stuffing the ballot box

[lex ludite]

The story Janet's Ordeal and the reviews it generated bring up a very sore point with me. The initial four reviews produced an average score of 1.75. Between them the four reviewers had 103 reviews published. All had the same problem, the english was atrocious and made the story almost unreadable.
Since then there have been fourteen additional reviews, twelve scoring 8 or better; with three reviewers giving it a ten! Of interest the total number of reviews posted by this group of fourteen reviewers was fourteen! There is literally something rotten in Denmark as far as I am concerned.

[redEva]

i would realy like if you could translate this for me - i read it about 7 times and still have no idea what you talking about?!

[Moggy]

Lex

A couple of points:

It seems that non-native English speakers are generally less distracted by English writing skills than us 'natives'. I've seen this with many stories. Yes, it does get tedious seeing the English language get mauled to pieces as if it's not important. (I should add that it isn't always the non-natives that are responsible for that! )

This isn't the first time a new story generates an influx of new reviewers who never bother to review any other story. People will draw their own conclusions. Does it matter anyhow?

I'm more concerned about the lack of reviews on some recent excellent stories. My beef is with anyone that loved a story but never thought of writing a little review.

Let's keep reviewing and allow the cream to rise to the top!

Moggy

[lex ludite]

The bottom line is that I find it very suspicious that after the initial poor reviews, which were unanimous, and done by people with experience in reviewing stories on this site, that 14 people who have never, ever participated in the review process should all choose at the same time, give or take a day or two, to give this story rave reviews. By the way this is not the first time this nonsense has occurred, it's just the most blatant example in recent memory. The other side of this distressing trend is the huge stories that would take mere mortals days to read, that are posted, followed immediately by rave reviews from four or five people who just happen to be first time reviewers.

[Kostly]

Why would someone Stuff a story with Bad/Good Reviews?

What would the motivation be...

It just doesnt add up...

If you want to create 12 user accounts, so that you can make 12 different reviews, then so be it, hell maybe it will keep these idiots busy and out of the forums

[redEva]

Originally posted by lex ludite
The bottom line is....

Thank you for clarifying, now i get it – yes you do have point, but... as Kostly says – as long as that keeps idiots busy – all is good.
I personally have to know reliever a bit better to have his opinion dictate or influence what i might or might not consider to read. I would be interested to see how many people actually read reviews before they read story!?

[lex ludite]

Well it appears that reviewing seems to be a meaningless exercise, so be it. I was always of the opinion that reviewing was part of the process to produce better writers; guess I was incorrect. Add to this the fact that the typical synopsis is only as good as the writing and we have a fine kettle of fish. In the future it appears that on this site it is reader beware, a caveat that one of my favorite authors attaches to every one of his stories. So let the floodgates open and hope that among the legions of weeds a few flowers may grow.

[boccaccio2000g]

Originally posted by lex ludite
The story Janet's Ordeal and the reviews it generated bring up a very sore point with me. The initial four reviews produced an average score of 1.75. Between them the four reviewers had 103 reviews published. All had the same problem, the english was atrocious and made the story almost unreadable.
Since then there have been fourteen additional reviews, twelve scoring 8 or better; with three reviewers giving it a ten! Of interest the total number of reviews posted by this group of fourteen reviewers was fourteen! There is literally something rotten in Denmark as far as I am concerned.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I agree that it is a distressing occurrence.

But to those of us who read and write a lot of reviews and take them seriously, the occasional person who tries this simply makes himself/herself look even more ridiculous than the story itself did. Because it's always so transparently obvious. It's as if the author had written in fingerpaint -- "Not only can I not write very well, but I'm foolish enough to think that by concocting some "rave reviews" I can fool intelligent readers into believing that an execrable story is a good one."

If someone wants to labor under the delusion that they're fooling anyone by spending their time writing phony reviews, who cares?

Eva asked "How many people read reviews before reading a story?" In my own case, it depends. If the story codes place the story within my usual realm of interest, (and it's not by an author I have given up on) I will usually try to read it (and review it) before too many people have had a chance to review it. If it has been reviewed, I will glance at the average rating (it's hard to avoid seeing it) but won't actually read any reviews until I've read it myself and determined my own grade and the general thrust of my own comments. Then I'll read the reviews, if any, which occasionally provide interesting material to comment on, and write my own review.

If the story is not within my usual domain, a series of very high scores will pique my interest. In that case I typically would glance at the reviews to see if some of the more reliable reviewers (many of us have our favorite reviewers, I should imagine, just as we have our favorite writers) had given it a 'rave'. If so, I might well read the story even though it's subject matter normally wouldn't appeal to me.


Boccaccio

[redEva]

Yes Boccaccio, i agree with you - that is usually the way i work to. One thing i use the reviews for is to trace other people and find out more about them . If i find someone interesting i try to see what stories they liked and than maybe read the story – learning more about person and his/her taste. i believe one can learn a lot about a person not only from what they write, but what they like/dislike and how they comment on other people work.

[Fox]

redEva writes:

One thing i use the reviews for is to trace other people and find out more about them .

I think I should start reviewing stories ... in hope the luscious redhaired vixen will search me out too ... although I will gladly send her my address, phone number, travel arrangements ... heh heh

[drayman]

As a new contributor to the Stories, I have been very interested to receive copies of the reviews submitted and I have replied to each one thanking them for the time that they have taken.

However, I find that in my own case when reading a story, I have never taken any notice of the reviews. I suppose that by taking 'pot luck' I have found a number of writers that I like, without pre-judging on other peoples opinions.

If I have found a story enjoyable, then I have tended to write to the author direct or mention it in these Forums.

[Alex Bragi]

Yes, I came across one the other day with several very low votes and a couple of tens. I'm not going to be as bold as you and mention the name of if here, but I tell you all hell would freeze over before that writer 'could compete with published authors'.

I've only been at this site a short time, but already I'm beginning to attune myself to the reviewers with similar standards and tastes to myself. For me, that's a good gauge.

Alex.

[Curtis]

Since the author of Janet's Ordeal is currently advertising for a new co-author, and is using the fact that his story is the most reviewed on the site (by a margin of 50 more than Bruce Boxer's Occupational Hazards, which is in second place) as an inducement, I thought it was about time to update this thread.

Out of 112 reviewers, 88 reviewed only this story and 24 reviewed at least one other at this site. Average scores: one-time reviewers - 8.7; multiple reviewers - 6.9. All of the scores lower than 5 were given by 'experienced' reviewers.

I tried to compare this to Bruce's story, but it, as well as the third and fourth most reviewed were so old that no information was available on how many reviews those reviewers had written. Many of the reviewers names for those stories were in blue, rather than the site-standard red, and you couldn't click on them at all, so I suspect they were purged when Jinn trimmed a few thousand people off the membership list recently. This left me with number five, Taking Carol by Lorddare. Taking Carol had 52 votes, of which 10 were by one-time reviewers and 42 by multiple reviewers.

From this quickie comparison, I think you can see the point lex was trying to make with his initial post in this thread, but some new information has come to light since he made his claim of "stuffing the ballot box". It seems that the author of Janet's Ordeal started a Yahoo! group fan club for his story, and in order to be a member of the fan club, you had to post a review.

Elegant. Ingenious. And an in-your-face response to all those authors who post here lamenting how few reviews they get, or how bad their review-to-click-through rate is. Apparently, it's also a good way to boost your average score. And it took a Dane to figure this out (I can hear Alex Bragi crowing from here).

My hat's off. I'm amazed that no one ever thought of this before. Congratulations.

[j]

Your exposure of this scam led me to review the 'masterpiece'. What a pile of dreck.

[Alex Bragi]

Well, I don’t really see it as a ‘scam’. I think that's too harsh a word to use.

No one has been harmed here, and no one has been coerced into giving a high rating. Like Curtis says, “Ingenious. And an in-your-face response to all those authors who post here lamenting how few reviews they get, or how bad their review-to-click-through rate is.”

I think ultimately a lot readers hone in on what they want to read, and their favourite authors, regardless of the reviews of others. In fairness to mickni2000, and I have no idea why everyone on this thread is avoiding using his name, has had a phenomenal response in terms of viewing to his story, and can't see how that could be manipulate.

Alex.

[Curtis]

I avoided his name because, first, I couldn't remember it, and second, he uses a slightly different name as an author than as a poster (I think he's mick_knight or something similar as an author). If I can't get it right, I'd rather not use it.

[Morrighan]

The reviews aren't only there for the readers, though--it's also unbiased feedback, which is very hard to get. A serious writer needs something more than, "I liked it, it was good." That doesn't help you develop as a writer. And "cheating" that way--well, I suppose there are always those with no code of honor. I personally am very serious about my writing, and plan to make a career of it. As of now, the only person in my life who knows enough about writing to critique my work honestly is my mother. And one, she's 1500 miles away, and two, I wouldn't show her these stories. So while I enjoy the compliments, there's rarely much to build from--and that's not just those who review here, that's my friends, too. It's kind of frustrating.

Thus, my question--if serious writers, not only myself, started attaching their stories to posts in the Author's circle, would anyone review them? Not proofread, not edit, but provide honest response to the strengths and weaknesses of the piece? I've done it for others, but I could be just wierd like that. That sort of review is how I learned to truly write in the first place, and I've yet to find a system that tops it.

Morrighan

[Curtis]

I think the size limit on posts would prohibit it, but at least you're thinking outside the box. Down in "the lower half" of the Forum there are some stories posted (mostly in the Fantasies sub-forum, I think), but they just got the same "I love it! Please write more!" that the stories in the Library do.

I guess I didn't make my own opinion of what mickni2000 did clear enough. I think it was brilliant. He put an enormous amount of effort into "getting out the vote" and it paid off, both in terms of increasing his average rating from 7 to 8.5 (which is big!) and in setting the record for most reviews. Granted, he put all this extra effort into marketing when most of us feel it would've more profitably been spent in writing lessons, but, hey! it worked for Bill Gates, and it worked for mick. And don't underestimate the effort he did put into it. Running a fan club takes time and patience, and did you check out the length of his responses to the reviews posted? Most authors can't be bothered to reply at all to a review, and some others just say "Thank you for reviewing", but mick replied to the overwhelming majority of the people who reviewed his story, and nearly always wrote more than the reviewer did. This is obviously a guy who cares about his project and doesn't believe in half-measures. I'll grant you that his record should probably have an asterisk next to it but, like Roger Maris's 61, it's still an amazing accomplishment.

I'm kind of wondering why the second, third and fourth most reviewed stories were all from before the site changed over two years ago. Why did so many more people review then than do now? Was registration not required? Were there many more site visitors then than now? Probably only Jinn could answer that one. Depending on the answer, it might be that the fifth place "Taking Carol" deserves the honorific of "modern-era champion".

[Morrighan]

Not putting the stories into the posts themselves, but attaching them. What's the limit on file size for attachments? or could we just hyperlink to the page within the library itself?

Back on topic--I'm glad that whomever devoted so much time and effort into publicizing his stories, but still...that degrades the efforts of everyone else, in my opinion. No, I don't write for the reviews, but I do look on them as a reward, of sorts, for my effort. If my stories stir someone enough to take the time to review, then I have done my job, and their reviews--not the compliments, but that they bothered at all--tell me I have done it well. But hey, good on him.

Morrighan

[Curtis]

Not putting the stories into the posts themselves, but attaching them. What's the limit on file size for attachments? or could we just hyperlink to the page within the library itself?

Ahh! Now for THAT, you'll need to speak with one of our resident technical wizards. I'm hopeless.