality on reviews? Do you check folks review stats?

That is indeed how that’s suppose to be used. However, it is often used as a rank of popularity and to indicate displeasure.

I do it too, especially when I see a great review (one that is helpful and one-the-money, whether positive or negative).

If someone typed verb tenses I would, know what they mean’t , they’d need to explain . I understand tenses but not verb tenses. I understand past tense/present tense. For that to be a useful constructive review I’d like an example of these incorrect verb tenses. I’d like to know what was interesting about my characters IMO this would be viewed by me as an intellegent but still generic review.

Excuse my typo I meant to say wouldn’t know what they meant in my opening line. My opinion on that review would still stand though, even if it is just an example. I would’nt really think that it was harsh, just lacking in info.

Reviewer Stats
1372
Reviews Completed
81.2% (453 votes)
Quality Rating

those are my stats.

So out of 1372 reviews written that have not been refunded (lol) about 350 received any type of votes (some items received duplicate votes – sometimes up to 5!) So 1000 reviews I wrote didn’t receive a vote. Ok… what is wrong with this picture?

Out of 1000 – probably 30-40% were done during the time that voting was not allowed. So I have 650 reviews that were not voted upon. Why would that be?

Because the people who received it didn’t bother to vote – obviously – but why?

Because it was good enough for them to accept it. In other words it was not bad so they felt to vote negatively and it wasn’t great so they felt they had to just let me know. It was good. Hence it was a quality review. Why don’t I receive credit then?

If an item is not voted upon, the formula should assume it is quality and figure it into the mix. Simple.

Hence if I were to take the current stats and adjust – including the time period voting was off (not the fault of the users – and probably impossible to really filter out – so why punish?) I would be somewhere between 91 to 95% quality. – a big difference.

This is on another thread squarehopper, I have commented on this also. those of us with many reviews are penalised for those not voted upon, I have said this for ages, but no-one listens .

I’ve just had a review of one person’s work rated 0 by someone else who disagreed with my suggestions. The author herself appreciated the review so much they private messaged me to thank me. This type of petulant voting wrecks the rating system.

Yes I know this is on another thread. It is in many. At least 4 or 5. I figured that if I state my argument in many different ways and in many different threads, I may finally make sense to the powers to be.

Avedis … why didn’t she vote positive for you then?

She probably didn’t know how to use it, and I don’t want to ‘prompt’.

I have said for a long time the helpful system is open to skullduggery. I had this done to me several times, where the author has voted me helpful, then some prat has gone and voted it unhelpful for spite. I complained a while back as it had happened 5 times. I suggested several times to Steve that these vote should only be done by the author.

I actually like the review request thing, someone has just e-mailed me to request I review his second version of an item, Trouble is this means I have to add him as a friend. So I asked him to guarantee he’d open my review. As the other day I’d reviewed a 40.000 word piece twice and owing to the urbis bug I had added this person as a friend, to top it off this person had a version two which meant I could’nt re-use the review I’d written out earlier for version 1. That so called friend has decided my review is too long and not opened it, thus doing me out of another 4 hours work. and 600 credits. thing is had they opened it it was an edit of a lot of incorrect uses of words and really bad sentence structure that all of the other reviewers had picked up on , but not helped with. So this writer has lost out on a whole world of help through they’re own lazziness.

From the reviews I did a couple days ago, I got four good votes and one bad – and my rating dropped from 89.6 to 89.1.

I thought I was on a roll! I went from 81.2 to 81.6 with 5 positive votes! Then I write a constructive review about a piece that doesn’t work for various reasons… and the creator votes me unhelpful and I drop to 81.4!

I guess I will never reach 82% let alone 90% unless Urbis begins to weight votes like many of us suggested or includes non-votes as positive (or as .7) in the formula.

Squarehopper I’ve been saying this for absolutely ages on the forums. but nowt seems to happen. this effects the long-term reviewer far mor than it does a newbie. Its took me three or four helpful votes to recover from one unhelpful one.

I know Nelson… you and I have been playing the same song… I don’t know who brought it up first… but we been doing it for equal amount of time… we are on the same team.

I hate these ratings.

ANOTHER negative vote on the same item and I am back to 81.2% So let’s see… I am given 5 positive and 2 negative and the 2 negative cancels out the 5 positives? Care to explain the Math Steve?

I think the idea behind this stat has to be rethought out.

Also, If the creator puts in a refund request and it is denied because it was a valid review due to the guidelines… can I just offer to pay back her darn credits and have the review removed – votes and all? I know she requested a refund… and since it hasn’t been granted yet… I am assuming that it wasn’t.

I am sure the second negative vote came from another reviewer that I voted negative because it was a kudos review only and even stated in the comments that it wasn’t a review. (By the way the creator voted it good! I guess that is one way of raising my quality rating…. Just give lip service… )

SH and Nelson,

I agree. The current scheme is problemmatic. The fact is many people use it as a means to show there dislike for the review, which is not the same as a bad review. Perhaps a weighting structure would be better. Instead of requesting a reviewer based on the %, it could be presumed in the Pro request that the creator wants the best possible reviewers, given the other selections (age, gender, etc.). The reviewer’s rating can be based on a formula that takes into consideration the %, but also weighs other factors such as number of reviews performed, number of reviews performed in the genre, the rating of the person rating, the number of credits earned in the genre or overall (which is a form of quality indicator), etc.

Thoughts?

Sounds complicated cdn, I tend to review humour, Journal/diary blogging/poetry/quotes and short stories. I don’t do chapters because sometimes they are too long to do in one sitting and because if I’m going to review chapter one then I’d like to review the rest. I hate Romance, and I don’t review haikyu(very rarely), I do occasionally review the other catagories if the post isn’t over 3000 words, unless I’m in the mood for a long sitting.

I’m not sure reviews performed can prove a reviewer is good, I’d say that for the amount of reviews i’ve done I’m only slightly above averages , because like two years back I had a steep learning curve on review skills, meaning I’m still being penalised for newbie reviews from the first three-four months of my usage. As I’ve been reviewing for ages ,I think my skills have improved a lot. but like I say I’m still being penalised for reviews done in a learning curve.
Actually I say the first 50-100 should not count in the review stats, but should be voted on, this way it allows newbies to learn. Of near 1400 reviews I’ve only had about 30 refunded and three of those were in error, I don’t know how many has been voted unhelpful, maybe 50-60 included with the 30 refunds and five or six of those were for malice. And like I keep being a parrot, but long term users had a patch where stuff could,nt be voted on and I’m sure we’d of gained both unhelful and helpful votes had that feature been available. As it happens i’m out of the danger zone unless I get two more unhelpful votes of course, then I will be below the 80%.
As well as playing the same song lol,Squarehopper and I are in the same situation re votes and no of reviews done.
I’ve slowed down on reviewing owing to my singing commitments. And I suppose I get disheartened over this system.

ditto jazz momma. square hopper, avedis, that bites. frowny face.

I give reviewer comments when I think the reviewer misunderstood the author, and I am able to share that “I understood you.”

I review stats as positive if I think it’s a “thumbs up” all the way review.

I gave one “not helpful” stat to a bland “good job” review.

Even when the reader doesn’t understand the author, he can still be helpful. There are reasons why the reader doesn’t understand, and it’s not always his fault. If the reader can articulately explain why he doesn’t understand, he IS being helpful.

In the same token, you may “understand” the author simply because you’re an idiot (nothing personal).

Unhelpful reviews are those that do not adhere to the Urbis guidelines (period): concise, specific, constructive.

Or down right offensive IMO DC

Fair enough, but I have a high tolerance for offensive. As long as the reviewer makes a compelling argument, I can take offensive. It’s happened only twice to me, and both times I found it so amusing that I couldn’t stop egging the guy on (just to see if his head would pop off).

Hey… Maybe I have been approaching this all wrong! Maybe I should not worry about my review quality vote ranking!

I should continue reviewing like I normally do… not caring about the votes… let them vote me below 80% Why should I care?

Maybe that way I will stop receiving as many review requests as I have been – the majority of which is bad poetry or even worse prose.

Yes… I think that is the way I should approach this issue. Just be me and honest as I am… let them do their worse… It may benefit me in the long run.

By the way… why are bad writers using PRO anyway… Do they really think they are good?

I am not in the business of teaching without being paid. I will give advice but I will not teach… and so many of the pieces coming through need just that… It is a shame we can’t control the quality of the review items like they can control the “quality” of the reviewers.

SH I envy you. After skipping all 10 in the queue for me, it takes only a few hours for me to fill up with requests (depending on the time of day). I would like a toggle on/off for review requests. I would lobby for that right here, right now. Anyone with me? I would rather that than purposefully trying to get my ranking lower (that seems counterproductive).

Steve?

My boyfriend signed up just for the purpose of reading my stuff, so he has never even written a review, but he occasionally gets PRO review requests based on his “review rankings”, so lowering your stats won’t help at all. I like surfer’s idea. We should be allowed that choice.

I rather receive 2 or 3 “occasional” requests that have my queue be filled within a few hours. I am empty now.. been empty for a couple of hours… but that is because I have been voted down to 80.9%...

I don’t care for or against a toggle switch… I won’t use it… I just want PRO to be PRO and for it to stop filling up so damn quickly with garbage pieces…

Steve… Until this gets resolved in some form or another… can you up the skips to 50 a day (at least for me?)