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An Unpopular Opinion of the Content Filter/My Rating SystemJul 23 '00 (Updated Aug 22 '00) Write an essay on this topic.Me, unpopular? Actually, I'm not too well known under this name in the Epinions world (I recently made the switch from user ID LSKLADZI to this one, BroadwayBaby). But I'm not talking about my reviews' own popularity. I'm talking about the fact that I'm one of the few people who noticed the good points of Epinions' recent decision to install a content filter which filtered out people who tended to give out an unbalanced number of Highly Recommendeds, Recommendeds, Somewhat Recommendeds, and Not Recommendeds. All right, though we may not admit it, the content filter (at least temporarily) changed the way that a lot of people read and rate. It sure opened up my eyes to take a closer look at my rating system. During the "Dark Age of Filtering" in which many people became invisible, excellent reviews began receiving Not Recommendeds and Somewhat Recommendeds, because Epinioners wanted to come out of the depths of invisibility. I was one of those people who became invisible, however, I did not begin giving out SRs and NRs in order to become visible again. I took a look at my rating system, and I realized that I was giving out an awful lot of Highly Recommendeds lately. "But Laura," people have said, "that's just because people are becoming better at writing good reviews. It's only natural that you're giving out more HRs; people are improving." Well, yes, you're somewhat right. When I first started Epinioning in January, a lot of people were also just joining Epinions. Accordingly, we weren't sure of the best way to write a review, so we wrote lower-quality reviews, and rated things more easily accordingly. Now that people's writing level has increased, it's time for us to increase our rating standard as well. After all, if we simply give out all HRs, then what's the point of using the rating system? We might as well not rate. The rating system only works if we do use it to differentiate excellent reviews from reviews that could be a bit better. What all this means is that it's going to be harder to get an HR from me. Rs and SRs are going to be the most common ratings given by me. I'm sure that I'll incur some revenge ratings as a result of this, but I'm not going to be intimidated by that. I know many of you who won't stoop to the level of revenge rating, so I'm counting on those people to balance the ratings so that reviews get the rating they deserve. Within 5 minutes of posting one of my recent reviews (on choosing a dog, for those of you who are interested), I had received an anonymous NR. But that doesn't bother me. The anonymous part just proves to me that it was a revenge rating. I hope that people who know me will know that I don't give revenge ratings, or even anonymous ratings, under any circumstances. I stand by any rating I give, and if you'd like to question a rating that I've given, please do. I won't take offense; in fact, I'll be happy if you e-mail me, because I know that you're willing to work it out rather than simply giving me a revenge rating. A warning: I know many of you won't like my rating system. I'm sure that I'm going to alienate a lot of you. Pretty soon, you'll be scrolling to the bottom to give me an NR. Well, just hear me out for the rest of the review. Then give me an NR, if you must. But if you do, don't do it anonymously, please? I promise I won't revenge rate you. In fact, I'll probably respect you more for having the guts to stand behind your rating. Without further ado, here is my new rating system: Highly Recommended Reviews Contrary to the way I used to rate, when pretty much any review which told the basics got an HR from me, I won't give out an HR very often. HRs are reserved for people who I feel could not really use any (or much) improvement. If you have one typo, you may still get an HR, but my HRs will generally mean that I think that the article was presented in a clear, detailed way. Even if I don't agree with your opinion, if I think that you wrote the article well, supported with details, you'll get an HR from me. Details, in my opinion, are one of the most important things to include when writing a review. I've written an entire Epinion on the importance of details in reviews. If you'd like to read it, go to <http://broadway.epinions.com/user-review-698E-40F795C-39A31FEB-prod4> I do not rate articles based on whether or not I agree with you, because I think it's important to present both sides of the story to a customer. The only way I'll rate something down if I disagree with you is if you state a fact which is incorrect. For example, one of the people I trust and respect very highly is Adam Woolcott (awoolcott on Epinions). I was recently reading one of his reviews on MSN Messenger, and he mentioned that it doesn't give you the option to send offline messages, like AOL Instant Messenger does. Well, I know that AIM doesn't allow users to send offline messages, so I gave his review an SR, and posted a comment explaining why. Adam quickly realized his mistake, fixed the review, and I gave it the Recommended rating it deserved. That's the kind of thing I love; when I give a review a low rating, and the person fixes it and then reminds me to come back. Don't count on me happening to come back again to re-rate, and then giving me a revenge rating because I don't come back. Please, by all means, e-mail me. I'm a busy person, and I probably won't remember to come back. I really don't mind the reminder, and I'd love to read an edited review. Recommended Reviews This will probably be the most common rating for me to give out. I'll be giving these out to people who do an okay job writing a review, but aren't as detailed as I would like. If you simply describe the product without giving your opinion, I won't be giving you an HR, I'll be giving you an R. Or if you just give your opinion, but don't describe the product, I'll give you an R. Keep in mind that getting a Recommended isn't bad at all. In fact, it's good. After all, I'm recommending your opinion right? Even an SR isn't necessarily bad. I'm still recommending your opinion, just maybe not as much as other ones. The only rating which I consider to be bad is an NR. And that just means you need some improvement. Recommended reviews generally describe a product pretty well, but just don't support what they say with details. Or maybe they don't compare it to others of it's kind. A lot of the people who write about Pay To Surf programs don't get an HR from me simply because they don't compare the programs. If I'm reading about FreeRide, I don't want to only know how points are awarded. I can find that out by going to the site. I want to know how it compares to MyPoints and Memolink, and why you prefer it or don't prefer it. Sure, it's great to hear you say "I like FreeRide the best." But the best of what? What have you tried? And why is it the best? Once again, remember details. Without supporting what you write, the best you can get is an R. I also like it a lot if people separate their reviews into paragraphs so that they're easier to read. Not sentences, which I've seen done, but paragraphs, of a few sentences each. I understand that those of you who have WebTV are unable to do this. I'm sorry, but in my opinion, that's too bad (I can see the NRs coming already). Epinions is about being a good writer, and if you don't have the tools to be a good writer, I'm not going to make an exception for you. An example: a teacher is giving a writing test. At the end of two hours, one of the students turns in a blank piece of paper. When the teacher asks why, the student replies that they didn't have something to write with. Should the teacher give the student an A+ out of pity, and make an exception for them? Of course not. The student should have been prepared. Now, I don't expect those of you with WebTV to go out and buy a computer just to get a higher rating from me :) Of course you're not going to do that. However, you may (that's may, not definitely) be getting an R from me instead of an HR. Not a big deal, so don't dwell on it. Grammar and spelling is another big thing with me. I want to see something that is done in proper English, with proper spellings. If you don't know how to spell a word, ask someone else, or look it up in the dictionary. I don't mind one or two typos, spelling errors, or grammar mistakes. But when there gets to be more than that, it's annoying to try to figure out what the author is saying. All right, I know not everyone went to Harvard. I'm not expecting you to have done that. But it's the same as my previous example. I'm not going to make an exception for you. If you don't know how to write, then don't be a writer on Epinions! Would you want me trying to perform brain surgery, making a mistake, and saying "I'm sorry, but I didn't go to Yale, so I didn't know how to do it properly... blah blah blah." No. Of course you wouldn't. You'd expect me to be qualified to be a brain surgeon. Likewise, I expect writers on Epinions to be qualified. If I wasn't qualified to be a brain surgeon (which I'm not), you certainly wouldn't want me operating on you. So if you don't know proper English, fine, I'm not going to hate you for it. Just don't expect that high of a rating from me. Somewhat Recommended Reviews Remember, an SR isn't bad. I save SRs for people who discuss a product a little, but not in great detail. In general, I like a review to be detailed enough that I have to scroll down to read it. I'll never take off for a review being too long (unless you start rambling on and on about nothing); just not long enough. If you think you can adequately describe a product in only 150 words, fine. But generally, a longer review will be more likely to get a higher rating from me. Not because of it's length on the screen, but because of the simple fact that shorter reviews do not contain many details. They can't. If they did contain a lot of details, they'd be longer reviews. For somewhat recommended reviews, I generally won't be posting a comment explaining why. I'm counting on you to read this as explanation. If it's for an unusual reason that isn't explained here, I'll probably post a comment. But I simply don't have the time to post a comment every time I want to say "I think you need more details." E-mail me. I love to get e-mail, and I really don't mind answering questions about my rating system at all. My e-mail address is visible from my profile page, or for easy reference (for example, to tell me that you hate this review), it's BroadwayBaby@dork.com :) Not Recommended Reviews My NR is really the only rating which means "I didn't like your review." Get anything else, and that's good. I give out NRs for blatant infractions of the Epinions rules, such as swearing every other sentence for the sheer purpose of creating a sensation, or padding your review by copying the same sentence again and again. I don't mind some curse words in a review; one or two is fine. But when there's a lot, you get an NR. A general rule for swear words: if you feel that they're absolutely necessary, go ahead and put them. But please don't overdo it. I may also give an NR if I feel that a review is in the complete wrong category, and there's a better one to which you can move it. Even if you explain it at the end, I don't care. When a reader clicks through to a review, they want to hear about the product they were looking for, not some other topic. If you don't know where to put something, go to the "suggest a product" link, and put it in that miscellaneous area. But don't stick it where it doesn't belong. That's one sure way to get an NR from me. Don't Hate Rate Me... I'm sure a lot of you are hating me now. Well, it's almost time for you to give me an NR :) Just let me ask that if you do, you show your name. I really don't mind, as I'm sure a lot of you will strongly disagree with my opinion. But rather than giving me an NR, I would really love it if you would follow my rating guidelines, just for this one review, and rate it based on how well you think it was written, rather than whether you agree or don't agree. Then just post a comment to me, or e-mail me (BroadwayBaby@dork.com), telling me how much you hate me :) Thanks, and happy Epinioning!  |
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