Those darn voters.

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Those darn voters.

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Contributor: SMichelle SMichelle
Quote:
Originally posted by SkylarrStarr
A gushing comment on a review and then just a useful rating I guess doesn't make sense in my head. I guess it's just the way I think...I also always want to improve on my reviews and like to know what wasn't EU about it. Maybe ... more
You just need to remember that everyone has their own method of deciding how they vote. What one person thinks is EU is not going to be EU to everyone... and, as I said, a useful rating is certainly not a bad rating. In fact, it's quite good.

I would just stop paying attention to the voting altogether, if you find yourself getting stressed out by it.
08/18/2012
Contributor: Kindred Kindred
I want to apologize if my response to your post came across as harsh, that was not my intent. I completely understand that reviews are a source of pride, and that any vote less than EU can be disappointing. We all go through the same emotions from time to time. Every reviewer believes we pour our heart and soul into every review we write (or at least most of us) and to not be recognized for that effort can be upsetting. You have to realize that we can not please everyone all the time. No matter how hard we try, a review will not meet every reader's standards. It's just not possible. Include information about vaginal use and someone will want anal information. Include the female perspective and someone will want the male view. Write everything possible and have someone criticize it for being too long and containing unnecessary information. It's a no win situation. To believe that we can write a review that would satisfy everyone would be a bit conceited on our part. Simply produce your best work and be satisfied that it is your best work. It's no different than creating a work of art. A review is our baby that we put out there and hope everyone will fawn over and love, but the fact of the matter is that not everyone will love it. Once we all learn to accept this fact, we will all be happier for it.
08/18/2012
Contributor: Ansley Ansley
Quote:
Originally posted by Kindred
I want to apologize if my response to your post came across as harsh, that was not my intent. I completely understand that reviews are a source of pride, and that any vote less than EU can be disappointing. We all go through the same emotions from ... more
Well said.
08/18/2012
Contributor: Ansley Ansley
I, too, apologize if my response sounded harsh. If I may remove my Eden employee cap for a moment and don my contributor cap...

Voting has been a hot topic of debate for almost a year now. Maybe a little bit longer. The truth is, not every review is Extremely Useful. I just submitted two reviews last night that I could have definitely worked a lot harder on, but I didn't. I didn't feel either of the products needed a novel of information to go with them, so I didn't set out to do that. Every vote so far has been extremely useful. There are no ingredients listed in one of the two reviews, nor are there are any flowery descriptions of the product.

One might have to ask themselves, are they voting my reviews EU because they know I work for Eden? It seems more likely than not, but maybe that's just the pessimist in me. Maybe an extremely useful review can be written just the way I wrote those two reviews. Though, no one has seemed to notice that I left out one of the seven items I said one of the products contained.

Remember in school, you had maybe one or two really lenient teachers who always had a way for you to earn extra credit on a test, allowing each student the possibility of a better grade for going above and beyond?
Even if a student couldn't retain the most basic of information and was bordering on passing or failing, answering an extra credit question could boost them from an F to a D.

Then, there were the rest of the teachers who would dock points for the smallest infraction or missing detail and never give an opportunity for extra credit.

Which teacher was really doing the most good for the student here? The one who didn't want to see anyone fail, or the one who gave honest and constructive criticism?

People are afraid to vote honestly because they feel like anything less than a useful or an extremely useful will earn them the reputation of point farmer, antagonist, or worse yet assume the voter has no idea what an EU review really is.

Extremely Useful is to Useful what A is to A(plus). So, just relax a little and know that you did your personal best.

The purpose of the review program is to tell a user about your experience with the toy. That is the most important aspect of the entire program. Did you like it, did it work for your anatomy/needs, and would you recommend it to someone else? Certain things like condom use for porous materials are mandatory, but little else is.

If the administrators start laying down a ton of guidelines on how, when, where, why and what to include and not include it just wouldn't be fun anymore; no one would be interested in writing reviews. Then we all lose.
08/18/2012
Contributor: Ansley Ansley
EF cap back on...

So, like I mentioned yesterday. We are making changes to the voting process...(I know I'm such a tease). I know I for one am really excited about it and I think it's going to improve things quite a bit.
08/18/2012
Contributor: P'Gell P'Gell
We've talked about "being required to comment" and the consensus was it is not a good idea. Here's why; someone writes a review that is missing a lot of things, has syntax errors, leaves things out, makes incorrect assumptions etc. Someone mentions these things in their comments.... then someone else mentions the same things in their comments (as to why they gave a low vote)... then someone ELSE mentions the same damn things in their comments and it looks like the community is ganging up on this particular reviewer.

It has happened in the past and we were told by the Administration DO NOT repeat suggestions that someone else made to a reviewer over and over, it's nagging and more hurtful than saying nothing. I usually only make a specific comment if no one has mentioned it before. But, with all this whining, I am reading and writing fewer and fewer reviews. People who wrap their self esteem up in something as silly as how many EU votes they get are sucking the FUN out of this place!

I, for one, also don't want to feel like I have to put more work into a comment than some reviewers put into their review (if it was a crappy, 3 paragraph review with "There really isn't any way to write 800 words on this toy" repeated 3 or 4 times in the review, or at all.) On the rare occasion I vote lower than "somewhat useful" it's usually pretty damn obvious what was lacking in the review. I'm NOT going to repeat what 20 other people have already said to the reviewer.

PLUS, the reviews are supposed to be for customers and buyers not for each other. We can't DEMAND that someone who is browsing through Eden looking for a new toy make "helpful comments" on every review they read and vote on.

People should be FREE to vote as they feel is right and not have to "justify" their votes. It's gotten to the point where I am rarely voting on reviews anymore, because of all this whining about people getting a few votes less than EU!

It's silly NOT to vote on review that simply didn't earn a less than EU vote. What's the point of voting, if every review is only getting EU votes? What's the fucking point? One doesn't "Deserve" nothing but EU votes simply because they put some words onto a template. It's so ridiculous to be THIS wrapped up in this stuff.

We should be free to be honest with how something is written, and to be honest, not EVERY review written is a pearl of wisdom that deserves a vote of Extremely Useful. Some are awful, and some are just OK, and some are simply filling the bill and no more. EU is supposed to be an uncommon vote. But, so many are so wrapped up in their "score" that is is the norm. It defeats the purpose of voting at all.

It's about the buyers, not about US, the reviewers.

I'm almost getting to the point where I don't even know if I want to review anymore.

People putting their self esteem into how many votes they get and getting upset if they aren't "popular enough." It's like fucking Junior High. I'm about finished, with all this immaturity.
08/18/2012
Contributor: (k)InkyIvy (k)InkyIvy
I'll occasionally message people who'd voted U or lower to ask if they had any suggestions/advice on how I could improve my reviews (even if just for them), but I never push it if they didn't reply, and I've never down-voted someone because I don't like their vote on my review.
I've had a couple people do the same (ask me for suggestions because of my rating), and I was happy to offer advice, even somewhat flattered that they felt they could ask me for it!

I essentially view (lower than EU) ratings as a way of people to tell me "You could do better." I don't take offense to it, but I do like to know what I could do to improve.
08/18/2012
Contributor: Beck Beck
Quote:
Originally posted by (k)InkyIvy
I'll occasionally message people who'd voted U or lower to ask if they had any suggestions/advice on how I could improve my reviews (even if just for them), but I never push it if they didn't reply, and I've never down-voted someone ... more
The point everyone is trying to say is that asking someone why they voted the way they didn't isn't fair! It's very rude no matter what your intent is. If you want to know how to improve your reviews, you are to seek out a mentor. Which is why that program is in place. Mentor's jobs are to help you include the information you and them feel is at least useful. It isn't the job of readers to help you decide what to include. Frankly, every reader doesn't even know what writing reviews takes. They are voting on how useful your review was for them. If it wasn't useful at all to them because of whatever reason; they are entitled to vote as they see fit. Voting on our own reviews it out of our control.

Do you want someone to message you everytime you vote below EU? I don't think most of us do. So, please, give others the same curiosity.
08/18/2012
Contributor: Zombirella Zombirella
Quote:
Originally posted by P'Gell
We've talked about "being required to comment" and the consensus was it is not a good idea. Here's why; someone writes a review that is missing a lot of things, has syntax errors, leaves things out, makes incorrect assumptions etc. ... more
I think it is ridiculous to stop reviewing if you LOVE to do it just because of posts in the forum. Nothing against either of you, but you can tell from her topic that this was probably about votes on a review, if that upsets you, then just stop reading posts about votes.
If someone messages you about why you voted a certain way, click the delete message button and don't answer. You aren't forced to do anything and shouldn't feel obligated to do anything that you don't want to do. But by replying to topics like this, it is only upsetting YOU more, is it worth it? Look over it and find a topic that interests you.

This probably won't be the last post made about votes, not everyone stalks the forums or goes back in date, some of us have it set to view only the most recent posts, not the ones that get responded to most and so on. SO, someone else may start another topic questioning this or commenting on it. SKIP OVER IT. For everyone that is getting mad about it, don't respond. Since it is frowned upon, let an employee tell the person, it is possible they honestly don't know. And from what I can see, the ones in charge of the forums do a pretty good job, like when someone starts a disscussion from the product page and then you see them do it 4 more times on something else, just saying "I like it" or something like that. EF takes care of deleting those posts and contacting the person and letting them know the way the forum and product pages works. Stormy replied here, and I'm sure will take care of things like this again when the topic is brought up.

Yes, we all love EU votes but we ALL get lower votes for many reasons. I don't think there is a single person that gets EU on every single review. It happens to me too, I just shrug my shoulders and continue to do my thing. In reality, Useful isn't going to bring down your rank, neither is a few less then U votes here and there.

I sometimes vote U for the reason(s) PGell stated and I also don't always have suggestions for people. Unless I'm mentoring someone, I'm not obligated to help but if I have the time and I'm not doing anything, then I have answered messages and I have given pointers to people. If it happened constantly to me, if it started to anger me, I'd simply delete it and ignore it. I have plenty of other things to stress about in life then someone messaging me asking me about my vote, it isn't worth letting your blood pressure rise over.

I have even been embarrassed by someone that wanted to start an argument with me right on their review when I actually WAS trying to BE NICE and SUGGEST things to them to make their review better telling them that is why I voted the way I did, and I almost left after that ordeal! But nope, no more. This is a place I enjoy and come to unwind, I'm not going to let someone work me up and make me leave. None of us should.

Just seriously, by me leaving over what happened to me, that is only hurting ME and I'm losing out on the great things about this place. By any of you wanting to leave, stop reviewing, ect, it isn't worth it. Don't stop doing something you enjoy over the occasional topic that may make you want to bash your head off the screen.
08/19/2012