Treat Opinions as Forum Threads

[Beowulf]

This is a very simple idea but I've put some thought into it and I think it would help out this site immensely.

My idea is to modify the opinion system to promote a one on one dialog with the reviewer and the creator. Say if I recieved an opinion from "Bob", it would be like Bob starting a thread about my video that only He and I could post in. I could reply to his review, and he could reply to my reply, ect. ect.

This might not seem like much but the ramifications are astounding. This would create an environment where people are encouraged to review the video multiple times. Also, under ideal circumstances, this would give viewers a much more detailed look at the thought process of the creator which will only give the audience a much bigger understanding of the video, and of videos in general. I would go so far as to say that it would be key in creating an atmosphere in the community that promotes people to look deeper at videos for symbolism and meaning which is essential if this community is to survive.

Also, as the viewer went on the learn more and more about the video, the scores would adjust themselves accordingly. As the viewer went on to review more videos, maybe the global averages would drop themselves down to reasonable levels over a year or two.

While this entire idea is in place currently, its not promoted to the member. Members have to click 5 buttons to look at people who have responded to their opinions, and the whole ordeal is arduous, with no records or dates kept, just people editing text. The entire transaction feels like your circumventing the system rather then being a part of it.

What I am proposing is things like whenever someone responds to your opinion, you get a little blue notification just like if you had gotten an opinion yourself. The semantics aren't whats important though, and can be easily worked out

Is this idea realistic? It would require a complete conversion of the whole opinion database. I have no idea about the amount of work that would be required, but I know that the idea is awesome and NEEDS to be implimented.

I would be very interested what people think of this, and if any sort of administrative person could answer if it would be feasible, that would be great too.

[Kalium]

First off, this should have gone in Site Suggestions. I have relocated it. (Why am I moderating at this hour anyway? I should be sleeping...)

Second, I have my doubts that any new system that doesn't normalize scores in some fashion could stem the issue of the ever-rising opinion values.

Third, while I personally like the idea, there are some things that I would prefer to see done before any additional features are added on. Or large portions of the site revamped, for that matter. Things like security issues go here, along with various other issues that I won't go into.

Fourth, this could probably be done using phpBB as a base, but it would (probably) require significant reworking and possibly some very ugly usergrouping.

I'll take another look later, when my brain is more functional.

[trythil]

Fourth, this could probably be done using phpBB as a base, but it would (probably) require significant reworking and possibly some very ugly usergrouping.

The idea is similar to news feeds that use phpBB posts for news items. I've done it before, and that part's not hard or messy.

The hard and messy parts are (1) ripping out the .org's existing opinion code (:P) and (2) one problem that I'll mention later.

I think this is doable, and it would allow for some interesting things, such as a better feedback mechanism. It would also have the side effect of making all opinions public, which IMO is a good thing. (We can make them hidden, too, if that's really necessary.)

The one immediate problem that I can see is coming up with a filtering and notification system that's efficient, both in terms of user interface and computation.

[Bob Marley]

This is a very simple idea but I've put some thought into it and I think it would help out this site immensely.

Say if I recieved an opinion from "Bob", it would be like Bob starting a thread about my video that only He and I could post in. I could reply to his review, and he could reply to my reply, ect. ect.

Its a great idea because I am in it.

No, the opinion system definantly needs to be reworked. Its too tedious boring and you get no satisfaction out of it. This seems like a great idea that if cannot be worked out there should still be something done along these lines to the current opinion situation.

[Fluxmeister]

I think some kind of tracking system would be nice. The generic date of last update doesn't help very much... I found that I will add "EDIT" in front of new content in the review or reply to a review to indicate a change... although most reviewers aren't going to go back and look at changes because it's not terribly obvious that it was updated without looking at the my given reviews page (and even then the entire list of reviewed videos is listed in order from best to worst).

In the case of updated reviews I think it's pretty obvious from the first page when you login... just might be hard to tell what changed. I think there is definitely some potential in improving the ability to recognize changes/updates.

[Tsunami Jones]

I don't know how hard this would be to implement, but I like it. For me anyway, after I reply to an op that I've recieved, and they then revise the op, I generally have no idea what they changed about it (unless of course they put in EDIT, but not many do).

[Arigatomina]

Now that we have a 'sort by update' option for reviews given, I don't see the need for this - from a 'opinionator' perspective. Those who want to know when they get a new review, or when a review is updated already get the notice on the member main page. Now, those who write reviews get an 'update' date as well. So they just have to watch the recent updates to the reviews they've given to know if the person replied again.

If you can't remember what was there originally (before the update), and you can't figure it out from your response, then it probably wasn't a very drastic change. That, or you weren't paying attention to the original review, in which case there's no reason to pay attention to the edited review. Just take it as a 'new' review. If you don't remember the original, it *is* a new review.

The only problem with the current system is if they get a bunch of updated reviews (the receivers, not the givers) - you only get told about the most recent 10. You'll never know if more were updated unless you check every single review you've been given.

/just looking at the "this has been updated" issue needed for back-and-forth discussion between editor and reviewer. The idea of turning reviews into a forum is as encouraging as turning the forum into a chatroom, I'd rather not.

[donone]

Now that we have a 'sort by update' option for reviews given, I don't see the need for this - from a 'opinionator' perspective. Those who want to know when they get a new review, or when a review is updated already get the notice on the member main page. Now, those who write reviews get an 'update' date as well. So they just have to watch the recent updates to the reviews they've given to know if the person replied again.

Thats stupid. Most posts here (including yours) are talking about the feasabillity of detecting if a review has been edited, and thus being able to respond (and then the reviewer being able to detect this response etc) - what you overlook is the system Beowulf proposes would feasably allow for a '4 or 5' post type discussion on the video, something that is currently practically impossible with the current system. This is because the current system is designed around the review-response 1-shot notion - trying to argue that it provides an appropriate means of back-and-forth discussion is ludicrous.

/just looking at the "this has been updated" issue needed for back-and-forth discussion between editor and reviewer. The idea of turning reviews into a forum is as encouraging as turning the forum into a chatroom, I'd rather not.

I think that would be the main problem. People misusing the system to either a) flame or b) chat could make the review system a joke. But equally there are rules on this forum (I assume), which need to be enforced and its no critical threat situation. Moderating the review discussions in terms of these problems would in-fact be much much easier than moderating forums, the moderators would only have to search review discussions longer than say 3 or 4 posts, and quickly check that its on topic, and if not remove the off topic posts and warn the creator/reviewer. I mean I imagine the rule would be 'you have to be discussing the video' which is much clearer-cut and thus easier to enforce than 'dont be offensive on the forums'.




In terms of the ever-higher review scores problem I'd make a few points.

1) This isn't gonna fix it.

2) This would however promote discussion and consequently immeasurably better feedback than the current 1-shot system, which ultimatly goes on to enable a better mean of Anime Music Videos, something I'd hope this site would wish to promote. Even, dare I say it, with more gravity than ranking who is the #1 king dick of our own private art form (when any thinking gentleman knows its Naruto anyway).

3) You cant at once make sure people dont give what you consider to be 'too high' reviews without restriciting what scores they can give (i.e 20 10s, 30 9s or 2% 10s, 4% 9s etc), which is dumb dammit I'll give any scores I please. Not to mention it would be unfeasable, the system would have to boil down to a great glorified 'my favorite videos' rank list with every video one has ever reviewed on it, having to bump up and down videos ("whos going to get my 10s etc") which would just be a pain in the neck for all involved - and probably bring even more politics into a-m-v.org, something it needs about as much as a Rosie O'Donnel biography.

4) The clear solution if one wants to majority-rank videos, is not to restrict the scores people can give, but broaden them. Rather than giving scores 1-10, allow scores 1-100, or hell even 1-1000. I'm sure this would encourage people to give higher scores (I'll warrant if you put in a 1-100 system the average mark would change from 7 -> 80) - but there is still one hell of a lot more degrees of freedom from 80-100 (20) as opposed to 7-10 (3).

[Kalium]

I think that would be the main problem. People misusing the system to either a) flame or b) chat could make the review system a joke. But equally there are rules on this forum (I assume), which need to be enforced and its no critical threat situation. Moderating the review discussions in terms of these problems would in-fact be much much easier than moderating forums, the moderators would only have to search review discussions longer than say 3 or 4 posts, and quickly check that its on topic, and if not remove the off topic posts and warn the creator/reviewer. I mean I imagine the rule would be 'you have to be discussing the video' which is much clearer-cut and thus easier to enforce than 'dont be offensive on the forums'.

Do you have any idea how much of a workload that would add to the existing mod workload? Let's just leave it at 'a lot'.

[donone]

As I said I think given the constraint of 'discussions in reviews staying on topic' - it would be pretty easy to implement a system where a mod could do a search for recent review 'threads' that have more than (say) 3 replies, and just check if they are on topic.

Of course even if this is more than I anticipate, theres always the option of promoting more mods. I mean animemusicvideos.org is hardly short on willing members to promote. Sure with more mods you'd need an extra Supermod or two to keep an eye on the mods, but I dont think thats a big problem.