Hey Mr Cat! Come Up and Meet The Pigeons..... (dooyoo Abuse)

Member Name: plipplop

Product:	dooyoo Abuse
Date:	18/03/09 (369 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Abuse is often a source of great amusement...

Disadvantages: ....but has the potential for long-term damage

Sadly, there are times when using this site can be a little tiresome. For me, the tiresome bit often starts when I log in and finishes when I log out, generally in a big old huffy huff. It's a sweeping generalisation, I know, but good golly Miss Molly, I have to wonder whether ANYBODY reads ANYTHING on this site anymore.

I refer you, dear reader, to Dooyoo rule number 4, recently published to glowing effect with a lovely, thoughtful-looking lady on the homepage. Said lovely lady tells us:

"4. Rate reviews honestly, and read all reviews properly before making your rating."

I would estimate that on average about 10% of members do this consistently. No more. So what do the other 90% do, I hear you ask in a slightly nervous fashion?

There are two types of member here on Dooyoo. There are those who read reviews and generally navigate their way around the site. There are also those who click buttons to earn money. The two are, generally, entirely separate from one another. I like to call the latter group "up-raters", largely because it sounds clever, don't you think?

It's astounding that people are so desperate for 1.5p (yes, dear non-member reader, that's one and a half new pence) that they are intent on getting their rating on every review in site in the vain hope that they will get a rating (and therefore one and a half new pence) in return. So desperate are these individuals for an income that I can only surmise that they have sold their shoes and pimped their children to a life of prostitution in order to keep food on the table and found that it's STILL not enough. After all, for every 100 times that they click that very useful button, the very maximum that they will earn in return is 100 reciprocal very useful ratings, which will equate to £1.50. What could you buy for £1.50? Not a lot. 15 packets of Tesco Value noodles, perhaps? A few first class stamps? Certainly not, from the looks of it, an ounce of integrity or a sense of community well-being.

It's not a new problem. It's been around since the site started but of late it's becoming increasingly problematic.

But would you like to know something really, really funny? Come closer, dear reader, and I shall whisper in your ear.

They're gradually condemning this site to the big recycle bin in the sky. Yes, that's right, this kind of sustained behaviour will, eventually, result in the death of Dooyoo. "How's that?" I hear you ask amidst the clicking of very useful buttons in multiple windows. Well, it's like this you see.

A web site is only as good as its content. Dooyoo accepts thousands and thousands of reviews every week and (allegedly) millions of people are reading them. Those people are looking for informative, useful reviews that reflect genuine consumers saying genuine things about genuine products. They're not necessarily looking for War and Peace, nor do they need a masterpiece in written English but they do want mobile phone reviews that talk about, for example, mobile phones or reviews of things they can eat that don't spend four days talking about the box, the barcode and the lovely picture on the front. As such, the Dooyoo community has a responsibility to accurately rate every review to ensure that the best ones get rated very useful, down to the absolute clag that gets rated with a not useful button. (You probably won't be aware of it. It's near the very useful one. Yes, that's right. It's the one that won't get you 1.5p in return.)

"What difference does this make?" I hear you ask, between copying and pasting the word nominated in multiple comment boxes in multiple windows. Well, you see the overall rating of a product review is calculated by the average of all the ratings awarded by members. Yes, that's right! When you click very useful, something happens. Woohoo! As such, to the genuine consumer, the product reviews will be ordered by usefulness. In simple terms, the consumer will get what we say are the best ones first (or at the top of the list anyway).

"What happens if they get the bad ones?" I hear you ask amidst the deafening sound of the words "great review!" being typed into those comment boxes. Well, if they read a bad one, they think "sod this, it's a load of old wiffle" and go elsewhere and (sob!) they don't come back. Worse still, they tell at least five of their friends, who never come here in the first place. This means that, not only will Elise (the site support manager) not get paid that week (and she has a family of nineteen children, you know) but the site has decreasing traffic. Decreasing traffic means no income. No income means you don't get paid anymore. Gosh! I make it sound so gloomy, don't I?

"Who cares?" cry the hordes of Money Saving Expert members who dashed over to pay off their overdraft and the deluges of our friends from overseas.

"As long as I get my £10 Amazon Voucher within three weeks, I can bugger off and let everyone else worry about it", they say.

(Or "so long as am very happy that Amazon specification ticket meets beautiful design on account of my bank be anally-loving away with anywhoo want challenge me///" as a certain demographic might say.)

Sigh. Yes. That's one way of looking at it, I suppose. Thanks. That's very community-minded. It's nice to meet you too. See you on the way out.

It's perfectly acceptable to rate less than very useful, you know. You don't have to be unfriendly. You can say something nice and still rate something as somewhat useful. There's nothing wrong with being honest. Who knows? It might catch on. ("Yeah, right!" they all said as they clattered away the words "Excellent review, nom!" in their various windows.)

It's also perfectly acceptable to be in it for the money. Why not? It's just that this doesn't have to be at the expense of the welfare of the site. Everyone gets their 50p for writing a review. You stil get the 1.5p even if you get a Not Useful rating. It can't be THAT much of a hardship to be honest too, right?

All that aside, for the 10% who do give a tom tit there are some steps that can be taken. They will make you neither popular nor rich, but at the very least you can say you had some kind of principles.

1. Avoid people you see serially up-rating reviews. They're only here for those shiny half pennies. Deny them of the money. They might need to throw another armchair on the bonfire but that's not your responsibility.

2. Report the serial up-raters to the site support team. It IS abuse and if they're prolific, they CAN be expelled from the site.

3. Challenge ratings you find unacceptable. They won't like it when you do it, but leave them a message and ask why they felt that the 150 word review on Mars Bars that was actually about crotchless cycling shorts was very useful.

4. Continue to rate honestly yourself and explain why. Nominate the right reviews for crowns and email the Dooyoo support team against reviews that have been heavily up-rated that you believe should NOT be awarded a crown. They do listen. Really.

I should also like to make the point that I don't think it should be necessary for the site support team to make changes to the site to try and curb this behaviour. There is no technical solution to this. This is a behavioural issue and needs to be addressed by a large group of individuals reviewing their behaviour NOT suggesting that there is some clever technical workaround.

And now a warm welcome back to all those who skimmed after paragraph one.

Let me summarise for you as follows:

1 Up-rating is abuse and can be treated as such.

2. Up-rating is the single most damaging form of abuse that takes place on this site. Plagiarists are easily spotted and quickly removed. Up-rating is deeper-rooted and a systemic problem. Consider it the fatty stuff that's clogging up the arteries at the heart of Dooyoo.

3. Up-rating is really, truly sad. Please have a word with yourself about whether you would like your children to remember you for contributing to the demise of the UK's only really useful consumer database.

4. Remember (cue spooky voice) "weeeeeee're watching yoooooooooooou!"

5. Now close the other twenty windows you've got open and read this review properly.

Footnote to the anal: Some of you will say that this hardly merits the effort of writing a whole review. You are absolutely correct. In the grand scheme of things, nothing about Dooyoo has any merit when you consider the plight of orangutans, the state of the British economy and the price of organic bacon. But that's a cop out. If something's worth doing, it's worth doing properly. Well, that's what I think anyway.

Summary: Comply or deny - the choice is yours.