What an interesting idea!

Would this page be seen by all readers who come to our site or only by Viewpoint members?

Also - thanks for including my Claddagh review in your example!    : )

This might be pretty interesting. Do the reviews with the most comments change very often, or are they pretty much the same for long periods of time? You might also extend that idea to the discussions with the most activity...I don't know what might interest people who are searching.

Matt, I've seen that on another site and didn't like it there because like the MH list it makes me nervous that many reviews that deserve MH don't show up on the list and many reviews that could be commented on aren't. Also I do wonder - at least on that site where a lot of essays are written- if people write controversial essays to get seen on the front page. Just my two cents. Jo

I agree with Jo. Helpful ratings and comments are often based on popularity of the author or controversiality of the topic, not quality of the review. This would simply give the most popular and/or controversial people higher visibility, not necessarily promote the best and most helpful reviews. It might also foster cliques who agree to rate and comment on each other's reviews to move themselves higher up the visibility list. That's a long shot but a few of us have seen things like that happen elsewhere. Interestingly, that "elsewhere" was named in two of the 10 reviews in your list!

--Bob (who's feeling contrary today.)

I think most viewed would be ok.

LisaCarey said…
I think most viewed would be ok.

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Most viewed by outside people would be ok. One it would give us ideas of what people are looking for and two - umm I don't have a two - make one up!

I say go for it.  Any new ways to look for reviews just makes everything more visible and let's me find different reviews I may not have seen.

I like as many ways to sort reviews as possible. I am all for sorting any way you can come up with. It would help people drill down what they are looking for. I like the idea of being able to sort reviews by date and by stars and I like the idea of being able to see the top most rated/reviewed products in each category. I'm cool with any way to help people find what they're looking for and to stick around reading.

Matt said…

  We are also considering creating a page that would allow users to filter products by most reviewed and higest rated.  Ideally each of these pages would also allow user to filter reviews by specific time periods and by category.

I like this idea the most, especially what has been popular in the last 30 days.  I reviewed my health insurance policy recently and am surprised how many reads that review is getting. There are probably other ''sleeper categories'' that members would post reviews in if we knew they would attract a lot of readers.

I don't think showing Most Helpful reviews or most hit reviews would be a problem here - considering we don't get paid for hits, why would anyone get into cliques over it?

Matt, I think it would be a great idea to make statistics like this available; for two main reasons.  The first, is that I love stats, and would have a lot of fun pouring over them.  The second though, and most important, is that it COULD breed competition for people to see their own review up there.  Why is that good?  Because the more reviews that we have on the site, the better it is for the site.  More good reviews getting hits means more money for the site.  If someone sees a movie they saw getting a ton of hits, and it causes them to also write about it, that benefits ViewPoints.  More reviews of more products being spread around the internet is a great thing.

 

Some lists might catch my attention as a long time online surfer and consumer.

 The one above (which appears to change over time with looking a couple of times over the evening) would not do it for me. Most listings do not give any real idea as to content from the title. I would guess the hits are in house (comments from buddies) or that they come from keywords on Google (hot topic not indicated by the list given per title).

I wouldn't have a problem with sort and various ways to sort. That's cool.

The example wouldn't pull a click on my part though, but other lists might. Would have to see them to know.

Yeah on Cyndia's line of thought - it would help if the actual page had more info like what product they were reviewing, the pictures like you've been showing on our review pages, and maybe even a sentance from the review

BTW - I'd show more than top 10, like top 1000 for each list.  Just b/c I know the top 10 won't change THAT much on a regular basis, but top 1000 I have a chance at making it there!!

Good feedback everyone.  The list that I put in the original post is not most popular but the most commented on.  It measures which reviews has generated the most comments.  Popularity would be measured based on the number of reviews. 

Perhaps one way to address the competiveness/clique issue is to not push reviews to the main page based on limited feedback.

Regarding Cyndi's point if we did develop this feature it would list more details of the review, product and reviewer than I have shown above.

Keep the feedback coming!

I want to be able sort reviews by everything up to and including the color of socks worn by the reviewer if I want.  Great idea!

vivasuzi said…
I don't think showing Most Helpful reviews or most hit reviews would be a problem here - considering we don't get paid for hits, why would anyone get into cliques over it?

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I'm not saying that any of us will be rushing to join a click circle to get more votes on our reviews, but egoboo is powerful motivation. Where ever there are lists, there is the potential for egoboo... and therefore the potential for some sort of click-circle abuse.

I'm not saying this will be a massive problem, just something to consider.

--Bob

LisaCarey said…
I think most viewed would be ok.

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I agree...

I like this thought and the other one I would like to see is to be able to sort reviews by most reviewed.