Dooyoo get annoyed by these too? (Frustration with dooyoo)

Member Name: SWSt

Product:	Frustration with dooyoo
Date:	07/08/09 (103 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Dooyoo is a great site and I enjoy contributing

Disadvantages: Churners, lack of transparenct over Crowns, obsessions with photographs

Most of the time, I really enjoy contributing to Dooyoo - both writing my own reviews and reading those written by other members. There are a number of things which frustrate me, though and Friday afternoon seems as good a time as any to get them off my chest. I promise to try and avoid ranting!

1. Churners
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When Dooyoo switched to its new rewards system a while back, I expressed concern that rewarding posting at a higher value than reading would lead to quantity over quality. I was hoping to be proved wrong, but no sooner did you get 50p for posting reviews and only 1.5p for a review read, there was a flood of uninformative, minimum-word reviews and it's still the case today.

I'm not knocking or discouraging new members - they are essential for the site to remain fresh. Nor am I suggesting that they should instantly be writing brilliant reviews. It takes time to learn how to write for Dooyoo (some of my first reviews were pretty rubbish). However, for every one member that successfully becomes a fully fledged member of the site and contributes great reviews, there are 10 who think Dooyoo is a quick ticket to the Times Rich List. They spam the site with loads of short, badly written reviews in a short period of time, don't return rates and then realise how long it will take to get rich on Dooyoo Miles and disappear forever.

There's a potential a negative knock-on effect for genuine new members who want to become a part of the site. Now, when I see that "New Members" text under someone's icon, I'm suspicious of what I'm going to read and that never used to be the case.

Until recently, I would just go to the Newest Reviews list, start at the top and work my way down, reading each one in turn. This meant that all members, old and new, had the same chance of having their review read and rated by me. Sure, there were some duff ones, but they weren't as numerous and I discovered some great new writers this way.

Now I impose a few rules, since I've got seriously fed up of trawling through uninformative, barely intelligible reviews. If I notice a new member who has posted several reviews in a short space of time, I don't read any of them. Similarly, if the title of your review is simply the name of the product, you're reviewing I'll probably skip it too - experience has shown that (as a general rule), if you can't be bothered thinking of a more imaginative title for your review, there's probably just as little effort gone into the review itself.

I know that's maybe a little subjective and there are notable exceptions. However, at the end of the day, I've got limited amounts of time to read reviews, and I want to read the ones which will help me as a consumer. Equally, I know that Dooyoo has always had a problem with "write and run" merchants, but it has definitely got worse since the new system came into place.

2. Crowns
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For me, the joy of writing for Dooyoo comes in honing my writing skills and writing reviews which people will hopefully find entertaining and/or useful (preferably both!). The monetary reward I get is handy, but of secondary value.

It is always nice to get Crowns, though, as this is effectively a mark of respect. I do wish, though, that Dooyoo wouldn't be so secretive about how Crowns are awarded. I understand that some information has to be withheld, since otherwise people would try to exploit the system, but it would be nice to have general information on what is crown-worthy. At the moment we're just told it's "an outstanding review", whatever that means. Who judges it? What criteria are used to define outstanding? What weighting does the opinion of ordinary users/number of nominations/opinions of Guides etc. have in the process? I'm not going to go on about this too much, as Plipplop said it all extremely well in a recent review. But when even a Guide doesn't know exactly what the process is, it suggests it is somewhat less than transparent.

Let me put this in practical terms. My hit rate for crowns has gone down massively over the last 6 months. It used to be that around 3 out of every 5 of my reviews got a Crown. Now, it's down to about 1 in every 10. Partly this can be accounted for by the fact that I've started writing outside my traditional categories (books and film), but even here I'm getting fewer Crowns.

Dooyoo claim nothing has changed, but I know I'm not the only one to notice this trend. If it's down to the world recession and the need to cut back, why not tell us? Most members would prefer to receive fewer Crowns but see Dooyoo continue than see the site pay out beyond its means and die. If it's for other reasons, tell us.

(Note: this is purely to illustrate my point and not a moan about the number of Crowns I get. As I said at the start, I enjoy writing for Dooyoo and whether or not I get a Crown isn't going to have any influence)

Aside from anything else, greater transparency of the Crown process would stop some of the silly accusations that Guides get them all, or that you can only win a Crown if the Guide for that particular category likes you.

3. Photographs
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What is Dooyoo's current obsession with real Member photographs? According to various news items over the last few months, if I don't have one, I can't be highlighted as a Top Reviewer in a particular category, appear in Dooyoo's Trusted Reviewers list (although they appear to have softened on this a little) or be featured on the Dooyoo Loves... section on the home page.

Could someone please explain to me the relationship between the presence of a photograph and the quality of a review? Plenty of my favourite reviewers don't have a photo and their reviews are uniformly excellent.

Dooyoo's justification for this is that people "like to know the reviews are written by real people and not robots". Well, call me old-fashioned, but I don't think we're yet at the stage where computers can adopt the very different style and tone used by the various writers on the site. If you can't tell these reviews are all written by "real people", then you're probably not ready for this advanced level of consumer research yet.

I have no problems at all with people using photographs if they want to, but others should not be marginalised because they don't want to splash their face all over the internet. There are perfectly legitimate reasons why people don't want a personal photo appearing, and these don't in any way detract from the value of their contributions. I'm registered on plenty of other "community sites" like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and none of them exclude me from parts of the site because there is no photo.

Moreover, my little four-eyed monkey next to my username IS my online identity (just ignore those cruel people who say it's actually a pretty good likeness anyway). It's the avatar I use on pretty much every community site, forum and message board I contribute to. The chances are if you see that picture next to a posting, it's from me. I want it to be the same on Dooyoo, but I resent the fact that my contributions won't get as much recognition for reasons which have nothing to do with the quality of my writing.

Maybe I should just scan some random photograph from a magazine and pretend it's me. After all, who's going to know? But I prefer to be honest (that is, after all, what this site is all about), and it looks like the consequence of that honesty is an ineligibility to be recognised as a valued contributor

Phew! That did become a bit of a rant, after all. These may seem like petty things to you, but I'm glad to have got them off my chest. I feel much better now and can approach the weekend in a more relaxed frame of mind.

© Copyright SWSt 2009

Summary: They may annoy me, but they won't stop me reading, writing and rating!