Help & Feedback Discussion Board

Found a weird bug? Report it here.

jasyjen — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 20:00:15 GMT

I had no idea there was a 'saved drafts' section!!! Can you tell me where to look under 'my home'? I tried to locate it myself, but I must be overlooking it.

When I get done writing the review, I hit PUBLISH and it will 'spin' as if it's taking in the review, and then....nothing. It acts like it's freezing up. IF I've had the forethought to copy and paste it into word, I can usually resubmit it okay, but if I haven't done that....I just lose out. There is no message given at any point.

Thanks for your help, Meredith. I'm sure I should have mentioned the problem sooner, but I was just waiting till the glitch was repaired. Sorry.

Meredith said…

Hi darlyn63 & jasyjen!

So sorry to hear about the problems you have experienced when attempting to post a review. In order to diagnose the problem & recreate it, I have a few quick questions:

1- Do you hit "publish" when the screen "locks up"? And if so, what happens after hitting publish? Specifically, what screen or messaging do you see next?

2- When you say the review is totally gone- does it appear in your saved drafts on My Home?

Also, darylyn, I can certainly help you out with the Restaurant.com certificate. It's not your fault if you had technical problems while trying to qualify. Please shoot me an email at meredith@viewpoints.com and I will get you a Restaurant.com gift card.

Thank you both and Happy Holidays!

BS reviews and half-hearted reviewers

AnnaBanana — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 19:49:31 GMT

copperdan said…

Thank all of you because I was wondering about that . Ihave a hard time since I dont use make up and I dont use a lot that other people do. So I will only have so many reviews but I plan to review them the best I can.I dont believe in lying about anything .Let alone to do it for pleagerism,or stature.Thank you

I definitely think quality is more important than quantity. Considering the length of time I have been with ViewPoints, I don't really have that many reviews done but I can stand behind each one of them as something I believe in. I think that most of the reviewers here (especially you) have great integrity and as I said before the problem I was complaining about has not been common to the group.

BS reviews and half-hearted reviewers

AnnaBanana — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 19:42:17 GMT

awareness said…

AnnaBanana said…

Another thing that is very rare here but I believe that it has happened, is when someone doesn't bother to actually experience a product on their own but creates a review by rehashing the information presented in another review ... very often something that someone else has done that very day or just the day before. Sometimes this is artistically done and hard to detect (and impossible to prove) but it is still wrong and defeats the whole purpose of ViewPoints.

I agree that that's entirely unethical, to present viewpoints on an item implying that one has direct experience with it when in fact one does not. And I agree that it's not good for Viewpoints.

However, is it actually against the terms of use (even if you can "prove" it)? Even uninformed viewpoints are still viewpoints. It's still on the reader to evaluate what is written.

If I wrote a review on a dryer bar (fancy that lol) and then told someone that I never actually used the dryer bar, is that grounds for a moderator to delete my review? How about if I wrote a review saying that "a friend of mine had these experiences with that dryer bar, so I give it 2 stars"; is there anything "against the rules" about that review (not against what I think the rules should be if were world ruler)?

As long as you are truthful, there is nothing wrong with it. I gave my aunt bedstand lamps from Sears for Christmas and -- since she is not a part of ViewPoints and doesn't spend a whole lot of time on the Internet -- I fully intend to write reviews about those lamps, what kind of service they are giving her, what they look like, etc. but I will explain the situation truthfully, that these are not actually lamps which I bought for my own home.

I have sometimes reviewed foods or other products which I experienced in my friends' homes (i.e. the caramel calcium chews) and explained that.

Actually, we are all on the honor system here so anyone can do or say whatever they want and their reviews will stand. No one is policing us nor should they be which makes it especially important for us to follow the ViewPoints code which used to come up at the top of the "Write a review" screen which began "Be truthful ..."

BS reviews and half-hearted reviewers

copperdan — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 19:40:55 GMT

Thank all of you because I was wondering about that . Ihave a hard time since I dont use make up and I dont use a lot that other people do. So I will only have so many reviews but I plan to review them the best I can.I dont believe in lying about anything .Let alone to do it for pleagerism,or stature.Thank you

BS reviews and half-hearted reviewers

this2shallpass19 — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:15:16 GMT

AnnaBanana said…

Another thing that is very rare here but I believe that it has happened, is when someone doesn't bother to actually experience a product on their own but creates a review by rehashing the information presented in another review ... very often something that someone else has done that very day or just the day before. Sometimes this is artistically done and hard to detect (and impossible to prove) but it is still wrong and defeats the whole purpose of ViewPoints.

AnnaBanana, I believe I know exactly who you are talking about. Awareness, there is a member here at Viewpoints that rehashes reviews she reads and then claims them to be her own. She has "stolen" about 17 of my reviews and I called her on it. She reviewed a product, literally the day after I did (and other people's). She said it was a coincidence, but that is BS. One of the members here reviewed something that isn't even made anymore and it was extremely rare and almost impossible to find at the time. The "review stealer" wrote a review of the exact same item the very next day. Coincidence, I think not! Several people have said that they reported her, but I don't know that anything has come of it, because she's still stealing reviews. If she's a paid writer, I would be furious.

BS reviews and half-hearted reviewers

awareness — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 17:52:45 GMT

AnnaBanana said…

Another thing that is very rare here but I believe that it has happened, is when someone doesn't bother to actually experience a product on their own but creates a review by rehashing the information presented in another review ... very often something that someone else has done that very day or just the day before. Sometimes this is artistically done and hard to detect (and impossible to prove) but it is still wrong and defeats the whole purpose of ViewPoints.

I agree that that's entirely unethical, to present viewpoints on an item implying that one has direct experience with it when in fact one does not. And I agree that it's not good for Viewpoints.

However, is it actually against the terms of use (even if you can "prove" it)? Even uninformed viewpoints are still viewpoints. It's still on the reader to evaluate what is written.

If I wrote a review on a dryer bar (fancy that lol) and then told someone that I never actually used the dryer bar, is that grounds for a moderator to delete my review? How about if I wrote a review saying that "a friend of mine had these experiences with that dryer bar, so I give it 2 stars"; is there anything "against the rules" about that review (not against what I think the rules should be if were world ruler)?

BS reviews and half-hearted reviewers

AnnaBanana — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 17:24:36 GMT

Another thing that is very rare here but I believe that it has happened, is when someone doesn't bother to actually experience a product on their own but creates a review by rehashing the information presented in another review ... very often something that someone else has done that very day or just the day before. Sometimes this is artistically done and hard to detect (and impossible to prove) but it is still wrong and defeats the whole purpose of ViewPoints.

Found a weird bug? Report it here.

awareness — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 15:53:48 GMT

I just clicked on a random profile photo from the home page (as I am wont to do) and got a page which said "We were unable to find a profile for 'sarahsnowwhitequeen'". If this user once existed but has been deleted or renamed, should the profile photo still show?

Found a weird bug? Report it here.

Meredith — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 15:42:28 GMT

Thanks for the info Patty. I see what you mean on the overlay with some product names within reviews. Seems to happen more often when the product name is a long one. We will clean them up on the next site update which is in about a week and a half.

Found a weird bug? Report it here.

Meredith — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 15:38:26 GMT

Hi darlyn63 & jasyjen!

So sorry to hear about the problems you have experienced when attempting to post a review. In order to diagnose the problem & recreate it, I have a few quick questions:

1- Do you hit "publish" when the screen "locks up"? And if so, what happens after hitting publish? Specifically, what screen or messaging do you see next?

2- When you say the review is totally gone- does it appear in your saved drafts on My Home?

Also, darylyn, I can certainly help you out with the Restaurant.com certificate. It's not your fault if you had technical problems while trying to qualify. Please shoot me an email at meredith@viewpoints.com and I will get you a Restaurant.com gift card.

Thank you both and Happy Holidays!

Have ideas for new features on the site?

awareness — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 15:10:13 GMT

Site Links

Currently, we are able to embed hyperlinks to Viewpoints pages within reviews.

This could be hugely streamlined by leveraging the idea that these links likely will refer 99% of the time to some "site primitive":

to a member profile
to an item (group of reviews)
to a specific review
to a discussion (a thread or group of related posts)
to a specific comment (a single post)

The proposal here is to make these primitives (and any others to which it makes sense to expand this concept) interactive, so, like, a member could right-click it or something and say "bookmark me" (or some other language to distinguish the behavior from browser-native bookmarks).

A widget in the page can display current bookmarks. For each current bookmark, there would be an option to "paste" a link to the primitive to which the bookmark refers, when it makes sense to do so, such as when a review editor has focus. "Pasting" the bookmark has the effect of inserting the descriptive text for the primitive (for instance, the "sound bite" when the primitive is a single review, or the brand and item description when the primitive is an item page) as well as forming a hyperlink to its associated view / page.

(Once the link is formed, there's no reason not to let the user edit it as if it were manually created, the way a user can now edit a link which s/he has inserted manually.)

The idea here is to take out the clumsiness in using the existing "Viewpoints-only insert / edit link" functionality. Right now if I want to link to a specific review, I have to do it in two-steps: type or copy and paste the "sound bite" text, and then copy and paste the URL to its associated page.

Maybe these bookmarks poof when the session closes? Maybe they persist? (If they persist, the user should have a solid way to manage them, likely from "my home".)

It's my impression that currently, only "power users" use the existing ability to embed hyperlinks to Viewpoints URLs in reviews. The idea here is to make it easier for everyone. Of course the next question is, if implemented, how would this functionality be demonstrated to the average user to encourage anyone who wants to use it (i.e. tooltips, tutorial video, etcetera)?

Notes / Annotations

Something that would be super helpful would be the ability to leave myself notes. A widget across all the site templates would let me create notes, and I could go to a "notes" section in "my home" to edit, delete, or otherwise manage them (archive? organize in folders?). This would be analogous to me being able to leave a comment to myself, only these comments wouldn't be mixed in with the other social content in my inbox.

A lot of times I'm on Viewpoints for a few moments, and I think of something—maybe a review I want to write or a class of items I want to research—but I don't have time at that moment to follow up on it (even to start a review draft, in the case of writing a review). Being able to type myself a one or two-line note would be just super. ("Super"? Who talks like that?!)

An annotation would be the same thing as a note, except that it would be associated to a site primitive: to a review, to an item (collection of reviews), to an item category, to a Viewpoints member, to a discussion (collection of associated comments; a "thread"), to a specific comment (analogous to a "reply draft"—a note to myself about something I thought of while reading that comment). I'm sure I've left out some "site primitives" here; this list is just off the top of my head.

The UI in the "notes" section of "my home" should allow (1) all notes to be viewed or (2) just notes of a particular category (or a user-defined folder), or even more than one category. If an organizational hierarchy is displayed to the left, you can make note folders be multi-selectable to determine which subset of notes is currently displayed.

Anyway, if you have interest in pursuing this, I'd be happy to help to continue brainstorming it.

Have ideas for new features on the site?

awareness — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 14:46:55 GMT

What about an upcoming birthday notification for each "friend" whose stated birthday (in fun facts) resolves to a calendar date? (Don't forget to handle the people with Feb 29 birthdays.)

Facebook has something similar (drawing a parallel, insofar as Viewpoints is a social networking site), though audiences in the two media differ in how they are constructed and motivated.

Like many features this is design choice. I'm not really sure how I feel about it—just putting it out there as an obvious extension.

Found a weird bug? Report it here.

jasyjen — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 14:34:08 GMT

I've been having this problem all month long, but was hoping that it would resolve itself. Every time I try to write a review, I'm kicked out of the site OR I get through writing the entire review and then it is somehow lost in the system. The reviews I've tried to submit have been on various topics. Floss picks, dog food, self-foaming cleanser, etc.

I'm using Internet Explorer 8.

Found a weird bug? Report it here.

darlyn63 — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 05:15:55 GMT

I tried a couple of times to write some reviews, and the page locked up and my review was totally gone. Has anyone else experienced this? I've tried 3 times on my new Bissell Pro-heat Cleaner. (Kinda wanted the Restaurant gift thingy). But oh well. I guess it is out in no mans land. Wrote to reviews on just that one, because of what happened the first time~the lock up. So a few days later tried it again, same thing. Hmmmmmm.....I'm afraid to try again. Any ideas on what happened would be appreciated.

category or item categorization irregularities

PattyTherre — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 03:45:31 GMT

The tool has been down almost all month so those who could change titles and merge things were unable to do anything. It is back up and I know I am trying to catch up in beauty which is sssssssssssuch a mess. I hope the new way to add a product helps eliminate the duplicates because it's insanity. I never saw one product spelled or described in so many ways. It's going to take a lot of work to get things rights but people are working on it both part time and full time.

I love that we can add things ourselves but hate that people don't take two minutes to use the correct spelling, capitalization, and look to be sure the product isn't already there.

Reviewed supplement last night-count as "health and fitness" item?

PattyTherre — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 03:33:50 GMT

I agree, it is always safe to write an extra review when trying to qualify for any of the sweepstakes just to be sure you totally qualify. But I believe that the medication you reviewed should be eligible under health. I have to go read it now as I have thyroid issues!

New look & feel of Write a Review tab

PattyTherre — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 03:28:39 GMT

SDC is evil. It is so inconsistent and has such weird titles and duplications. But I do like that it is harder to add a product now before at least searching for a listing. There are so many duplicates floating around the site that need merging and fixing as it is.

I agree that a way to see the listing that comes up which has no reviews would be helpful though. You never know what you're going to get with SDC links. In general, though, I feel this new way of adding products and services will help reduce user made duplicate listings.

quick questions about review date

PattyTherre — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 03:23:28 GMT

Yep. I just published a review I had sitting partially written in draft for months. It shows the current date of publication and counts for points when it was published, not drafted.

Whyis it always about money ?

PattyTherre — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 03:21:13 GMT

This site is friendly and avoids most drama. It's a welcoming place for all who care to interact or be a part of it. Welcome aboard and enjoy the site any way that you want. I love that it is a part review, part social site and open to all.

BS reviews and half-hearted reviewers

PattyTherre — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 03:18:36 GMT

I see those types of reviews all the time. I mark them inappropriate and, if there are a lot of them from one reviewer, email Meredith with a heads up. I hate even more, people who post a slew of stolen reviews which are word for word taken from professional sites. I found at least two people doing this over the course of the last couple of weeks. It was SO blatantly obvious. I even commented to one.

I marked all the reviews and emailed. I believe those reviews are now gone.

Writing a review here is not hard at all and takes only a few minutes. I just don't get why people don't take those few minutes and actually SAY something (of their own). It takes about as long to type out crazy gibberish than to type out a few sentences about a product. Sheesh.