Description: What does this problem look like?
You will not see a product title, product image, a view details tab, or a compare prices tab on the review page. Links to see all reviews, comments, ratings will not work. The messaging in the profile page review list reads: "Product information unavailable/Category information unavailable and Vertical information unavailable"

Cause:
As part of the 2008 catalog migration to the Shopping.com catalog there were a small number of Epinions products with reviews that didn’t have an equivalent product. A related bug exists for products in the Media categories (Books, Movies, Music). Due to our media catalog coming from a 3rd party, products may be dropped from the site upon catalog refresh.

Impact:
Reviews in this state cannot be updated, commented on, and rated. These reviews are not counted in the Most Popular lists.
You cannot see the comments left prior to this state or any ratings beyond what is on the page. The comments and ratings are still valid and in the database. Once the review is attached to a product you will be able to update, view/post comments, and read/post ratings. Reviews in this state still earn Income Share, if eligible.

Continued below...

Things you can do:
1. Look for the product on Epinions. It's possible our process for mapping products missed yours. If you find a match you should move your review.
2. Add the product title, author, model info, etc. to your past and future reviews. This will help the reader.
3. Request the product to be added to the database via a category lead.
4. Media products added to the catalog via SAP are not subject to Media catalog updates and will not be dropped.

Things we are doing:
1. In November we started to move reviews in small batches to existing products or SAPd products. We'll continue working on this problem through early 2009.
2. In early 2009 we are going to improve the user experience on these pages by adding messaging about missing product information and what the author can/can't do on that page.

Yoel
Epinions Product Manager

**12/15/08*** Edited to correct the statement about these reviews in the "Most Popular" lists. These reviews are NOT counted in the "Most Popular" lists.

Yeah, what do I do about those? I have a perfectly good review sitting there, and the book has gone MIA.

Yes, I've been waiting to hear something about this too. I've got at least six book reviews backed up and waiting for _someplace_ to put them here on Epinions. I wish there was an easier way to do this. In any case, I'll go back to patiently waiting... Regards, Telynor

A couple of days ago, I deleted a review of mine that had lost the product to go with it, only to see two more of my reviews lose products today as well. I am not deleting those two and will wait for them to get moved back to the products with which they were once associated.

ALL (six, I think) of my book reviews in the top thousand and displaying on my profile page have invisible product listings (titles).

Plus, the constant progress in the search engine to which Andy laid claim before fleeing has led me to decide that if I cannot find something on Eps, I'll review it elsewhere. What is added through the hard work of CLs SAP can't be found by the search engine, so why bother them or bother posting something here that no one else will be able to find?

I have always been annoyed at how Muse handles the updates of the catalog. Why do they have to break all of the older links to the search engine to add new products? Instead of doing a mass integration, they should consider entering new topics one at a time. Unless a topic already has a showing review on it or someone happens to have it saved on their wish list, then it can never be found again and CLs end up creating unnecessary duplicates. If a topic has a showing review on it, at least we can find it through Google, but less experienced users aren't going to think to do that.

Adrienne

Thanks for the update. Just one question:

I have not only noticed this occurrence with several of my book reviews BUT ALSO that I cannot revise those same reviews.
I usually do not repeat the book's title in my review title, figuring that Epinions does that automatically. But now that some of my reviews say "no such product" or whatever this new caption is, I wanted to go back and make sure that my review gave the name of the book and its author in either my review title or my first paragraph. But I cannot. I click on the Update option and nothing happens.
So Epinions has, effectively, made those reviews completely pointless since readers cannot figure out what book I am reviewing.

But this will change the way I write reviews in the future.

PLEASE, see last review of this type. Follow-up on your list of recommended 'small manufacturers' of natural gas inserts, direct vent.
[very expensive investment] Thanks !

I had this product (DVD) on my wish list, which I use to track items I plan to review in the near future and it suddenly disappeared. Is this due to these same issues? It sounds like I can get it re-added by the category lead. Is this correct? Sheila

Thanks Bob, this sounds like the problem I've run into. Sue's explanation is very helpful. Sheila