Implemented Requiring Review To Rate (Anonymous Reviews)

[digitalpoint]

The new version requires a review in order to rate, and requires a download in order to review.

This is a step in the right direction, but always forcing someone's name publicly is going to tend to have people not give bad reviews even when one is warranted. Simply because they don't want to deal with having an argument with the resource author.

I'm not sure what the ideal solution would be, but maybe somehow give reputed members the ability to not sign their name to their review. Maybe based on user group at the time they left the review... or maybe a preference you could set a threshold at like after xxx public reviews, the user is allowed to leave reviews without signing their name.

Another idea would be to have another sort of rating based on the ratio of ratings to downloads (since the current setup will make tons of positive reviews, but very few negative reviews).

Anyone else have any ideas of how to encourage negative reviews when they are actually warranted?

 

[DRE]

Well... I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

It's all good man. If you make your twitter authentication add-on a resource I'll hook you up with a positive review.

 

[DRE]

There isn't anything you can do about this. Saying anonymous review isn't legitimate is not the answer.
If a product has 1,000 reviews, a few negative reviews are expected and should not affect the overall rating.

That's your opinion and I respect it. To me it's cowardly and not legitimate cause it's faceless and has no source.

 

[Andy.N]

I've mentioned the possibility of making reviews anonymous, though this isn't coded yet.

Also, you don't have to require reviews to rate - it's just a decision we've taken here.

Look forward to this and much more when you are back from your honeymoon, Mike.
Enjoy a great trip.

 

[Andy.N]

To accommodate anonymous reviewers, I think we can simply randomly add * into their usernames so it becomes a********

 

[Vicki]

+1 anonymous reviews as an option...

this is especially important to a community with members who already know each other very well in daily life... to get most honest voice out, anonymous reviews is a must; even if it's for a community full of strangers, most people still tend to be very polite, respectful, and avoiding to cause any unnecessary confrontations with resources owners, thus those people would need a little help from the software itself to provide certain protection in order to really speak out what they truely feel about the resources they've used(both positives and negatives), otherwise they'll only mention the plus side and leave any uncomfortable feelings about the resources in the black holes, and if those resources are paid, certainly it would cost many more customers waste their money to keep purchasing even if it is something in bad quality; in the long-run, less and less customers would want to trust the review system at all and your RM won't be a reliable asset to use any more. Being either a site user or a site admin, you do want RM help you monitor the quality of the resources uploaded to the site... so you really want to hear most honest voice about each product/resource's up side and down side(if there is any), it's good to each product/resource's improvement too...

Of course, there are jerks everywhere, with anonymous option turned on, there will be unhonest negative reviews appear on the site, but like Andy.N mentioned earlier, 'If a product has 1,000 reviews, a few negative reviews are expected and should not affect the overall rating'. Users are mostly intelligent enough to judge...

Each site's functionality is different, so not every site needs anonymous reviews, not only that, I actually think, for a couple categories of the RM part on my site, I'd prefer anonymous is not turned on for those couple small areas; but for the majority part of RM, I'd definitely prefer letting users make their own choices - whether with a username or anonymous - each time they post a review.

If it is possible, I'd also like to see for each resource he/she uses, each user could only post one review within certain period of time - which admin could set - not sure if it is already available in RM? However, whether with a username or with the anonymous option, users could always edit or update their reviews.

 

[Kiwi]

Agree with Vicki's point.

Each forum has its policies to decide whether to use anonymous reviews or not once this function is available. I believe creeps hang around every site but as admins we keep the rights of deleting those spam, insulting or vicious posts.

 

[Vicki]

Looking forward to seeing 'anonymous' become an option in the review system of RM...

Yes, forum rules and policies could help control the number of viciously planned negative reviews. Without 'anonymous' being an option, it's going to be very hard to let most users always give out their most honest reviews(pros and cons; good and bad; bad and worse etc.).

 

[Paul B]

Implemented in 1.1.

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/watching-resource-categories-anonymous-reviews-and-more.60735/