I am really tired of the spam, pointless and joke reviews overwhelming the real ones.

[KeetaCat]

It happens in most games. Make meme, youtube, almost anything giggly teen girls find funny and it goes to the top, pushing the good and real reviews down to the bottom. Also, the reviews that have NOTHING to do with the game AT ALL do the same thing.

It's not funny and it doesn't help the people who want to decide if they want the game.

[Sucidal Sheep]

İlk olarak ReBoot tarafından gönderildi:

Downvote the reviews which are spam.

Agreed

[Gus the Crocodile]

İlk olarak TristanMike tarafından gönderildi:

Take South Park: The Stick of Truth, first review:

"when you right click, your character farts.

10/10"

Now, 8,326 of 9,865 people (84%) found this review helpful. Do you see how many downvotes it would take to knock that off ? It's absurd. That's not a review that belongs on a store page, especially the first review.

Well, 84% of people who voted disagree with you. I can't see that the system increasing a review's visibility when the vast majority of respondents have told them to do so is absurd in the least.

Of course, ideally your "review feed" shouldn't need to be bound by what 84% of people think, but I think this should be achieved in a way that isn't just about removing reviews simply for the terrible crime of not being liked by some minority: as long as they aren't breaking the Steam code of conduct etc, these reviews have every right to be there for the people who appreciate them more.

Rather, there should be more methods in place for people to tailor the selection of reviews they see to their particular tastes. Someone who doesn't like one-liner reviews should be able to filter by word count. Someone who doesn't think a review from someone with 0.1 hours playtime will help them should be able to filter by playtime. More subtle issues can, I believe, be at least improved by doing things like promoting the visibility of reviews by people whose other reviews you found helpful, or of reviews they in turn found helpful, or even reviews by people who have similar library/gameplay patterns to you. I've made these few suggestions before and I'm sure there are countless other possible techniques used by people with more expertise than me - a lot of companies have put a lot of effort into building recommendation engines for any media you care to name.

In the short term though, there isn't really going to be a good replacement for explicit moderation by like-minded people. It shouldn't be a surprise that if you have a system that's democratised over millions of people and your tastes aren't around the average of that population, that you might not get great results. But that's why we have the whole internet out there, so you can tailor your own media habits and focus on sources you prefer.

[Noctuary]

As much as it pains me to say, Gus is absolutely 100% right. There is a very blurred line between what some may consider helpful and rubbish like the South Park example.

[Hopper]

The ability to find something "helpful" is not the same between every person. There is nothing valve can do because there might be people who might legitamtly think it is.

[X-542]

Well it has the same notion towards quality control as the rest of the internet I'm afraid... We have the community to thank for that and unless something radical happens, it's not going to change soon.

[Zukabazuka]

We got our own little meta critic section now. Thankfully Valve decided to remove the numbers for it. But yeah they kind of suck.

[Eoin]

I can usually find a a few serious reviews with a lot of upvotes among the jokes. The joke reviews can be funny and I can still decide if a game is good even with them. I think it is ok to have some humor in the reviews section as long as it's not just straight up spam and serious reviews aren't to hard to find.

[Energy]

İlk olarak Gus the Crocodile tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak TristanMike tarafından gönderildi:

Take South Park: The Stick of Truth, first review:

"when you right click, your character farts.

10/10"

Now, 8,326 of 9,865 people (84%) found this review helpful. Do you see how many downvotes it would take to knock that off ? It's absurd. That's not a review that belongs on a store page, especially the first review.

Well, 84% of people who voted disagree with you. I can't see that the system increasing a review's visibility when the vast majority of respondents have told them to do so is absurd in the least.

Of course, ideally your "review feed" shouldn't need to be bound by what 84% of people think, but I think this should be achieved in a way that isn't just about removing reviews simply for the terrible crime of not being liked by some minority: as long as they aren't breaking the Steam code of conduct etc, these reviews have every right to be there for the people who appreciate them more.

Rather, there should be more methods in place for people to tailor the selection of reviews they see to their particular tastes. Someone who doesn't like one-liner reviews should be able to filter by word count. Someone who doesn't think a review from someone with 0.1 hours playtime will help them should be able to filter by playtime. More subtle issues can, I believe, be at least improved by doing things like promoting the visibility of reviews by people whose other reviews you found helpful, or of reviews they in turn found helpful, or even reviews by people who have similar library/gameplay patterns to you. I've made these few suggestions before and I'm sure there are countless other possible techniques used by people with more expertise than me - a lot of companies have put a lot of effort into building recommendation engines for any media you care to name.

In the short term though, there isn't really going to be a good replacement for explicit moderation by like-minded people. It shouldn't be a surprise that if you have a system that's democratised over millions of people and your tastes aren't around the average of that population, that you might not get great results. But that's why we have the whole internet out there, so you can tailor your own media habits and focus on sources you prefer.

south park is entirely made of jokes, do you not expect people to have a laugh at it?

[Quazimortal]

People are free to write out any review they want as long as they don't break any Steam rules with it. They gave everyone an option to upvote or downvote so if a vast majority of people upvoted something you didn't like, well then that's tough turkeys for you.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Not just that; we have the ability to leave comments on reviews too. Which can be read by others -- including the reviewer and others who have read the review.

[Gus the Crocodile]

Edit: Erg, I wish people wouldn't delete their posts. I get that sometimes you change your mind and I think that's great, but removing the post can really make the rest of the conversation look weird. I also should have used quotes though, my bad.

So to be clear, this post was a response to Justice Wolf who said something to me like "that's not the issue, the fact is that one-liners and such are not legitimate reviews"

Says you, yes. Which is why you get to downvote things that you don't think are helpful (I assume you don't think "illegitimate" reviews are helpful), or even report them if they're breaching Steam's codes of conduct etc. And why I propose that you shouldn't have to view them at all. But you aren't in charge of what everyone else has to think, that's why I'm in favour of filters on reading rather than restrictions on posting.

[ppposttt]

Agreed.

[Hopper]

İlk olarak Gus the Crocodile tarafından gönderildi:

Edit: Erg, I wish people wouldn't delete their posts. I get that sometimes you change your mind and I think that's great, but removing the post can really make the rest of the conversation look weird. I also should have used quotes though, my bad.

So to be clear, this post was a response to Justice Wolf who said something to me like "that's not the issue, the fact is that one-liners and such are not legitimate reviews"

Says you, yes. Which is why you get to downvote things that you don't think are helpful (I assume you don't think "illegitimate" reviews are helpful), or even report them if they're breaching Steam's codes of conduct etc. And why I propose that you shouldn't have to view them at all. But you aren't in charge of what everyone else has to think, that's why I'm in favour of filters on reading rather than restrictions on posting.

Whats with the italics?

[Goschi]

me too

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

^^ someone deleted their post after Gus posted that. Gus edited his post to make mention of the deleted post.