Thank you for posting this. It's so difficult, sometimes, when people demand to know why you voted the way you did.

Maybe I just couldn't get into your review. Maybe I was distracted. Maybe I'd read too many reviews that day. Maybe your writing style is boring as shit or maybe you're too long-winded. Maybe I'm PMSing or my cat just ran over my face. Maybe the only thing more you could have done is to stop having your personality and writing the way you do.

If we use the grading system, useful is an A to me, extremely useful an A+. "Just ok" is "somewhat useful." As I've explained to others, a useful vote for me says "this review is good, worth reading" but won't make me see stars. d=

With that said, I think some people who are feeling insulted or disappointed with "Usefuls" are probably considering them lower than those doing the voting and, as far as rank goes, writing a review is going to go a lot further than waiting for "extremely useful" votes. less

Kindred,

I love your logic and thank you for sharing it. You make some great points here.

Honestly, I think that the key to those of us who are more sensitive is just to not worry about it even though we may be perfectionists.

Personally, I have sort of an "inner circle" in my mind of people I trust and respect and their ratings do mean a lot to me. I've gone to one of them and said, "I know as I get closer to 100, its going to be tempting to just pump out reviews and be fast but not the same quality. Please kick me if you see my quality going down."

But I've decided - particularly after this discussion - that others just really don't matter. There are some people that I know will never give me an "EU" - I have three people in particular in mind. Two of them have lower ratings than me - one has higher ratings (and I have gone and looked at their reviews to see what I can learn from them).

I've even had people who see a "useful" rating on my reviews (before this thread) contact me privately and say, "Don't worry about that person cause they always do that".

I will say that the one person who once voted "Extremely Useful" on a review and made me dance around the room - was JR. I already knew he was tough on reviews and I'd received several usefuls from him and gone to him to ask what I was doing wrong cause I was a newbie. He explained how oftentimes EU is given more as a popularity thing and so he didn't give them out very often. When I saw him give me an EU...my family heard my "Whoopeee!" and saw me dance around the room. I felt like I had "arrived"!

Anyway - Kindred - thanks for your insight. Honestly, after what you've said and what others have said to me publicly and privately - I promise - I will try to not take votes personally any more.

I think I'll put a note above my desk "Votes don't matter - Comments do".

I do think that when you're building up your ratings though and are close to the next "pricepoint" for free items to review, then its easy to find they matter a bit more. less

Oh, my apologies then. I was unaware of that. I was simply hoping for feedback and suggestions to improve my reviews and make them more useful. I had no intentions to harass anyone.

Though, upon reading through the discussion that you linked me to, I saw that the administrator Kristi (aka Zuul) said "I've decided I will allow polite inquiries. However, be aware that you never know how it will be perceived, and if they say anything to me I'll have to investigate. Also, be aware that your request may go denied. So, go ahead and ask politely."
In essence, I believe what she's saying is if you contact someone once with a polite inquiry about what they might suggest to improve your work, that is alright. They may misconstrue your contact as harassment, so if they choose not to reply, do not continue messaging them, because that WILL be seen as harassment. But contacting someone once is fine.
Again, my apologies to anyone that felt uncomfortable by my request for suggestions and advice. less

Like I said (and you commented after), those votes really don't matter as much as things we can control (writing more reviews and being more socially active) in the breakdown of ratings. I, personally, would focus on that.

It really strikes me as interesting how much "animosity" has generated in some groups over a "Useful" review. Some people seem to be pretty upset about it while others, like myself, view it as a positive thing and possibly even a compliment. It's not an issue of doing anything wrong. It's an issue of perspective. For me, there's always room for improvement. I mean, just in general, I'll spend the rest of my life improving as a person and I still won't be perfect. I have a similar view about my reviews here.

So I personally wouldn't even feel frustrated unless someone was consistently giving me "somewhat useful" votes or less... and I don't even know if I'd notice. I don't have the time or inclination to track user's activity, I guess. less

I think that most people wouldn't mind a polite inquiry but I have seen some less than polite demands about why someone votes the way she does. At the end of the day, EF doesn't require us to explain that and it's kind of entitled to think that you deserve an explanation every time (not that you personally do but if someone does..). less

After some discussion, it appears there are two dissenting opinions about useful votes.

I have personally always seen a useful vote as a positive good for a good but not perfect review -- reserving extremely useful votes for those reviews that are the bee's knees. But not everyone is the same, it seems. less

I view a 'useful' vote on my review as saying "this had all the necessary information but I still had a question you didn't address" or maybe "good review but your style wasn't very approachable to me" ... or occasionally "I didn't want to read this and just voted for the point."

In any case, I really love it when people leave me constructive criticism for improving my future reviews---but if not, I am still satisfied that (if they read it) at least they learned most of the information they were interested in, and I did a reasonably good job. less

After some discussion, it appears there are two dissenting opinions about useful votes.

I have personally always seen a useful vote as a positive good for a good but not perfect review -- reserving extremely useful votes for those reviews that are the bee's knees. But not everyone is the same, it seems. less