RATE FAIRLY, AND LEAVE THE SHEEP IN THE FIELD. (dooyoo - Members' Opinions On How to Rate And Comment)

Member Name: thingywhatsit

Product:	dooyoo - Members' Opinions On How to Rate And Comment
Date:	20/04/06 (142 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Rating fairly gets results.

Disadvantages: None at all.

Reading, Rating and commenting.

In order that people can understand the reasons for my thoughts on reading, rating and comments, I need to tell the background of the thought processes that went along with my decision to write this review. I have been a member of review sites for some time and of course, like many writers, am still learning. A while ago, someone suggested reading and getting out there and giving some “somewhat helpful” ratings. His thought processes were astute, and I have a great respect for the guy, and looked at the way in which I read and rated on both this and another site that I belong to.

I started to read outside of my usual circle of trusted writers, and was astounded by what I found. New writers were being downgraded because they were new members, and some of their work was super and told everything that a review should say, and were marked down because they were not as lengthy as other writers tended to write, and being new members (shown as a white dot on the other site) were indeed an easy target for low ratings.

A little baffled when I was awarded ratings that put one of my reviews into an “Exceptional” status, I was pleased. I waited with anticipation for monetary reward, or even what Ciao call “diamonds” as opposed to the crowns on a site like Dooyoo. When payments were made, I received zilch, nada, nothing. It made me question the rating habits of Ciao members, not by confrontation, but by studying what was happening on the site, and coming to the conclusion that the rating system was failing, that comments actually meant earning points, and that in the majority of cases were innane and meant nothing. This alarmed me when new members were leaving in their droves driven off the site by words like “good first review but........”, or “needs more info”. What upset me about this trend was that although people were either generous with ratings on popular members, downrating of new members seemed to be a national passtime, and that the ratings were never backed up with common sense information that helped the writer improve or even encouraged them to stay.

Reading new writers was a pleasure for me, and amidst the waffle and the number of reviews that were not very good, there were treasures that were being missed. Little by little, with encouragement, some writers blossomed into becoming the amongst the best writers on the site, although still not as well read as I thought they could be. I have always been a commenter on ciao, sometimes criticized to the extent that people thought comments were for “brownie points”, others questioning the validity of comments, and I watched members that I respected and learned how to improve though my reasons for commenting are part of who I am, someone that likes to help people. Someone asked me whether I thought that all members wanted to improve and said that some were happy to write mediocre reviews, and I beg to differ, having this week received emails of thanks from people who had not understood what review writing was about.

Looking at the social side of sites like Dooyoo and Ciao, I saw many criticisms of members' behaviour, of the way in which sites are abandoned, and people move onto new pastures, and in the light of the lack of reward on ciao as a site, thought of exploring Dooyoo to its full potential to see what the differences were and why they occurred. What I read alarmed me to a certain extent, so much so that I was actually ill at ease giving any advice on Dooyoo at all. I wrote a review, I rated the equivalent to my reads and I disappeared silently into the horizon because I didn't feel confident, after reading all the hooha about sheep raters, (people who just copy everyone else), VH whores (a horrible expression that means people that mostly rate VH), etc., and backslapping (although here I never understood the significance until my recent readings on ciao where people were being congratulated for writing what could only be described as “piffle”. I always thought that if someone congratulated you on your writing because it was good, then it was positive, although I now understand why sayings such as these are now seen in a derogatory way.

Then I looked at earnings. Ciao has paid me Five Pounds, and in the same period, Dooyoo has paid me a staggering thirty five pounds for less effort. It occurred to me that if Dooyoo were rewarding me more, then perhaps the site merited more than I was giving to it and for a few weeks, I started looking at the rating system, how it worked, when comments were appropriate, and discovered a whole new world of opinionating, based on a non community platform that was unfamiliar to me.

Ratings.

We all have a choice in what ratings we give reviews, ranging from Not helpful, through to Very helpful. Basically, the rules are simpler than they are on ciao. What we are expected to do, as members, is to rate reviews, basically putting them into stacks, so that the less useful ones are at the bottom and will be removed eventually from the database, and the most useful at the top. Ratings are not about fairness to individuals, but they affect fairness, in that they are a serious reflection of your participation as a member. I chose to read every review written for a couple of weeks, more for convenience than anything else, because there are less reviews to read on Dooyoo than ciao. Less reviews and more time in which to read, lead me to reading a whole cross section of reviews, and here, I found rating perfectly honestly, people actually copied my ratings. Whether they were sincere in their appraisal of reviews is down to each member to decide, and I would not question the authenticity of any one persons' ratings, but knowing from conversations with people who were not perhaps convinced that Dooyoo was for them, many were skimmed, rated like everyone else and not thought any more about.

Basics of choice.

Very helpful – contains everything that you need to know about the product or service.
Helpful - Written in such a way that you have balanced opinion, though perhaps lacking something.
Somewhat Helpful – Here, I had it explained to me that whilst somewhat helpful is the right rating for a review, the help that it offers may be limited, but the fact that it mentions something about the product may actually prove useful to a consumer seeking answers to questions.
Not helpful – Usually here, a review that is off topic or nonsence would fall into this category. To my mind also reviews that are racist or harmful to the public fall in this category too.

Pretty straightforward choices are presented, and in fact the rating system on Dooyoo is easier to understand than it is on Ciao, where that terrible “exceptional” button has been introduced that means nothing, as proven by my review. There are fewer grey areas on Dooyoo and rating is actually super simple, and another thing that I like about rating on Dooyoo is that you never really notice the name of the person that you are rating, and I found that by being completely honest, and not letting the name or “status” of a member get in the way of fair rating, my enjoyment of the site and my involvement in it was fun. In the past, sometimes I had found that going into each member that read me and reading one of their reviews in return lead me to dead ends, that there were never enough reviews to read, and by reading the whole of the new reviews area of the site, I got a better insight to the variety of ratings open to me.

Reading is important on a site like Dooyoo, because no matter how established a member may be, any member can make mistakes, or miss something that you think important about a product from their review. Also by paying particular attention to the subject matter of the review, I found that a few were off topic that others did not find.

I come into contact with a fair few people on the net through my activity on Ciao and Dooyoo and one of the reasons that I found people walked away from giving bad ratings was not wishing to hurt someone's feelings. I understand what those people are saying, and explain that instead of being afraid of hurting feelings, would it not be better to rate honestly, and to write a kind comment explaining why ?

Nominations.

This to me is a serious side of rating. We get the chance, as members, to nominate those reviews that we feel are worthy of a crown. I never used to use the nomination button much. I believed that the site was kind of run by guides and felt uncomfortable nominating, although since reading a good cross section of reviews have the confidence to “put my money where my mouth is” and vote. I believe that members should only use this in the case of exceptional and worthy reviews, and here Dooyoo are to a certain extent in control. Each area has guides that can nominate in their own area of expertise and with new guides that take their roles seriously, as well as responsible members using the nomination button the times are changing. I was pleased that all the reviews I nominated last week were crowned.

One area of rating that leaves question marks but that need not soon is the DVD/Film only sections of dooyoo, but here the rules are simple. If you review a DVD and include your experience of the extras, then the DVD category is the right place. If you review the film without this information, it should be neatly slotted into the VHS category because this is very soon to become a Film only category.

Commenting.

From my experience at Ciao, which is a site that encourages comments by offering hypothetical reward, comments are more frequent on a site like Ciao than they are on a site like Dooyoo, and this saddens me. For a couple of weeks, I went into comment overload and many people said that it wasn't necessary to make so many comments. Not necessary for whom ? I sat back, didn't rate anything for almost a week, came back on the site, and saw that comments were rare, but that guides were making very good comments in an effort to improve the quality of reviews. These are new and enthusiastic guides since the changeover recently, and where a comment had been made that covered everything I had to say in the way of a comment, I simply did not comment, or backed up the guide's comment by saying that following their advice would be a good idea.

My enjoyment of sites like Dooyoo and Ciao are based on the kind of person I am. If I downrate a review, then I feel that as a member, I have a responsibility to leave a comment to the writer saying why. Here again, many criticise this action, though having thought about how much I have tried to please other people on the internet or even to seek approval at times, I came to the conclusion that my participation on sites like Dooyoo is my hobby. If I want to help someone I see as struggling then I shall. People argue that not everyone wants to improve. I find this hard to swallow because I cannot imagine in my life not wanting to improve, and looked at my own life to find answers, and believe it or not there are people that are happy to be mediocre, such as people that I teach that never do homework. They want to say they have french lessons but are not that bothered about actually achieving. Having looked into that side of the way people are didn't make any difference to me in that although they may wish to remain as they are, giving minimal information, if I did not rate and comment upon the low ratings I was giving, I wasn't giving them the chance to improve, and wasn't helping them to develop. With comments, we have a chance to try.

On Ciao the comments got overkilled. Comments that were written for the sake of it didn't help users. Telling people what style of writing they should try doesn't help either, because it stifles the imaginative flow of writers, and I have seen many change their styles in order to conform, and would never want a writer to go down that road. Telling them in a polite way what is missing is something else. The choice is theirs as to whether they edit or not, and here on Dooyoo the incentive is less, as any rating gets paid, but at least by making sensible comments, the message you give is something that the writer concerned will read, and will hopefully add to the experience of a review writer in their next review.

At the end of the day, Dooyoo for me is enjoyment. I like reading reviews on masses of subjects, have learned loads of things since being on opinion sites, and decided that there has to be a line where my enjoyment and the way in which I act on a site like Dooyoo or Ciao has to be just that, i.e. Enjoyment. Since reading from all corners of the site, I believe there is talent out there, waiting to happen, writers to enjoy, communication to be had, and by rating in a responsible manner, commenting where necessary and being totally honest and sincere in my critisism of other people's work, I achieve a balance where I give as much as Dooyoo give me.

Be fair, treat all members the same, and enjoy the experience.

Rachel X

Summary: Give all members an equal chance.