your opinion please...

[Arigatomina]

It's been done.

Most Usefull
Most Useless
Most Opinions

Lower right of your "given opinions page"

Yes, we have those lists - squirreled away where only those who write opinions will ever think to look for them, let alone find them.

They aren't up there with the top vid lists, or even the 'overused' lists. They are only accessible if a person is looking at the reviews *he* wrote himself. How does that encourage anyone who wasn't already concerned with writing reviews? New members don't see them, won't know they exist unless they get bored and explore their 'opinions given' page - and if they're new, they probably have *given* any opinions so they'd never see those little links on the lower right of that page.

There isn't any encouragement for writing reviews, useful or otherwise - unless the person is already set on the idea that it *matters* to write them. To the rest of the viewers/some-time reviewers, those lists might as well not exist on the site. I may not care for those 'feed the creator' banners, but they do serve a purpose. They make anyone who sees them aware that reviews are important, at least to some banner-makers, if not the majority of creators. That oft-talked about 'karma' system might encourage 'useful' reviews someday. But the 'most useful' list is only 'useful' if it's up there with other 'most/top' lists. Otherwise, it's just an interesting statistic for those who pay attention to reviews and know where to look to see who is doing what.

[Flint the Dwarf]

Personally I was hoping some sort of karma system would be implemented. Eventually. That doesn't look to be happening, as there is a lot more going on with the site. So there really is no incentive for reviewers, and that's part of the reason I lost the motivation to review. Half the time even the creator didn't acknowledge the review.

It seems the only incentive for reviews now is for an exchange. And I think if people want reviews badly enough to make banners to bitch about having no reviews, they should put some effort into exchanging.

Of course, it's really hard to set up an incentive system and I'm not sure any of the site coders have the time. I find the system here to be very successful. Although it encourages people to be more positive and less critical, it still works great for assholes like myself who like to search out the bad points. It's a fairly simple system, but I know it would require a lot of work to be implemented into this site.

Basically, people are allotted points for leaving critiques on poems; the longer the critique, the more points you receive (that'd be hard to judge for videos, because lots of words != helpful review). With points, people can promote their poem, which puts it at the top of the Featured poems list. Critiquing a Featured poem also gives more points than critiquing one that's not on the list. You can also do other things with points, like starting contests (the winner of the contest usually wins a lot of points, and the contest is judged by who started it). Contests would be great for people who've been wanting to see a certain video done, but can't find anywhere. Plus it would give them a reason to critique a lot, because it takes a lot of points to start a contest. Also, if you found a critique especially helpful, you can "applaud" it, which gives the critiquer extra points. In that way, helpful critiques are encouraged. You can also "applaud" especially good poems.

It really is a great system, but the site was designed around it. It's much different here. Too bad, really.

People make crap... people vote "no"...

Yeah, if only that were true. It seems the majority of voters have the idea that if it has colors, it deserves to be shown.

[Arigatomina]

Critiquing a Featured poem also gives more points than critiquing one that's not on the list.

This is the only thing I disagree with on that system you talked about. When it comes to reviews, I think reviewing something with no reviews is much more useful than reviewing something that everyone else has reviewed (since you did say it takes a lot of reviews to get 'featured' in the first place). That sort of system would discourage people from reviewing new videos by people who don't have any feedback (if they're not on the list, they don't get extra points) - and we definitely don't want to discourage reviews for the people who need it most.

[Flint the Dwarf]

Well, except that anyone can easily gain points by giving critiques. So it really isn't hard to get on the Featured list. But if someone with no points goes and reviews just a few Featured poems, they can already get their poem on the Featured list. And that way, you're almost guaranteed that your poem will be critiqued, just because it's on the list and people get more points by reviewing things on the list. Also, the list is actually 500+ poems long, and there are poems on the list that have no reviews.

If you look around that site for a bit, you'll be able to see more than I explained. It really does work well. If people are willing to put forth just a little effort in giving critiques, they can get their poem on the list.

The thing about the list is that you'll often read a poem you aren't interested in (because you aren't browsing for a specific style/writer), and usually wouldn't critique. But the extra points is usually enough incentive to get you to critique it.

Here is the current full list. You can get your poem a higher place on the list by spending more points. Let's say I want my poem in the top 5 (usually means at least 7 points per click). So I usually give up 42-70 points. That means 6-10 will read my poem before it's taken off the list. Every time someone clicks on the link, 7 points is taken out of the total I spent (42-70). If you look at the full list, some people only set it at 1 or 2 points per click. I always go down to critique those poems. That way I still get the extra points, and those people didn't have to waste much on getting it read. Here at the Org, I don't think we'd have a list that big, so people farther down would still get some hits.

Also about the applauses, you only have a certain number to give out per day. So you have to be selective about what you applaud.

But, again, this is a big system and I don't think the coders could implement it easily here.

[Animal4890]

how about a list similar to the star scale? Basically, it would list the top ten most useful opinions of that week and allow people to access them. Perhaps the winner of that week would be allowed to have a personal quote posted on the main member page somewhere for a week. The quote could be about that AMV they saw or anything suitable for the main site. Some weeks could be special weeks where only opinions for AMVs with a certain genre, anime, or music would be accepted. That way people would have to go out and search for something to review rather than just reviewing whatever they like. To make this truly effective the quote would probably have to be close to the top.

I'm not entirely sure if this next idea is possible, but what if people who left an opinion would be allowed more access to the Local server? For instance, they would be allowed three connections instead of two for a limited amount of time.

Perhaps that idea could be taken to a different level. Suppose everyone was initially only allowed one connection. However, if you left one opinion then you'd be allowed two connections for 24 hours. If you left two opinions then you'd be allowed three connections for 48 hours. The amount of opinions and time limit don't have to be those, but you get the idea of being temporarily promoted based upon your interactivity.

[Flint the Dwarf]

The mulitple connections thing doesn't help those of us on 56k much at all.

[pen-pen2002]

That does seem like quite a system. The only problem is that AMVers are very competitive and dial up users could give fake reviews to boost the visibility of their work.

[Flint the Dwarf]

Yeah, I suppose. I'm sure there's a way to get around that. At least as far as Local, it might be possible to only be able to critique it after the d/l is finished. Ideas similar to that have been brought up before.

Ideally it'd be best just to have the creator screen reviews, but then people would be able to get rid of reviews they don't like. Perhaps there'd be some way where creators could screen only the text and not the scores? That way reviews from people who just put nonsense in the text can be eliminated, but scores would be kept regardless of whether or not the creator likes them. People can still put crap scores, but they get nothing if they have nothing to say about the video.

[Kalium]

I think the simplest way would be a 'report improper opinion' button.

[Flint the Dwarf]

I agree. But the less extra work the mods have to do, the better. If there were a system of self-maintenance that could still be fair, that would be ideal. Not the simplest, though, true.