Silk Road forums

Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 28, 2013, 05:28 am

Title: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 28, 2013, 05:28 am
It's been a kinda crazy past few days.  I really thought we had thought through the implications of the various proposed changed.  I even opened up the discussion here to talk about what we were planning and if it would be an issue.  I guess you never know until the rubber meets the road.  I think we are getting closer to where this phase of the overhaul needs to be.  Some concerns that were raised:

Reviews for specific items should be on the item's page.
They are back

The design is ugly and hard to navigate.
it has been slimmed down

the buyer stats reveal too much.
they have been rounded down to the nearest power of 10 (1+, 10+, 100+, etc) and capped at $10k (or equivalent), 100 orders, and 100 vendors, and account age has been removed completely.  Keep in mind you can still change your alias to something other than your username and are encouraged to do so.

No one is leaving written reviews.
a link now appears on the order page immediately after a review is left prompting the user to write a written review.  also, there is a link on the account page that brings up the most recent un-reviewed transaction

I'm not ready to make any changes to the new policy that ratings and reviews can't be edited.  If we do anything, I'm leaning toward allowing the buyer to delete a rating or review.

Thank you everyone for your input with all of this.  It's hard to please everyone and not everyone's desires are feasible, but I think we can find a new balance that meets most people's needs and fixes the problems we've been plagued with for so long.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Juggernog on August 28, 2013, 05:37 am
It's been a kinda crazy past few days.  I really thought we had thought through the implications of the various proposed changed.  I even opened up the discussion here to talk about what we were planning and if it would be an issue.  I guess you never know until the rubber meets the road.  I think we are getting closer to where this phase of the overhaul needs to be.  Some concerns that were raised:

Reviews for specific items should be on the item's page.
They are back

The design is ugly and hard to navigate.
it has been slimmed down

the buyer stats reveal too much.
they have been rounded down to the nearest power of 10 (1+, 10+, 100+, etc) and capped at $10k (or equivalent), 100 orders, and 100 vendors, and account age has been removed completely.  Keep in mind you can still change your alias to something other than your username and are encouraged to do so.

No one is leaving written reviews.
a link now appears on the order page immediately after a review is left prompting the user to write a written review.  also, there is a link on the account page that brings up the most recent un-reviewed transaction

I'm not ready to make any changes to the new policy that ratings and reviews can't be edited.  If we do anything, I'm leaning toward allowing the buyer to delete a rating or review.

Thank you everyone for your input with all of this.  It's hard to please everyone and not everyone's desires are feasible, but I think we can find a new balance that meets most people's needs and fixes the problems we've been plagued with for so long.

This is awesome!

However:

I'm not ready to make any changes to the new policy that ratings and reviews can't be edited.  If we do anything, I'm leaning toward allowing the buyer to delete a rating or review.

This does not seem right. I can see allowing them to remove a review, but not a rating.. they would be able to control their average then correct?
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: missbliss on August 28, 2013, 05:38 am
hi hi

all very good tweaks that go in the right direction....

any thoughts on the minority of reviews (1-4) being omnipresent on all pages of 5/5 feedback? any vendor with at least 1 review at any rating from 1-4 will have that paragraph on every page when a viewer pages through the 5/5 feedback... perhaps keep all of the "pages" in sync?


also, i have noticed for reviews written in the "new" system you've included back in the header the exact dollar amounts of the orders. why? i was very pleased that you saw the practicality of not clearly broadcasting exact dollar amounts for everything to the world... there were quite a few security concerns that were brought up in the other threads and i'm wondering what makes new reviews fall under different rules.


xoxo
-mb
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 28, 2013, 05:45 am

I'm not ready to make any changes to the new policy that ratings and reviews can't be edited.  If we do anything, I'm leaning toward allowing the buyer to delete a rating or review.

This does not seem right. I can see allowing them to remove a review, but not a rating.. they would be able to control their average then correct?

the buyer would be the one with that power, not the seller.  So, if a buyer leaves a bad review and a seller makes it up to them, they can at least remove the bad review, but they won't be able to to switch it back and forth and hold the seller on a string.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 28, 2013, 05:49 am
hi hi

all very good tweaks that go in the right direction....

any thoughts on the minority of reviews (1-4) being omnipresent on all pages of 5/5 feedback? any vendor with at least 1 review at any rating from 1-4 will have that paragraph on every page when a viewer pages through the 5/5 feedback... perhaps keep all of the "pages" in sync?


also, i have noticed for reviews written in the "new" system you've included back in the header the exact dollar amounts of the orders. why? i was very pleased that you saw the practicality of not clearly broadcasting exact dollar amounts for everything to the world... there were quite a few security concerns that were brought up in the other threads and i'm wondering what makes new reviews fall under different rules.


xoxo
-mb

The review groups are already sorted with 5's at the top.  I think it's fine as it is.

the exact dollar amount and quantity is only listed for new reviews.  This is not new info because anyone scraping the site before could get this info as reviews rolled in.  Now everyone has it.  Additionally, because only transactions that have a review written for them are displayed, you can't get a complete picture of a vendor's business like you used to.  In my opinion, that alone makes all of the headache of this change worth it.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: convergedlight on August 28, 2013, 05:50 am
It's been a kinda crazy past few days.  I really thought we had thought through the implications of the various proposed changed.  I even opened up the discussion here to talk about what we were planning and if it would be an issue.  I guess you never know until the rubber meets the road.  I think we are getting closer to where this phase of the overhaul needs to be.  Some concerns that were raised:

Reviews for specific items should be on the item's page.
They are back

The design is ugly and hard to navigate.
it has been slimmed down

the buyer stats reveal too much.
they have been rounded down to the nearest power of 10 (1+, 10+, 100+, etc) and capped at $10k (or equivalent), 100 orders, and 100 vendors, and account age has been removed completely.  Keep in mind you can still change your alias to something other than your username and are encouraged to do so.

No one is leaving written reviews.
a link now appears on the order page immediately after a review is left prompting the user to write a written review.  also, there is a link on the account page that brings up the most recent un-reviewed transaction

I'm not ready to make any changes to the new policy that ratings and reviews can't be edited.  If we do anything, I'm leaning toward allowing the buyer to delete a rating or review.

Thank you everyone for your input with all of this.  It's hard to please everyone and not everyone's desires are feasible, but I think we can find a new balance that meets most people's needs and fixes the problems we've been plagued with for so long.

If the reviews still require an alias then it will still be possible to link all of one person's orders together, if someone happens to know that a single review belongs to a given person (I thought this was one of the main reasons we didn't want the true stats, because it can work as a unique identifier.  If a site-wide alias is always there, that's it's own unique identifier.)  Can it be possible to hide alias on reviews?  I'm more on the fence about aliases for the discuss tab, because that is a legitimate discussion with a personal element and you might need to track the conversational flow from one member to the next.  But, the reviews, I believe, stand by themselves.  They aren't part of a conversation and really don't need a person's identifier at all.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I just don't see any value for the alias in the actual product reviews.  It has the rough buying power now, and that should be enough to weight the review.  Why the alias?
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Juggernog on August 28, 2013, 05:52 am

I'm not ready to make any changes to the new policy that ratings and reviews can't be edited.  If we do anything, I'm leaning toward allowing the buyer to delete a rating or review.

This does not seem right. I can see allowing them to remove a review, but not a rating.. they would be able to control their average then correct?

the buyer would be the one with that power, not the seller.  So, if a buyer leaves a bad review and a seller makes it up to them, they can at least remove the bad review, but they won't be able to to switch it back and forth and hold the seller on a string.

My bad DPR, kinda out of mind right now, I missed that. :)
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 28, 2013, 05:58 am
If the reviews still require an alias then it will still be possible to link all of one person's orders together, if someone happens to know that a single review belongs to a given person (I thought this was one of the main reasons we didn't want the true stats, because it can work as a unique identifier.  If a site-wide alias is always there, that's it's own unique identifier.)  Can it be possible to hide alias on reviews?  I'm more on the fence about aliases for the discuss tab, because that is a legitimate discussion with a personal element and you might need to track the conversational flow from one member to the next.  But, the reviews, I believe, stand by themselves.  They aren't part of a conversation and really don't need a person's identifier at all.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I just don't see any value for the alias in the actual product reviews.  It has the rough buying power now, and that should be enough to weight the review.  Why the alias?

good  question.  I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up sooner.  You need the alias so you can see if reviews are coming from the same person.  Imagine a vendor buys 20 items from themselves and then leaves a bunch of fake good reviews.  You will be able to spot the ruse because of the alias.  With the stats now obscured, it will be very hard for anyone to link your alias to your main account name through a review.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: missbliss on August 28, 2013, 06:04 am
hi hi

all very good tweaks that go in the right direction....

any thoughts on the minority of reviews (1-4) being omnipresent on all pages of 5/5 feedback? any vendor with at least 1 review at any rating from 1-4 will have that paragraph on every page when a viewer pages through the 5/5 feedback... perhaps keep all of the "pages" in sync?


also, i have noticed for reviews written in the "new" system you've included back in the header the exact dollar amounts of the orders. why? i was very pleased that you saw the practicality of not clearly broadcasting exact dollar amounts for everything to the world... there were quite a few security concerns that were brought up in the other threads and i'm wondering what makes new reviews fall under different rules.


xoxo
-mb

The review groups are already sorted with 5's at the top.  I think it's fine as it is.

the exact dollar amount and quantity is only listed for new reviews.  This is not new info because anyone scraping the site before could get this info as reviews rolled in.  Now everyone has it.  Additionally, because only transactions that have a review written for them are displayed, you can't get a complete picture of a vendor's business like you used to.  In my opinion, that alone makes all of the headache of this change worth it.

hi hi

i'm sorry i must not have explained what i meant properly.  if a vendor has many pages of 5/5 and only a single 1, 2, 3, or 4 rating... each time a viewer clicks "next page" on the 5/5 section, the other lower rating reviews are still present on all subsequent 5/5 pages.  to the casual observer, it would appear that there are multiple pages of those lesser reviews as well, when in fact it's same one reloading on each new page...

that's all i meant.


as for the exact dollar amount, i understand scripts can scrape the site and get that information, but it's not exactly clearly visible to the human observer. appears to take someone to be initiated enough to do such a thing, not stumbling upon something "interesting"

would you be adverse to "generalizing" it similar to how the buyer stats are generalized on the reviews?

xoxo
-mb
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: convergedlight on August 28, 2013, 06:04 am
If the reviews still require an alias then it will still be possible to link all of one person's orders together, if someone happens to know that a single review belongs to a given person (I thought this was one of the main reasons we didn't want the true stats, because it can work as a unique identifier.  If a site-wide alias is always there, that's it's own unique identifier.)  Can it be possible to hide alias on reviews?  I'm more on the fence about aliases for the discuss tab, because that is a legitimate discussion with a personal element and you might need to track the conversational flow from one member to the next.  But, the reviews, I believe, stand by themselves.  They aren't part of a conversation and really don't need a person's identifier at all.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I just don't see any value for the alias in the actual product reviews.  It has the rough buying power now, and that should be enough to weight the review.  Why the alias?

good  question.  I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up sooner.  You need the alias so you can see if reviews are coming from the same person.  Imagine a vendor buys 20 items from themselves and then leaves a bunch of fake good reviews.  You will be able to spot the ruse because of the alias.  With the stats now obscured, it will be very hard for anyone to link your alias to your main account name through a review.

That's a good point, but what I'm thinking is, people often talk on the forums about things they just tested when trying a vendor's new products, and then just by reading the forums, there will often be cases when you can figure out that a particular forum user wrote a particular review, because they may say the same thing about a particular product at the same time they mentioned having bought it and tested it in the forums.

In your counter example, you show it's valuable to tell users apart in a particular vendor's page.  What if instead of showing a site-wide alias, it displays a simple hash of the (vendor name + the username or alias).  This will provide unique numbers on a specific vendor's page, so it will be clear that one user is not padding all the reviews for that vendor, but it will keep the identifiers from being linkable between vendors.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: convergedlight on August 28, 2013, 06:23 am
If the reviews still require an alias then it will still be possible to link all of one person's orders together, if someone happens to know that a single review belongs to a given person (I thought this was one of the main reasons we didn't want the true stats, because it can work as a unique identifier.  If a site-wide alias is always there, that's it's own unique identifier.)  Can it be possible to hide alias on reviews?  I'm more on the fence about aliases for the discuss tab, because that is a legitimate discussion with a personal element and you might need to track the conversational flow from one member to the next.  But, the reviews, I believe, stand by themselves.  They aren't part of a conversation and really don't need a person's identifier at all.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I just don't see any value for the alias in the actual product reviews.  It has the rough buying power now, and that should be enough to weight the review.  Why the alias?

good  question.  I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up sooner.  You need the alias so you can see if reviews are coming from the same person.  Imagine a vendor buys 20 items from themselves and then leaves a bunch of fake good reviews.  You will be able to spot the ruse because of the alias.  With the stats now obscured, it will be very hard for anyone to link your alias to your main account name through a review.

That's a good point, but what I'm thinking is, people often talk on the forums about things they just tested when trying a vendor's new products, and then just by reading the forums, there will often be cases when you can figure out that a particular forum user wrote a particular review, because they may say the same thing about a particular product at the same time they mentioned having bought it and tested it in the forums.

In your counter example, you show it's valuable to tell users apart in a particular vendor's page.  What if instead of showing a site-wide alias, it displays a simple hash of the (vendor name + the username or alias).  This will provide unique numbers on a specific vendor's page, so it will be clear that one user is not padding all the reviews for that vendor, but it will keep the identifiers from being linkable between vendors.

You could even use a modified hash function that outputs an arbitrary name from a large name dictionary to make this more friendly to users that wouldn't want to see hashes in place of name-like aliases.  Each vendor page would basically give random names to a given user and keep it consistent for all reviews by said user on that vendor's page.
Title: Editing review and rating is important !
Post by: maligan on August 28, 2013, 06:39 am
What will a I do with those who act first and than think. Few  times I got 1/5 simply because my stealth was so good that they  could not find the product. Plus I been called a scam artist for the same reason.

From now on there is no way of changing ratings and reviews Only matter of time before something like that will happen  and I will be left alone .............


I was able to talk to people and control my ratings . I can say goodby to my 100 %. and most likely my sale will drop as well.....

Being helpless makes me sad...........
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 28, 2013, 06:41 am
You could even use a modified hash function that outputs an arbitrary name from a large name dictionary to make this more friendly to users that wouldn't want to see hashes in place of name-like aliases.  Each vendor page would basically give random names to a given user and keep it consistent for all reviews by said user on that vendor's page.

not a bad idea.  we already have a database of words for the captcha.  It wouldn't be hard to stick two of them together for each buyer/seller combination.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: livestr0ng on August 28, 2013, 06:51 am
This is what I'm talking about. I've slowly started to somewhat accept locked in feedback but still feel there should be maybe a week to edit it but I understand the argument against it so maybe, as many have already suggested, only being able to increase the rating.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: erlknernjdefdefpo1 on August 28, 2013, 06:56 am
I for one think the new system is fairer to all and a good step forward - I was somewhat dubious when the individual ratings on an item's page went awol but I'm really encouraged by the speed of the tweaks to get a happy middle ground for all.

For future updates would it be possible to start 'DRP's beta club' where open minded buyers and sellers could 'opt-in' to proposed changes in a beta environment to gather feedback prior to the whole community getting the changes - it wouldn't need to be a live site with proper listings. I'm sure there are enough community members that would spare an hour or two to test out changes. .

Anyway, thanks to DRP and their team - progress isn't welcomed by all and it takes balls to change something that people feel passionate about - so kudos.

Take care all, (and NEVER FE ;)

Erl.

**edited a typo**
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Cimicon-Rep on August 28, 2013, 06:57 am
DPR,

Looking good boss. Excellent work that's only getting better. Thanks for taking into consideration the thoughts of vendors and buyers alike. Yes, it will be an SR cultural change - a paradigm shift. But we can adapt. Making feedback permanent was the right choice given that nearly every e-commerce site on the web makes ratings and feedback permanent once left. And adding the ability for a buyer to delete a review was also a wise choice.

Libertarianism is also about taking responsibility for one's own self. These new changes are more in line with these Libertarian values.

As time goes on and people find ways to exploit whatever deficiencies exist, everyone should be confident that you will address them for the betterment of SR that makes for a happy median.

Congratulations, you've done excellent work here. I was somewhat of a harsh critic at first until I saw the bigger picture and realized that taken as a whole, it all amounts to a better and more robust Silk Road.

:)
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: maligan on August 28, 2013, 07:06 am
Wrong ! Accidental ratings cant be changed from now on. I had a few. In other words I be left alone with a lie !
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: hallucinating horse on August 28, 2013, 07:17 am
Dpr you gotta remove this stats hidden option man. I know people don't like it, but all the concerns are ridicules.

You MUST think of the greater good. A true market where anonymous fake reviews can not be used to catapult someone to the top spot. If you must, keep the username hidden, but display vendors used, and range of amount. Seeing a vendor who has a page full of over the top reviews left by (stats hidden) helps none.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: convergedlight on August 28, 2013, 07:24 am
Dpr you gotta remove this stats hidden option man. I know people don't like it, but all the concerns are ridicules.

You MUST think of the greater good. A true market where anonymous fake reviews can not be used to catapult someone to the top spot. If you must, keep the username hidden, but display vendors used, and range of amount.

I don't think anyone would disagree with this.  With the buying power only shown by a power of 10, and account age not mentioned, very little information could be leaked.  When it was originally hidden I think it was because all the exact information was showing.  It makes sense to undo this now that it is more anonimized.  I think hiding usernames is still a good idea, although if the hashing idea was implemented instead of site-wide usernames, I think people would be happy with that applied to old reviews instead of having anything listed as alias hidden.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: hallucinating horse on August 28, 2013, 07:44 am
Dpr you gotta remove this stats hidden option man. I know people don't like it, but all the concerns are ridicules.

You MUST think of the greater good. A true market where anonymous fake reviews can not be used to catapult someone to the top spot. If you must, keep the username hidden, but display vendors used, and range of amount.

I don't think anyone would disagree with this.  With the buying power only shown by a power of 10, and account age not mentioned, very little information could be leaked.  When it was originally hidden I think it was because all the exact information was showing.  It makes sense to undo this now that it is more anonimized.  I think hiding usernames is still a good idea, although if the hashing idea was implemented instead of site-wide usernames, I think people would be happy with that applied to old reviews instead of having anything listed as alias hidden.

I don't mind how its done. Being able to identify multiple reviews by one user on the same vendor page would be very awesome. I know people will complain about that. I just want to know that, when I buy from a vendor and see that 99% of his reviews were left by new buyers, I know to avoid that vendor.
Title: Editing ratings !
Post by: maligan on August 28, 2013, 08:02 am
Editing ratings should be allowed for at least 2 weeks !
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Endemic on August 28, 2013, 05:31 pm

The review groups are already sorted with 5's at the top.  I think it's fine as it is.


I think what the previous poster was getting at is that any reviews for less than 5/5 are getting a disproportionately large amount of room on the feedback page.

For example, consider a vendor with the following review count:

5/5: 980
4/5: 5
3/5: 5
2/5: 5
1/5: 5

This vendor has fully 80% of their review page dedicated to reviews of less than 5/5, although the total number of those reviews put together represents 2% of the total number of reviews as a whole, thereby potentially misrepresenting the feedback this vendor has received overall.

Yes, a buyer can check the totals at the top, and yes, they can scan through everything themselves and compare dates to determine relevance. But consider the effect of confirmation bias: a buyer with a good impression initially will probably just look at 5/5 reviews and ignore the rest. Conversely, a skeptical buyer will just read about the problems and move on to another vendor that doesn't have any 1/5 reviews (which ironically is probably a vendor that is simply too new to have gotten them yet).

In order to get a full picture of a vendor, you need to check the stats at the top of the page, then switch to recent reviews to check for recent scam activity, then view a few pages of 5/5 reviews, then back out and start in on the 4/5 reviews while noting the dates, then back out and so on. It's not that it can't be done, but that it can't be done quickly or easily.

I know you've put a lot of time and energy into these updates and I'm extraordinarily pleased to see an effort to improve the experience. I'm just afraid that things are becoming much more complicated than they need to be for such a simple task: checking feedback. Like the first few generations of BMW's iDrive system that required several clicks and spins of the wheel to simply adjust the radio station or temperature, the feedback system risks becoming a counter intuitive monstrosity that could create a swarm of confused n00bs and a mountain of pending support tickets.

Might I offer a very simple solution that could be implemented tomorrow if you decided to go with it? Just give us a long list of feedback ratings and reviews, sorted chronologically (with the option of switching to weighted order) of around 20 or so per page, with a simple product descriptor atop each review. This way a customer can scan the most recent (or most heavily weighted) 60 reviews with 3 clicks total. One to get to the review page, and one to turn each page. That's a lot of info to digest very quickly with no back and forth or extra attention paid to dates, or the risk of other biases. Just the straight dope, so to speak.

I know you've been working hard. Keep it up.

Endemic
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: BenJesuit on August 28, 2013, 05:40 pm

Might I offer a very simple solution that could be implemented tomorrow if you decided to go with it? Just give us a long list of feedback ratings and reviews, sorted chronologically (with the option of switching to weighted order) of around 20 or so per page, with a simple product descriptor atop each review. This way a customer can scan the most recent (or most heavily weighted) 60 reviews with 3 clicks total. One to get to the review page, and one to turn each page. That's a lot of info to digest very quickly with no back and forth or extra attention paid to dates, or the risk of other biases. Just the straight dope, so to speak.

I know you've been working hard. Keep it up.

Endemic

This is brilliant. It would really perfect the feedback system. Simple, clean, useful.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: shroomin1 on August 28, 2013, 05:51 pm

I'm not ready to make any changes to the new policy that ratings and reviews can't be edited.  If we do anything, I'm leaning toward allowing the buyer to delete a rating or review.

This does not seem right. I can see allowing them to remove a review, but not a rating.. they would be able to control their average then correct?

the buyer would be the one with that power, not the seller.  So, if a buyer leaves a bad review and a seller makes it up to them, they can at least remove the bad review, but they won't be able to to switch it back and forth and hold the seller on a string.

How about allowing the Buyer to propose feedback changes and then the Vender can Accept the change or not.  Likewise, the Vendor can propose a feedback change to the Buyer and the Buyer can Accept or not.

This way, if a buyer makes a mistake with a rating, he can ask the seller if it's okay to change it higher.  A seller is likely to allow that.  Whereas if the buyer has to ask the seller to make the feedback lower, the seller can decline.

On another note, I would like to request that the exact price of a purchase not be shown in the review.  And here's why.

Say I list a certain product at a certain price and it sells out immediately.  Obviously, the price is too low.  So I raise it a little, it still sells out immediately.  I raise it some more, and only 1 person buys it.  Obviously the price is too high.  I lower it back down a little, and now supply is keeping up with demand. 

Now, all these prices are now shown in the reviews.  People want to know why they are paying a higher price than someone else did.  And they think I am ripping them off.

If pricing wasn't shown in the review, this would not happen.  Like someone said in another thread, stores don't advertise that their widgets were $10.00 cheaper last week!
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: missbliss on August 28, 2013, 06:11 pm
hi hi

endemic: you are absolutely correct in your interpretation of my comment regarding the "pages of 5/5 vs pages of 1-4/5"  thank you for helping me explain my thoughts :)

my clumsy solution is/was to synchronize the pages for all x/5 reviews. so in your example of 1000 orders, if the front page were 5 posts long, you would see 25 reviews on the first page, 5 of each rating, and then when clicking page 2, you'd see ONLY 5/5s as the other x/5 ratings were already viewed on the first page.... page 3 would be more only 5/5s all the way until the final page of 5/5s... make sense?  this way the casual buyer is not seeing the same scammer bs page after page and not realizing they're in fact the same reviews from months ago re-loading over and over..


shroomin1: in addition to security, price experimentation is also one of the main reasons for not advertising the exact dollar amount per sale. glad you agree! there's MANY reasons to keep that information hidden, or at the very least vague. this has all been brought up already in the other threads. i still do not understand why DPR insists it's "less visible" when ANY dollar amount is clearly more visible than NO dollar amount....  why not generalize it in brackets of 10, 25, 50, or 100 dollar increments? if buyer stats can be generalized i see no reason why vendor sale amounts are exact dollars.  DPR agreed with the overwhelming sentiment that those numbers should be hidden for pre-tweak reviews; i see no logical explanation for different rules on post-tweak reviews.

allowing a buyer to remove feedback is nice, but i dont really see many people doing this.  it seems to be an issue just to get them to write a review now. i'm happy i'm at least still getting star ratings lol


xoxo
-mb
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: NorCalKing on August 28, 2013, 06:13 pm
hi hi

all very good tweaks that go in the right direction....

any thoughts on the minority of reviews (1-4) being omnipresent on all pages of 5/5 feedback? any vendor with at least 1 review at any rating from 1-4 will have that paragraph on every page when a viewer pages through the 5/5 feedback... perhaps keep all of the "pages" in sync?


also, i have noticed for reviews written in the "new" system you've included back in the header the exact dollar amounts of the orders. why? i was very pleased that you saw the practicality of not clearly broadcasting exact dollar amounts for everything to the world... there were quite a few security concerns that were brought up in the other threads and i'm wondering what makes new reviews fall under different rules.


xoxo
-mb

The review groups are already sorted with 5's at the top.  I think it's fine as it is.

the exact dollar amount and quantity is only listed for new reviews.  This is not new info because anyone scraping the site before could get this info as reviews rolled in.  Now everyone has it.  Additionally, because only transactions that have a review written for them are displayed, you can't get a complete picture of a vendor's business like you used to.  In my opinion, that alone makes all of the headache of this change worth it.

hi hi

i'm sorry i must not have explained what i meant properly.  if a vendor has many pages of 5/5 and only a single 1, 2, 3, or 4 rating... each time a viewer clicks "next page" on the 5/5 section, the other lower rating reviews are still present on all subsequent 5/5 pages.  to the casual observer, it would appear that there are multiple pages of those lesser reviews as well, when in fact it's same one reloading on each new page...

that's all i meant.


as for the exact dollar amount, i understand scripts can scrape the site and get that information, but it's not exactly clearly visible to the human observer. appears to take someone to be initiated enough to do such a thing, not stumbling upon something "interesting"

would you be adverse to "generalizing" it similar to how the buyer stats are generalized on the reviews?

xoxo
-mb


And to piggyback onto this, like Endemic expresses it so well, a vendor who has done a large volume would be at a huge disadvantage especially since they tend to become "larger targets" & will by nature have more negative feed back if they have been around for a while.  So they may have 10 or 15 feedbacks that are less than 5/5,  but with the 5000 5/5's that were given in the same time frame it doesn't give a customer a real look at the landscape . . .  they see 5 good feedbacks at a time, but the same negative ones each time they refresh the page for the next page of good feedbacks. 

This is why the (100) was so important, it gave the customers an immediate pic of what was REALLY going on!  And on top of that eveyone who was giving vendor 5/5 for doing a good job will now be knocking them down to 4/5 for the same service which makes SR vendors look like more barely average like Atlantis.  I thought you were trying to blow Atlantis out of the water, not trying to make it more appealing!

There should be another option to see the feedback in chroniclogical order with the good with the bad so both buyer & vendor can see immediately what is happening in realtime so no one has to try to figure out what the less than perfect feedback has to do with the last 20 or even 100 orders.

There is still an issue for us to follow what is going on with the latest feedback still.  Ours starts out by showing it from 3 days ago, (wtf)  & if we check out recent orders it only shows the last 10 orders that go back 22 hours on all the pages so with no feedback so there is no way for us to find out wtf is going on to fix anything if we need to.
NCK
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: terpene on August 28, 2013, 06:17 pm
. i'm happy i'm at least still getting star ratings lol


xoxo
-mb

We know bliss, we all know ;)

We took a sneaky peak when DPR turned on the lights a couple of times.

terps
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Kiwikiikii on August 28, 2013, 06:43 pm

Might I offer a very simple solution that could be implemented tomorrow if you decided to go with it? Just give us a long list of feedback ratings and reviews, sorted chronologically (with the option of switching to weighted order) of around 20 or so per page, with a simple product descriptor atop each review. This way a customer can scan the most recent (or most heavily weighted) 60 reviews with 3 clicks total. One to get to the review page, and one to turn each page. That's a lot of info to digest very quickly with no back and forth or extra attention paid to dates, or the risk of other biases. Just the straight dope, so to speak.

I know you've been working hard. Keep it up.

Endemic

This is brilliant. It would really perfect the feedback system. Simple, clean, useful.

thats what he had originally, a bunch of useless anonymous reviews that didnt tell us anything
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Kiwikiikii on August 28, 2013, 06:54 pm
I think dpr is on the right track with this. There is one problem that is affecting alot of vendors its that buyers dont really have any real incentive to leave feedback. So instead of just leaving links posted around for them to do that why not just force them to? Like if they go to buy something after finalizing a sale then a page should pop up, "if you would like to make another purchase please finish rating your vendors".
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: happyhippy on August 28, 2013, 06:56 pm
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE , don't let the buyer alter their feedback AT ALL . Then we're back to " I'll change / delete my feedback for a bribe " .
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: shroomin1 on August 28, 2013, 07:12 pm
If we are stuck with the "Buyer cannot change feedback ever."  Then how about adding some more information to the Buyer's purchasing stats.  In addition to what the Vendor can currently see, add in the total ratings they've given to vendors.

Something like this:
12    5/5
0      4/5
0      3/5
0      2/5
1      1/5

If I saw this, I would likely sell to the person, figuring the 1 1/5 rating was for a vendor that really messed up.  However if the Buyer had quite a few 1/5's, then I wouldn't sell to him figuring I'd get the same kind of rating.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: convergedlight on August 28, 2013, 07:17 pm
I think dpr is on the right track with this. There is one problem that is affecting alot of vendors its that buyers dont really have any real incentive to leave feedback. So instead of just leaving links posted around for them to do that why not just force them to? Like if they go to buy something after finalizing a sale then a page should pop up, "if you would like to make another purchase please finish rating your vendors".

So if someone buys some LSD and doesn't have a chance to use it for 3-4 weeks you would have them blocked from further purchases until they use the acid and are able to review it?  That just wouldn't fit well with some people's use-cases of silk road.  They may have every intent to review it but can't under the current system because partial reviews (praising shipping speed, stealth, etc, before the actual product review is added after testing) are not allowed anymore.  I don't think stopping further purchases in this case would necessarily benefit the community (it may in some cases, but in many cases it would be an issue).
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: missbliss on August 28, 2013, 07:20 pm
If we are stuck with the "Buyer cannot change feedback ever."  Then how about adding some more information to the Buyer's purchasing stats.  In addition to what the Vendor can currently see, add in the total ratings they've given to vendors.

Something like this:
12    5/5
0      4/5
0      3/5
0      2/5
1      1/5

If I saw this, I would likely sell to the person, figuring the 1 1/5 rating was for a vendor that really messed up.  However if the Buyer had quite a few 1/5's, then I wouldn't sell to him figuring I'd get the same kind of rating.

hi hi

great idea! +1 for you

but instead of the actual numbers of reviews, since buyers will inevitably complain about having their stats more visible, i'd be happy with a percentage (unweighted, straight linear average) of the distribution of their x/5 ratings.

your example would read as 99 or 100% as a 5/5 reviewer, and 0 or 1% as a 1/5 reviewer depending on how the rounding gets decided. i'm cool with that. show it to me with buyer stats when a user places and order. easy as cake! ya?

xoxo
-mb
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: shroomin1 on August 28, 2013, 07:30 pm
hi hi

great idea! +1 for you

but instead of the actual numbers of reviews, since buyers will inevitably complain about having their stats more visible, i'd be happy with a percentage (unweighted, straight linear average) of the distribution of their x/5 ratings.

your example would read as 99 or 100% as a 5/5 reviewer, and 0 or 1% as a 1/5 reviewer depending on how the rounding gets decided. i'm cool with that. show it to me with buyer stats when a user places and order. easy as cake! ya?

xoxo
-mb

I would be more than happy with a percentage instead of totals.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Hungry ghost on August 28, 2013, 08:21 pm
I suggest that buyers only be allowed to edit their most recent feedback with a vendor. This would prevent a buyer with multiple recent buys using them to blackmail, while still retaining the usefulness of feedback.
       People are talking as if the bribe/ blackmail can happen with a single instance of feedback. If that's the case it can happen whatever the setup. A buyer can message a vendor he just purchased from and say "I am not happy with product/did not arrive I want full refund or 1/5" (I assume this is how the blackmail works not "give me money for blackmail or 1/5 LOL").
       If it is possible for a well weighted buyer to fuck a vendor with one feedback the weighting needs adjusting…

If this is the case I predict buyers with good stats being asked to FALAFE: finalise and leave a five early!
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: SpaceAce on August 28, 2013, 08:24 pm
If we are stuck with the "Buyer cannot change feedback ever."  Then how about adding some more information to the Buyer's purchasing stats.  In addition to what the Vendor can currently see, add in the total ratings they've given to vendors.

Something like this:
12    5/5
0      4/5
0      3/5
0      2/5
1      1/5

If I saw this, I would likely sell to the person, figuring the 1 1/5 rating was for a vendor that really messed up.  However if the Buyer had quite a few 1/5's, then I wouldn't sell to him figuring I'd get the same kind of rating.

ohhh I like this!

dpr thanks for all the work and listening to everyone. It helps keep faith that we will survive...
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Kiwikiikii on August 28, 2013, 10:43 pm
I think dpr is on the right track with this. There is one problem that is affecting alot of vendors its that buyers dont really have any real incentive to leave feedback. So instead of just leaving links posted around for them to do that why not just force them to? Like if they go to buy something after finalizing a sale then a page should pop up, "if you would like to make another purchase please finish rating your vendors".

So if someone buys some LSD and doesn't have a chance to use it for 3-4 weeks you would have them blocked from further purchases until they use the acid and are able to review it?  That just wouldn't fit well with some people's use-cases of silk road.  They may have every intent to review it but can't under the current system because partial reviews (praising shipping speed, stealth, etc, before the actual product review is added after testing) are not allowed anymore.  I don't think stopping further purchases in this case would necessarily benefit the community (it may in some cases, but in many cases it would be an issue).

so they should review it after a month or two when they've completely forgotten what the shipping, communication and stealth were like....great idea. im sure they'll remember exactly whose product their smoking too. why even have a feedback system at all, the only reason a buyer has now for giving feedback is to ream the vendor. the remainder give good feedback out of the goodness of their heart, but from my experience vending thats like maybe 10% of orders on average.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: godofall2 on August 28, 2013, 10:51 pm
think DPR need to change everyone feedback to sort by freshness. if it has not been and that be made the default. when it on sort by weight it show old feedback everywhere. when the change went it my account was on weight till i change it.i think that is what hurting all are sales.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: bluedev1 on August 28, 2013, 11:10 pm
think DPR need to change everyone feedback to sort by freshness. if it has not been and that be made the default. when it on sort by weight it show old feedback everywhere. when the change went it my account was on weight till i change it.i think that is what hurting all are sales.

This was confusing to me as well and I agree makes no sense when stuff that is 4 months old might not be relevant anymore. 

But also, the 'freshness sort' puts all the 5/5 ratings on top, then 4/5, etc.. which is NOT useful to the buyer.  It needs to be sorted by date and nothing else.  If you want to add an option to see all of a certain rating (e.g. 5/5's) fine but that shouldn't be the default.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: BenJesuit on August 29, 2013, 01:01 am
If we are stuck with the "Buyer cannot change feedback ever."  Then how about adding some more information to the Buyer's purchasing stats.  In addition to what the Vendor can currently see, add in the total ratings they've given to vendors.

Something like this:
12    5/5
0      4/5
0      3/5
0      2/5
1      1/5

If I saw this, I would likely sell to the person, figuring the 1 1/5 rating was for a vendor that really messed up.  However if the Buyer had quite a few 1/5's, then I wouldn't sell to him figuring I'd get the same kind of rating.

This is an AWESOME idea! +1 Karma.

This is perhaps one of the most useful metrics a vendor could use.

In fact, if you saw a buyer with feedback left stats like this:

10 5/5
6   4/5
2   3/5
0   1/5
0   1/5

You'd know that this was a very picky buyer and you'd probably not want to deal with this buyer at all. It shows that they have unrealistic expectations and will likely be combative, manipulative and can be a general PITA.

Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: WhiteShark on August 29, 2013, 01:34 am
nice some much needed tweaks
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Bronangen on August 29, 2013, 01:52 am
1) being able to sort reviews by 5-1..being able to see all of a certain number, chronological-as well as reverse, as well as by items.

2) there should be a limited amount of time that you are able to edit feedback. perfect if you fe before weighing or testing but not long enough for extortion. say 2-4 days?
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Miss Sexy Boots on August 29, 2013, 02:07 am
DRP: Great work on the 'Slim Down' the review box... Thank you.

Can I suggest that we slim them down again to around 50% of the current height?

Currently 50% of the review boxes are just empty space making it difficult to evaluate many reviews at a glance. At present I find myself shrinking the screen to view the reviews all at once, then having to expand again when I scroll up to read the vendors spiel. Less scrolling with maximum info on the screen at any one time makes for greater understanding of a vendors status quo IMHO.

Thank you. Bootzy. :)





Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: convergedlight on August 29, 2013, 02:35 am
DRP: Great work on the 'Slim Down' the review box... Thank you.

Can I suggest that we slim them down again to around 50% of the current height?

Currently 50% of the review boxes are just empty space making it difficult to evaluate many reviews at a glance. At present I find myself shrinking the screen to view the reviews all at once, then having to expand again when I scroll up to read the vendors spiel. Less scrolling with maximum info on the screen at any one time makes for greater understanding of a vendors status quo IMHO.

Thank you. Bootzy. :)

+1.  The boxes are still gigantic.  You could save one line just by removing "stats:" on its own line above above the 3 stats.  You could save another line if you rotated them 90 degrees (assuming the review is a 1 liner which most are).  for instance:

spent    orders     vendors
฿10+     10+         1+

And, maybe the margin could be shrunk down a bit around the box too.
Title: Not being able to edit feedback is wrong !
Post by: maligan on August 29, 2013, 08:17 am
It will cause frustration and eventually leads to don't give a f...   And that's no good!! No buyers and vendors should be stuck with a mistaken  feedback !!! Its just not fair !

Listen to Hungry ghost ! 
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: IceIceIce on August 29, 2013, 06:09 pm
ΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞ
I hope SR staffs can read this.
ΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞ

Since the reviews and rating system got overhauled, I have received quite a number of ratings lesser than 5 in a week and it has never happened before. I have found out that my customers were actually happy with the product, but they thought leaving a 4/5 is just as fine as 5/5, because a 4/5 read "Solid, would recommend". This is actually not quite fair to we vendors, because "Solid, would recommend" sounds just like a 5/5, and before SR came out with the new system, the majority of my customers used to say something like this with a 5/5. (Since someone is gonna recommend you to his mates, why should the rating of we vendors get pulled down by a "Solid, would recommend"?)

Also, not allowing feedback to be edited or changed is just as bad. I am confident to say that most of my customers do not even know about that, so even if I am willing to resolve any issues of theirs, they can't change their feedback anymore back to 5/5. So no point to "rescue" any issues then, no point to refund if something goes wrong with the post, is that what the system wants/encourages? The new system will only cause more and more buyers get blacklisted by their vendor (I have blacklisted 3 buyers in just 3 days) and create misunderstandings, while in fact, both vendor and buyer are innocent and are very happy with the overall transaction.

This is just my humble opinion, I am a small vendor on SR but I think I have paid enough of commissions to at least voice my opinions out.

Sorry for my bad grammar, not native speaker.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Purpletown on August 29, 2013, 07:10 pm
Altering feedback seems to be a charged topic, but something that nobody has brought up (and if they did I apologize) is the possibility of "updated feedback" - giving buyers the option of one, threaded, followup comment to their reviews - e.g. "Finally got around to trying this and it was awesome."  That way the original feedback stays intact and a buyer who raved cannot then flip it on the vendor without justifying the reason for their reversal.  Just  a thought.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Purpletown on August 29, 2013, 07:12 pm
I for one think the new system is fairer to all and a good step forward - I was somewhat dubious when the individual ratings on an item's page went awol but I'm really encouraged by the speed of the tweaks to get a happy middle ground for all.

For future updates would it be possible to start 'DRP's beta club' where open minded buyers and sellers could 'opt-in' to proposed changes in a beta environment to gather feedback prior to the whole community getting the changes - it wouldn't need to be a live site with proper listings. I'm sure there are enough community members that would spare an hour or two to test out changes. .

Anyway, thanks to DRP and their team - progress isn't welcomed by all and it takes balls to change something that people feel passionate about - so kudos.

Take care all, (and NEVER FE ;)

Erl.

**edited a typo**

So you edited a typo but not Dread Roberts Pirate or closing the parentheses after your smiley face? Huh? HUH?  WHAT THE HELL MAN!

Just kidding.  Good post.  Infrastructurally difficult (a sandbox environment isn't really something you expose to your customers and different UX for different userbases is a coding nightmare unless you're Google), but it would be cool.

Title: Listen to IceIceIce !!!!
Post by: maligan on August 29, 2013, 08:48 pm
As I said before !   Editing is essential !    Not being able to fix a mistake will lead to hostility  !

Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: DrCol on August 29, 2013, 09:01 pm
It's been a kinda crazy past few days.  I really thought we had thought through the implications of the various proposed changed.  I even opened up the discussion here to talk about what we were planning and if it would be an issue.  I guess you never know until the rubber meets the road.  I think we are getting closer to where this phase of the overhaul needs to be.  Some concerns that were raised:

Reviews for specific items should be on the item's page.
They are back

The design is ugly and hard to navigate.
it has been slimmed down

the buyer stats reveal too much.
they have been rounded down to the nearest power of 10 (1+, 10+, 100+, etc) and capped at $10k (or equivalent), 100 orders, and 100 vendors, and account age has been removed completely.  Keep in mind you can still change your alias to something other than your username and are encouraged to do so.

No one is leaving written reviews.
a link now appears on the order page immediately after a review is left prompting the user to write a written review.  also, there is a link on the account page that brings up the most recent un-reviewed transaction

I'm not ready to make any changes to the new policy that ratings and reviews can't be edited.  If we do anything, I'm leaning toward allowing the buyer to delete a rating or review.

Thank you everyone for your input with all of this.  It's hard to please everyone and not everyone's desires are feasible, but I think we can find a new balance that meets most people's needs and fixes the problems we've been plagued with for so long.

No,.... thank you for the hard work to make the site the best it can be...and for taking the time to engage and respond to our thoughts and feedback in a constructive and positive way..

i know for one, I have had my concerns and voiced these so to read this and the thread gives me confidence. I think we will all be more patient and let it all bed - but continue to outline any concerns - also to support what we value and feel are genuine improvements.

I think we have some wonderfully capable brains here to crack the detail and I am really encouraged by your recognition and respect for the community (not surprising I guess, but still very impressive and to be commended)

Once again - sincere thanks

Doc
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Off The Wagon on August 29, 2013, 09:13 pm
Here is what is bugging me about the rating and review system...

When a customer leaves a less that 5/5 ranking to start with, then goes back and changes it, the system still keeps it as less than 5/5 and it still counts against your vendor percentage

I only have 3 review that are less than perfect, and 2 of them were changed because at first the customer made a mistake, but they still show up as less than perfect...wtf?
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Railgun on August 29, 2013, 09:54 pm
From all the criticism on the forum...I thought this would be a horrific change.

I actually quite like it. People are encouraged to actually leave more substance in their reviews. Unlike the previous system...I can see how the vendor is for all of their products which lets me know more about the stuff that matters...like stealth, time to deliver, and resolution management. 

The scores are accurate. In the real world..a B is above average..it means that you are solid..but not amazing. 5/5s were being abused. Im amazed with my vendor for speed..quality...and price..but there are a few that I've ordered from that id only rate a 4/5 because of something offputting. its good that now we're encouraged to do so.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: WhiteShark on August 29, 2013, 09:58 pm
I totally agree. With this new system truly EXCELLENT vendors can be distinguished from decent vendors.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: maligan on August 29, 2013, 10:05 pm
Correct me if I am wrong ......How do you change a 1/5 rating based on a mistake ? I had at least 5 of those....
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: NorcoCo on August 29, 2013, 10:55 pm
Couple quick design suggestion:

1. Increase the prominence of the rating score in each feedback message.

Right now, it currently shows in the top right "5/5" right next to the date which is a little difficult to notice. Since this is the most important characteristic of a feedback message, it should be made more visible. This would especially help when looking at a long list of feedback with many different scores.

Personally, I would color the score in shades from green to red. Or in other words, communicate the vendors score using some color. Seeing lots of red means to stay clear. Lots of green means its safe to order.

2. Another issue with the feedback messages is that the writing "alias hidden" and "stats: (hidden)" is basically useless information for most users and is even somewhat confusing. If there is no relevant information to put there, why not just remove that space for those messages? This will make seeing those messages with buyer stats that much more special.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: maligan on August 30, 2013, 05:19 am
I really dont care about the new system  as long as ratings ( at least the most recent ones) could be changed....

Our business depends on buyers ratings !!!

I dont want it to be ruined by stupid mistakes. And mistakes happen all the time . I dont want a single 1/5 .

Editing is a must !  Period !
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: AlbertHoffman1943 on September 10, 2013, 08:36 am
DPR, your desire to upgrade SR and your efforts to that end are very commendable but sadly, they are doing a lot of harm and many, many vendors' businesses are suffering.
I know you were probably unable to run an even partially normal dev cycle but rolling the new system out completely, as you did, and fixing the problems on the fly, is exactly the opposite of what any respectable developer or product manager would advise you to do. (and if your people are telling you this is how a good Agile cycle is supposed to run, you need to kick that person in the teeth)
In fact, you are making most of the mistakes that have been well documented in cases like Microsoft Vista, Windows 8 and several massive Facebook software changes that ended up rolled back days or weeks after getting rolled out.
Please roll back to the old system, take the new one back into a dev environment, have your developer(s) study all of the feedback and newly-acquired information, and have him/them work to implement those changes offline.
When it's time, do a controlled beta - maybe ask for volunteers or incentivize vendors to participate in the beta with a deal like, no SR commission for a period of time...something...but doing it the way your doing it now is hurting a lot of vendors, myself included, and it doesn't have to be this way.
I've worked through these kinds of upgrade fails many times during an earlier iteration in my professional life and I can say absolutely (and so can the plethora of case studies on this issue) that you gain more by rolling back to the previous version, and fixing the problems slowly and carefully offline, then you do by ploughing forward and ignoring the massive collateral damage that's being done to vendors' businesses across the community.
And by rolling back, you will increase vendor faith and confidence in you because you will have demonstrated that you take our concerns seriously, which is a commodity you cannot buy...
Please listen to us...and don't forget that we need each other for SR to work at it's best.
thx
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: livestr0ng on September 10, 2013, 08:53 am
AHHHH

This is one of the very rare times I'm posting without having read the previous posts but I accidentally just declined to leave a review (I "unrated" a vendor according to SR  ???) and now there's no going back! It was for a kick ass vendor who really deserves it and its the least I could do for what he's done for me and the services he provides.  >:( Anger. Vent. :( Sad. Fuck.
Also, the View Feedback button is gone? Who was that hurting? (Recent orders is not the same!)

EDIT: Apparently, I once again have the option! Anger residing...smile forming. Maybe it was a glitch, I just needed to wait a little, or something else. Idk.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: convergedlight on September 10, 2013, 10:12 am
I see a lot of people still pretty negative on the new feedback system, even AlbertHoffman1943 who is one of my current favorite vendors around.  I agree that overall the old system sort of worked better because it forced feedback immediately (this was ok because it allowed editing) and gave more realtime feedback about a vendor's current activities (the very nature of forcing feedback immediately).  I think these are the main reasons people want to roll back to the old system.  But there are certainly a lot of benefits to the new system that many have recognized, and from doing development of php web apps and databases on a smaller scale, I seriously doubt a full rollback is even in the cards at this stage.  There are probably too many bug fixes, improvements, changes in data structures, etc, that it would cause havoc to try to go back now so I just seriously doubt DPR is considering this in the slightest, and I don't blame him.

I do think however, that a very minor compromise in the way the new system works would make nearly everyone happy.  Most of the current complaints, it seems, stem from the lack of realtime feedback available to prospective buyers, which reduces buyer confidence and makes choosing new vendors difficult.  The only reason this capability has been lost is because feedback is no longer mandatory.  The only reason feedback is no longer mandatory is because is it immutable.

All we need is a minor allowance for editing feedback for a short period of time or for the last order from a vendor.  These ideas have been mentioned by many in various threads.  This would still prevent mass feedback blackmail, the impetus for the original change, and it would allow feedback to be mandatory again, because that's fine as long as it's briefly editable.  The mandatory feedback would provide the kind of realtime updates to a vendor's sales that buyers need to evaluate vendors, and I think this would mitigate the problems still affecting some users/vendors that are causing a subset of them to still call for a full rollback.

Several features of the new system are improvements, and it really would be better to make this simple change rather than to roll back.  For instance, there are benefits to seeing the obfuscated buyer stats next to the feedback to help weight the reliability of the feedback.  Of course, I think the site-wide aliases should go as I've mentioned elsewhere, since that is the only real privacy issue left in the current system, but this is a relatively simple change, I think, without rolling anything back.

Are there really any legitimate problems with the new system that would not be addressed by these two changes?    to summarize:
- limited, temporary feedback editing to prevent blackmail but provide realtime sales data similiar to the old system
- removing user aliases to increase privacy but use another identifier (based on user/alias+vendor hash) to differentiate individual users on a specific vendor's feedback page (to prevent padding feedback)

From everyone's comments wanting to go back to the old system, it seems like this would satisfy them and provide the best of the old and the new feedback systems.  Am I wrong, anyone?

Anyway, I hope some kind of compromise is reached soon that everyone will accept because this site is such a wonderful resource that DPR has gone out of his way to provide for us and I don't like seeing so much unnecessary strife surrounding some otherwise minor changes/improvements that seem to be causing some people major problems because of how they were implemented.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: cirrus on September 10, 2013, 12:37 pm
As you all have seen in the past, DPR reads through each of these and takes your opinions seriously.   Give him some time and I'm sure he'll take them all in and will respond if necessary.   He's a busy guy lately. 
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: NoQuarter_merchant on September 10, 2013, 03:24 pm
Buyers are slowly becoming more entitled because of this, and it's causing more problems.  I think sellers should be allowed to leave buyers feedback.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: DrCol on September 10, 2013, 07:52 pm
I have for some time suggested a vendor right to re-dress...or at least respond to any feedback left. This could be positive or a defence.

I have one guy out of many hundred who was a multi-account vendor scammer - tried to bully me into a refund which was not due - I obviously fought in resolution and won 100% (thanks guys) however,  he left an insane but hideous review which was defamatory...I have no chance to put my side - it sticks out like a sore thumb amongst great positives, but y'know it still really annoys me!

Just an idea...

Otherwise I think things are settling well and thank you for taking our feedback into account.

Very impressive.

Doc
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: plainsman1963 on September 10, 2013, 11:56 pm
I remember reading one of DPR's post shortly after this latest feedback update where he said next on the list was giving vendors more tools, so maybe vendors being able to give feedback on buyers/buyers comments is coming?
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: abrakadabra on September 11, 2013, 05:17 am
or maybe secret society type "moose lodge" forums that only exist for the elite where they can blacklist and dishonor buyers behind their back, usually rightfully so i imagine.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Hungry ghost on September 11, 2013, 10:31 pm
I know I'm hammering this point, but I really want DPR to see it. The new feedback is great, but its vital a buyer can edit last feedback with a vendor. The reason is so that it will be easy to see when a vendor is turning exit scam and asking lots of people to FE.
       Under current system a buyer who is asked to FE can either leave 'FE as requested' or wait to see if item arrives and then leave feedback. Neither of these is helpful if vendor is asking everyone to FE as part of exit scam.
      If a buyer could edit ONLY last feedback (thus removing risk of multi feedback blackmail) then he can put "FE as requested" then change it to show current status (item not arrived, vendor making promises but not following through) and since other customers in same situation will also be able to post similar updated feedbacks, a vendor pulling an exit scam will be exposed much more quickly.
       With this little tweak the new system will be much better. I'm liking it apart from the no editing at all. I understand the reason this change was brought in but I think it has gone too far and destroyed a useful early warning system.
      Thanks for your consideration, DPR. This site is becoming something really special and has changed my life in a modest way.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: livestr0ng on September 12, 2013, 01:59 am
I'm still not really seeing how it stops blackmail. A person can still message the vendor before or after finalizing and say "give me money or I leave a 1." On the other hand, there are many benefits of being able to change feedback which have been discussed countless times already so I'm sure we're all aware of some.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: WhiteShark on September 12, 2013, 05:01 am
I'm still not really seeing how it stops blackmail. A person can still message the vendor before or after finalizing and say "give me money or I leave a 1." On the other hand, there are many benefits of being able to change feedback which have been discussed countless times already so I'm sure we're all aware of some.

How it stops blackmail is this -

Old system:
Buyer makes 7-8 transactions with you always leaving 5/5 and stuff. Then out of the blue threatens to change all feedback left to 1/5 unless you give him full refund and full reship etc etc.

New System:
Buyer can only change one transaction rather then 7-8 thus being less influential on the vendors final score and better reflecting what occurred. There was a single transaction that the buyer was unsatisfied with, rather then he 7 previous that he could change with the old system.

The new system is amazing. Sure there are a few things I miss, but it is much better. It was broken, now there have been some fixes.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: livestr0ng on September 12, 2013, 06:54 am
I'm still not really seeing how it stops blackmail. A person can still message the vendor before or after finalizing and say "give me money or I leave a 1." On the other hand, there are many benefits of being able to change feedback which have been discussed countless times already so I'm sure we're all aware of some.

How it stops blackmail is this -

Old system:
Buyer makes 7-8 transactions with you always leaving 5/5 and stuff. Then out of the blue threatens to change all feedback left to 1/5 unless you give him full refund and full reship etc etc.

New System:
Buyer can only change one transaction rather then 7-8 thus being less influential on the vendors final score and better reflecting what occurred. There was a single transaction that the buyer was unsatisfied with, rather then he 7 previous that he could change with the old system.

The new system is amazing. Sure there are a few things I miss, but it is much better. It was broken, now there have been some fixes.
Oh! That makes much more sense. Thank you for providing that perspective I lacked  :)

EDIT: Solution- Make only most recent feedback on vendor editable.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: plainsman1963 on September 12, 2013, 03:57 pm
Quote
EDIT: Solution- Make only most recent feedback on vendor editable.
So now the buyer can't make another purchase if he thinks he might want to edit his latest feedback?

Hopefully everybody will be able to adjust to the new updates as they happen. Don't leave feedback until you are sure of the feedback. The days of "got package, will edit after I try it out" are over.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: livestr0ng on September 13, 2013, 02:46 am
Quote
EDIT: Solution- Make only most recent feedback on vendor editable.
So now the buyer can't make another purchase if he thinks he might want to edit his latest feedback?

Hopefully everybody will be able to adjust to the new updates as they happen. Don't leave feedback until you are sure of the feedback. The days of "got package, will edit after I try it out" are over.
No, you misundertood me because I wasn't very clear. Make only most recent feedback on *that specific* vendor editable. If somebody makes another order from the same vendor, we can assume things went alright with the previous order so the feedback should not have to be changed.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Hungry ghost on September 13, 2013, 10:06 am
I'm still not really seeing how it stops blackmail. A person can still message the vendor before or after finalizing and say "give me money or I leave a 1." On the other hand, there are many benefits of being able to change feedback which have been discussed countless times already so I'm sure we're all aware of some.

How it stops blackmail is this -

Old system:
Buyer makes 7-8 transactions with you always leaving 5/5 and stuff. Then out of the blue threatens to change all feedback left to 1/5 unless you give him full refund and full reship etc etc.

New System:
Buyer can only change one transaction rather then 7-8 thus being less influential on the vendors final score and better reflecting what occurred. There was a single transaction that the buyer was unsatisfied with, rather then he 7 previous that he could change with the old system.

The new system is amazing. Sure there are a few things I miss, but it is much better. It was broken, now there have been some fixes.
Oh! That makes much more sense. Thank you for providing that perspective I lacked  :)

EDIT: Solution- Make only most recent feedback on vendor editable.


Yes.....that's what I have been saying. The current inability to edit even the current feedback means a buyer who has FE has no way of indicating whether he received or not. Thus large scale exit FE scams become much harder to spot early on.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Hungry ghost on September 13, 2013, 10:10 am
I'm still not really seeing how it stops blackmail. A person can still message the vendor before or after finalizing and say "give me money or I leave a 1." On the other hand, there are many benefits of being able to change feedback which have been discussed countless times already so I'm sure we're all aware of some.

How it stops blackmail is this -

Old system:
Buyer makes 7-8 transactions with you always leaving 5/5 and stuff. Then out of the blue threatens to change all feedback left to 1/5 unless you give him full refund and full reship etc etc.

New System:
Buyer can only change one transaction rather then 7-8 thus being less influential on the vendors final score and better reflecting what occurred. There was a single transaction that the buyer was unsatisfied with, rather then he 7 previous that he could change with the old system.

The new system is amazing. Sure there are a few things I miss, but it is much better. It was broken, now there have been some fixes.
You are slightly wrong in that a buyer cannot change one recent transaction, but only remove it. It is this slight tweak to the system I am pushing for, so that FE buyers can indicate to other customers whether they received or not., helping to alert early when an FE scammer is starting.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Hungry ghost on September 13, 2013, 10:11 am
(Unless DPR has made this much needed tweak already and I missed the announcement?)
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Magic Man on September 15, 2013, 05:03 pm
The permanent rating thing is bullshit! I'm getting way too many people sending me messages like this on an all to regular basis.

"man i totally fucked up... i went to leave a 5/5 and was on my phone, navigated away from the page, went back and clicked it and it was on dont leave a rating.... but i left you great feedback >.< next order will definitely be rated.. im such a tard."

Lets get this improved, a vendors rating is the only thing we have to rely on to set us apart from other sellers.
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: NW Nugz on September 16, 2013, 01:28 am
What is permanent feedback supposed to help with? Is there any good reason for it?

Buyers can withhold ratings/feedback and delete them, so, I don't know of any good reason to make it permanent.
I do like the idea of only being able to change feedback on your most recent transaction (or transactions if they were within a few days of each other).
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: Hungry ghost on September 16, 2013, 06:18 am
What is permanent feedback supposed to help with? Is there any good reason for it?

Buyers can withhold ratings/feedback and delete them, so, I don't know of any good reason to make it permanent.
I do like the idea of only being able to change feedback on your most recent transaction (or transactions if they were within a few days of each other).
exactly...it solves the problem of buyers using multiple past buys to hold a vendor to ransom, while allowing full flexibility to alter mistakes, or in the case of FE buyers, let other customers know whether they received or not.
      I hate to keep going on about it, but, y'know when you think you've got a good idea that fixes something people are complaining about you want to put it out there.
       I'm guessing after the problems with blackmail DPR is just dead set against people shilly shallying about with the feedback. But it can be a vital way for a customer and vendor to interact.
       
Title: Re: more rating & review tweaks
Post by: NW Nugz on September 16, 2013, 01:17 pm
       I'm guessing after the problems with blackmail DPR is just dead set against people shilly shallying about with the feedback. But it can be a vital way for a customer and vendor to interact.     
If you think permanent feedback can stop blackmailers, I think you are mistaken. They can threaten bad feedback while witholding it and they can give bad feedback and blackmail for it's removal. Blackmail is alive and well.

Any other reason for permanent feedback?