Dear All

It saddens me to read some of these so called "reviews." I get the feeling some people are abusing this excellent section and are using it solely as a traffic generation tool. Please I will mention no names and throw no stones.

Write 3 "dubious reviews" ... post your link and ask for some reviews .. bingo free traffic.

Please is anyone else getting that feeling lately? Or is it just me.

I would like to call for some changes. Could we look at introducing a "standardised review form" that the reviewer must complete. Could I suggest this may have two possible advantages.

1/ We hopefully get better desired reviews.
2/ We should possibly get more reviews by providing default guidelines to the reviewer.

Possibly even this form could provide provisions for the reviewer to provide there credentials. For example someone who owns a top quality template site reviewing your template would carry extra weight in my point of view.

Regards

Micmol

I would like to point out one little thing about the dubious reviews. These kinds of reviews are filtered out when Advisors validate the threads in the queue, so it is not an easy way to get a website reviewed. All insufficient reviews are not counted towards the total of three needed reviews.

However, you do raise some interesting points .

Hi Micmol,

Thanks for writing to us about this. It's a subject I'm quite interested in.

We currently have a system which is designed to prevent spam in the Website Reviews forum, and by and large this system works.

There is a problem of poor reviews, I agree. However, ultimately nobody gets to post until they've made three good reviews.

We don't let people give three "dubious reviews". The reviews given must be helpful, and in-depth. We enforce this by moderating the reviews queue. A person simply cannot post until an advisor has decided his 3 reviews are detailed enough.

The traffic a person gets as a result of posting in the reviews queue doesn't stick. The people will visit your site briefly, give you a review, and leave. The time and effort taken giving 3 reviews to other sites is not worth the amount of traffic you will receive by posting in the reviews queue and the low probability of any of that traffic sticking. The main benefit of posting a site for review is the reviews you will receive.

We already provide guidelines for giving a good review. It is in the thread called "Before You Ask for a Review... Read this." There is one comment by me and one by Overgrow. Both of them give good advice about giving reviews.

If you have some more advice about giving good reviews, feel free to submit it to us and we can put in into that same thread, if you like. They're lots of different types of reviews and I think people need the freedom to write what they think is appropriate, rather than answering a set of fixed questions.

If you feel that somebody has his post made visible in error, ie he has given insufficient or poor reviews, please contact an advisor. We have the power to hide his thread again until he satisfies the requirements.

Cheers,

You've definitely got a point, but even those threads can offer some insight into web design and development, so they're not all Eeee-Vill.

What I find to be more offensive are some of the threads in the business/promo/marketing areas (generally) that are thinly-veiled marketing gimmicks or attempts at market research by spammers.

Dear Gentlemen

I must confess I have enjoyed reading the "Website Reviews forum." However, saying this at times I'm not convinced that some of the reviewers have the authority to make some of their claims.

I want to throw no stones and will not pick on any individuals, except myself. I have refrained in the past from commenting on site design. IMHO a review from me on site design would be the same as asking George W Bush to make comments on chess.

I always take the view by sheer definition a review is a self opinionated appraisal or evaluation. However, here if the review lacks genuine knowledge in the given field however commands the ability to sting a few sentences together - Does this then become a "review"? Well, yes by sheer definition it does. However, by value and assistance to the website designer it does not.

I then accept that reviews can be moderated. However, here surely the censors primary role is to eliminate rubbish in the literary sense and not in the factual sense.

I must then ask what are some peoples motivations to seek or to review another website. I concede my assertion that it was a mere traffic generation tool may be wrong.

Thanking you for allowing me to voice my opinion.

Kind Regards

Micmol

When you are user testing a website, you want ordinary people, not experts, to use your website and try to spot problems.

The idea that ordinary people aren't qualified to give a review that is in any way helpful is a bit harsh. Somebody is qualified to give a helpful review, no matter what their expertise, if any.

What did you have in mind, as a solution to this problem? That users without adequete experience in a certain field are barred from giving reviews, or instructed on what to write? I say people must give their true opinion, and only their opinion.

Getting a review from someone who doesn't know what they're talking about is unavoidable in life, but it doesn't mean that what they say is worthless. Their opinion counts.

I'm not sure which other motivation you may be referring to. Probably a common motivation for reviewing somebody else's website is that they want their own website to be reviewed. That is entirely the point of our current system. Before the system was invoked, reviews at all were rare. Now, most threads get at least 4 or 5 responses to them.

Someone (in another thread) has suggested that a possible motivation for reviewing somebody's site is to increase post count. Is this what you're referring to? This could well be occuring.

However, this isn't a problem specific to the reviews forum. All our forums (except general chat forums) have this problem. It isn't a large problem, as we're good at cutting back on spam at SitePointForums.

PS. do let me know what specific examples you're talking about. In private, if you like. If you're not happy with the behaviour of a certain member, you can always report it to an advisor. We're quite happy to discuss things with members in private.