CaptainD’s Guide to Rating Reviews (and commenting!)
Nov 24 '07 (Updated Nov 25 '07)
The Bottom Line [Jedi Mind Trick]
YOU WILL RATE THIS VERY HELPFUL
AND THESE ARE NOT THE DROIDS YOU ARE LOOKING FOR
[End Jedi Mind Trick]
CaptainD’s Guide to Rating Reviews
To be honest I’d never really seen the point of these essays until quite recently. I mean, it’s pretty obvious what gets rated as what, isn’t it? The whole “how I rate” thing seemed to me to be some sort of Epinions signature more than anything else.
However, a while back I was talking to someone at work, and he mentioned that he wrote reviews for a games website. I suggested that he might want to post them on Epinions as well, and he did post a few. After a while I asked him what sort of reception he’d had. Ratings on his reviews tended to be Helpful with the a few Somewhat Helpfuls and the off Very Helpful here and there. Though his reviews were quite well written, they were rather lacking in detail, and the ratings were a fair assessment of those reviews.
The interesting thing was, he interpreted the ratings as depending on whether people agreed with him or not, more than anything else. This naturally was not actually the case – personal opinion shouldn’t really be an issue when you’re rating a review. It might be a review about evolution / creation / religion / philosophy or whatever where you disagree with the views of the reviewer, or even as simple as the case of my colleague where someone disagreed about how good a video game was – no matter how much you disagree with the reviewer’s opinion about something or the product, the question is was it a good review? So I guess there is a place for this sort of essay. So I guess I’ll write one…
(To some extent this is also an essay about commenting etiquette, which I think is very closely tied in to rating reviews. Not that you should feel obliged to comment on every single review you rate, of course!)
First off, Express Reviews:
Don’t Show - this should be almost impossible to achieve, yet it regularly happens. The review is probably off-topic, contains offensive content or language, tells the reader NOTHING about the product being reviewed, is riddled with so many typos and spelling mistakes as to render it practically unreadable, or is simply such unutterable rubbish as to be impossible to give it a Show rating.
Show - it doesn’t have to be brilliant but a coherent few sentences that actual gives some opinion on the product at hand will get a Show. If I read an Express Review that is actually well-written and informative, I will probably leave a comment encouraging the reviewer to move on to full-length reviews.
The maximum wordage for an Express Review is 200, but really a decently written 40 words will probably be a “Show”.
Now onto normal, or full-length, reviews:
Off Topic - pretty obvious really, the review is not actually about the product. This may be an oversight or honest mistake, so when commenting don’t be too harsh. (I learned this the hard way when someone wrote effectively what he thought the plot should have been instead of reviewing the film itself – my words [and some others] were unnecessarily harsh and the reviewer left the site pretty quickly.) Sometimes people misinterpret the search engine results they get and review, for example, an airline when what they actually should be reviewing is a book about the history of the airline. It’s nice when you can find the actual right product and put the link to it in your comment, saying that you’ll re-rate when it’s in the proper place when they’ve moved it.
Not Helpful - well a review has to be pretty damn awful to get the dreaded NH rating. Usually it's mainly obscenities, personal attacks on other members (or sometimes actors / authors etc depending on the product) with practically nothing in the way of useful information. Off the top of my head an example of a Not Helpful review would be someone talking about a film - but instead of the reviewing the film basically telling us that he'd like to "bang" the actresses who are in it. This was one I actually did see once. Oops... It's very hard not to be extremely critical when commenting on this sort of review - so I usually don't bother.
(Of course if a review is plagiarised, it is automatically DS or NH. Unfortunately blatant copying of other peoples' work does happen here, but there are members who are skilled at spotting plagiarised content. Unless it's a serial offender, the original source should be cited to back up the allegation of copying.)
Somewhat Helpful - there is something good about the review, but it doesn't cut it. Sometimes this can actually be a good review marred with features of the above, or good information but very badly written. More frequently though it's a case of a good start to a review but without being complete - lacking vital information or featuring plot synopsis but not much opinion etc. If it's a new reviewer, I'll often try to leave a comment that's encouraging - highlighting the positive aspects of the review (there must be at least one, if there aren't any then it would be NH anyway) but tactfully pointing out areas where the review can be improved. Again, comments that are very critical would be more likely to drive a new member away than make them want to improve their reviews. If the SH review is by a more established member, then I wouldn't normally bother leaving a review unless they normally get VH ratings and this is an aberration - if someone has a hundred reviews already and gets mostly SH or H ratings, I figure they're not too bothered about improving their reviews enough to get VH ratings.
Helpful - most often this is a good review overall but just missing something that would make it VH. If commenting on such reviews try to be specific on what is missing. It's easier here to be positive about the existing content than an SH review, so try not to only highlight the negative aspects.
Very Helpful - if a review is (at least relatively) well written and contains enough information to help someone make a purchasing decision, it will by VH. The range of quality of reviews with an average VH rating is very wide - some reviews are truly excellent while some are simply good, but both merit a VH. Occasionally a VH review will still lack some information that might be nice, but the lack of this particular information doesn't actually stop it from being VH. Unfortunately only Advisers and Category Leads are able to give Most Helpful ratings...
Most Helpful - I currently hold an Adviser hat in Books and once did in Movies, so I've had the opportunity of being able to hand out Most Helpful ratings. Maybe I have the wrong viewpoint on these - after all, technically to know whether a review is MH you would have to have read every single review on a product. However, I see it more as a recognition of someone achieving true excellence in their review, and that's how I'll use it - whether I've read the other reviews of that product, or whether in fact there even are other reviews on that product. I know some other Advisers have a similar outlook on this to me, and some definitely do not. When I first got an Adviser hat I probably accidentally gave out a few MH ratings as I wasn't used to the extra rating button being there! I've only once had a situation where I gave a MH rating and had a message come up telling me that I'd already given one for that product, so had to re-read both to check which one deserved it more. I felt unhappy that I couldn't give both superb reviews an MH - but that would have defeated the object of having a Most Helpful button I guess!!
One more note - if you see a review that's already been rating SH/H/VH or whatever by everyone and their dog, don't automatically assume that you will rate the same way. Keep an open mind that your opinion of the review might be different from some other peoples - or even different to everyone else! Rating reviews is always going to be a somewhat objective thing, and we will all probably rate slightly tougher in categories we know more about. Also the amount of detail needed for different products can range widely - a children's book for instance will probably need a lot less explanation than a digital camera.
So read wisely, and think before you rate! (But remember, all reviews by CaptainD should automatically get the highest rating you can possibly give :-D)
See also:
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Guide to Epinions - Third Edition - recently updated,
How to build a WOT
My guides to writing Very Helpful reviews in:
Movies
Books
Games
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Epinions.com ID:
captaind
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Member: Dave Seaman
Location: Birmingham, Merry Old England
Reviews written: 1077
Trusted by: 387 members
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