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Reflections upon the life of an EpinionatorFeb 05 '02 (Updated Feb 07 '02) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Epinions has grown and changed, but it's the growth and changes that it has spurred in me which matters most.
As always, I appreciate any comments about this opinion. Please leave feedback. Well, here I am, almost a year and half since I became a member of the epinions community. After such a long time, it just seems appropriate to reflect on what this past year and a half has been like for me. It’s also a good opportunity to bring up some of the lessons and wisdom I’ve gained over this time and hopefully you guys will enjoy this time of reflection. The beginning The first time I ever heard of epinions was back in the big boom of the dot coms that were just exploding everywhere. You had all these new internet companies advertising literally everywhere, even with Super Bowl commercials (Go Pats!!!). I encountered epinions on their first commercial. They had a dude who was talking about the George Foreman grill and how he looked up reviews from real people about the grill. He was happy to report that their comments were all true. Thus began the love affair with epinions. We can actually earn money?! What was it that finally prompted me to join up? Well, it all started with my USB burner. It died on me basically and I had been waiting to get a replacement from the company I bought it from. Eventually after the second attempt with another burner and having it fail on me, I decided that I needed to let people know how bad of a product this CD burner was! Yes, you read me right, I joined epinions to spite that company! I wanted somehow to vent out all the frustrations, tiredness, and just plain anger out into some positive way. So thus my first review on epinions! It also helped when I noticed that there were two reviews that actually said the CD burner was a good product! Yeah... right! Less to say, I really enjoyed the chance to express myself totally. The biggest surprised for me was that I actually could earn cash! The more hits I received from members, the more cash I got! That was totally amazing! I mean, I never was told that I would get 3 cents per hit! At this rate, I’ll hit 10 dollars in no time! Woohoo! Honeymoon’s over Alice… Alas, such as all good things must come to an end. My little honeymoon with epinions only lasted up to the point when I also realized that I was being rated on my writing. Apparently, there were actually people who would bother to read my review, even if they weren’t interested in the product at first, and decide for themselves whether they thought my review was good or bad. To be honest, I was hurt at first when there were some people who rated my review with a Recommended, AKA Helpful, or worst yet a Somewhat recommended, AKA Somewhat Helpful. What I knew was if my writing was up to a certain standard then there will be people who would judge me and somehow cause my reviews to get less hits from other people. That realization was not fun. Hard lessons are hard to learn… It was definitely a blow to my pride. One of my most vivid memories were my bitter feelings towards a specific epinions music reviewer. Man, here I was, writing reviews on my favorite music, having a fun time, then BAM!!! I get hit with a low rating because this dude who I think was 23 at the time, thought I didn’t go in-depth in my reviews. What the… To make a long story short, eventually, after I was willing to get pass my hurt pride, I realized something. My writing wasn’t really that great. Like it was pretty good, but it wasn’t consistent and to be brutally honest, I’m not particularly pride of my old reviews now. When I looked at other people’s reviews and their styles, it became very obvious to me that I was dealing with some professionals and I should have been listening to their advise. My writing style and the depth of the material I covered is nothing in comparison to what I do now these days. So eventually with time and understanding, my writing started to drastically improve (and still is), and even Mr. D who was 23 started to give me some positive feedback! Whoa! BTW, I think Mr. D and I are on good terms now, right Mr. D? The lessons that I’ve learned from Epinions To start bringing this little opinion of mine to a close, let me just state some of the good that I’ve learned from epinions during these past 18 months. 1. Writing style – Writing reviews for epinions have helped me improve upon my writing skills tremendously. I’m an engineering major and if you know anything about us strange people who make the stuff you use day to day, we usually don’t have great writing or speaking skills. So any chance to keep working on my grammar and speech is always welcomed now. Hey, when you meet the CEO of the company you work for, you better not stutter! 2. Be Honest – It’s also a great thing that I have to be honest with any reviews I write or read. Too many times I’ve seen people who will just rate a review as a VH just because it’s long, but not read the content. For myself, if I’ve been chided before because my writing sucked, then I must be willing to help improve another person’s writing by being totally and sometimes brutally honest about their review. 3. Don’t do revenge rating – If you don’t know what this is, then you’re pretty blessed right now. However, I will guarantee you that eventually you’ll find someone who will get so ticked off at you because of your honest rating on one or more of his reviews. He may decide to do a NH on all your reviews, but don’t let that stop you from rating. Plus, don’t sink down to that level by doing NHs on all of his reviews either. Remain honest and if the review is good, then rate appropriately. My pet peeves about abusive members Unfortunately, there are people who log onto epinions not because they want to help people, but just do it because they want to make cash(which is pretty hard now these days), get revenge, or who just want to fill this site with plain trash. 1. Revenge raters – You know who you are. These reviewers are basically the people who will add a NH on your review because you gave them an H, SH, or NH on one or more of their reviews. These people generally, in my opinion, seem to be a little too sensitive about their reviews. They expect everyone to like their reviews and give them VHs all the time. The reason why I dislike this is pretty obvious, it encourages a person to be dishonest with his or her rating out of fear of being rated unfairly. 2. The blah reviewers – I used to read about such people on epinions a year ago, but I thought that this breed has gone the way of the dinosaur. Unfortunately, I have encountered members to this very day who will write no content reviews. These people will just cut and paste a word over and over again just to get pass the minimum word limit on a review. For some strange reason they think they can get hits from members with a review full of blahs. Eventually if honest raters put in NHs, no one will read their reviews, thus defeating their original intent. Sometimes, these people are also part of category 1. A variation of this breed are the reviewers who don’t write their own content, instead they copy and paste material from another reviewer or from an official review from another company. That is just wrong! Again, if there are responsible reviewers, this kind of review will not last long. 3. 30 year old 5-year olds - Simply put, these are the reviewers who will not write about the product at all. Instead they will write about stuff that propagates their racist, angry, irresponsible views. I’ve read reviews on techie stuff and would find reviews by Neo-Nazi groups. Other times I’ve read reviews where the people are using every possible form of curse words without actually spelling those words out, and the review again isn’t about the topic. Essentially, these 3 types of people I will usually NH and if this is a consistent pattern in their reviews, then on my block list they go. Conclusion Being a member of epinions has been one of my little blessings for these past 18 months. I’ve enjoyed reading reviews by people on this site. There are a lot of talented and dedicated people on epinions and I am blessed to be part of such a group. Despite the flaws in the system, which can always be improved upon, this is little a great place to find info on a product you’re thinking of buying, and a great place to help people as well. In the end, overall I look forward to the next 18 months as an epinions member. Later.  |
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