Review length

zerky's given a few reviews around the site and she's noticed that 400 words is really short.

It's hard to give a proper criticism of something in such a small space, and twice, people have accused her of trolling or being inflammatory because she didn't have adequate space to write a balanced review. Both times she had to write lengthy responses in the comment section that by far exceeded the wordcount of the review itself. To clarify what the review was trying to say.

She was wondering why such a small word limit is given to reviews in the first place. Also why it couldn't be lengthened to something that'd give the reviewer more room to work with, 800-1000 words or so?

The word count was chosen specifically to keep things short, the review section is only to allow tropers to openly give their feelings on a particular show/movie/etc. It isn't meant to be an open blog post.

That said, I admit the word count is short and it can be difficult to express everything you want to express, but I usually find that my reviews get more to the point after spending a half hour trimming the excess fat.

If there's quite a bit more to say than what's allowed, you should try the Analysis tab. That's for going more indepth.

Keep in mind, I do agree 400 words is not enough. Not even my shortest review was that small. 1,000 would be acceptable to me.

edited 11th Nov '11 11:44:27 PM by Hydronix

I've found 400 words to be too short to write a good review, too. Roger Ebert's reviews always feel "just right" to me in terms of length and he usually clocks in at a bit over 800.

As I understand it, the shorter length is driven by the goal of giving folks a place to say why they liked something, or not. That's not quite the same thing as a review.

edited 11th Nov '11 11:16:03 PM by Camacan

Ah, maybe the name should be changed or something? Calling them reviews is a little misleading if they're basically just supposed to be a descriptive thumbs up or thumbs down. Maybe... Like/Didn't Like? or... something?

Short reviews are still reviews. They may not be all that useful, but they are still reviews.

I suspect Eddie is trying to limit the reviews to prevent them from overtaking the main pages. After all, we do get a number of people who come here (and have said as much) trying to use us as a guide to which shows they should watch, which books they should read, etc. That's definitely not the main mission of the wiki. Of course, I could be wrong about Eddie's intent.

As for me, I'm ambivalent on the whole thing. I tend to stay away from the reviews in general (I wrote one, and I don't plan on doing any more).

edited 12th Nov '11 7:55:39 AM by TotemicHero

I think it would be fine to extend them to maybe 800 words or so. That's enough to give a good summary of the pros and cons, but short enough that it won't lead to walls of text.

The idea behind the word limit is to prevent reviews from becoming walkthroughs. Sending this to Wiki Talk to clarify how the limit should be configured.

No offense, but I kind of wonder if you really needed to necro a 4+ year old thread just to clarify what the stance of the new admins is on review length.

'Cause we are scrapping the Tech Wishlist forum, but I need to decide whether to port this issue into Query Wishlist or not. Also, it's a request to tropers, not to admins specifically (they can give their stance in Query Wishlist)

I've posted a couple of reviews total and I rarely read them, so I'm not that invested in the question, but a small expansion would be good. 600-800 is probably enough. Not longer.

There's currently a 2943 character review up, so I'm not sure what the current limit is, or if it even exists

The current limit is on words, not characters.

In my experience, you don't get into quality walkthrough space until you break through the 10,000 word mark. A decent review online is usually about 800 words. I would put the limit at 1000 words (6KB).

800 words is a good limit.