I like it!

It's not as easy for me to find things, but it may be easier for people just visiting the site for the first time. Although I agree that the better reviews should be the ones highlighted and not just due to star rating.

Wow! I've had to have limited access to other sites besides my class for a few days because it's finals time, but now that I've got time I see you all made some very valid points! I really hope someone who can do something, sees this thread, I like to think our constructive criticism can go over well and no fall on deaf ears. Thanks, everyone! ^_^

I hate the new system, it makes viewing opinions and finding previously viewed reviews a major pain in the ass and will likely make me take peoples reviews less into consideration when looking at toys because I don't feel like fudging about through numerous pages just to find bloody factoids...EF shouldn't become Facebook in the sense they don't need to change these things. They were all fine before and now are just a mess :\

I've not been able to be online in the evenings lately so I wasn't able to come to the review workshop. Were any of these constructive criticisms brought up?

You guys have made some really good points---

(First, having the histogram is a great idea!)

I agree with namelesschaos's weighted averages instead of pure averages for review ranking.
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**as an aside, I'm not even sure if pure averages are used in all the cases. In one product, when all reviews are sorted by "most helpful first," each of the top four reviews (each giving 5 stars) has only EU votes, and no lower votes. But the highest-ranked review has 17 EU votes, the second has 23 EU votes, the third has 16 EU votes, and the fourth has 18 EU votes. Maybe the date the review was written factors in, too?

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Kindred makes a good point about a vote having more or less weight depending on a contributor's rank. However, there is some merit to having it be perfectly democratic---there are lots of people who use the site who are not reviewers, and really, their opinion matters, too. I know we get very involved in our community, and it's easy to think "I'm writing this for my friends on EF," but we are also writing this for people who never make their presence known on the site. I try to write mine for a someone new to sex toys who just stumbled in. Before our names were recorded with our votes (what's that, 2 years ago now? Guess I spend too much time reading EF history...), any anonymous user to the site could vote. That seems fair on one hand, because those are the people we really want to help make their decisions. At the same time, though, anonymous people don't understand that the review "grades" have an effect on those of use who write the reviews, and might vote carelessly. So it makes sense to have to register to vote.

And so looking at that, I totally understand why it would be attractive to say "higher contributer rank, means their vote counts more..." I know that over the course of a week, one contributer rated about half of my reviews a grade lower than *every other voter to date*, and when that contributer wrote their first review a little while later, the writing quality was terrible (imo). I was frustrated. (And I refrained from voting on the review.) But at the same time, we want to be friendly to newcomers. And we don't want voting to be a popularity contest. So I think it's necessary to take the hits that come from unfamiliar voters, because their thoughts and voices matter too. We can't just say "well that frustrates me so let's change the system to only benefit the established reviewers."

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Along with Selective Sensualist and P'Gell, I think it makes more sense to weight pure usefulness (by whichever algorithm you decide) instead of showcasing the most useful 5 star and the most useful 1 star reviews, because a) we'll start to see more 5 and 1 star reviews as reviewers subconsciously vie to have the showcased slot, but more importantly b) when I'm looking to buy a product, I usually learn a lot more from reviews in the middle: 4 star, 3 star, and 2 star reviews, where people have honestly weighted pros and cons, and not fallen into the (to borrow a phrase from UP!) "I just met you and I love you!" fallacy, or into the "this didn't work for me so there is nothing good about it" fallacy.

I think this is important both for the community at large and for the rest of the shoppers of EF who are just browsing through.
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I also miss being able to check at a glance on the product page who the author of the review is, because I know some reviewers have similar responses to me. At the same time, I see how that matters more to those of us in the community than it does to random shoppers on the site.

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I do worry that showcasing only two reviews will lead to voting that jiggers for placement. At best, people will be totally magnanimous and it won't be a problem. In the middle scenario, if a reviewer knows (s)he will be reviewing a product, (s)he may not cast votes on the reviews (s)he reads as she makes her purchase decision. At worst, people might vindictively give lower grades to good reviews just to gain position.

I believe that most people on Eden are above that worst case scenario. But the middle scenario really doesn't seem that far-fetched to me.

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I think that MeliPixie is looking in a good direction when she hybridized the old and new systems: You keep the histogram, and the featured positive and negative reviews (with the weighted average upgrade, and the "all star types have equal opportunity" upgrades, hopefully), and you also list all the other reviews in the same one-line format that they had been in, taking up less space but still visible, with the author's name. Hopefully that will take some pressure off the "grading other reviews just to be noticed" effect.

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SS said this well, so I'm going to quote her:
"As with anything new, I realize there are glitches to be worked out. The above is given in the spirit of feedback and is not meant to be an attack. I know the tech team works hard; therefore, I wanted to also give feedback on the nice, neat appearance of the new product page. I am just hoping that some of the good features about the older system could somehow be incorporated with the new."

A lot of people have written a lot of great criticisms above that I don't feel I need to re-hash. But I will say that they are valid criticisms, I DO NOT like the new system, and I hope we can revert back to the old or a hybrid version before I lose my mind.

here is the community of reviewers reviewing the reviews layout...find it kinda cool. I love our group of opinionated opinions! the positive, the negative, the suggestions. we do rock!

anyways...I LIKE that you can sort reviews by either newest first or most helpful first. Now it is like shopping for a review.

At first I liked the idea that I could see how many reviewers gave the item 5 stars etc.

I still like that, but why couldn't that just have been added and leave the way the list of reviews where before!
It was much easier to go into reviews. Made finding a toy to free review easy too - now it's a bloody friggin nightmare!
I dislike going through reviews now.

I hate the way that reviews are showcased right now as reviews that were over two years old when the product was new and exciting get 21 votes and NEW reviews on the product get 2-4 votes. If the 21 vote old review is placed as the most helpful, only it will be read and then voted on and made "more" helpful whereas other reviews that have new information (especially on products that have been updated) are never scene in the front lines. This means they will not be looked at and will not be voted on.

BAD BAD BAD system.

If a review is going to front line (be on the front product page) then it needs to be a random choice, changing every time the page is loaded with the link to all the other reviews.

Another thing I just noticed, it doesn't even matter if another better review comes along and gets more extremely helpful reviews, it still does not show up as the most helpful review.

The example I saw was one where the first 5 star review was in January 2010 and currently has 21 extremely useful votes and 1 useful vote. It is listed as the "most helpful favorable review" on the product page. However, when you go to the page with all the reviews there is a 5 star review dated in January 2011 (one year later) that has 31 extremely useful votes and 3 useful votes. You would think that this one would be the one that qualifies for the "most helpful favorable review" but it does not.

So the "most useful" review system doesn't even work! (BTW if you are interested the product is: Touche Ice Big

Wow, that's crazy! I just assumed there was a sort of algorithm or something so it could instantly identify which was "most useful" and update automatically. Maybe the webmasters have to go in and update things by hand?! That seems like a huge waste of company resources... Hmmm....