Your review was not useful...

Now I am nervous to flag a bunch of reviews that has something wrong with them.

mentioning a beer is a "three out of five" and then rating it a five seems odd.

or the same reviewer saying a beer is tasteless and forgettable, and rating it a 5.

 

To me it sounds like your case is a really good one for the upvote/downvote system. You self-admit that others probably won't find your review useful (and it sounds like at least some others are agreeing by downvoting), so having it show yours at the bottom is a good solution. Also means you shouldn't feel bad at all for using the review system slightly differently than others.

 

Yeah...I think I've come full circle here and now share this opinion as well. I guess I thought that I might somehow be adversely affected by being downvoted...but it seems that isn't the case. I could really care less now that I get downvotes.

 

Unless I've misunderstood, I think it was actually clarified that the reviewer being downvoted will face no consequence other than having that review bumped to the bottom. Downvoting is solely a means of letting the community decide which reviews should be less visible. Downvotes aren't alerting the mods to poor review etiquette or anything like that.

In other words, I am anticipating getting a shit ton of down votes, because I'm basically just writing a few words to remind myself of why I rated something the way I did. I intend to see all my reviews sink to the bottom, but I've been reassured that there will be no consequences to that.

Again, unless I've misunderstood.

 

I got ya...the example helped. You had mentioned reporting and abuse and such which seemed to be following on the heels of the previous discussion about how down voting effects the reviewer in terms of site privilege repercussions.

But yeah, you have a good point too.

I'm clearly waffling on this topic.

 

How did you find out about getting a thumbs down for your review? Did you receive an alert or were you checking your reviews? Just curious because I don't think anyone has thumbs upped or thumbs downed my reviews yet but I'm not sure if I get notified automatically or if I have to go digging.

 

you have to dig

 

So I guess we don't get alerted when this happens. Lame.

 

I did but, since the thread where the announcement was made was locked, I could not post to share my feelings about the change. But, now that I have your attention, I don't see how adding this feature is helpful if the reviewer isn't even aware of how many downvotes he/she has for their reviews. I'm all about constructive criticism even if it's in the form of a non-descriptive thumbs down. If one of my reviews had a considerable amount of thumbs downs, I'd like to be able to readily know about it so I can read it over and see if there's something that was inaccurate or lacking about it. Or maybe there was misinformation, an error or inconsistency I might be able to catch if I'm made aware of these downvotes. I know that in my early days of reviewing I probably made a lot of generalizations or even straight up false statements. If there's a way to track the less helpful reviews I've made, I'd definitely be all for this new feature. But, if we can't even get a simple notification when these downvotes or upvotes occur, then I'm of the opinion of others on this thread that the only option should be an upvote and that the downvotes are pointless If you've taken the time to read this entire post, I thank you.

 

I think it is hard for a lot of users to see value in changes that are made to this site that aren't obvious to themselves. I myself try to look at both sides (site owners and site users) when figuring out why changes were made. Far too often, I can't see the advantage to the users. Personally, I see where a lot of added value can come of changes, but with regards to downvoting I don't see how added value can be found if a user is just downvoted without any reasoning for it.

It seems that there is a lack of accountability here. What harm can be done if a pop up box is used to require a person for explaining their actions?


If a thread is inappropriate, a user is required to explain why they feel so. Why not do that for a downvote as well?

 

Regarding the flagging, would it be possible to include a feature that says "are you sure you wish to flag this review?". When I am browsing on my phone and wish to down vote, I have accidentally pressed the flag button and there has been no way to undo this.