Please moderate reviews

[Lux Nothum]

Steam reviews are in dire need of a moderation system. I mean, look at this: http://steamcommunity.com/id/twilightvomit/recommended/237630/ There are plenty of similar reviews around, and most are not even written by 12 y.os. Downvoting does no good, there's too many people that keep upvoting reviews just because they think they're fun or edgy or whatever.

I keep seeing long and thoroughly argumented reviews being surpassed in popularity by four words jokes. It's chaos. And it's not useful to anybody, in fact it just makes it hard for everyone to trust these ratings and to tell useful reviews from uninformative or stupid ones.

IMO when a review is submitted it should not be published immediately, a moderator should approve it then it can proceed to be publicly posted. Yes there's a report function but apparently it's not very used. Guess you can't count on random users to take their time to report every spamming case.

And one more thing: the "funny" button? I think it's a joke, honestly. It counts as a positive rating, so it just adds more confusion.

[fluxtorrent]

You can flag reviews "for" moderation by clicking on it and hitting the flag. But steam support is overburdened so its not going to be "quick".

[Start_Running]

Oh look anothr :
SOmething I don't like exists it must be removed

[Gus the Crocodile]

Funny doesn't count as a positive rating - at least not if you mean it adds to the counter of positive votes. It's its own separate thing. And not "trusting" the ratings of a bunch of internet strangers is healthy. :)

I understand a desire for more moderation of reviews, but having moderators judge "quality" or "usefulness" of reviews is shaky ground as far as I'm concerned. I'm not really comfortable with the idea that people's reviews can be denied because one of the Steam mods thought it wasn't "good" enough.

Personally I would start by making the report button actually visible on each review when it's listed on the store page, not just when you click through to its individual page. I expect a lot of people don't even realise they can report reviews.

I would also work on, rather than trying to restrict writers, helping readers see reviews by particular people whose reviews they are more likely to find helpful.

First thing in that respect would be following particular users so their reviews are shown with priority. That way if someone writes a review you think is well thought-out, you can tell the system to show you their reviews in future. I'm aware there's already a function by which you can "follow" a user, but I must admit I don't actually know what that does - it might only be about Workshop submissions or something, I have no idea.

After that you could expand the display process to prioritise reviews by people whose reviews you've found helpful in the past (followed or not), people who have similar taste in games to you, etc etc. Given that most individuals don't review tonnes and tonnes of games all this is of limited help, I know, but hey, better than nothing.

Edit: plus, you know, filtering options for all the stuff people regularly complain about: play time, word count, etc.

[Vanna]

Gus the Crocodile の投稿を引用：

Personally I would start by making the report button actually visible on each review when it's listed on the store page, not just when you click through to its individual page. I expect a lot of people don't even realise they can report reviews.

You're right. I think I've never seen that button until I've casually clicked on a single review.
Maybe the system itself should show the first review of the curators which, usually, they tend to write more logic reviews.

Also, but I think is a personal desire, I would like to filter reviews by language (and save this preference somewhere in the client). I prefer english rather than other languages.

[Lux Nothum]

Start_Running の投稿を引用：

Oh look anothr :
SOmething I don't like exists it must be removed

Lrn 2 read, troll. Also reported.

Gus the Crocodile の投稿を引用：

Funny doesn't count as a positive rating - at least not if you mean it adds to the counter of positive votes.

I thought the contrary, but maybe I just misunderstood how it works.

I understand a desire for more moderation of reviews, but having moderators judge "quality" or "usefulness" of reviews is shaky ground as far as I'm concerned. I'm not really comfortable with the idea that people's reviews can be denied because one of the Steam mods thought it wasn't "good" enough.

I understand your concern about this, I was actually thinking about a kind of "broad" moderation, that mainly filters reviews that are obviously spamming or those that are just limited to a meme-like catchprhase with a x/10 underneath. Whether the review is actually helpful or not can only be decided by the user that's reading, but a minimum of decency should be required.

Personally I would start by making the report button actually visible on each review when it's listed on the store page, not just when you click through to its individual page. I expect a lot of people don't even realise they can report reviews.

Yeah, this is a good statement. In fact, I had to edit my first post 'cause I didn't see there actually was a report flag lol. It should definitely be more visibile. I agree about everything else you said, there's a lot of work to be done in order to make this review system more reliable and easy to consult.

[Matt]

We only remove reviews if they are abusive. Otherwise, you'd have to down vote them. Unfortunately pre-reviewing every review is simply too much work.

[Lux Nothum]

Matt の投稿を引用：

We only remove reviews if they are abusive. Otherwise, you'd have to down vote them. Unfortunately pre-reviewing every review is simply too much work.

Well at least you should consider the other options we were discussing about, like making the report flag more visible or prioritize reviews from curators and users with a good "reputation". I think these things could lead to a good improvement.

[Joki the Disco Bandit]

I'll volunteer. I promise to not favor anyone and be totally arbitrary in my application of justice. I'll only censor reviews with the word "the" in them on Tuesdays.

Please don't prioritize at me, though. I don't care about anyone's curator preferences, it's none of my business. I suppose if you'd like the *option* to see certain people's reviews before others it wouldn't bother me, just don't force them on me.

[Gavmandog]

I don't see it as a huge problem, just scroll down a bit further and you can read a real review. I agree that hours played is a big marker for how good a game is.

I'd really like the option of reading negative reviews even though they are marked as not helpful. For games that are popular early, negative reviews get quashed by the weight of gamers that really enjoy that type of game.

The whole process is a bit fishy, i got a key off a developer, their game had a 55% positivity rating with negative reviews that pinpointed the issues with the game. A month later when they advertised it, it had a 90% positivity rating with only a handful of new reviews. - the game updates did not reflect dealing with the issues the reviews brought up either.

[Unexpected]

there's nothing wrong with a funny review like that

[shs]

+1 to Gus. Which is to say, +1 to elementary customer courtesy.

Xuchilbara の投稿を引用：

Matt の投稿を引用：

We only remove reviews if they are abusive. Otherwise, you'd have to down vote them. Unfortunately pre-reviewing every review is simply too much work.

Well at least you should consider the other options we were discussing about, like making the report flag more visible or prioritize reviews from curators and users with a good "reputation". I think these things could lead to a good improvement.

No, no, no, the curators are god awful.

And one more thing: the "funny" button? I think it's a joke, honestly. It counts as a positive rating, so it just adds more confusion.

I believe the "funny" tag was meant for joke reviews, but Steam backed off tagging them as "joke" because then everyone who disliked any review for any reason would tag it in dismissal as a joke, precisely as you used it in your first sentence above.
But yeah, "funny" sounds like a good thing.