Im a millionaire! (dooyoo Rewards System)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	dooyoo Rewards System
Date:	03/10/09 (135 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: We enjoy our winnings

Disadvantages: But share em out dooyoo!

Just got my one millionth dooyoo mile!

Dooyoo has recently printed a pointer on the community page on how we should read and rate reviews, presumably to help us crown more, coming up with his bizarre 95% of all rates are Very Useful stat. I get 95% Very Useful rates and I'm pretty sure everyone else doesn't.

It seems some members are being lazy and rating back the same rate. I always understood that wasn't allowed and was cartel behaviour and so wouldn't be tolerated. Apparently not.

The real problem with rates seems to be that the whole site makes its money on that clicking volume and routine and so accidentally encourages speed and cartel rating by many members and so something dooyoo can't escape. It is the elephant in the room. Technically we cant help breech that at some point. Effectively someone has to or the site won't function. It has to be busy and vibrant here with clicks and rates. When the site is quiet you have to rate a lot to get any sort of rightful return on your work for the effort detail you have put into it. It's the nature of the beast here. We are not trying to get one over just make the site function.

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Bits of Dooyoos recent statement...

* For important points*

'Think about it: which reviews that you've read would ***help you the most to reach a well informed purchasing decision****? Is the review clearly structured, thorough, and interesting? Does it cover the author's own, personal experience and opinion? Does it summaries the author's thoughts of the product overall and give a clear indication to the reader about whether the product is worth the effort? *** Or is the review missing one of these key facets? ***

"***Write the reviews you would want to read***. Think about what would be important to you in a review of the product you're reviewing, if you were trying to decide whether or not to buy it. Read carefully and rate honestly. ***Think about what you would want to know about the product before you decided whether or not to buy it***. Does the review cover all your questions? Your decision should be based entirely on these factors, not what other dooyooers have rated the review or what you think of the reviewer's other reviews, and certainly not what the reviewer has rated your reviews in the past. Reward quality reviews with the top dooyoo rating.

We know there a lot of excellent reviews on the site and we want those reviews to stand out and for excellence to be rewarded - we here at dooyoo HQ do that with Crowns.

- Your dooyoo Team

Ok, in a perfect world we would all adhere to the above, as ambiguous as it is. But we don't because this is not a tight community and we are ultimately pitted against each other to win the big awards. If you nominate another review in the section you have just written in you are effectively decreasing your own chances of a crown that week.

This time last year I was getting one-in-seven of my reviews crowned, it's now down to one-in-fifty! So that brings me nicely on to guides and crowns, of course. Well it wouldn't be a devil review without the crowns and guides would it!

Firstly I have seen countless movie reviews crowned that don't include the special features that I know that are on the DVDs in question. To me just listing the extras is enough because at least we know what's on the product. If you buy a DVD that's been on TV you often get it for the audio commentary or the extras. No one expects you to watch the special features in our busy lives. But to quote the above dooyoo rules to earn Crowns you must include...

*** Or is the review missing one of these key facets? ***

I think we should expect members to include special features if they are there and if you don't then the review should not crown as it contravenes a core requirement. I don't like listing them but I do, if just to try and push myself to the head of the queue when movie crowns are handed out, surely the point of dooyoos statement on requirements in reviews. We have a good idea who will crown every week and I am to beat those guys and girls. It's all you can do. Detail and opinion are important in film reviews. I used to get one-in-three of my film reviews crowned in the glory days but now its one every two months if I'm lucky. How did I get that bad? I didn't, Ok, I had a recent suspension for a comment that was misinterpreted by some members. But one crown since seems rough punishment. Why are crowns still linked to the member not the quality? I take the above dooyoo statement with a pinch of salt because it doesn't mention the sites politics.

Another thing that bugs me is reviews are getting crowned on the day they are posted up. Tuesday is that day and some had just 5 or 6 rates when they were crowned. They were on site maybe 10 to 30 minutes. Did dooyoo apply the above rules and guide to them then? Do dooyoo have a criterion to crown that's not included in those above rules? People on the message boards talk about 'keywords' that pop up on Google and help bring people on to the site. Should we be stuffing our reviews with those instead?

A corresponding review that has been up all week obeying the rules accruing rates and nominations from the community is not awarded a crown for being just as good if not better than one there for twenty minutes?

So knowing that possible loop-hole I thought I would have a crack and put my review up Monday night for Dan Browns latest book, 'The Lost Symbol', and try and nick a cheap crown. I mean you can't get more Google popular than Mr Brown right now! No luck. If you want to have ago yourself then feel free. AT least take a look at the crown list for next Tuesday and make up your own minds if it's cool that reviews can crown with little or no community support. Would it be best if reviews posted up Tuesday morning should be eligible only for next week's crowns? I have had this debate on the message boards but you just get shouted down. I also feel it's about time crown nominations were listed under reviews (you get shouted down for that too). They do this on ciao with the 'E' button and it works well and encourages members to go chasing rates rather than settle for cheap rate backs. The best reviews clearly stand out. I believe with ciao that their rating system of different colour buttons, accrued through community points and quality time on site, means rating from higher ranked members are worth more. It's very clearly defined on Ciao when members are writing reviews for Pearls and Diamonds (their crowns) and when they are just churning out garbage. You may not agree with some members writing style but if the review is good it's good. Dooyoo seem to be saying they don't trust their own rating system anymore and will over ride the community and award the crowns to reviews they think are best.

The most absurd waste of money on dooyoo is paying royalties to reviews that remain unrated. Yep, when you click on the churn and realise its just churn and then back click to read another review that member gets paid. Why not reinvest that substantial amount of money over the year on giving more crowns! And why no speaker's corner, err....sorry, "Dooyoo Lounge" crowns these days? Books and music is sewn up by the same old faces as far as crowns go and so speaker's corner was a big earner for others crown wise. If dooyoo aren't dumping it and in fact re-launching the section then maybe that suggests it's popular and maybe dooyoo should back it up and start awarding crowns for it again as that popularity is clearly not going to go away. We don't mind not getting paid for those crowns but just want to feel like the time we spent on reviews (and getting around the fact hyperlinks still don't wont work on dooyoo to support our arguments) is worth it and hope that churn is not how dooyoo want to make their money for those pure advertising hits.

I think the rewards as they stand are fair, no other sites paying that money. The Amazon vouchers are about right at £20 claim and the cash excellent. They are taking a long time for cheques to get out because of the postal strike but also because of other reasons. If you do want them to hurry things up so you can get your Christmas order in now at Amazon in time to deliver before Christmas (ho ho) it is worth emailing their German address. It's worked for me once.

Pretty much all members have seen a drop in crowns (some more than others) as we bottom out in the recession. The guides have not seen a big a fall though. In fact I'm writing this review because they are back over 50 out of every 250, a percentage where I think where it looks biased towards guides and so looks bad and so triggers my whinging reviews. Now I need to say at this point it's nothing to do with the guide's quality of work or voting for each other or anything conspiratorial like that. They always accuse me of that but it's never my point. It's to do with dooyoo backing their guides, simple as. Some guides are cool and only tell you off when you need to be. Some guides are bossy and uncompromising. Some you don't notice. The ones to be wary of are the ones that buy the legendry dooyoo T-Shirt with their first rewards pay check and wear it proudly when they rate. What I don't like are the 'snitch members. These members don't rate your work, don't comment on your work but just report it for tiny little discrepancies, discrepancies that add up in dooyoos little black book, but things that can be sorted with a quick private message here, the words deleted in your review if not fair comment in the work.

Two weeks ago I had a film review locked for using the eff word in a Brian Clough quote without putting in the asterix. Why didn't the film guide or any of the guides tell me about my mistake? The first I hear about it is it's locked, presumably another lost crown. When I did my World Athletic Championship review and posted it in the 'General Sports and Comments' slot I thought I was doing dooyoo a favour by not asking to put up a new category that no one else would probably write in. A guide got it locked and it's still locked now. It just feels picky.

In the spirit of Dan Browns latest code breaker and Derren`s latest botched trick,17 is the number of crowns guides have accrued between them for each of the last 4 weeks. Last week's crowns it was 17 from 72 crowned reviews and the week before 17 from 82 reviews. Intriguingly the 17th crown is always awarded the morning of crowning day. It's like they have to have 17.lol. Last week only four guides who wrote a review failed to crown. The week before it was also four and so on. But the four who didn't crown that week who did write the week before did crown. To complete the 'Lost' style intrigue six guides haven't written a review each of those four weeks, but different guides of course, that last bit totally irrelevant but nice for the equation. Just as '42' was the secret of Douglas Adams universe who knows what '17-4-6' can unlock on dooyoo!

A qucik 'google' reveals the King James Bible chapter of 17:4-6. It reads:

'And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication.

And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH'.

Try it next Tuesday guys! (Queue the X-Files theme tune!).There's nothing in it but its fun. Again most of us writing for crowns or recognition on dooyoo put a lot of work into our reviews and we need to know we count. We can't just be dismissed because of personalities and our opinions. Surely three 150 word reviews are worth less to dooyoo then our longer, detailed and researched reviews that fore fill the dooyoo pledge.

Dooyoo say not enough of us are pressing the nomination button either and it's rational to calculate the guides are the ones pressing the nomination button the most as they read all the reviews in their bit, and it's their job. I make between twenty and thirty noms a week on who I think the best reviews are, rather than the reviews I think will crown. A lot of my picks win crowns. There was gossip on one of the message boards that it's hard to crown without a guides nomination these days. I can understand why dooyoo may be doing this to back their guides up but that means you may have to suck up to the guides. I think. I have gone past that point. Lol.

Anyone who wants to have their say freely on any of the issues on dooyoo is welcome to join a rebooted message board called 'Dooyoo Lovers'. It's very open and not you're normal stuffy board full of bossy boots adhering to all the rules. The board needs new members as they have lots of vacancies now. lol.

http://dooyoo.forumotion.net/forum.htm

In the interest of balance if you want the more formal message board full of guides and rules then dooyoo den is the place. Dooyoo lover's intention is apparently to offer an alternative.

Summary: Breezes