How I Rate Reviews (dooyoo - Members' Opinions On How to Rate And Comment)

Member Name: Brooke3

Product:	dooyoo - Members' Opinions On How to Rate And Comment
Date:	06/03/09 (304 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Honest rating benefits dooyoo

Disadvantages: Most people rate everything as very useful

Usually I don't write more than one review in a day. I return every rate that I recieve and try to read a lot of other reviews too so I just don't have time to write more than one review every couple of days. However, I'm making an exception (and my rates will probably suffer for it) because dooyoo for me recently has become a much less pleasant place to be for the simple reason that I stopped rating everything as very useful.
It's amazing how much offence people take when you don't consider every review they write to be very useful.
This experience has made me really think about how people rate reviews and I think half of the problem is that there are too many people out there who rate everything as very useful. It's got to the point where if something is rated as useful then people think that it's a bad rating.
So, I'm going to write about how I rate things. I don't think that everyone should do their rates based on my criteria, what's very useful to me might not be useful to you. I think the important thing is to respect that people have different opinions and that they're all valid.

But anyway, my opinions on how to rate and comment...

-Rating-
This for me depends entirely on the category.
In general if I like a review and thought that the information provided was useful then it will automatically get a useful rating. If I thought that it was exceptional then I will rate it as very useful. Most reviews aren't exceptional, most reviewers can't write exceptional reviews every time (although a few can), this doesn't mean that the review wasn't good or useful.
If I feel that a very important piece of information was missed out or if there is very little information but what is there is useful then I will rate as somewhat useful.
Not useful for me is exactly that, there wasn't anything useful about the review.
I don't often judge the grammatical or spelling mistakes of people (the gods know that I'm not perfect) but if it is so bad that I find it difficult to read then I will rate down on spelling and grammar.

-Film/T.V Programme.
A useful film review for me would first of all have to have a synopsis. I don't need to know every detail of the plot or have a list of characters but I do need to know roughly what the film is about. Then I need to know if the film was good or bad and I need to know why. The why to me is very important. Just because you like a film doesn't mean that I will. For example you could say that you loved a film because it was full of violence and had some really gory scenes. This would tell me that I would hate that film because I can't stand violence. I don't agree with your opinion but it makes the review useful to me.

-Books-
For me rating books is very similar to rating films. I want a synopsis and I want to know why you thought the book was good or bad. Additionally with books I like to know about the writing style. Was it easy to read or a little bit taxing? Was it written in first person or third person? Does the writer express herself clearly?

-Speakers Corner-
To me it doesn't matter if I agree or disagree with the point of view of the review. In my opinion it's always useful to read about a point of view that is different to your own because it makes you consider other angles. I actually usually prefer to read about opinions that I don't agree with for this reason (I won't rate you down if I agree with you either!)
If a review is entirely opinion then unless grammar is exceptionally bad i will rate it as useful because everyone's opinions are useful, even if they are different to my own. There are of course some exceptions to this. If someone wrote an opinion promoting violence or racism etc. then I would consider that to be not useful and would also report it to dooyoo.
However, if your opinion piece is a mixture of opinion and information then the rating is slightly more complicated.
I think that a review can only be somewhat useful if you don't include references. In order to judge the usefulness of information provided it's important to know where you're getting your information (information found in the Daily Mail is probably a lot less accurate than information found in an academic journal).
The rating I give is also very much dependant on how much I know about a subject. If I am knowledgable on a subject and know that you have missed out a lot of information or your information is misleading then I will rate down because of it.

-Everything Else-
For everything else for a review to be useful to me it would have to include enough information for me to decide if I want to use that product. If I need to look up information somewhere else before deciding if I want to use it then that is only somewhat useful, in my opinion.

-Comments-
I don't always comment to explain my rating, I don't think that's the point of the comment feature. Sometimes i will comment but only if I have something constructive to say.

This is all of course only my opinion and I don't expect other people to rate using the same criteria. What I do expect is for people to respect that I rate as I see fit. You are not in a position to tell me what is useful to me and what isn't, just as I can't tell you in this review what you should consider useful or not useful.

Summary: My opinion