I don't usually propose changes to the system, but this is something I've been thinking about for a
while now, and before I email my ideas to wade/tom/liljim I thought I'd post em and get you're
ideas...
Being able to review a movie is one of the coolest parts of NG, but it's rarely used correctly.
Some users simply bash a movie without "reviewing" it.
They will say that the movie is terrible, and give it a very low score, and nothing else.
What’s worse, is that I've noticed the voting scores often reflect the current review on the flash,
so if there is a really bad bashing review there, people tend to go along with that review and vote
low on the movie. It's sad, but true!
I've found that about 90% of these useless bashing reviews (found on good movies) are posted
with a rather new account, with no movies, and no contact information. So you can't even talk
with that person and find out how to improve your flash so that everyone can like it. It makes
you wonder if some other animator has created that account just to knock down the review
scores of other animator's works to elevate their own.
So here two of my ideas on how to get fairer and more accurate reviews.
I. Add a power system to reviews, just like the voting System...
Right now everyone has the same review strength, and at first that seems fine. But there are
users who know a lot more about flash and Newgrounds than other users. Experienced flash
creators, as well as users who have been voting and reviewing movies for a long time should
have more say as to what deserves a high score, and what doesn’t. The formula would be quite
simple. Just take your voting strength and add your batting average (if you have one), and that is
the amount of newbie reviews your review would be worth. And this would be your “Review
Power”. At first this might sound steep, cause some users would have a review power of nearly
10, but if it is applied to everyone, it will be perfectly fair. Any user who has ever attempted to
make a flash movie, is twice as likely to adequately review a movie, as someone who has never
made a movie, and this would take that into account. But since it is based on your batting
average (which is a convenient new addition) and not simply a count of all your movies, people
won’t just submit movies to improve their review power. Even if they did, they know that they
would have to be GOOD movies, and this might even increase people’s desire to submit quality
works for the incentive. If this is added, then next to “Overall rating: X” there should be
“Review power: X”, so that the animator can see easily who is responsible for their Average
overall rating.
2. Add an option to choose how many reviews you see...
Only being able to see one review on the page, without clicking the link is a minor, but valid
annoyance for many (particularly animators). Often a user will very strongly disagree with the
previous review, and make reference to it, and when this is done at a glance nobody has any idea
who the new reviewer is talking about, or what he/she is talking about, and rarely will someone
take the time to load another page to find out. Also it can be annoying when you take the time to
write a good review (by good I mean well thought out) for a highly visited movie, and
immediately after posting it, you find someone else has placed their foolish junk where your
masterpiece should be, and it’s likely that nobody will ever see that review except the creator of
the flash. It’s not a good idea to make it display more reviews all the time, cause that would just
cause more server work, so to make it convenient and cool you can add an option to your
profiles where you can specify the amount of reviews to show on the main page. When an
account is created this could be set to a default of 3. So if you are logged in, you and you haven’t
changed the specification you will see 3 reviews by default, or in your profile you can change it
from 1 to 5. If you are just an average browser to the site without an account, or if you aren’t
logged in you will see just the last review (as you do now). Hopefully being able to see more
reviews at once (without having to dedicate more of your time by clicking and loading the
review list) will promote a more balanced and fair voting trend.
