Nit picking.

It's nice and helpful to ask questions if facts are left out of a review. Even to point out which facts or suggest the extended template.

But honestly, it's getting ridiculous when you see comments like...

"You forgot a period in the third sentence, fourth paragraph."

"You have three spelling errors"

"I don't like the phrasing that you use, it's not musical and poetic enough"

"What color is the toy"

"This review is really dry and boring"

"Why didn't you ride an elephant into the ring and then dance on it's back as you spoke this review????"

Ok, so some of those are made up. But still. We're not Siskel and Ebert. We're fellow community members who should be trying to help one another, not tear each other down. Small errors? They're okay, folks. Review styles we don't like are okay, too. They don't make the review bad. Missing a fact or two is even okay, since most of it can be found in the overview of the toy, yanno?

Nitpicking is just icky. Over critiquing is icky. It's also not our job. It offends me that people feel the need to do it, and do it so often and so cruelly.

Which brings me to my next peeve.

I don't know about anyone else but most of us are not required to vote on or comment on reviews. Those who are required to do so may run out of creative things to say and just say "thanks for the review". But those of us who are not? Really, folks, skip the comment if you don't have something worthwhile to say.

I find it just... offensive... when people say "thanks for the review!" after they've voted not worth reading or not useful. It doesn't even make sense. If the review is bad enough to warrant that sort of vote you should have *something* useful to say yourself.

That is all.

P.S. I got a message today about a typo in my video review. This post is NOT in response to that. I appreciated the message and even fixed the typo (Which is a lot more difficult in a video review, btw. All that time spent uploadingggggggggggggg gggggg.....) less

The things I can be offended by are mainly in relation to sexual/ gender identity. I find it's not so much the word itself but how it's used contextually that kind of (really) pisses me off sometimes. I don't mean an innocent mistake made out of naivete, I mean a blatant disregard for someone else's sexual/ gender identity.

The other thing that really (really really) lights a fire under my ass are snarky comments to reviews ('what's the color?' 'what's it's size?' 'what kind of lube can be used with it???') when they're answered in the review itself. Most of the reviewers that are posting regular reviews are careful to include everything. If we missed something, ok cool. Point it out, by all means- I don't mind at all (you're doing them a favor, really, if it's important information or something you're just curious about) as long as it's done respectfully. However, if someone is not going to take the time to thoroughly read the review that someone else took the time to be thorough when writing, I'd rather they didn't take the time to rudely comment, either. This has happened to me on more than one occasion and I've seen it happen to others as well, so much to the point it begs the question 'Did you even read more than the title of the review?'

Please note that all uses of the word 'you' are not meant to be personally directed towards any one individual but rather are just the only way I could think of to word something without it being too convoluted. less

I've seen a couple of instances of "Did you actually read this review before commenting?" as well. I'm not sure why it happens. Whenever I read a review and think "Was this piece of information missing?" I always read the review again to make sure I didn't just skip over it by accident before commenting on it.

My theory on why it happens: Voting/commenting on reviews counts as site activity, which adds to contributor rank. This gives an incentive to vote/comment more often on reviews, so contributors do. Voting is easy enough. But what to comment? As Carrie Ann pointed out, some just put "Thanks for the review!" regardless of what they voted. Others want to seem like they're giving constructive criticism, so they ask a "technical" question...without checking if it's already been covered in the review. IMO, both are equally useless. And I'm pretty sure I've been guilty of the "Thanks for the review!" comment at least once. The difference is that "Thanks for the review!" is kind of empty...but positive. The "desperate question" comments lead to fury and frustration.

I'm sorry if that theory offends anyone. I'm willing to listen to/read any other alternate hypotheses on the "useless comment" phenomenon. less

First and foremost, I find the idea that some people are never offensive offensive. EVERYBODY is offensive from time to time, even if they don't mean to be, because there are so many things that people are sensitive about, especially with regards to sexuality. I know for a fact that a comment I use from time to time, "buy I'm a very tiny woman" (usually meant to refer to my actual vagina, but it's easy to misinterpret) has offended people from time to time, and I try to explain myself without acting haughty. Nobody is 100% PC, so be willing to listen to others when they say you've offended them; by the same token, don't automatically flip shit if somebody inadvertently offended you. Talking, not yelling, folks.

I also agree with the "made in China" thing. This is something I've had to remind people about many times, mostly with regards to makeup: China is huge and is the manufacturing capital of the world. A sizeable chunk of what you own was probably made in China. Chinese people aren't biologically designed to create crappy equipment; if a company provides the Chinese manufacturer with cheap-o "ingredients," methods, etc., it's the company's fault, not China's. PS: I never hear anybody complaining about stuff when it's made in Canada, Taiwan, Thailand, or the UK. Just a thought.

Also, I just did a review and noticed the tags, and they really boggle my mind. It kind of bothered me having to tag my review, since I feel like I'm trying to "peg" peoples's preferences.

I dislike the term "tranny," but only because I've never seen it used in a positive way. (As compared to "queer," "dyke" and "fag," which I've heard used by members of the LGBTQ community in a positive/humorous way.) Usually, I hear the word "tranny" when people are trying to insinuate a woman is "ugly" or "masculine," and that just rubs me the wrong way.

99.9% of the time, "transgender," "transsexual," and "transvestite" refer to three different things. "Transgender" is often used as a blanket term, but it can also refer specifically to an internal gender feeling; "transsexual" usually refers to someone who is physically trans, and "transvestite" usually refers to those who wear clothing of the opposite gender, but do not alter their physical bodies and may still identify as their "birth sex" (for lack of a better word).

Also, remember that essentialism is out: women do not automatically love clitoral stimulation, men are not the only people who are pricks, not all male dancers are gay men, not all female motorcyclists are lesbians, and trans people are people, too. So on and so on. less

Ditto this! And while we're on the subject of offensive things, there are a couple of people (no names) who seem to think it is their personal job to be as rude and cutting as possible on the new reviewers, and it irks me to no end. I find it offensive because they often come across like their opinions are law and they have some special place in EF that makes them superior so they can speak for all of us. Since the comments that they're leaving are visible with the review, I think it's relevant here.

Funny thing is, these same people will leave polite criticism or even positive comments for people whom they know or like, but can't manage to give the same courtesy to new reviewers.

The bad part is, I personally know 2 very promising newbies who left EF because of it.

Even if it's the worst review you've ever read, if you have something negative to say, you should think first and employ a little tact. Maybe it would help to re-read what you've written (before you post it) and think about how it would make you feel to get a comment like that. less

I've seen a couple of instances of "Did you actually read this review before commenting?" as well. I'm not sure why it happens. Whenever I read a review and think "Was this piece of information missing?" I always read the review again to make sure I didn't just skip over it by accident before commenting on it.

My theory on why it happens: Voting/commenting on reviews counts as site activity, which adds to contributor rank. This gives an incentive to vote/comment more often on reviews, so contributors do. Voting is easy enough. But what to comment? As Carrie Ann pointed out, some just put "Thanks for the review!" regardless of what they voted. Others want to seem like they're giving constructive criticism, so they ask a "technical" question...without checking if it's already been covered in the review. IMO, both are equally useless. And I'm pretty sure I've been guilty of the "Thanks for the review!" comment at least once. The difference is that "Thanks for the review!" is kind of empty...but positive. The "desperate question" comments lead to fury and frustration.

I'm sorry if that theory offends anyone. I'm willing to listen to/read any other alternate hypotheses on the "useless comment" phenomenon. less

I've seen a couple of instances of "Did you actually read this review before commenting?" as well. I'm not sure why it happens. Whenever I read a review and think "Was this piece of information missing?" I always read the review again to make sure I didn't just skip over it by accident before commenting on it.

My theory on why it happens: Voting/commenting on reviews counts as site activity, which adds to contributor rank. This gives an incentive to vote/comment more often on reviews, so contributors do. Voting is easy enough. But what to comment? As Carrie Ann pointed out, some just put "Thanks for the review!" regardless of what they voted. Others want to seem like they're giving constructive criticism, so they ask a "technical" question...without checking if it's already been covered in the review. IMO, both are equally useless. And I'm pretty sure I've been guilty of the "Thanks for the review!" comment at least once. The difference is that "Thanks for the review!" is kind of empty...but positive. The "desperate question" comments lead to fury and frustration.

I'm sorry if that theory offends anyone. I'm willing to listen to/read any other alternate hypotheses on the "useless comment" phenomenon. less

I don't know why it bothers people if someone puts "good review" or something. I understand that if the comment is incongruous with the vote (a somewhat useful or less vote and a positive comment) --if you get a crappy vote then you'll likely want to know what the issue was and how to improve it. However, if I vote "extremely useful" and I don't have any particular questions or specific comments, I sometimes just put "Very thorough review, great job." I don't know why that's such a bad thing. I don't do it on Carrie Ann's reviews because I've seen her express her dislike of it, but in general I don't know why it's so bothersome. It seems like a nice thought. less

I could swear I've seen a couple reviews where somebody actually asked the reviewer if they had spent any time reviewing anything before because this review was horrible. I'm very happy I haven't seen anything like that in a while tho. Now this was right when I found the site which was a while ago and I'm happy to say I haven't seen anything like it in a good long while but I was still offended by the fact that people can't seem to take the time to make the criticism constructive. If somebody said something I reviewed could use a lot of work I would be hurt at first because it takes me a while to write these, but as long as they were giving me something to work with I would get over it, if that makes any sense.

And as far as the "useless comment" phenomenon, I know there are some times that I want to let somebody know that I really did enjoy reading their review, but there's not so many ways to let them know other than saying "thank you for providing me with this review." That's my take on it, but I'm not here to change any opinions less

But if you enjoyed reading the review and voted it fairly useful, a thank you makes sense.

If it was horrible to you and you voted it low, that's when it makes no sense to me.

It's not the thanking in general, it's the thanking for something you (generic you, not specific) just called useless. less

I've never really found the different slang terms for penis or vagina to be offensive. I don't use too many slang words .. (though I did use "cha-cha" for vagina once lol) but reading the words used in reviews don't really bother me. I really haven't seen many reviews that have anything offensive in them. Or, at least not things that offend me.

I think I see more offensive things in the comments of reviews than in the reviews themselves. Especially on newer user reviews. less