My opinion on Dooyoo... (dooyoo.co.uk in general)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	dooyoo.co.uk in general
Date:	12/01/01 (84 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: helpful advice, free

Disadvantages: slow loading times, wild variations in opinion quality (and reward), some people not mature enough to rate honestly

As a rule, I try not to look at other peoples opinions before I rate something myself. I find that writing my own opinion without being influenced by someone else’s is more likely to end up with points of view that may not have been expressed before rather than points that everyone else has made. This said, I do go back and add, or change my opinions if I think they could be improved.

I think Dooyoo is a great idea – it allows people to get an idea about things before buying them, and with more people writing their opinions, hopefully a clearer picture on a lot of goods and services will come clean. This means that if a person has had a bad time with a good or service, and gives it a bad review, then it can be taken on board but if more people have good reports about the same thing, then it can all be put into perspective.

I have a few problems though. The first is about rating other people’s opinions. Do you rate them according to how useful you yourself find them, or do you rate them according to how useful you think other people might find them? I've seen some reviews where they've been well written, but while I haven't found them to be particularly useful (because of my own knowledge of the subject) I could see how it would be useful to someone else.

Secondly (and this is an idea, don’t slate me for this, I’ve only just thought about it!) should different types of opinion be treated in different ways? The way I see it, Dooyoo contributors are offering a service by relating their experiences of good and services to other people who can then take this information on board before shelling out some hard earned cash. But Dooyoo offers two kinds of opinion – one on goods and services, and another (i.e. Speakers Corner, Top 10 lists etc.) which are just member’s personal preferences. I have no qualms about contributors getting rewarded for providing information on goods and services, but
I think the other type of opinion should be treated differently – it’s always interesting to read other peoples opinions on certain matters, but it is providing a service? As a note, I have submitted some Top 10’s myself.

On thing that I don’t understand is how, or why, some opinions are read more than others – it’s certainly not due to the quality of writing (although with the advent of the premier opinions the better opinions are being read, but a suggestion I have is to organise them (i.e. the premier opinions) by category as with the normal opinions instead of the long list which is currently in operation) I have read plenty of opinions that I thought were perfectly good and informative that hadn’t gotten anywhere near the amount of reads that other, less informative or less well written opinions had received.

Another thing I have noticed is that some products have different paths leading to them. This is a good thing, but maybe there should be more paths leading to a product? As an example, I have been looking through the Computers section recently, reading reviews on 17" monitors. So you go into monitors, and in the top level you're given a list of sizes and manufacturers. I clicked on 17", and lo and behold, I was given another list of manufacturers. Would it not have been better in this case to arrange them in some other order e.g. price? The users could browse looking for 17" monitors, and choose whether to look at <£150, £151-£300 and >£300.

A few minor points are that there should be more top-level categories, so that browsing to what you want is a lot easier, and I think contributors should be paid for non-members reading their work, even if it’s only, say, half of what you get for members reading it.

I only use the internet from home with a 56k connection, and unfortunately, this can prove to be woefully underpowered for trying to connect to Dooyoo.
This can seriously hamper my Dooyoo-ing to be totally honest. There are times when the system is so slow that I don’t bother rating opinions, or writing comments, or even writing opinions – maybe the team are working on this now, or am I an isolated case?

A good point about using Dooyoo is that sometimes you get lots of feedback – I recently wrote my first, and hopefully, not last Premier opinion (now at 4!!! Woohoo!), and I’ve been getting lots of encouragement and feedback from the people who have read it.

I also like the way you can see what other contributors have written opinions on, and the fact that you can have circles of friends so that it is easier to see how many people have read your opinions, and a large number of people who trust you would indicate that your opinions are generally good and hit the mark, although this is open to abuse.

I also like the way that it is continuously being tweaked, and that with each tweak it gets better, and not worse.

Generally, I think it’s an excellent idea and is getting better all the time! Keep up the good work guys! (And that goes for you contributors as well!)

**Update**
Since I have written this, I have gone back to university (Boo!) with its' high bandwidth backbone (Hooray!) which makes Dooyoo-ing that much more enjoyable. However, I have come across a lot of "opinions" of goods and services which have simply not enough information in them to be called opinions. Rating these as SU or NU (and leaving a comment explaining why) is just inciting people to accuse me of being a plant by (insert name of good or service here) to beef up its' reputation.

Dooyoo, over the last few months has re-jigged its' reward system (gerneally to the tune of us members getting less miles per opinion / read opinion)- now with more and more people joining Dooyoo, and writing opinions, should the Dooyoo administrators be more str
ict about what opinions are getting posted? This would have the benefit of increasing the quality of writing, and hopefully cutting down on those who are simply in it for the Dooyoo miles. Maybe it's time to rejig the opinion criteria, or even up the minimum word count to 100 or more words?

There are some accusations of empty accounts being created by some members to rate other peoples opinions as "Not Useful" and to bump up their own reads and reputations - maybe a new clause which means new members are not able to rate opinions until they have written say, 5 opinions themselves?

The over riding thing in Dooyoo though, should be honesty. If you rate (and write) honestly, then it shouldn't matter what your rating of someones opinion is. Although if you are rating honestly, I suspect you will more than likely leave a comment explaining why you did so! I know I do.

I think that perhaps a more sophisticated rating system as hinted at above should be developed and implemented. If Dooyoo wants its' members to write the highest quality opinions that they can, then maybe it's time that they were a lot more picky when it comes to passing opinions for posting, as well as taking a lot more interest in things like tit for tat NU ratings (which I have suffered rom myself recently *sigh*).

Another point I noticed is the standard of grammar and spelling - while some typos and grammatical (sp?) errors are to be expected, they can (and should) be fixed by the "change your opinion" link on the opinion page.

Summary: