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Originally Posted by Derby
J2O is a site where users can review content with valid opinions. An opinion is never wrong. An opinion, however, is invalid if it has no support whatsoever.
That said, the quality of many of the reviews on J2O is excruciatingly dismal and the invalidity of the opinions disallows the respective reviews to warrant an actual rating.
Those who submit poor reviews have no excuse at all for posting poor reviews. He or she only has to ask him or herself a few questions and submit a minimum of three to five well-developed sentences to support his or her opinion.
The following is what one could ask him or herself to help justify his or her review:
1. If someone were to read my review, would he or she be able to determine that I have actually evaluated the content thoroughly?
2. Do I have a solid statement about the content?
3. Do I have sufficient evidence to support that statement?
4. Does my explanation for the evidence's correlation to the statement effectively support my conclusion about the content?
5. Is the statement in my review justified by the support? What can I add if it is not justified?
These questions are already integrated into various reviewers' thinking processes. If one finds his or her reviews constantly having his or her ratings removed, he or she better believe that he or she can strongly answer with "no" to one of the questions above.
Users really should not have to write too much about the content that they are reviewing because they have other things to do and cannot make the full-time commitment to J2O that some think they can. On the other hand, users should not be able to write off or praise another user's hard work with just a few unsupported statements. One would be right to say that opinions are never wrong, but he or she would be illogical to say that they are always valid.
I do not necessarily represent the views of J2O's administration or any of J2O's individual reviewers. In my opinion, the removal of older reviews' ratings was not a good idea because the general opinion had been established by many other reviews of the same content in the past; also, the users were not under the same magnitude of enforcement of the rules. However, J2O's administration has still been relatively lenient in the removal of ratings if one considers the fact that various monitored reviews would get negative responses with the questions above.
The writing of reviews does not have to be systematic, but the enforcement of the rules does. This issue is nowhere near as big as it has been made out to be, but it does need to be addressed more systematically.
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I do not agree with this post at all. On the contrary.
You've got a nice argument but it is only valid if the point of the site is just rating levels instead of a
community site. Yes, so many reviews are not really helpful. They don't have to be in my opinion, that's only what we prefer, but it's not compulsory. The site is not just for the creators of levels, it's for the reviewers, too.
It's like a restaurant. The admins are the owners. Now, they could have this policy where everyone who wants to eat in the restaurant has to wear very shiny and high-quality clothes, but that way the restaurant would become so formal they would barely get guests, because some people just don't like that. So what they (we), the admins, should do is allow in people without a nice tie, too. That doesn't mean they should let in people who wear rags.
Obviously
some reason has to be given when reviewing a level. But "I really like this levels' graphics and gameplay." is good enough in my opinion. Only things like "Wow this rocks!!" should be disallowed. And even then you can pm the owner asking him to improve it before dumping it.
If you disallow smaller opinions people will go away. Who can blame them.
"J2O is a site where users can review content with valid opinions. An opinion is never wrong. An opinion, however, is invalid if it has no support whatsoever."
Indeed an opinion is never wrong. Neither is it invalid. It's just that, when that opinion is expressed people will give it more value if the opinion is supported by arguments. But some opinions are invalid for our site.
If an opinion differs a lot from the majority and has not enough supporting arguments, then we will have to doubt it's veracity. It's still a valid opinion in itself, but we have to see then if it has any value to keep. If it really is badly supported, like someone rating a level with a 1 because it is giving a 404, then actions should be taken.
"That said, the quality of many of the reviews on J2O is excruciatingly dismal and the invalidity of the opinions disallows the respective reviews to warrant an actual rating."
Bad quality disallows giving a rating? That's not something I agree with. See my restaurant analogy.
"Those who submit poor reviews have no excuse at all for posting poor reviews. He or she only has to ask him or herself a few questions and submit a minimum of three to five well-developed sentences to support his or her opinion."
They have an excuse. They're allowed to. It's that simple. We are not a proffesional site. We are not peer reviewers, scientists, teachers, whatever. We have a community site dedicated to a game. One inhabited by very young people, most of which who have english as a second language. That doesn't mean we can't try and push them to improve, but to just shut all their comments down is harsh. There're better ways for that. Still, it's allowed.
Why should we raise the bar as high as you suggest?
Our admin policy should be that when your rating really differs from the rest of the ratings people gave you will really have to have a good argument. But if it's the same, no, reviews don't have to be
that detailed. The positive effects of this, more reviews, will outweigh the negative because more opinions (other than 'wow!' and 'cool!') will give a better average.
I value free speech here above having each review here really good. And it is in my mind that this will stay. I've made up my mind and I don't think my opinion of this will change..