Changing The Way for False High Raters

Just been on this morning in a frenzy of reading, rating and commenting on new members' initial reviews and a thought has crossed my mind; I've noticed quite a few of other new members who are overly-rating reviews OR have rated reviews without submitting review themselves...my question is this.. should Ciao change the way that new members are allowed to rate? I think its largely unfair that a new member should receive a rating from another new member who has no reviews to look at in reply.

Should Ciao just allow members to rate if they dont have reviews themselves or change this policy? Discuss!

I don't think it's a problem specific to new members.

I agree with Aaron - there are people who never write but seem to still feel they have a right to criticise everyone else's work. One particularly high profile member springs to mind whose comments are longer than a lot of reviews.

At the other end of the spectrum there are also 'ghost' members who appear for a while, serve some 'higher purpose' (usually delivering nasty rates to all the people who have ever dared to give their 'real' persona a rating they perceive to be poor) and then never write, never appear again. I would like to see them 'dealt with' and would happily provide a list!

I have thought in the past that it might be good to see a small writing requirement for changing levels - e.g. to be 'promoted' to the next dot you have to write at least one review. But then I also know that many people don't have any interest in dots so I don't know if it would just be a waste of time (and probably one more thing that Ciao's systems would struggle with).

koshkha wrote:

But then I also know that many people don't have any interest in dots so I don't know if it would just be a waste of time (and probably one more thing that Ciao's systems would struggle with).

Its a bit like the fact that some consumers will read "off line" reviews but have to join Ciao to ask members specific questions.. Id have thought Ciao could impose similar things when new members rate reviews and leave comments...

Get rid of the dots and then people would not base a judgement of either a review or someones rating based on a little coloured dot.

Vax, Am I right in thinking that the jist of your original post was that you don't like FALSE members rather than particularly picking on them doing high ratings?

FALSE members who dish out low rates are probably more common - either through using a new identity to dish out lots of nasty rates or through newbie ignorance of how the rating system works - e.g. the 'I don't like coke zero so your review is wrong and I'm giving you a NH'

No.. what Im against is the fact that new members are allowed to rate reviews and leave comments thereafter without doing reviews themselves. I think Ciao should impose something such as a rule where new members cant rate and leave comments UNTIL they have submitted reviews themselves.

There has been times when ive seen reviews which have either been unfairly over rated or underrated with a comment and then gone to the member's page only to find that they haven't got any reviews to show.

But surely the logic is more sound if members are encouraged to read (and therefore rate) before writing. That would perhaps drive up the standard of submissions from new members.

Has it though? If improvements have changed right across the board then the evidence would suggest the standards of writing has improved from new members, and perhaps even reflected in the Diamond/Premium award section.

On trivago, you get limited 'rights' to do things until you've 'proven' yourself with simpler tasks first. This stops some of the dumb stuff we get on the review sites BUT it can be annoying and very patronising to newbies who often give up very quickly from the frustration of it all.

I think new members should do lots of reading - but I wish they'd start by reading the 'how to rate' guidelines.

Yeh but many are returning members that create an account just to rate people down or make some kind of statement. All a bit silly really.

But, as stated at the start of the thread, it's not just new members who rate artificially high, so why should they be "punished" when established emmbers are equally, if not more, guilty of this?

I couldn't rate on Helium until after I'd posted and I thought it was a ridiculuous idea.

Vax wrote:

Has it though? If improvements have changed right across the board then the evidence would suggest the standards of writing has improved from new members, and perhaps even reflected in the Diamond/Premium award section.

Well, I'm not sure what you mean by "improvements". I don't see how restricting members encourages people to take part and the logic, if not the reality, still says people should read around the site before writing.

And the Diamonds award section has as much to do with quality as Sylvester Stallone has to do with Shakespeare.

It's not my experience that new members over rate though...that is reserved exclusively for the "coloured" masses...!

The only exception is when someone creates 83 accounts all with spookily similar names and interests, purely to rate their one 3 line SH review with an E...but surely we don't create new processes just to deal with that minor behaviour...?

helencbradshaw wrote:

The only exception is when someone creates 83 accounts all with spookily similar names and interests, purely to rate their one 3 line SH review with an E...but surely we don't create new processes just to deal with that minor behaviour...?

Yeah I mean I'm against criticism of ratings even in this case, but these members never last long anyway.


It would be harsh to punish new members, after all they have little say in the average rating with white (or no) dot. Of course with time they will go through colour changes as will others (given activity). It is possible that their Ciao behaviour change will change over time, although this might not appear to be the case...

I've noticed new people with very similar names, and writing 2 or 3 lines about the same thing too. I just ignored them, as having no proof what can you do? I presumed those wiser in Ciao than me would sort them out!