Quote:
Originally posted by
indiechick
I try to read 5-10 reviews each time I log on. If I am interested in reviewing a product I will go see what the current reviews look like to see if I could improve on what we already have (trying to make the site better) Instead of having hundreds of
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I try to read 5-10 reviews each time I log on. If I am interested in reviewing a product I will go see what the current reviews look like to see if I could improve on what we already have (trying to make the site better) Instead of having hundreds of review on something like the ELLA I like being either the first to review a product or the first to review it well.
Anyways. Today I stumbled on one of the worst reviews I have seen in a long time. It was in extended format, but had maybe 2 sentences per section, and false information. Additionally it had been poorly edited, basically not edited at all. How you do you respond in situations like that? Should I write a PM to the reviewer and explain what an extended review should look like? Should I send a useless support ticket in flagging the editor for not doing their job? I want EF to get better but shitty quality reviews and an editor who doesn't give a damn brings down all of the hard work the rest of us do daily.
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I would send the editor a PM as soon as possible and let them know they missed those errors, so they can fix them if they are still within the 24 hr window from when they published the review. Other than that, I would definitely rate the editor as having done a 'poor' job, then I would send a message or email to Ilya informing him of the situation and include the link. (I would like it if you told me, too, about who is not doing their job because I am somewhat the de facto editing maven. I will send my own message to Ilya about the situation. Plus, I likely know about this person already and if they have already been removed from editing, so I could fill you in on it, or add this info to my "file" of evidence to have them removed. In fact, I know an awful lot about what's been going on for the last 11 months as far as editing is concerned
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I hope people keep in mind that we HAVE to publish reviews, even if they are short and not up to snuff. We editors are not mentors and we have clear guidelines about what we are supposed to do (if we choose to do more, that is different, but most don't contact the reviewer to help them improve their review). However, we are never to publish reviews that are plagiarized or have false info, such as indiechick mentions in the review she is talking about!
As for contacting the reviewer, in the past we (*ahem* read I and some others) were scolded for commenting on reviews and suggesting to reviewers ways to help them to do a better job and also for calling them out on a sloppy, crap review. We were told to contact the member privately, so you certainly can do that. However, we had to worry about being punished for not being welcoming blah, blah, blah. Well, times have changed and if you (indiechick) want to contact the reviewer directly, I don't see why you couldn't or shouldn't. Keep in mind they may not know better, but I have a feeling you already checked them out and saw if they were new or not. If not a newbie, then it is likely they knew exactly what they were doing by making the least amount of effort necessary to get points for the review. People may not be able to do much with points now, but some don't know that yet and others want to try to get advanced to try and get free items to review *sigh*.
On a similar topic, I also report absolute crap reviews done for free assignments. I recommend they not get any more free assignments because they obviously are not bothering to fulfill their end of the bargain and it's not fair -- especially when others are doing excellent jobs on assigned reviews and more people should get the chance to do it correctly, not the proven slackers!
