Review System Improvements

Ya that sounds like a good idea. Added that to my list.

Is there a way to fix the fact that most fanfic reviews take you to Fanfic Recs/ instead of Fanfic/? That was an Eddie choice that doesn't really make sense in practice.

We may also want to make it so that reviews cannot be posted without a title, which is a common event that makes it impossible to read said review from the review screen.

These are more bugfixes though, not really ways to make it more popular.

Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 1st 2023 at 3:58:46 PM

Ya I’ve also got a short list of bugs and issues in reviews. But fixing bugs is also important, users are less inclined to use a broken system.

Is sorting works by review count an interesting metric?

Also I've noticed in the reviews, work names don't have a link, while the review titles link to the work's reviews subpage and not to that specific review, so you can't get to individual reviews from this menu unless they have comments.

Ya that’s one way we could sort things. one of the other things I plan to implement in the future is view counts, since we have Google analytics. Then we can sort by views as well.

Edited by kory on Sep 1st 2023 at 1:15:14 AM

I like writing reviews and I often wish more people responded to them because I love having conversations about media. If it's a matter of not many people checking the space, then I'd like to see something to increase engagement in that area. Thematic analysis and critical discussion is a massive factor of my engagement with media and my opinions toward it (what a work is saying and how well it says it are essential to me as a storyteller and story-lover myself) so I quietly but firmly disagree with analysis being something reviews aren't for.

That being said, I'm relatively mixed on increasing the character limit. I try to go back and check if a review I've published exceeds the limit and I work to trim it when it does. While that's been an excellent exercise in learning to be concise and prioritize the things I want my review to impart, it can also feel like a restriction that forces me to sacrifice some phrasing or opinions that I would have liked to include. Maybe 4,000 characters would be an okay balance over an increase to 5,000. I don't know if I'd ever need 5,000 but I can't see myself in the position of having to sacrifice writing within a 4,000 limit.

Edited by 8BrickMario on Sep 1st 2023 at 6:03:18 AM

This might be a self-report, but I think to make reviews grow, they shouldn't be as tucked away as they are. Personally, I keep forgetting they exist, even if I'd probably find them helpful.

What do you mean tucked away? A link to reviews is in the main sidebar on every page.

... Huh, I literally never noticed that link, although since it's just 'all reviews in reverse chronological order', not sure I'd use it much even if I had.

I guess they mean that seeing if a work has reviews is in the little navbar at the top of the screen. It's really more of a "you have to be looking for it" type link as opposed to the subpages, I guess?

Ah I see. and I could insert some sort of little box after the main image that shows recent reviews if they exist for a work? Or something like that.

Ya that’s why I suggested giving a search bar and other things to help make the latest review page much more useful. Added my list of suggestions to the OP.

Edited by kory on Sep 3rd 2023 at 1:35:48 AM

Yeah, or maybe moving the review link to some other element that might actually get attention—"between page history and the discussion link" limits it pretty much to people already looking for it, or regular editors.

Fwiw, a lot of the interface on mobile is tucked away out of necessity.

I do like what some online stores do by providing the most liked positive and negative reviews at the top, if that's feasible.

Probably also a lower priority, but maybe different likes for reviews that were helpful in deciding whether to invest time into the work vs. those that were an anjoyable read.

Oh yeah, I forgot it's not even visible on mobile◊ unless you know it's there.

I don't know if this is the proper place to suggest this, but would it be possible to have it so reviews can be added to Recap pages? I sometimes see people leave reviews for single episodes of a series, instead of having a review for the series overall.

If I recall correctly, people temporarily change pagetype to "work", add review, then return pagetype to "examples".