Your thoughts of the website review forum restrictions

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to talk about those restrictions on the website reviews forums, i disagree with all the idea of if u want to get ur website reviewed u have to review 3 other sites first.

From a first view it make u understand what’s the point of doing this, so everyone will get a chance to get their website reviewed

but on the other hand, i see lots (90%+++) of the reviews are from members which has excactly 3 posts (or just members who say iirelevant stuff just to get their post count), which makes it useless (at least in my opinion) to post a website for review…

I wanted to show my website, but i just know how the reviews would look like so it makes me not want to post it there…

Tell me what are your opinions regarding this, thanks :slight_smile:

I think the requirement is fair. Yes, a lot of new members make 3 reviews so they can post their own Review request.

More specifically though, the requirement is to make three “good” reviews. So if you’re seeing a lot of qualifying fluff reviews then we as Moderators are not doing enough to help ensure that helpful reviews are being made to meet the requirement. That is, we are not being strict enough. I seriously doubt that removing the requirement of making three good posts in order to post a request would improve things.

IMHO many members make “short” reviews that do not meet the requirement - perhaps because they are not doing it so they can post their own request - yet they usually bring up a valid opinion. It is not required that everyone post a more extensive review - except when to meet the requirement needed to post their own request - so short may be OK, but fluff is fluff. As in most SitePoint forums (other than General Chat), fluff posts made in a Review forum should be considered fluff and are not OK. I urge you to help us by clicking on the flag icon and Reporting them.

And yes, if you post a Review request, you may not get only lengthy replies. But they should all contain at least a wee bit of something for you to consider.

I guess a problem with a review forum is that there’s not a huge incentive to visit it unless you want your site reviewed. So requiring people to review other sites first is a way to help motivate people to give feedback. As Allan said, we are not meant to approve a review request if the three mandatory posts are light-weight or fluff; and that stands to reason, IMO, as it’s a little vain to expect lengthy reviews of your own site if you are only prepared to make fluffy, vacuous comments on others’ sites. The requirement at least helps to ensure that there’s a kind of mini community for reviewing sites.

If you lift the restrict you’ll just open the floodgates for self-promo. Obviously like was mentioned the reviews have to have some form of quality control too.

I think a better option to requiring 3 “quality” reviews before posting a review request would be to require a member to wait 90 days, or whatever, just like they need to for signatures, which are mostly filled with self promotion links anyway, and/or to have a minimum number of posts.

As it now stands, anyone wanting to promote their website can just register, spend maybe 10-20 minutes making 3 “quality” reviews and then they can promote their website by requesting reviews.

Well, that was just my opinion regarding this matter, ofcourse i didn’t think of removing all of the requirements completely, the problem with this website review forum is that it’s not really active enough to have those requirements removed, it won’t attract people who really just wanna “waste” time looking on other members websites and telling them what’s good/bad with it.

Maybe there’s just a few out there who would, and for me, i would preffer to see that my website has 1-2 real reviews, rather than 5-10 reviews which made mostly by members who just want to get their website on review afterwards

I should’ve probably came with a solution of my own and then post this thread but i dont have any suitable one in mind at the moment :slight_smile:

No, ulthane you are bringing up a good point (even though it’s one we know about).

Earlier this year I was going to commit myself to something like “do one good review of a website per week” or something, but I slacked.

Definitely, click the flag on all the crappy fluff-reviews, because those should not count towards that person being able to post their own site for review. Mods can remove it from the list of “reviews that count”.

Anyway, if I get off my butt and post more reviews and others, maybe staff, did too then it can be a good area of the forums.

Maybe aidos’ suggestion should be looked at, though the 90 day thing goes against many needs (many times people want a review right before a launch).

I still like the idea of at least making the forum software force x-number characters (enough for like 2 good paragraphs or something).

It does that already (unless it was removed in the recent upgrade). Reviews that aren’t long enough don’t even get counted and the site isn’t accepted into the queue for review. Even those that are accepted are still subject to moderation for checking again.

I think all posts should be subject to the same routine and the character limit increased so that something substantial has to be written.

People may still post longer fluff posts but it should deter most.

It does that already (unless it was removed in the recent upgrade). Reviews that aren’t long enough don’t even get counted and the site isn’t accepted into the queue for review.

There are certainly many one-sentence reviews out there. Maybe there’s a demand but it’s like 10 chars right now or something?

Yes but they have not been counted towards allowing a user to submit a site.
Anyone can post a few words as a review but it won’t be counted as one of their 3 reviews if they then want to submit their own site.

Only reviews of xx characters (can’t remember the exact number but its a couple of lines) are included and then the user is allowed to submit for review or the system denies them. The system also counts whether the reviews are within the 30 day limit.

I feel the character limit should be increased and the rule applied to all who post in that forum and not just when they want their own site reviewed.

Hmmm. The criteria are relatively clear, but ultimately up to a mod’s judgment. What’s a quality review? A 20-word hit-and-run that makes some valid observations? A 200-word diatribe that barely addresses the site?

I think Poes has the right track here. We need to mark poor reviews as “fluff,” and make sure that we don’t count them as part of the requester’s review count. This might even obviate the character- or line-count; if it’s a good review, it stays, and if it’s a poor, i.e. unqualifying review, it gets fluffed, whether the reviewer asks for a review or not.

I Like the idea of having to rate 3 first is nice but forcing members I can see how some would not like that.

I think the posting inadequate reviews is mean and should not be counted.
However reading every post to check if anyone is posting pseudo posts seems.improbable.