Dooyoo .... Could do better (Frustration with dooyoo)

Member Name: sandemp

Product:	Frustration with dooyoo
Date:	23/07/09 (173 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: I feel a bit better now

Disadvantages: You may not

Although I do enjoy spending time on Dooyoo, reading all the different opinions on how good (or bad) different products and services are and getting paid for sharing my opinion, there are (of course) many aspects of the site that infuriate and frustrate me. While none of these niggles seriously affect me in the grand scheme of things, it is nice to get things of my chest every now and again, and so that's what I'm going to do.

'Churning'

I've got nothing against churning in itself, if a reviewer wants to post 20+ reviews a day, then that's up to them. What I am against is when someone posts 20+ reviews which tell me absolutely nothing about the product or service and then doesn't have the decency to have a look at anyone else's reviews. Now personally, I think that this is Dooyoo's fault, the 50p a review payment has certainly got a lot to answer for. After all, it hardly seems worth the bother to spend time writing an in depth review filled with opinion when in the same timeframe 10-20 150 word reviews could be produced with each of these being paid the same amount. It would be very easy to earn (and I use that in the loosest sense) a fiver in less than an hour so why bother putting some thought into what you're writing.

All these short, virtually unhelpful reviews must be costing Dooyoo a small fortune and not just in the amount they're paying out. Dooyoo makes it's money through advertising and click throughs and I know that if I was researching, say a mobile phone, I would soon just move away from the site if I was faced with countless reviews that said something along the lines of 'G8 fone, really cool'.

So what can Dooyoo do about this? Well personally I think that they could remove the 50p payment and increase the payment per member read to 2p. This would mean that the worst culprits wouldn't be such a drain on the system as they quickly realise that they'll be getting a measly 10p for the 5 reads they get per review (as opposed to the 57.5p they'd get now). As a quick aside, I do like the fact that only the three most recent reviews by any member are shown on the new review list and so that list is not completely dominated by the churners.

'The VU culture'

When I write a review I like to think that I've included all the information and opinion that would make it Very Useful, but this is subjective. There's everything that means I would find it very useful, but I'm well aware that there's probably something missing (or simply too much) for you. So I know that there should a range of rates on every review. So why are there so many reviews that have nothing but VU rates? And why is there sometimes such drivel rated as VU?

It's all down to what I like to call the VU brigade, raters that want to appear to be friendly, or are scared of getting revenge rated or rate on length or just don't bother reading the review. Now don't get me wrong, I do not read the whole of every review I open, if I've opened a review on a book or film and find that I'm being given a blow by blow account then yes I'm going to stop reading, I don't want to be told what's going to happen I want to discover it for myself.

It's not so much the blanket VU rating that frustrates me, it's the fact that if anyone dares to not rate VU then they're treated as if they really don't have a valid point of view. I've had a few really insulting messages over my rates and over the last couple of weeks I've felt that I've had to explain myself so many times that I've ended up putting an explanation of the way I rate into my about me. I'm well aware that there's virtually nothing I can do about this, and I'm not sure that Dooyoo can do that much to change the mindset either. So I'm just going to carry on rating in a way that I feel is fair, ignore the messages from those that don't feel I have a valid point of view and try to educate that Useful is a good rate. Just so you know, I don't mind explaining why I've rated as I have but please respect my point of view.

'Descriptions and Lists'

I think this particular frustration follows on from the previous as a lot of reviewers seem to think that the longer and more in depth a review is the more useful it is. It seems (to me at least) that there are more and more reviews that describe every little thing about the product, by that I mean the packaging, every ingredient, what they were wearing the day they bought it and the whole of the plot. Yes a little background info is useful and there are a few aspects of the packaging it's good to know about (for example if a tin has a ring pull) but this shouldn't take up the majority of the review and certainly shouldn't make it harder to find the actual opinion. Again there's not a lot I can do about this except rate as I feel but there are days when I think if I read just one more description of a box I'm going to scream.

'DVD vs. Film'

This has been a problem on the site for as long as I can remember, someone writes a film-only review but where can they put it? Well, there's not really anywhere on the site for them as all the new movie categories are very clearly labelled as DVD. Imagine you've just watched a film on the TV and are trying to decide whether to buy the DVD (or not), so you go online, search for a review of the DVD and the result page brings you to a review on Dooyoo. On opening the review you read all the way through and find there's no information on the DVD itself, would that be as helpful as a review that covers the DVD and any special features? Personally I don't think so, and that's the sort of person we should be writing reviews for, you know that mythical consumer.

Personally I don't think this is completely the fault of the reviewer, Dooyoo should find a way to differentiate between film-only and DVD reviews. Ciao (Dooyoo's rival) has an option that allows the writer to show which they are reviewing would it be so hard for Dooyoo to have similar. What the reviewer can do is signify whether they are reviewing just the film at the start (or even better in the title) of the review or simply accept that a DVD review that doesn't give any opinion on the actual DVD just isn't as useful to some.

'Suggestions'

I remember when Dooyoo brought out the new method of product suggestion, the fact that I knew where my suggestion was in the list seemed like a great idea. But the trouble is that even though each suggestion is given it's place in the queue, this never changes. My latest suggestion is queued at number 32042 and this figure hasn't changed since I suggested it. Basically the number means absolutely nothing to me, it doesn't tell me how many have to be added before they get to mine and gives me no idea how long it will take to appear on the site. It's useless information, in fact worse than useless, as it's got to be a bit off-putting that it appears there's some 32000 suggestions in front of it in the queue. Yes I know that it's no where nearly that many but will someone who only joined the site today? Come on Dooyoo, either remove that number completely or update it so that we all know where we actually stand.


I could carry on here for hours, but this is getting a bit long. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy spending time here, I just feel that there are times when the whole site gets a bit frustrating and that there's not a lot little old me can do about it. But I do feel a bit better now I've got that off my chest and just maybe, one day, Dooyoo will do something about those frustrations that they can help to ease.

Summary: I get to partake in that great British tradition of moaning