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So you want to be on my Web of Distrust? Here's How!Jul 31 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line If you really, really want me to Block you, I guarantee you can make it! You just have to take the right approach!
Judging from the quality of many of the reviews I see each week, it seems that some of you are working very hard to qualify for my prestigious WoD (only 230 members at the moment - lots of room for expansion!) Unfortunately, you don't know how to go about it and you often do silly things which are certainly a complete waste of time but don't automatically score a touchdown and get me to click on Block. It finally occurred to me that it might be helpful to you if I wrote down some quick notes on how to achieve your goal as efficiently as possible! Successful Methods for Getting Blocked 1. Irrelevant/Obnoxious Gibberish The fastest way to get onto my WoD is to write a "review" that is actually stuffed full of obscenities, or pure gibberish, or even a couple of coherent sentences that have absolutely nothing to do with explaining the pros and cons of this particular product to me (such as an opinion which is supposed to be telling me about a particular movie, but turns out to simply be an ad for another Internet service where you will make money if I sign up and say you referred me). I have a fertile imagination, but not even I can read any of the things I just listed and convince myself that you were making an honest effort to tell me something useful about the product. I remember one fellow who wrote a review that went "asdf asdf asdf asfd asdf" for several lines . . . and that was all it said. He was one of the earliest members of my Block List, but I don't know if he's still on it because I don't remember his name! 2. Blatant Theft Failing that, the next best way is to blatantly plagiarize material written by someone else. This method is slower and less certain to attract my notice, because it's very rare that I actually use the www.google.com search engine to search for a certain sentence from an Epinion I just read to see if it was stolen from somewhere else. But occasionally I read an opinion to which someone else has appended a helpful Comment giving the URL for the source material which you stole, and if I check out the URL and decide that the accuser has his facts straight and you are indeed guilty, you've managed to make it onto my WoD permanently! 3. Consistent Low Quality (Over an Extended Period) This takes longer, but it is the most frequent method. Probably your best bet. I don't Block anyone because I thought his very first product review was Slightly Helpful or Not Helpful, but might have been a sincere first effort. I don't even block him because I felt that his first five opinions in his first two days of activity on Epinions were all Slightly Helpful or worse, again assuming he wasn't actually committing one of the sins listed above. However, if I discover that someone has been around for at least a month or two and has written a large number of reviews, and even the most recent ones are worthy of SH or lower when I read them, I'm going to assume that he is making absolutely no effort to improve himself and simply doesn't care what quality of advice he is providing for his readers. It's at this point that I say to myself, "Once upon a time he may have been a clueless newbie who just needed to examine the feedback he was getting and see that he'd have to give more details to start raking in the VH ratings, but after all this time he is obviously a diehard abuser who couldn't care less about being helpful to his readers who are wondering how to spend their money, which is allegedly the entire mission statement of this site." At that point I add him to the old Block list. Right now there are about 230 people on that list, all of them having worked very hard to get there! (I estimate I've blocked at least 270 people in the last five months, but sometimes the number listed on my screen drops because some abuser accounts have been deleted.) Now, having gotten that out of the way, let's discuss several of the things that people keep doing, presumably because they want to be Blocked (I can't think of any other good reason for these behavior patterns). Unfortunately, none of these things has ever managed to get me to Block them. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but they just aren't quite obnoxious enough to persuade me you are a lost cause, now and forever. (Keep trying, though! You can probably persuade me if you try enough stupid things in enough different ways until you wear me down!) Unsuccessful Methods That Haven't Gotten Anyone Onto My Block List So Far 1. Self-plagiarism "Wait!" You say. "What if I plagiarize myself instead of someone else? That is to say, what if I cut-and-paste a movie review or game review I already wrote for online publication on another website! One that has more than five people contributing material, or at least one where I fail to update my old online reviews with the necessary text stating that the material is also available on Epinions? Doesn't that qualify me as worthy of Distrust, since it's a blatant violation of the Epinions Terms of Service?" I'm sorry, but that's just not good enough. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume they never read the User Agreement or have terrible memory problems. I know, I know, I'm too generous. I probably won't bother reading them again if they don't get the problem straightened out in a hurry after it is brought to their attention, but I don't bother Blocking them. 2. Writing about the wrong subject, although it has a very similar name to the one you're supposed to be writing about in this category Suppose, for example, that you found a book titled "Coca-Cola" and wrote an opinion about the various beverages that corporation produces and how you rate each one. Will this be enough to make me Block you for not discussing the product your opinion is supposed to be about? Sorry, sorry, that's no good. Mistakes happen. I'm likelier to assume that you typed in "Coca-Cola" for a search and then hastily dashed off an opinion and posted it without looking at the category listing at the top of the page carefully enough to realize you were supposed to be reviewing a particular book instead of the corporation named in the title. 3. Blatantly admitting that you are not really writing about this product at all; you are using Product Title A as a place to write about Product Title B, because dear old item B is not in the Epinions database Nice try! You nearly made it to my WoD! That one is very tempting. Unlike the previous possibility I mentioned, in this case there is no room for doubt as to whether or not you intentionally strayed from the straight and narrow path of being helpful on the selected product. If I weren't such a fundamentally patient fellow I might Block you at that point. After all, writing an opinion which has nothing to do with the category listing in question is a clear violation of the Epinions rules. But so far I've never actually Blocked anyone over that issue. Giving a NH rating and leaving a comment explaining why you really ought to delete that opinion is about as far as I'll go. If I see too much of this nonsense, it is possible that I will reconsider. The gaps in the Epinions database can be very frustrating, but that doesn't mean you are guaranteed the "right" to pretend the holes aren't there and write about any product you please and place the review under a different one's heading. Just abandon the idea and find something else to right about. I've had to abandon several ideas myself when the database didn't have what I wanted in it. 4. Freely admitting you haven't read the complete book that you are encouraging the rest of us to read or bypass Obviously this can happen in other types of product, as well as with books, but it just so happens that within the last couple of weeks I've run across three different people doing this in what were allegedly opinions meant to help me decide whether or not to read a book. One person had started a book but got bored and quit in the middle and figured that was enough basis to say no one would like it; one person had started the book, loved it, and decided to tell us so right away before finding out if it stayed high-quality all the way through; one person had not read the book at all but mentioned that a relative loved it, and that relative was very hard to get interested in reading material, therefore the book was superb. None of these people managed to get onto my Block list, however. In each case I just laughed and left a polite comment explaining why I gave them a low rating. (I might mention that in each case, even if they had erased the sentence explaining that they hadn't read the entire book yet, all of them would still have gotten SH or lower from me for lack of detail on just what made this book different from millions of others.) In a twisted sort of way, I have to admire the nerve of someone who freely admits he doesn't really know what he's talking about when he tells us the book is or is not worthy of our time! A coward could never be so forthright about his own lack of credentials to hold forth on the subject! 5. Giving lorendiac ratings lower than he thinks he deserves Nope. That won't cut it. Total waste of time. Thus far I have never Blocked anyone because of the way they rated my own reviews, nor anyone else's for that matter. Honest differences of opinion do occur, and I try to make full allowances for them, although I have trouble believing in the sincerity of the person who very thoughtfully gave me an anonymous NH on my last opinion before this one. 6. Clicking to "Trust" lorendiac but never, ever reading and rating a single one of his opinions Pathetic. That one doesn't even come close! A couple of months ago, during my great "Rate opinions by 500 strangers and measure the rate of reciprocity" experiment which you may recall from a previous essay, I noticed that I had rated two of a certain person's opinions as VH on one day, and the following day I logged on and discovered he had already added me to his Web of Trust. My first reaction, of course, was to assume that he had read and enjoyed some of my opinions. However, at the end of my month-long experiment when I was checking my last 20 or so opinions to see how many of those 500 strangers had rated at least one little opinion somewhere along the line, I couldn't find his name, and believe me, I looked! It was painfully clear that I had discovered a "trust slut", someone who trusts anything that wanders into his line of sight in the hopes that he will be trusted in return and perhaps get lots of ratings. I made a mental note to not bother going back to read and rate any more of his opinions if he thought "Trusting" me without ever reading and rating me was an honest way to deal with people, but I didn't actually add him to my Web of Distrust. I don't try to punish people for "trusting" too many people too fast . . . I just don't want to get involved. Ideally, now that I've explained all those things that simply won't work to get you on my Web of Distrust, where so many of you obviously want to be, everyone will stop doing them! And this community will become a much happier place! (Excuse me . . . I'm fantasizing wildly again . . . I think I need a double dose of my usual medication.)  |
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