Long reviews.

I'm not saying it's right and not saying It is wrong because each product is different, but I have noticed that alot of people are now writing very long reviews. sometimes the length is needed, especially if describing a particualr place with lots of areas but sometimes I feel it is mostly waffle that could be reduced down.

Looking at things from a consumer point of view I am not sure I would bother to read such an extensive review particulary if it is not broken down into paragraphs if I was only after one bit of info.

I read one recently that was well written but missed out one piece of info which I thought to be quite important to people thinking of visiting. The review had been given lots of E's, but i almost felt like giving it an H since some info was missed out. I ended up giving a VH it still did give lots of help, but what are others' views?

Oh look, even my post has gone very long now!!!

If it missed out important info I would still have given it a H regardless of the length.

If a review is too long I won't bother reading it...unless it is regarding something specific to my interests. If its a review I come across while randomly picking reviews to read then I'll skip it,

The problem with reviews is that there's always someone out there wanting to criticise what's been written because the writer forgot to mention the opening hours, the size of the box, the disabled access, whether it contains nuts or (an example someone mentioned on another thread) whether they accept dogs!

Result - writers try to think of everything that a reader could possibly want to know to avoid giving a reason to pick holes and hey presto! long reviews.

So who's to blame - the writer themself who's trying hard to please and to do the best they can, or the raters who keep being picky on little omissions and consequently drive up the word count?

I agree that sometime there is a lot of waffle and piffle and padding - great long shopping lists of features and specifications. But I think the readers' quest for perfection has a role in pushing up the writers' length.

I believe people should just include the stuff they think is important, not what other people believe is important (considering of course the level of what really is important and missed).

Yes, it should be what the writer felt important, and I get cross when someone says you should have added this or that was needed. But if I missed a vital point I would take it onboard.

Obviously i won't discuss the particular review, but let's just say supposing it was a review on an entertainment place for kids, wouldn't you want to know what facilities it had for them, or if it was a retirement place, if it had lifts or things to make life easier.

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Obviously i won't discuss the particular review, but let's just say supposing it was a review on an entertainment place for kids, wouldn't you want to know what facilities it had for them, or if it was a retirement place, if it had lifts or things to make life easier.
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But if you wrote on either of these, one would expect you to have experienced it, and I would have thought that you would be able to talk about your experience and give information. If you were an old person in a retirement place, I would imagine lifts would be something that you would know about and write about, or if you had your mother for example in one of these places, presumably before putting them in there, you would have checked these kind of things, and they would be part and parcel of your experience of the place.

Lunah_c wrote:

I read one recently that was well written but missed out one piece of info which I thought to be quite important to people thinking of visiting. The review had been given lots of E's, but i almost felt like giving it an H since some info was missed out. I ended up giving a VH it still did give lots of help, but what are others' views?

But haven't you just admitted that you're as guilty as the next party? You've admitted that you think there was information missing, but that because it was long and still had other stuff, you rated it as VH?

Anyway, I believe that people should be rating due to their own personal needs and requirements, not those that they think might apply to other people. Taking that to extremes, you might as well rate everything as VH because someone, somewhere will find a review as VH.

The length's a problem because of three factors: the writers seem to be on a quest for perfection (as koshka says above), constantly adding any little piece of info in a desperate attempt to get a VH in the mistaken belief that ratings equate to review quality. There's also a problem on the rater's front because often ratings aren't given as a reflection of helpfulness, but rather to encourage return reads or to avoid a confrontation or because they thought it was entertaining. Thirdly, Ciao are also to blame. I'm unsure about the PF in general, but as far as diamonds are concerned, Ciao rewards long, padded, instruction manual type reviews and not the type of reviews I tend to use when I'm a consumer (concise with loads of experience and opinion).

I've said before. When you post a review on Ciao, you do make a choice of whether you're writing to be helpful to the consumer or whether you're writing for a slice of PF/Diamond pie.

koshkha wrote:

The problem with reviews is that there's always someone out there wanting to criticise what's been written because the writer forgot to mention the opening hours, the size of the box, the disabled access, whether it contains nuts or (an example someone mentioned on another thread) whether they accept dogs!

That's not criticism. That's rating due to helpfulness. They're fundamentally different. If the review doesn't tell you what you want to know, especially if the missing snippet(s) of information are deal-breakers, then how can it possibly get "top marks"?

berlioz wrote:

I believe people should just include the stuff they think is important, not what other people believe is important (considering of course the level of what really is important and missed).

kelr101 wrote:

If it missed out important info I would still have given it a H regardless of the length.

If a review is too long I won't bother reading it...unless it is regarding something specific to my interests. If its a review I come across while randomly picking reviews to read then I'll skip it,

Exactly. Review reading/rating and writing should be a personal thing. Only include what you require yourself and let the rating system take care of the rest of it. You won't get VHs across the board, but any other rating is not personal criticism but simply that someone else has different requirements than you. The same with reading – only read that in which you are interested. Otherwise, how can you read a review as a consumer if you've no interest in the product?

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The same with reading – only read that in which you are interested. Otherwise, how can you read a review as a consumer if you've no interest in the product?

I agree with everything you said except this one. By reading across the board, I find as a consumer rather than as a rater that I learn so much about products that would otherwise remain a mystery to me, and have found some real gems. I would read about things like mens items, because often I buy for my husband or suggest things to him, although I do wonder at those men rating reviews on tampons, though perhaps they look up information for their wives. There are so many things I have been tempted to buy since reading outside those areas that particularly interest me. I hate soap ! I use liquid soaps, but by gosh I even bought lush on the strength of a review, because they explained the experience so well and I thought I would give it a go. I call it open mindedness and learning and just because you initially have no interest, if a writer makes it interesting, then they really have achieved something worth reading.

koshkha wrote:

So who's to blame - the writer themself who's trying hard to please and to do the best they can, or the raters who keep being picky on little omissions and consequently drive up the word count?

Both. And this spiral of ever growing word counts in reviews was one of the reasons why I got really annoyed and bored with Ciao. I just couldn't be bothered to read through 3 or 4 screen pages of reviews which were trying to fish for Es by covering each and every possible aspect. And I once read that normal internet users (excluding ciao writers ;-)) never read screen texts which are longer than one or maximum two pages.

Goethe, our most famous poet in Germany, once wrote to his sister: ""Da ich keine Zeit habe, Dir einen kurzen Brief zu schreiben, schreibe ich Dir einen langen ...". ("Since I have no time to write you a short letter, I'm writing you a long one"). And this expresses perfectly what I think about a good review: Writing lengthy reviews about everything doesn't require any intellectual skills (except literacy). You just go ahead writing and writing and writing like a robot with no regard to or mercy for the reader. The real mastery of writing consist in choosing what is important. The writer has the choice - and only if this choice is made wisely, the outcome will be a good one.

Ciao's Favourite Member wrote:

But haven't you just admitted that you're as guilty as the next party? You've admitted that you think there was information missing, but that because it was long and still had other stuff, you rated it as VH?

Probably, but I did feel there was a lot of unnecessary info too that was not actually about the place.

But rather than rate on what I felt should be in the review, I rated on how useful it would have been to others. It was Very Helpful, but my point was would someone who was unfamiliar with Ciao wade through a long review to find the information they actually wanted.

And in this particualr review it is possible they would not find the particular info which i would say would have been vital.

SaschaT wrote:

koshkha wrote:

So who's to blame - the writer themself who's trying hard to please and to do the best they can, or the raters who keep being picky on little omissions and consequently drive up the word count?

Both. And this spiral of ever growing word counts in reviews was one of the reasons why I got really annoyed and bored with Ciao. I just couldn't be bothered to read through 3 or 4 screen pages of reviews which were trying to fish for Es by covering each and every possible aspect. And I once read that normal internet users (excluding ciao writers ;-)) never read screen texts which are longer than one or maximum two pages.

I agree. The other day I was looking for info on a particular game. i did find one (not on Ciao) but it was so long I gave up halfway through.

Reviews should be short(ish) and to the point. Ones that can achieve that in my opinion are the Exceptional ones.

Unfortunately a long review is something to fall back on, where top ratings can be rewarded with effort to mind.

People must realise it's impossible to cover all aspects in a review, but it's important to pick on points which can be related to.

if I see a review that is jam packed with waffle and aimed at the Ciao community rather than the genuine consumer then I would have no qualms rating SH or H even if it had 50 Es- reason being if I did not "know" the person (i.e. if I was a Non member), then I am not interested in what their Auntie Nellie got for Christmas.

that's if I bother to read it, often it is a turn off altogether..

I really hate some of these reviews that trot out the entire menu, the opening hours, the track list, the ingredients...etc..! Or a manual type review (do A, B, C etc) But yes, Ciao do reward them, so while that happens member behaviour will not change.

That's a really hard one though isn't it Helen, if ciao encourage long reviews with everything but the kitchen sink, it is obviously what they see as useful. People don't seem to get it that length doesn't mean quality

helencbradshaw wrote:

if I see a review that is jam packed with waffle and aimed at the Ciao community rather than the genuine consumer then I would have no qualms rating SH or H even if it had 50 Es- reason being if I did not "know" the person (i.e. if I was a Non member), then I am not interested in what their Auntie Nellie got for Christmas.

that's if I bother to read it, often it is a turn off altogether..

I really hate some of these reviews that trot out the entire menu, the opening hours, the track list, the ingredients...etc..! Or a manual type review (do A, B, C etc) But yes, Ciao do reward them, so while that happens member behaviour will not change.

If I start reading a review, it'll get rated, even if I can't/don't finish it. If it's so long that I give up finding the info I require, then it's going to rated fairly lowly.

Have you never opened up a review on alerts, discovered what it is about and decided you dont want to read it Aaron ? I have. With alerts, you don't know what it is until you press the thing to open up the review.

Ummm... no. The alert emails I get state fairly clearly in them what topic the reviews are written on. Most of my reading is done from the site front end where I can clearly see what it is I'm choosing to read.

I dont use alerts..

I don't always finish a review though..if I open something that isnt what I thought it was, then I might abandon it, or for other reasons, too technical, dislike of the style etc. I wouldnt say it happens a lot, but sometimes time is pressing too..!

Thingywhatsit wrote:

That's a really hard one though isn't it Helen, if ciao encourage long reviews with everything but the kitchen sink, it is obviously what they see as useful. People don't seem to get it that length doesn't mean quality

The thing is that "quality" for the ambitious ciao user is different from what ciao considers to be "quality". Ciao is a commercial platform - they want to earn money. And they don't earn money with your reviews. They tried to sell them to makers of reviewed products a couple of years ago but that did not work out as a business modell.

The main source of income for ciao is advertising, referring to sellers like amazon, ebay and others and selling your personal consumer profile to survey customers.


To earn real money from advertising on the net you need huge amounts of clicks and a high page rank. What ciao needs to maintain high click rates and page ranks is 3 things: content, content and content. And it's not difficult so realize that "quality of reviews" as we see it is secondary.

That's why they barely care to control "quality" in reviews and have a tendency to reward longer reviews better than shorter ones and why they never introduced a more realistic/quality oriented rating system.

agreed, short punchy reviews with opinion and plenty of them is better than one masterpiece a week/month etc

Actually, I disagree. What Ciao needs to maintain high click rates is quality content, quality content, quality content. I don't use Ciao because I think the quality sucks huge amounts of ass. I use other sites.

If Ciao want people to return (as consumers) to read the reviews and then use the referral clicks, then they surely have to give the consumers what they want?

As most people seem to be in agreement that concise reviews (don't confuse that with short) filled with experience and opinion are better for making decisions, the argument must be that Ciao's system is flawed and/or they've no idea how consumers are using their site.

Ciao's Favourite Member wrote:

the argument must be that Ciao's system is flawed and/or they've no idea how consumers are using their site.

either is fine with me, Ciao is not my place anymore.

[quote="SaschaT"]

koshkha wrote:

Goethe, our most famous poet in Germany, once wrote to his sister: ""Da ich keine Zeit habe, Dir einen kurzen Brief zu schreiben, schreibe ich Dir einen langen ...". ("Since I have no time to write you a short letter, I'm writing you a long one"). And this expresses perfectly what I think about a good review: Writing lengthy reviews about everything doesn't require any intellectual skills (except literacy). You just go ahead writing and writing and writing like a robot with no regard to or mercy for the reader. The real mastery of writing consist in choosing what is important. The writer has the choice - and only if this choice is made wisely, the outcome will be a good one.

This brings up an interesting point about the art of writing short reviews. Some sites have the option to write "express reviews" and the like. Basically a shorty snappy and concise overview in say seventy five words. Its much harder than you think, i cant do it but it is an interesting exercise for testing your writing skills.

It depends what I am looking for.

If i get a DVD in the post, I might take a look on Ciao to see if it is worth watching , and I might even read one or two reviews if there is someone who I know (i.e. have met or virtually)

Hotels/Travel - need expedia or tripadvisor to make a purchasing decision (sorry Sascha...trivago is not there yet..!)

electronics, technology etc - I would probably google and find a site that looked promising for reviews (could be any in theory, but I dont have that many purchases of this type)

All the emails I ever get from non-members (which have been numerous - from dooyoo reviews) are linked to about two or three of my 250+ reviews, namely an Airline (Eva Air), a Spa destination - (spa Samui), and my Vegetable juicer..!! Of course these are more significant purchases, and I think a lot of content on Ciao is not the kind of stuff people research first very much at all. (Food, books, etc) That is not to say they dont inspire members to buy, as I know they do that.






(I am not touting for reads there, just using examples, these reviews are absolutely ancient..!!!!!)

Ciao's Favourite Member wrote:

As most people seem to be in agreement that concise reviews (don't confuse that with short) filled with experience and opinion are better for making decisions, the argument must be that Ciao's system is flawed and/or they've no idea how consumers are using their site.

Think you are right there. Ciao have no idea, but as they seem to make money they don't appear to want to listen either to how they could improve. Shame we can't rate and leave comments for Ciao themselves.