New: Set a minimum word count for reviews

General / off topic Reviews
1

This has been a highly requested feature - some people do not enjoy reading very short reviews, and prefer to only see in-depth, lengthy commentary.

Rather than force people to write long reviews, we have decided instead to allow people to filter what they view - there is a new setting in My Account → Customisation that lets you enter the minimum word count you’d like to see.

Once you enter a number here, all reviews with less than that number of words will be hidden from:

  • Story Pages (with one exception, see below)
  • Your homepage sections (there is a brand new “Review Reader” widget, check that out!)
  • The “All Reviews” page
  • The “Review Reader” page

If you want to have a filter in place, but still want the ability to view those short reviews (such as to moderate them), don’t worry, you can view all reviews for a story by clicking the “open in a new window” link:

A purple banner with the text "Open in new window (all unfiltered reviews)"

That page shows all reviews, unfiltered.

Also, you can still view all a user’s reviews on their page, and still visit a review directly to read it.

Enjoy! What are you setting for your minimum? Or do you enjoy short reviews? Let me know below!

21 Likes
2

I’ve gone with 100 for the moment and see if I need to up it.

5 Likes
3

I set mine to 20, because I do like little bitesize reviews, just not ones that are a single sentence (or, sometimes, a single word).

8 Likes
4

And now my review reader feed is suggesting what look like some great reviews. Look forward to reading these at some point.

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@sircarolyn

8 Likes
5

It’s suggesting your own reviews? lol

6 Likes
6

You obviously coded it with a ‘good taste’ filter.

9 Likes
7

I don’t mind small reviews but I went with 30 for now.

8 Likes
8

It’d be great to have an upper limit too so I can avoid those sort of reviews that just ramble…

You know, like @MrColdStream’s…

9 Likes
9

There, you should no longer see your own reviews in Review Reader!

OK, time for bed!

6 Likes
10

I love the customisation aspect of this! Much better than forcing everyone to write in a way they don’t want to (especially as I’m someone who does a mix of shorter jokier reviews, and in depth long ones)

I’ve set to 20 for now but will likely experiment

11 Likes
11

Agreed! It’s a good way to ‘solve’ this Issue for many, I, for one, will probably not use this feature for now in case I miss a perfect thought-provoking “Not good” for a Story, now that’s what I call a TRUE Review! /j

But seriously great Way to find a Solution! :tada:

10 Likes
12

When do we get the ability to filter out certain users’ reviews completely? I’d really want to stop seeing @deltaandthebannermen’s so-called “reviews” everywhere and pretend they don’t exist!

10 Likes
13

It’s funny how I’m one of the people who aren’t a big fan of very short reviews, yet I’ve set the lowest word count so far (10). Probably have to up it now :sweat_smile:

7 Likes
14

But I wanted to be reminded of how great a reviewer I am! :wink:

4 Likes
15

Great feature! I’ve set it to 30 for now

6 Likes
16

Thank you so much for adding this!

There are some reviews that are just the date the user completed the story and the rating they gave it, that’s it. :sob::sob::sob:

7 Likes
17

Yes they seem to be trying to get around the “repeats are only for patrons” thing by writing a review for their repeats :exploding_head:

Another reason I opened it up to all…

8 Likes
18

I made another new Homepage widget called Popular New Reviews.

This shows the 5 most-liked reviews added this week.

I can’t decide if I should replace the “Latest Reviews” that is on the non-logged-in homepage with this?

Pros:

  • People viewing the site for the first time won’t see a bunch of short reviews that no-one likes

Cons:

  • Reviews shown will be much more focused on current new releases than just completely random stuff

What do we think?

  • Keep as is
  • Replace Latest Reviews with Popular New Reviews
0 voters

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3 Likes
19

Imo, that’s a pro, as I imagine new users would look for reviews for the newer episodes first.

8 Likes
20

I think it makes sense to have the most liked reviews being about the current series when that’s airing and it will probably be a wider range the rest of the time. Or if there’s a big release from BF like Genesis of the Cybermen or Hooklight that, again, is creating buzz, we’ll see decent reviews for that.

10 Likes