GameFAQs Nuking Negative Reader Reviews?

jvm writes "Are negative reader reviews of the Sony PlayStation Portable (like this one) being yanked from GameFAQs? Some have certainly been removed, and Kyle Orland of the Video Game Ombudsman investigates: one of the reviews which was taken down, an interview with the author of the review, and a subsequent anonymous email purportedly by the person who took the review down. The review's author then responds that the justifications are questionable. Accompanying this is a discussion of the handling of reader-submitted reviews." Update: 04/16 04:53 GMT by Z : Many thanks to CJayC for setting the record straight in the comments below.

Comments

That's like IMDB

[QuantumG]

Any comment that is negative of the film is dropped. The same appears to go for books and games on Amazon.

It's pretty obvious too, I mean the number of positive reviews for Jean-Claude Van Damme can be counted on zero hands and yet imdb always appears to have at least 10 people saying his latest flop was the greatest movie ever.

CNET Ownership

[poppen_fresh]

A few years ago, when gamefaqs announced they were acquired by CNET and later gamespot, I was worried they might begin having "influence" over the site.

Seems like it's starting to happen.

Here's the comment I left:

[oGMo]

I left the following comment for the author.

Maybe they just took it down because it was a crappy review. It is a crappily-written review; you realize that, right?

Your examples all tend to be weak and opinionated without reason. Your example of Lumines, for instance... "value beyond trying to improve your high score". Let's take a game a few people might have played, like, say, Tetris. Not much replay value beyond trying to get more lines! This oversimplification can be applied to any game. RPGs, play 'em once, not much replay beyond the story and getting more experience points. This is poor writing.

And there are contradictions. "The screen is big and beautiful" vs "doesn't this thing basically look like a GBA?" Battery life "??/10" ... but it hasn't been an issue. Couldn't come up with a number? Most of your other areas are "well, I don't like it" or "it doesn't suit me personally"---that's nice, but I don't care. Does it suit me? You don't give examples or reasons, you just say you don't like it ("I really don't like the way this thing looks") or that you don't like them (" I wouldn't recommend any of them myself"). Why wouldn't you recommend them? Is the gameplay poor? Do they lack replay value? Are the graphics muddy? What, exactly, do you have a problem with, so that I, the reader, can decide if I would also have the same problem with the unit?

To sum it up: you write a heavily-opinionated review with few facts, making it worthless to the general reader, and wonder why GameFAQs takes it down to make room for another one? Why?

(Now how's this: will my comment get taken down because it's a comment that rates your rating poorly?)

Now, I've seen some less-than-stellar reviews on GameFAQs, but this is definitely bottom-of-the-barrel. And GameFAQs doesn't arbitrarily post anything they get. But if this were a glitzy gushing review with the same level of content (i.e., none), I would hope GameFAQs would take it down too!