Maybe remove the 'Funny' review filter

[ploppo]

I know kids took over Steam years ago; however, the whole idea of filtering 'funny' reviews surely means that x amount of people are going to write a 'funny' review or are goint to tag a review as funny.

What's funny about that? Who cares if someone finds a review funny or not?

Why would any NORMAL person take a look at a game's reviews and set the filter to only read 'funny' reviews.

How does a 'funny' review sell a game?

This is an actual game review of 'FOR HONOR':

POSTED: 27 FEBRUARY, 2017
So recently there's been buzz around town for a very tasty lobster dinner, "Pour L'honneur," from the local 5-star restaurant, Subioft. You go to Subioft looking to try it. There it is on the menu, right below the other recently added dish, "Chiens de Garde II" (which, by the way is an excellent entrée, I recommend that to everybody, even though the first rendition of that meal was not so good, they actually improved upon it drastically.) You order the meal and wait for it to come out. About thirty minutes later, the waiter collects it from the kitchen and brings it to you. (He seemed to have had a little trouble balancing it while he was walking it to you, but luckily didn't drop it.) He sets it on the table.

It looks amazing.

But where's the cutlery?
The waiter hands you a plastic, off-white fork that feels and looks like it's part paper or less-sturdy-than-plastic-material. He says it's all the restaurant can afford to give its customers. Wait, what? This is Lobster..? Shouldn't this warrant at least a fork AND a knife??? Metal cutlery, too, perhaps-- isn't this a 5-star restaurant?? (I mean, they don't specialize in seafood, but-- they should technically have had a lobster cracker and special utensils, but apparently this kind of behavior has become expected of Subioft???) The waiter stays silent to these questions. You confusedly shrug it off, and continue to the task at hand-- eating delicious lobster.

You go to grab your napkin and get ready to attempt to chow down with your plastic peer to pe-- I mean cutlery. You realize your napkin is a stark white piece of tissue paper. The waiter brings up a large corkboard that displays an assortment of fine napkins of assorted colors and materials. There's a label on the top of the board; "Premium Napkins." He says you can pay small amounts of money in exchange for exclusive currency called Steel used to purchase and use their premium napkins, otherwise, you'll get a tiny amount Steel earned for eating the dish, which can be used for, say, a used low-rate polyester hankerchief.

Whatever. You don't care. You just want to eat the very tasty lobster dinner. That's what you came for, what you came to eat, came to experience, came to enjoy.

So you try. Some of the experience was rather pleasant, and the dish, itself, was indeed very tasty.

Other times, your fork chipped and snapped and fragmented and broke into the meal, and you would end up tasting that plastic later, or the fork wouldn't properly grab food, or it would just fall apart in your hand. The fact that the restaurant couldn't even provide at least a knife was demeaning. The lack of a proper napkin made it messy at times, and you couldn't help but wonder if paying for a better napkin might've been worth it. Also the seasoning was a little inconsistent, sometimes it'd taste a little salty, other times... was that cheese? That definitely tasted like it. Bleu, perhaps.

In the end, it was a very tasty lobster dinner. But only when you could enjoy the meal itself, and not be bogged down by the lack of real cutlery where there definitely should be, or a proper napkin instead of being prompted to pay even more than 60$ on, say, a silk lavender napkin imported from Japan. And you couldn't help but feel bad for the chef, who clearly made great efforts into the presentation and taste of the dish itself, which would have only been truly realized had the restaurant, Subioft, made any effort to provide better services and emphasis on the quality of the things which accompanied the meal, such as the utensils or the napkins. If you had a nice napkin that came standard, a proper set of cutlery accomodating a crustacean dish, you would have, without a doubt, truly enjoyed the dish.

Later that night, you got on your computer and went on Nudle Chrome and went to Nudle Plus, where you updated your review of the restaurant Subioft, stating that the cooks must be great, but the restaurant itself was not, for it was clearly not the cook that ruined the dish you ate. When you commented about "Pour L'honneur" specifically, however, a random commenter responded,

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
Yeah, they had a taste test of that dish earlier this month because they had planned to add that to their menu, and we complained to them about the exact same things!!

This made you suddenly feel very uneasy and concerned for the new dish Subioft was pushing to add to their menu soon, "Terres Sauvages." You also wondered why Subioft is even considered a 5-star restaurant at all.

3,624 people found this review helpful
2,954 people found this review funny


It's not helpful and it is not funny.


EDIT:
This is what it says when Steam prompts you to post a review:

Please describe what you liked or disliked about this game and whether you recommend it to others.

How hard is that to understand?

[Black Blade]

Funny is there because users voted reviews up even when it was not helpful because they found it funny
So they added funny in hope that users will vote on funny in place of up
That is at least what I am aware, but as ou say seem like maybe its not working completely to help

Any way if you see a review that is not a review report it

[76561198001062896]

even if it would be removed people still would make nonsensical gag reviews so that wouldnt solve anything

[ploppo]

Yeh, but it was Steam itself that gave people the power to declare a review as being funny.

Removing the whole 'funny' aspect would probably do more good than harm - unless Steam thrive on this.

Steam added it for a reason - well what was the reason? Was it so they could roar and laugh as some idiot marks a review as funny (when it is not) - was it to encourage users to write funny reviews?

The whole thing seems to have been Steam's idea; however, as far as I can tell, it has no real use.

[76561198001062896]

Originally posted by ploppo:

Yeh, but it was Steam itself that gave people the power to declare a review as being funny.

Removing the whole 'funny' aspect would probably do more good than harm - unless Steam thrive on this.

Steam added it for a reason - well what was the reason? Was it so they could roar and laugh as some idiot marks a review as funny (when it is not) - was it to encourage users to write funny reviews?

The whole thing seems to have been Steam's idea; however, as far as I can tell, it has no real use.

It was to at least try and control an obvious problem that wasnt going away anytime soon at first place.



people would still make funny reviews except those would get even more mixed alongside helpful reviews

[Gus the Crocodile]

Like Black Blade said, silly reviews already existed, and people ‘upvoting’ them was rife - only without funny, the only upvote available is Helpful. So you get a bunch of nonsense reviews being voted helpful, which is, well, unhelpful. Adding Funny into the mix reduces that effect.

[ploppo]

When you look at a review it says:

Was this review helpful? Yes - No - Funny

Steam is the one that allowed people to click Funny.

I don't see how having the option does anything good - surely, it has the effect of allowing people to effectively troll other reviews?

Why no just get rid of the funny option?

If there is no 'Funny' option, then nobody can click it.

[Gus the Crocodile]

Originally posted by ploppo:

If there is no 'Funny' option, then nobody can click it.

Yes, which is precisely the problem. If there is no Funny option, people who want to upvote silly reviews will vote them Helpful instead, making Helpful a less useful filter.

[ploppo]

Originally posted by Gus the Crocodile:

Originally posted by ploppo:

If there is no 'Funny' option, then nobody can click it.

Yes, which is precisely the problem. If there is no Funny option, people who want to upvote silly reviews will vote them Helpful instead, making Helpful a less useful filter.

I see what you are saying.

Technically I make sense with my 'argument' - but in practice it doesn't work that simply.

[Black Blade]

Originally posted by ploppo:

I see what you are saying.

Technically I make sense with my 'argument' - but in practice it doesn't work that simply.

Sadly only way to see if it works or not is to roll back time and see what was the case before it come in
I mean from what you show on the review above we had:
3,624 people found this review helpful
2,954 people found this review funny

That can mean that there are 2,954 votes that are not helping that review get a "helpful" rating, compare to if the button did not exist and that will have been 66578 helpful in place of that

But hard to really say on that, as we cant really see what got it there

[ploppo]

As the review is not really helpful either, I see it more as 6,578 people who could have read a real review and rated that instead.

[Black Blade]

Originally posted by ploppo:

As the review is not really helpful either, I see it more as 6,578 people who could have read a real review and rated that instead.

Maybe but these guys like already said where also there in the start of the system before the funny button was there
And the same thing happen people voted on helpful in place of not helpful on joke reviews that many times had nothing to be a review
That is why Valve put in the funny button in hope that more users that do that kind of spam will vote on that in place of upvote

If you have a way to stop them from doing that or there effect and help them vote on really helpful stuff, I am sure Valve will be glad to hear it

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by Gus the Crocodile:

Originally posted by ploppo:

If there is no 'Funny' option, then nobody can click it.

Yes, which is precisely the problem. If there is no Funny option, people who want to upvote silly reviews will vote them Helpful instead, making Helpful a less useful filter.

Then people had to read through dozens of 'LOL LE MEME' 'helpful' joke reviews in order to find proper 'Helpful' reviews.

As tha system works now people can upvote a review for the sake of being funny without affecting it's helpfulness rating.

Now a review can be helpful, funny or both. Before if a review was funny it automatically became helpful, which isn't necessarily true.

[SilverDiamond]

Problem I'm having is that I don't make my reviews funny. Would be nice for the maker of a review to allow or delete the tag. If people want to make a funny review, they make it funny. If review is clearly funny, but doesn't allow for the tag - it gets reported and read by PEOPLE, who then decide to delete review and maybe a timeout for a few days for "wiseguys: who try to cheat the system. Everyone else who makes a serious review, and wants them to be considered such - have a solid yes/no response to their reviews.
My Review on Them's Fighting Herds have 4 wasted votes. SnowRunner review has 6 wasted votes. And those are just from me, and my half a dozen reviews. Who knows how much votes are wasted when a person tries to make a solid negative or positive review but it gets a bunch of useless votes? There is also a matter of "negative" reviews, when people say that don't like something, but the rating is positive, or the other way around. As well as "empty" reviews, that to not critisie but a bunch of useless text, that doesn't help at all.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

There are a whole bunch of reviews that are heavily upvoted simply due to being funny, despite being completely uninformative.

I highly recommend you report such reviews. It's generally assumed that Valve doesn't remove stuff like this unless someone actually bothers to report it.

Valve did create the "Funny" rating to hopefully stop people from upvoting well-appreciated in-jokes or other nonsense as if they're actually helpful reviews. This...probably worked to some extent but definitely has not eliminated the problem of people posting unhelpful reviews for the sake of humor.