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Atyreus · 01-15-2004, 07:52 PM

WarHound's post is a strong argument against accepting reviews in that it provides a perfect example of most of the reviews that do get posted. This is not because it is a negative review, but because it is a completely useless review. I have almost absolutely no idea as to why he didn't like the mud in question other than that he had some tiff with the admin over his name. For example, I don't know (1) if his comments over globals were civil, (2) if the admin based their decision about the appropriateness of his name on those comments or if there were other reasons, such as it being in violation of their naming guidelines, (3) whether they were requiring him to reroll because of an inappropriate name or just requiring him to change the name.

Now, maybe the review he was going to write would have addressed all the above concerns or maybe it wasn't going to touch on his particular spat with the admin at all, but a random perusal through the reviews posted to this site make it pretty clear that his rant is largely typical of the quality one can expect from such reviews.

Generously speaking, I'd say maybe 5% of the reviews posted at Topmudsites are useful, and almost all of those are positive reviews. At the time of this writing, the six most recent reviews listed on the home page are all complete rubbish. The best of these are so vague as to be useless, and the rest are poorly written, completely un-thought-out wastes of disk space. One isn't even for the game that it is supposed to be a review of.

Given that, I don't fault admins at all for not accepting reviews and I think it is ridiculous to assume that this would be seen as something that should cast said admins in a suspicious light. Personally, if I were to use most of the reviews on this site (even the positive ones) as a basis for my opinions about the muds reviewed, I probably wouldn't give any of the muds reviewed a second glance. Admins aren't so much at the mercy of negative reviewers as they are of just plain bad reviewers who really should learn to take a bit more time to develop a coherent line of thought and come up with something more substantive than "I've only ever played one mud, but this is clearly the best mud around." Taking time to use a spell checker probably wouldn't hurt either.

And that's taking positive reviews into account. If you just look at the negative reviews, the preponderance of obvious griefer reviews makes the whole review section seem largely worthless.

01-15-2004, 07:52 PM	#3
Atyreus Member Join Date: Feb 2003 Home MUD: The Dreaming City Posts: 60	WarHound's post is a strong argument against accepting reviews in that it provides a perfect example of most of the reviews that do get posted. This is not because it is a negative review, but because it is a completely useless review. I have almost absolutely no idea as to why he didn't like the mud in question other than that he had some tiff with the admin over his name. For example, I don't know (1) if his comments over globals were civil, (2) if the admin based their decision about the appropriateness of his name on those comments or if there were other reasons, such as it being in violation of their naming guidelines, (3) whether they were requiring him to reroll because of an inappropriate name or just requiring him to change the name. Now, maybe the review he was going to write would have addressed all the above concerns or maybe it wasn't going to touch on his particular spat with the admin at all, but a random perusal through the reviews posted to this site make it pretty clear that his rant is largely typical of the quality one can expect from such reviews. Generously speaking, I'd say maybe 5% of the reviews posted at Topmudsites are useful, and almost all of those are positive reviews. At the time of this writing, the six most recent reviews listed on the home page are all complete rubbish. The best of these are so vague as to be useless, and the rest are poorly written, completely un-thought-out wastes of disk space. One isn't even for the game that it is supposed to be a review of. Given that, I don't fault admins at all for not accepting reviews and I think it is ridiculous to assume that this would be seen as something that should cast said admins in a suspicious light. Personally, if I were to use most of the reviews on this site (even the positive ones) as a basis for my opinions about the muds reviewed, I probably wouldn't give any of the muds reviewed a second glance. Admins aren't so much at the mercy of negative reviewers as they are of just plain bad reviewers who really should learn to take a bit more time to develop a coherent line of thought and come up with something more substantive than "I've only ever played one mud, but this is clearly the best mud around." Taking time to use a spell checker probably wouldn't hurt either. And that's taking positive reviews into account. If you just look at the negative reviews, the preponderance of obvious griefer reviews makes the whole review section seem largely worthless.