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At 4/22/09 10:19 PM, KrevZabijak wrote: Thank you for your time.

What joe was saying was that for the most part we are lenient on flaggers, however if we notice that there is a pattern of non-abusive reviews from the same submission/author and it's obvious that people were flagging incorrectly either on purpose or as a group without thinking, we are forced to penalize those flaggers.

In a black and white world, every review that is not deleted will penalize those who flagged. The curve is nasty, so we can also clear the flags without any penalty given. This is for reviews which aren't steller but certainly aren't abusing the review system, or ones which we could possibly understand why it could have been flagged, but it still doesn't merit deletion. Usually these are few and far between, especially since the abusive review thread has been locked. With users flagging things on their own rather than ganging up on reviews there is far less chance of a 'groupthink' moment where everyon may flag something incorrectly which brings an non-abusive review to our attention, and is rightly cleared with penalty.

But this is far too off topic from the purpose of this thread. If you would like to discuss this topic further please take it up in PM with a review moderator.

SuperMarioBrosS has three news posts that talk about abusive reviews and practically offers the same thing as Rage's Abusive Reviews thread, however it seems a bit more organized.

Is marking these reviews as abusive a danger zone due to the moderator's frowning on Rig's thread or is it a better idea?

At 5/3/09 01:24 AM, The-Great-One wrote: Is marking these reviews as abusive a danger zone due to the moderator's frowning on Rig's thread or is it a better idea?

As long as the reviews posted there are abusive, it doesn't matter.

At 5/5/09 12:19 AM, VictoriaGoldsmith wrote: okay so what was wrong with this?

---

Score: 10 / 10
Summary: cool!
Review: the animation and music were pretty cool together
I recognized the theme from that yotsuba flash, so let me is ask, is that the MGS theme?
in any case, cool music and stuff
10/10

In terms of the quality of your review it was fine, albeit somewhat general. The reason it was probably deleted was because of the question you have asking about the MGS theme. There is an indication in the rules that says that a review shouldn't contain personal remarks/messages towards the author and this includes asking questions to them. The reasoning behind it is that these questions can be asked via PM to the author and don't contribute to your evaluation of their work. Most of the time, reviews with questions in it will be deleted if the remarks/questions are being used in a negative sense against the author. They can also be deleted when the questions are in a positive context too, though I'm fairly sure that most review mods will not think it's cause for deletion most of the time. Just be mindful of that when reviewing in the future, but other than that, your review was fine.

At 5/5/09 12:19 AM, VictoriaGoldsmith wrote: okay so what was wrong with this?

why are you giving a 10/10 review to a submission which is a 2 frame repeat of some guy jumping up and down with very quick shots of shock pictures and porn pictures?

I deleted that review because it had nothing to do with the actual submission and to be a bit blunt, your account looked like an alt used to give high scoring reviews to utter shit to try and minipulate awards.

Ok so I was banned for reviewing for "Feeding the troll".

This is my review:

At 5/6/09 9:23 PM, M-Bot wrote:

You have been banned from submitting reviews for the next 7 days.
This is a result of the review you left for Miley Cyrus Porn Clip XXX on 5/6/09 at 7:05:34 PM:

===============

Score: 0 / 10
Summary: ...first review?
Review: Ok since all this movie is spam, I gave it a zero because it just shows some pics and a dog moving his head. Nothing more to review, nothing more to recommend.

Ok now to the author's comment:

1. Nobody gives a shit (Well most people). If they did, then you would have seen a review here or something already. Its been about three hours already and there has yet to be a review posted here (Unless they were all deleted or something).

2. People who spam deserve to get IP banned.

3. If your going to mass-vote on a submission, please dont make it obvious.

4. Dont like what I said so far, kiss my ass and suck my ****. This is not a review intentially made to piss you off, this is to give to helpful insight just so you know.
===============

The moderator deckheadtottie gave the following reason for the ban:

"Feeding the troll."

Please review the review guidelines in the FAQ before submitting further reviews.

The author was being a dick in his comment and gave a reason why he released a spam flash.

My question to the review mods (or just deckheadtottie) is it really against the rules to argue his/her point of view? I dont understand because im just giving my review even though if the author's submission is clearly spam or just seems to be trolling. And another thing, the reason I was banned wasint even mentioned in the fucking FAQ!. Plus what added insult to injury was when I saw "Please review the review guidelines in the FAQ before submitting further reviews.

Sorry for the harsh language by the way

At 5/6/09 09:50 PM, Alex-Cortes wrote:

===============

Score: 0 / 10
Summary: ...first review?
Review: Ok since all this movie is spam, I gave it a zero because it just shows some pics and a dog moving his head. Nothing more to review, nothing more to recommend.

Ok now to the author's comment:

1. Nobody gives a shit (Well most people). If they did, then you would have seen a review here or something already. Its been about three hours already and there has yet to be a review posted here (Unless they were all deleted or something).

2. People who spam deserve to get IP banned.

3. If your going to mass-vote on a submission, please dont make it obvious.

4. Dont like what I said so far, kiss my ass and suck my ****. This is not a review intentially made to piss you off, this is to give to helpful insight just so you know.
===============

The moderator deckheadtottie gave the following reason for the ban:

"Feeding the troll."

Please review the review guidelines in the FAQ before submitting further reviews.

The author was being a dick in his comment and gave a reason why he released a spam flash.

My question to the review mods (or just deckheadtottie) is it really against the rules to argue his/her point of view? I dont understand because im just giving my review even though if the author's submission is clearly spam or just seems to be trolling. And another thing, the reason I was banned wasint even mentioned in the fucking FAQ!. Plus what added insult to injury was when I saw "Please review the review guidelines in the FAQ before submitting further reviews.

the point is that you fell into exactly what the author wanted. They only want attention, be it negative or positive. Since he can't handle making anything worth a shit, he goes for negative attention. By giving such a review you are only enabling him, you aren't telling him off or anything.

And your review was abusive for a number of reasons. Telling the author that "nobody gives a shit"...in a review? apparently you gave a shit enough to leave an angry review. implying that the author should be IP banned is just the same as saying the submission should be deleted or blammed. implying that the author cheated to get his submission through judgment which is the same as saying it should have been deleted or blammed.

and chances are "4. Dont like what I said so far, kiss my ass and suck my ****. This is not a review intentially made to piss you off, this is to give to helpful insight just so you know." will get you review banned regardless of what you are reviewing.

a rule of thumb for spammers/annoying artists is this: vote 0 and move on. Leaving a review is giving them exactly what they want and apparently getting you a review ban.

I'm sure his submission was utterly horrible or broke the terms of service, but if you find something that got through judgment that shouldn't have you need to PM wade, just as if you found a stolen submission that got through. But deckheadtottie hit the real problem right in the nose - you were simply falling for his little trap to piss you off.

At 5/6/09 10:41 PM, Malachy wrote: the point is that you fell into exactly what the author wanted. They only want attention, be it negative or positive. Since he can't handle making anything worth a shit, he goes for negative attention. By giving such a review you are only enabling him, you aren't telling him off or anything.

Ok now I could see why a review would be pointless for such artist.

And your review was abusive for a number of reasons. Telling the author that "nobody gives a shit"...in a review? apparently you gave a shit enough to leave an angry review. implying that the author should be IP banned is just the same as saying the submission should be deleted or blammed. implying that the author cheated to get his submission through judgment which is the same as saying it should have been deleted or blammed.

Now here I wasint implying that he should be IP banned. In his comments he complained about the rule that if a submission ever reached below a .4 average, it will be automatically deleted and the author would be banned. When I said what I said, I was talking about his complaining for the rule. In the future I will clear some things up so it wont be implied that im actually saying that his submission is crap, shit ,ect.

and chances are "4. Dont like what I said so far, kiss my ass and suck my ****. This is not a review intentially made to piss you off, this is to give to helpful insight just so you know." will get you review banned regardless of what you are reviewing.

Now the author was clearly a jackass on his comments who just wanted some attention. People who act like jerks, get treated like jerks, but then again I will be carefull what I say next time.

a rule of thumb for spammers/annoying artists is this: vote 0 and move on. Leaving a review is giving them exactly what they want and apparently getting you a review ban.

Now this or something like this should be added in the FAQ. Without a clear guideline, reviewers might continue to review spam submissions, unintentially break the rules and get themselves banned. By clicking the Write a Review buttion, I was already screwed from behind.

I'm sure his submission was utterly horrible or broke the terms of service, but if you find something that got through judgment that shouldn't have you need to PM wade, just as if you found a stolen submission that got through. But deckheadtottie hit the real problem right in the nose - you were simply falling for his little trap to piss you off.

Ok well thanks for your help.

Also I hope the FAQ gets updated soon, as many of you guys know it needs to be clearer.

At 5/7/09 06:53 PM, Alex-Cortes wrote: Also I hope the FAQ gets updated soon, as many of you guys know it needs to be clearer.

you broke a number of the current review guidelines outright...how could it not be any clearer than that? we only have so many characters to give a ban message. The problem isn't so much the guidelines as people thinking they can get away with breaking them because an author is being a jerk. We only see reviews one at a time, so when they get to us they are totally out of context. Deckheadtottie may have found the root of your issue (that you found it necessary to engage the troll) but beyond his message you still left a legitimately abusive review.

I guess if you want to argue the merits of the ban itself, you will need to PM deckheadtottie.

At 5/7/09 08:18 PM, Malachy wrote: you broke a number of the current review guidelines outright...how could it not be any clearer than that? we only have so many characters to give a ban message. The problem isn't so much the guidelines as people thinking they can get away with breaking them because an author is being a jerk. We only see reviews one at a time, so when they get to us they are totally out of context. Deckheadtottie may have found the root of your issue (that you found it necessary to engage the troll) but beyond his message you still left a legitimately abusive review.

I guess if you want to argue the merits of the ban itself, you will need to PM deckheadtottie.

Hey im not arguing here, theres no need to beat around the bush anymore. Ok it may have seemed like I was angry when I first posted here yesterday, but im not today.

But I still think the FAQ needs to be revised alittle.

Don't reply to this post please, it's a little off-topic, but I feel should be said just so people don't keep chiming up about the review guidelines being updated.

At 5/7/09 09:39 PM, Alex-Cortes wrote: But I still think the FAQ needs to be revised alittle.

There's a lot of stuff going on with the site right now, and the admins have their hands full most of the time. The review guidelines are hardly even on the radar right now in terms of what's getting updated / implemented, so you may have to wait a while for that one, if it ever does actually happen.

In the meantime, that's why we have this lovely thread: so that unclear matters concerning reviews can be swiftly clarified for you, the people. Aren't we lovely mods?

When reviewing a flash, how much value should you put on the background music? Is there a line between being reasonable and unreasonable with the score of a review when it comes to the audio tracks in the flash?

I'm thinking mainly of those reviews that give garbage flashes high scores simply because the reviewer liked the music used in it, and conversely, reviews that give a perfectly fine flash a low score simply because they didn't.

Does basing the review mainly on the audio (or the lack of it) ever constitute an abusive review? I suppose it depends on exactly how much the flash itself relies on the audio used, but are there any general rules and/or suggestions for this?

For this example, let's say the flash in question wasn't a music video, or anything else that emphasises or directly relies on its audio content to function properly as a flash.

My question comes more in general with my whistle. I noticed that it's recently changed to a garbage status.

I mainly try to flag reviews that:

A) Go into "This should be blammed" territory
B) Generally abusive to the author (even if I don't agree)

Not that it's a major issue, but how exactly can I avoid negative points if I flag a review that's supposedly abusive by the rules but I in the end continue to receive negative points for such a thing?

At 5/10/09 01:10 PM, Sheizenhammer wrote: Is there a line between being reasonable and unreasonable with the score of a review when it comes to the audio tracks in the flash?

Not at all. There would be multiple criteria to look at, and it would depend on the review as a whole, as well as other factors (what Flash the review is for, the user's other reviews, etc).

I'm thinking mainly of those reviews that give garbage flashes high scores simply because the reviewer liked the music used in it, and conversely, reviews that give a perfectly fine flash a low score simply because they didn't.

Short, positive reviews are generally not abusive, so short reviews for the Flash that praise a specific part as well (such as the music) would probably be even safer, and therefore not abusive. Likewise, the submission's audio track or lack thereof is a perfectly viable reason to give a Flash a lower or higher score.

But in either case, judging whether someone's criticisms and scores are valid is extremely subjective, and you'd be better off flagging reviews that are clearly abusive, rather than reviews you feel gave too low a score for the reasons stated; flag reviews that give low scores and give no reasons for doing so at all.

Does basing the review mainly on the audio (or the lack of it) ever constitute an abusive review? I suppose it depends on exactly how much the flash itself relies on the audio used, but are there any general rules and/or suggestions for this?

It would probably be easier to answer your question through examples, as there aren't really any general rules for such subjective reasons to delete a review.

REVIEW 1 (for a high scoring Flash): "Sucked"
"Yeah the graphics were good but the audio really sucked sorry 0/10"

I would probably clear the flags on this review without any penalty. Depending on this user's other reviews, I may delete the review. By itself, I don't see it as very abusive to warrant an automatic deletion.

REVIEW 2 (for a spam Flash): "Awesome"
"lol the graphics sux but that song you used was tight nice work. 10/10"

I would probably clear the flags on this review with penalty. However, if I realized, or it was brought to my attention, that the review was written by a confederate of the author of the submission trying to win a reward, the review would probably be deleted.

At 5/10/09 04:05 PM, Jagos wrote: I mainly try to flag reviews that:

A) Go into "This should be blammed" territory
B) Generally abusive to the author (even if I don't agree)

Not that it's a major issue, but how exactly can I avoid negative points if I flag a review that's supposedly abusive by the rules but I in the end continue to receive negative points for such a thing?

This depends on what you define as the "this should be blammed" territory and what you feel is "generally abusive to the author." There is a good chance, if you have received a garbage whistle, that you are either being too harsh in your judgment of reviews and are flagging reviews which are actually fine, or have flagged clearly non-abusive reviews or submissions in the past which only now have had the flags cleared on them.

I really can only answer your question without any examples, so if you can provide examples of reviews you have flagged, or examples of reviews you would consider abusive (which aren't completely obvious), then it would be possible to help.

Okay, so I seized asking flagging questions here. Now I have a question in general about reviewing.

Audio reviews tend to have less constructive advice than flash reviews. There are more 'try harder' type reviews in the audio portal.

Do you review mods moderate each type of review (flash/audio) equally or do you tend to be lighter with audio reviews since criticism is harder to put down in audio reviews?

The answer given could change how I review audio submission (IF I decide to review).

Again, this is NOT a flagging question, but rather a reviewing question

At 5/11/09 03:20 PM, SuperMarioBrosS wrote: Do you review mods moderate each type of review (flash/audio) equally or do you tend to be lighter with audio reviews since criticism is harder to put down in audio reviews?

The same guidelines apply to both audio and Flash reviews; there's no reason reviews for audio submissions should be given preferential treatment, or anything like that. Plenty of criticism can be given to audio submissions. If you feel you don't know enough about audio creation to give proper criticism, don't review.

As long as a review clearly breaks the review guidelines, it is abusive. What submission or type of submission the review is for doesn't matter.

At 5/11/09 04:14 PM, absent wrote: If you feel you don't know enough about audio creation to give proper criticism, don't review.

Fair enough. Thanks for the speedy reply. I'll review audio submissions that deserve high scores then.

WTF where is my common sense now these days?

Would a review like this be considered abusive or just useless? I just wanted to make sure, since I'm new to this whole abusive review flagging thing.

you did not lie Score- 2

that WAS an exploding dog.10000000000000,0000000000 00!!!!!pts 4 u

At 5/21/09 08:34 PM, NikLink wrote: Would a review like this be considered abusive or just useless? I just wanted to make sure, since I'm new to this whole abusive review flagging thing.

you did not lie Score- 2

that WAS an exploding dog.10000000000000,0000000000 00!!!!!pts 4 u

it's not exactly helpful, It would probably be deleted because of the short nature and the repeating characters.

Again, if you're worried about flagging, go for the obvious abuse. If it's not painfully obvious to you, don't bother flagging it.

I recently found another reviewer who was writing all of his reviews in a foreign language (Spanish, I think). I was going to PM a review mod and let them deal with it, but then I remembered this post from the old thread, and now I'm curious:

At 19/8/08 03:09 PM, Malachy wrote: I'd recommend PMing a review moderator if you find a user doing this rather than flagging all of the reviews they have made (unless you want to do the work for us and run them through translators and make sure the submissions aren't in the same language ^_- )

It's the last part of it that got me thinking.
Okay, suppose I do make the effort to go through all of these reviews with a translator and give the results to a review mod, so he/she doesn't have to do it all. Sounds like a fair idea (I don't have anything else to do for the next month), however: why would a review mod trust me on what I say is and isn't abusive? For all anyone else knows, I could be making the whole thing up.

Is there any real point in trying to take the work out of foreign language reviews like that, given that the review mod who gets them would likely just have to check everything I say anyway?

At 6/10/09 11:17 PM, Sheizenhammer wrote: Is there any real point in trying to take the work out of foreign language reviews like that, given that the review mod who gets them would likely just have to check everything I say anyway?

Sorry, I said that last bit in jest, thus it being in parenthesis and having a winking emoticon. Next time I will be sure to use sarcasm brackets. Chances are we will be a little more lenient on reviews that happen to be higher scoring and offering encouragement than ones of 0/10 and lots of exclamation marks and obvious curse words.

Typically it only takes a couple of deleted reviews, a PM or a short ban for a user to stop making foreign language reviews. I would probably investigate myself on most of the reviews somebody PMs me telling me they're abusive. In most cases I would rather be more lenient on a reviewer in order for him to shape up than tick him off by giving him a ban and deleting all of his reviews. We aren't here to get users mad at us, we're here to make sure they enjoy their experience.

I have read the whole thread, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to ask this:

Can someone explain me why some of my reviews are rated useless?

At 6/11/09 09:09 AM, Lixu1 wrote: Can someone explain me why some of my reviews are rated useless?

Spiteful individuals can tend to vote your review as useless, because they think that it doesn't conform to their views. Ergo, it is a bad review.

Of course reviews do get marked as 'useless' whenever someone flags it as abusive. Judging by the first few pages of your recent reviews, I don't think that's the case though.

Useless Reviews

From time to time (which is most of the time) I tend to see reviews that are basically like YouTube comments, either just

1. Quoting one line from the flash itself and nothing more

2. Saying they like it - it rocks - etc. and nothing more

3. Posting great work within the subject as well as in the body of the review and nothing more.

I know these types of reviews aren't really abusive, but shouldn't there be some kind of punishment besides just marking it and saying "useless" review? I mean what if a user just doesn't care and makes multiple reviews like this?

I know the rule from the FAQ states...

Do not post TONS and TONS of crappy reviews just to get high in the rankings. If we catch someone doing this we will delete all their reviews - wouldn't that be a pain in the ass? Take your time and write a sincere review for every movie you wish to critique. Make sure your review is relative to the submission. Reviews that are found to offer no benefit to the author may be deleted.

and if we catch someone doing this then we should report them to a Review Moderator. I want to know what is the proper way in doing so and how should we show our evidence?

Also it says at the end Reviews that are found to offer no benefit to the author may be deleted. If a review is found "useless" by a great amount of people then shouldn't it be deleted then?

At 6/17/09 05:19 AM, The-Great-One wrote: and if we catch someone doing this then we should report them to a Review Moderator. I want to know what is the proper way in doing so and how should we show our evidence?

If you see someone posting a ton of crappy short reviews, contact a review mod and let us handle it from there. We'll take the appropriate action, or inaction, depending on the case.

Also it says at the end Reviews that are found to offer no benefit to the author may be deleted. If a review is found "useless" by a great amount of people then shouldn't it be deleted then?

For the most part, reviews that are short yet encouraging are assumed to be beneficial to the author. Tom has stated that thes types of reviews, whilst lacking effort on the reviewer's part, are fine in small quantities as praise is praise, and we all enjoy a bit of praise every now and again.

At 6/17/09 06:04 AM, NEVR wrote: For the most part, reviews that are short yet encouraging are assumed to be beneficial to the author. Tom has stated that thes types of reviews, whilst lacking effort on the reviewer's part, are fine in small quantities as praise is praise, and we all enjoy a bit of praise every now and again.

So if there is a user with a bunch of these types of reviews then we should notify a review moderator and leave it to them then.

At 6/17/09 06:17 AM, The-Great-One wrote: So if there is a user with a bunch of these types of reviews then we should notify a review moderator and leave it to them then.

That's what I said, yeah.

I have a new question.

With some of the new submissions there seems to be a lot of users that want to tell the artist to submit to Youtube for whatever reason.

Are these alright to flag as abusive? My reasoning for flagging a review such as this is:

1) It doesn't help the author at all
2) Regardless of if something SHOULD be on Youtube or not, I don't think it's the reviewer's job but how we vote.
3) How does a review that basically says "You need to put this here" supposedly effective?

At 7/7/09 09:42 PM, Jagos wrote: With some of the new submissions there seems to be a lot of users that want to tell the artist to submit to Youtube for whatever reason.

Are these alright to flag as abusive? My reasoning for flagging a review such as this is:

1) It doesn't help the author at all
2) Regardless of if something SHOULD be on Youtube or not, I don't think it's the reviewer's job but how we vote.
3) How does a review that basically says "You need to put this here" supposedly effective?

This is entirely my opinion, but I feel it will depend upon the intent of that review. If the review is found to be offensive/abusive say.. "Get this shit off of Newgrounds! This belongs on Youtube!" or "Tittle back to Youtube! Foo' >:-(" It's almost certain that it would be deleted.

But if the review is found to be more helpful say.. "You got some great points going on here... dig the story...but I think you'd benefit more through submitting through youtube" then I would be more lenient toward it.

In short, ask yourself if you find the review abusive in nature.

I have another question if you all don't mind.

I know that the BBS Forum Moderators obide by the original rules of the BBS. They are there to enforce the rules and thus keep them intact. However during changes of events throughout the Internet the moderators have made new rules as well.

You the review moderators also obide by the original rules for reviewing submissions, however I wonder if you have ever made any new rules? I know chain reviews and such are not allowed, but are there any new rules and if so where is the list of these new rules?