Are lengthy reviews always the best?

I find myself too lazy to write short reviews and therefore often end up with 1500 – 1800 worders. It is a curse I am doomed to bare.

fizzywizzy wrote:

Furthermore, I am not convinced that people are telling the truth about this subject. I think the trend is to rate these reviews as E but to moan about them privately later.

I decided not to rate E at all and if I feel a review is worthy money from the premium fund I use the 'recommend product' button and send the email to Ciao with my explanation. I think that counts for more than E ratings as they can see why I recommended it.

yeh I find that button more effective than an E

People who are fairly active on Ciao but may not come here will probably not knw about that button though....it was a revelation to me some time ago

We keep telling people but they seem to forget about it.

In reply to a comment about book quotes, I do think that they can be useful but I don't think having a huge chunk of them is necessary.
Lisa x

fizzywizzy wrote:

People who are fairly active on Ciao but may not come here will probably not knw about that button though....it was a revelation to me some time ago

I didn't know about it myself until Rachel told me, since then I tend to use it rather than giving E's. Lisa x

As long as the review gets to the point pretty quickly it keeps my interest. Reviews with unnecessary info tend to pad out the review when all people need to do is write their opinion, after all that is what the site is for.

I must repeat that what I see in the ratings is pretty much not what people are saying here. Have the courage to rate as you really think. Yes, it might be beautifully written but if a review has a thousand words on the history of a building and not enough on what the writer thinks of the experience of visiting said building, you shouldn't really rate it as exceptional.
Let's see people rating honestly!!!!

I usedto give the advice pretend the person had never heard of the product but I am thinking now the consumer must know a little bit about the product to want to read a review. For example a perosn might have heard a song on the radio and wondrred if th whole album was similar. (That's an actual situation for me) What do other people think??

Sarah

l must admit to feeling like Sarah used to ~ particularly when the author is a new writer:

duskmaiden wrote:

I used to give the advice 'pretend the person had never heard of the product' but I am thinking now the consumer must know a little bit about the product to want to read a review. For example a person might have heard a song on the radio and wondered if the whole album was similar. (That's an actual situation for me) What do other people think??

Sarah

l have looked up products for which l have received a request as a gift suggestion; so l would tend to still give that advice . . . BUT . . .

Please don't patronise me or tell me lists of history and technical specs (particularly if the specs are available in product details already) . . .




l have been known to comment "Less is More" when a review has too much detail.

Oh, and Lisa, they've hidden the recommend button under "Actions" now ~ to differentiate between review and topic.