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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.
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.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Seems like it's starting to happen.
Personally, I think that the review was excellent. It was very professional and stayed on subject. I've seen quite a few reviews get accepted that were mostly praising system A and bashing on system B. What's happening here just looks like someone getting overprotective of a system they really like and feels that anyone who disagrees shouldn't be allowed to post a review.
... in a way.
It's better to have this reported than not at all. I'm grateful that someone commented on it because one-sided reviews are the reason I mainly avoid sites like Gamespot and IGN. They can easily be bought out, and I've been getting the real dirt on all the games I'm interested in from Gamefaqs for years, specifically because of it's consumer base feedback.
Hopefully this doesn't go on much longer or I can find some other way to get honest opinions instead of bullshit. This is just another sign that they're floating the industry as far as it will go on fluff, before bailing out as it sinks like Atari in 1983.
Just take a look at the "anonymous email" link. I may be a Nintendo fan, but this is just silly. The person writing the email purports that there are "high standards" for a GameFAQs review (go look at the reviews for any new game... 95% 10/10 with no real comment, 1 hater who gives it a 4/10 with even less comment, and the rest somewhere in between), and seems to miss the point that this is reviewing a game _system_, and thus all the components of the system are in play: games both current and near-future, other abilities, form factor, battery life...
1. In the review, he states that because of the lack of memory available for MP3s, that it doesn't stack up to the iPod as an MP3 player. This seems perfectly obvious to any rational person, and the review doesn't seem to make it a major point of contention, just a point that it's jack of all trades, master of none.
The response: We removed your review because it compared the PSP to an iPod. Quote: "For starters, this is the first and foremost reason why the review was removed."
2. Here's some damaging "false information" for you... The PSP costs $250, not $300. 2GB and 4GB Memory Sticks don't exist yet. And you shouldn't add the cost of additional hardware like Memory Sticks to the cost of the system.
One of those three is a minor point. The second is in the PSP's favor to even mention. The third doesn't even apply to the review.
3. "As a small side note, the mention of slim pickings for movies available is laughable at best. Did people blame the Ps2 when DVDs were a new breed of entertainment? No, they blame the movie studios and DVD release corporations."
Okay, so the lack of games argument is now moot on every system ever made, because it's the publishers' fault for not putting the game out for the new medium. Wanna bet that they aren't enforcing this on other systems?
I'm not even going to bother with the rest. There's a repeated implication that there is a bar of quality that must be met to get a review posted on GameFAQs. I can say unequivocally that this implication is false. Here's an example. Now I want you to look at those reviews and tell me that every single one of them justified the score they gave.
This is my sig. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
In any case, is his site, and he can decide what to screen and what not. Don't like it? There's a whole bunch of pages with user reviews out there aswell. No biggie.
In this case: http://www.google.com/search?q=sony+psp+user+revi
CNET had some negative reviews up here
First page is filled with score 1 out of 10.
Sample this!
Ahah, just the fact you're stating this review which mainly states facts with a good smattering of easily recognizable opinion is at the bottom of the barrel with the dredge that is the GameFAQs troll? "GameFAQs doesn't arbitrarily post anything they get" Ha! It's a review by a person, not a magazine. Of course it's going to have personal opinion in it. You should expect it, because if they don't have a personal opinion on the thing, why are they even bothering reviewing it? Plus, your "contradictions" are contradictions in your opinion. See, the screen comment doesn't contradict the GBA one because one's about the beauty of the screen and one's about the general layout of the device, which matches the first generation GBA relatively well. Of course, you were out to hate the "opinionated" review to the point you internally contradicted these two points for no good reason. And how dare he not give points for something he hasn't experienced enough to the point where he can give points to it! "It hasn't been an issue" in conjunction with "??/10" means he either hasn't bothered to test it extensivly, or that he hasn't played his system enough without a wall socket nearby for it to matter, so he couldn't rightfully give it a score. One could argue he shouldn't have posted the review until he was finished reviewing every aspect of the machine, but since he's a person and not paid to do the reviewing, I'm sure any reasonable person would overlook this instead of using it in a thinly supported argument that this is a "horrible review not up to the standards of GameFAQs"
I bought a Dreamcast once, even though I did what you suggested, because everyone was calling it "poor", "unappealing", "dreadful", "doomed", "woeful" or "horrible".
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
Forum drama on GameFAQs! Next on slashdot: water is wet!
Okay, it is a poorly written review. And the author does appear fairly full of himself: he dismisses out-of-hand game genres as stuff he doesn't like, then, to top it all off, he manages to get his story on slashdot.
/., all you need is to slip in some criticism of Apple, Inc., or the Open Source movement, and you'll find that someone will moderate you a Troll. That's why trolls work: because some people have trouble distinguishing between criticism and provocation. Some of those are the forum idiots who get provoked by criticism; and some are the moderator idiots who see criticism as provocation.
I mean, heck, I dislike just about all portable games, but if I'm going to write a review (And no, I haven't and won't), at the very least I'll give some witty description of the suffering involved (like "the nauseating experience of scrolling under gobs of gaily-textured molasses" or something equally dumb, but at least evocative), rather than just "I don't like it".
And it's not surprising that stuff gets canned, especially stuff suspected -- rightly or wrongly -- of being a troll. Heck, here on
The lesson? If you're gonna slap out some criticism, even in a review that has some balance (as his does), do it with an eye to making the moderator snicker.
And if you are gonna moderate something, never comment on your actions. An absolute monarch's actions are law, and above scrutiny. Besides, if you smite a review as a troll, it may not be; but the complaint "my review was smitten" that follows necessarily is a troll. Don't bite -- retreat into the mist of mystery and let the white noise of the intardnet do the rest, as the pointed debate on a thousand forums inexorably deteriorates towards yet another case of Godwin's Law.
First of all, the review posted on the Video Game Ombudsman as "Chris Buzan's GameFAQs PSP Review", isn't. While it is indeed a part of the review he submitted, it's been edited down from what was actually posted (and subsequently removed) from GameFAQs.
But more to the point, while some people think GameFAQs is operated by a faceless corporation known only in whispered tones as "CNET", in reality very little has changed from the days in which I ran the site all by myself. GameFAQs receives hundreds of codes, reviews, FAQs, and game saves from contributors every week, and they are all reviewed and approved or rejected by a staff of two, including myself. While we do check every submission that comes to us, we don't always get it right. This is precisely why we have a Contributor Problem report form, so any registered user can report anything we've posted that "slipped by" us.
We review these complaints, determine if they're justified, and if we feel they are, we take appropriate action. That's how our system works, that's exactly how it worked in this case (both times the reviews were posted, they were subsequently reported by site visitors), and we probably remove eight or nine reviews a month out of the few hundred that are posted in this manner. These removals are not influenced by any advertiser or by management, but by our other users.
Of course, since our users are the ones that report problems with reviews, it should come as no surprise that when a review with a low score is posted for a very popular game or system, it will draw more than its fair share of complaints. Likewise, a review scoring "11/10 Best Game Evar!!" won't draw that level of scrutiny, even if poorly written. This is a phenomenon not unique to GameFAQs, but to any community on the Internet or off; those who go against the norm will always receive more attention, and their flaws are much more likely to be pointed out.
To sum up: Did we remove the reviews of Mr. Buzan and others bashing the PSP? Yes. Do we remove similar reviews bashing other systems and games on a regular basis? Yes. Is this whole thing blown way out of proportion? Oh, yes.
Jeff "CJayC" Veasey
Senior Editor, GameFAQs