It seems typical of the ineptness of testing of software at epinions that a topic can be locked yet epinionators who are not very familiar with message boards can post to it ... and that the solution is to wipe out dozens of member postings disputing the party line.

I don't really see that an eight (or so) part posting quoting who knows whom from the Brisbane staff is the way to communicate.

Following this dubious precedent a ways, I am going to follow up this posting with one addressing what the wizards of Brisbane claimed.

In my apparently illicit comment on the ineptly locked
"Status of things on Epinions" topic, I picked out the phrase that I have taken as the title for this posting to invite anyone who believes it to send me money for which I will issue shares in the Bridge to Nowhere (trust me that I will supply an appropriate number of shares for whatever amount I am sent by anyone.

The quotation, BTW, came from Garrett when he was still an epinions employee in charge of cooling the marks out. (It's OK is you don't understand this allusion.)

I would like to know how products with reviews can be weighted more heavily when the epinions software does not even recognize that there ARE reviews on a product. I do not appreciate the message "No review found" when I am looking for one of my own reviews and am certain that there is at least one. I then go to google and include "epinions" in the search and find it.

What about ordinary and/or new readers coming to epinions for a review of a product? They don't know that "No review" is frequently false. They don't get to my review (or your review). They do not conceive of this as "inadequate search engine" but as epinions not having information on the product about which they are seeking information. This seems to me bad for the invisible reviewers but even worse for a site that needs to be conceived as having information. Unless I completely fail to understand the business of epinions, this is bad for business in the most essential way.

As a former database manager and software analyst (for a corporation, BTW), it seems to me that the analysis of how to weight towards reviews was not just wrong but catastrophically mistaken. The alternative possibility is that the software does the opposite of what was intended, in which case the analysis was unclear rather than mistaken. But then the testing before implementation was incompetent (and THAT is standard operating procedure for changes at epinions).

Yes, there are competing priority, but the acceptance of sloppiness in testing and the Cheney-like culture of secrecy in epinions long predates acquisition by DealTime, shopping.com, and E-Bay.

Sometimes (well, all too often) there is a duplication of category slots. But rather than showing the one WITH REVIEWS, it seems that very, very often one without any appears. I have moved some reviews I'd posted to a slot with photo and product information to one without one or both that the search engine finds. This is absurd. Moreover, it shows that the opposite of weighting to reviews has been engineered in the purportedly "always improving" but in fact worsening epinions searching.

The decline of outside hits that many of us have observed probably relates less to the worsening internal-to-epinions search engine than to GOOGLE seemingly downgrading epinions as a site. That is, unless one includes "epinions" in the search line at google, an epinion is less likely to appear now than, say, last year. This is bad for writers and bad for the basic business.

Whether making travel destinations completely invisible (we were told that they were at the bottom because shopping.com did not have travel reviews, but they are in fact not even at the bottom, as my partner, Jiahong, has complained. Travel destination reviews are not "behind an 8-ball," they are not on the table or even visibly under the table!

I have to contest Andy's inference that because there are some hits, the search engine works to some extent. Well, OK, to "s

This thread was locked but I re-opened it, since I specifically told Stephen that he could start a new thread discussing search issues. I disagree with the way Stephen has characterized Garrett in his post and think it's a cheap shot. I have a lot of respect for Garrett, who did an excellent job of keeping the community informed and in general good humor. However, I don't want to re-neg on my assurance to Stephen that he could start a thread discussing search issues.

Attacking another person in the forums is a quick way to get a thread deleted. Just keep it even and fair, and we can actually exchange ideas.

--Bob (a moderator)

I wonder:

Which would make more epinions content visible to the public:

Adding new reviews with a perpetual 10-4-10 promotion?

-or-

Making existing reviews findable and accessible?

-Andy

before it was really begun -- while I was writing the substance of my disagreement with the scattershot status report.

I copied what I was writing and posted an even longer analysis of the deterioration of searching (both the epinions search engine and the seeming systematic lowering of epinions status in google searches, which is certainly not something anyone working for or writing for epinions wants!) in "General comments about Epinions.

To that posting, I appended descriptions of three other ways in which the visibility of epinions review has deterioriated.

There is great discomfort with any criticisms specifying a named name on epinions. My posting (the one that I was writing about the substance of the claims about improving searches before the thread was pre-emptively removed by someone other than pyreditor) responds to statements made by particular epinions employees who were reporting -- or in my view spinning -- about the state of searching of epinions.

In that a very long thread in which many nonemployees responded was deleted so that the statements of then-employees could stand alone, not linking offical (author of the statements) in my comments to who made them seemed absurd or at least onerous.
I do not think I made any "cheap shots" at Garrett (and glad that he has gone on record as agreeing about this!). His job to a large extent was to "cool the marks out," that is, in this instance, to keep us producing epinions despite our mounting dismay at how many of them have been becoming invisible.

Garrett is quite right that there is something disparaging about calling myself and others who continue to post epinions "marks" -- those who are conned and kept from exploding into violence while or after being conned. I feel like a mark, but as Garrett correctly interprets the analogy, this is self-criticism, not criticism of him.

BTW, disparagement of those who see searches worsening instead of improving "Chicken Littles" (which it was Andy rather than Garrett who did) is to me a real "cheap shot" (recognizing that "cooling the mark out" was part of Andy's job, too).

In my epinion http://www.epinions.com/content_5199667332 I invite (challenge?) epinions staff to provide advisors (or everyone) data on mean (statistical average) number of hits per new review for some month this year in contrast to the same month last year. Maybe my/our perception is mistaken, but instead of labeling us "Chicken Littles" why not provide real evidence?

(Another surprise in the unfamiliar territory of the Message Boards is that I "do not have permission" to edit my own posting to a thread I initiated.)

what an eye opening thread, this "mark" thanks you and is going to read your review....doesn't make me feel good to think of myself as a Mark or Rube...but you know, it really is true...like a lemming, the 10 for 10 keeps me writing even though I have a feeling in my guts that it's all for naught...I have a deep affection for epinions and many of the people who write here but somehow I'm afraid each morning I will wake up and find the site has disappeared.

Besides, some of us have been banished from the member center--whenever we try to open a member center essay we only get a blank screen.

-Andy

I don't care about made-up rules based on dubious customs.

There is a link because after being told that the proper procedure was to start a new thread here, the thread was disabled before I finished writing a posting. (Others can make what I post as epinions invisible to outsiders by giving low ratings, but can't delete the postings. I think this apparent feature of the Message Boards is despicable, not to mention profoundly alienating!)

The link is to a category that does not generate any IC to me and anyone who is interested in the topic is going to be interested in the comments on the expanded posting.

I am a newbie to "message boards" (and will never again try to start a thread even by invitation!) and the experience I've had in the last 24 hours is all too much like that of newbies posting epinions: being slapped around by veterans for violation of customary practices.

I had no idea that the thread to which I first posted was supposed to be locked. I was shocked that something like a hundred member postings were erased from that thread and that a thread that this newbie opened could be suppressed (I don't know by whom) let alone that it WOULD be suppressed on the basis of the announcement of the topic, before I had been able to post the first substantive bit to it.

In this and previous postings, I am criticizing how the site is misrun. Is "meaningful conversation" only Pollyannish comments like "the search engine is constantly improving"? How did deriding many of us as "Chicken Littles" then get by.

None of my postings in this thread are spam, infringe copyright, or "personal attacks."

I have no idea why your original post was deleted.


But I do know that if you don't remove the link, this thread will surely be locked, and you'll lose the opportunity for a meaningful discussion. Why not just take out the link? All you have to do is mention that you wrote an essay. Anyone who wants to find it can do so easily enough from your profile page.

for providing reasons the link is not link-pimping.

Someone new to the site (as I pretty am much new to the Message Boards) is supposed to know about what there has been extensive discussion? This is not a reasonable expectation.

Similarly, if there is a button that says "post your reply," newbies are not going to know that this should not be used and is only visible because of one of the innumerable failures to test functionalities!

Similarly, I think that if there is a slot in epinions, posting a review in it is legitimate. Newbies (newbies to epinions, I mean) don't know that they are not supposed to post their review in more than one slot, and my view about that is (1) duplication is the fault of epinions (database design) not of naive users and (2) that since it is so difficult to find many products, having the same review in each one that can be found is good for the site in providing readers something when they find a product. If IS is not entirely smoke and mirrors, any IS from a posting should be independent from IS from any other posting (whether on the same or other products).

The corporate culture of accepting sloppiness that I would never have accepted as a CORPORATE database manager is one thing, the making up and then enforcing rules is one of the less savory facets of the culture of the community (and one of the ways in which newbies are quickly alienated and driven away). The way "off topic" is latched onto by some advisors (and would be censors) is another about which I have written, but will forebear linking to what I have written!

I don't know if the Mods will lock this or not because of the link, but I definitely feel the way Mona does.

I think this thread has a lot of good things in it. I think there are definitely things one should stand for and things one should just do to be in alignment. Bob asked nicely in my opinion.

Why don't you link it to your profile page in the blurb section?

Whatever the case may be, there are good points in this thread.

Stephen, isn't there an "edit" link next to the quote and reply links in the top right corner of your message board posts? Other than the inability to edit the original title of your thread, does it not allow you to edit the body of your posts?

It works for me, but it's certainly possible that it doesn't work for you. Just as you can apparently see member center essays, but I can't. Welcome to epinions.

As for the links in threads, etc., there are good reasons why the forum moderators have tools (however flawed and poorly tested before being rolled out) they can use to lock and delete and move threads. There have been plenty of spam attacks to put that beyond question.

As to how those tools were used in this instance I haven't paid close enough attention to have and opinion. As for the link you provide in this thread, I'd agree with gamblin_man that it's not inappropriate.

-Andy