People drop shows early, and that feedback is still valuable. Removing it biases reviews toward only fans who finish, making ratings less trustworthy.
On-going and dropped reviews are not really the same, personally I have no issue with dropped reviews. We could still have dropped reviews exists, but be available to view by users only after the show ends airing. One can write it when they drop it, but the review section being open to be viewed only after show finishes airing.
Ji-N:
It also doesn’t work for long-running or ongoing shows. Expecting users to wait months or years kills engagement and discussion when interest is highest.
I think reviews is not the place to talk about how people feel about currently watching shows, we have many other spaces on mdl for that: comment section, forum, feeds, episode reviews. There are many places for the "engagement" to happen even outside of the review section. If people want to figure out how the show is going when it airs, they can check these places, and when they want to find out how the drama is overall after it finishes airing, that's where they check reviews. But if reviews are "free to write whenever and whatever you want" then there is not real place to find actual reviews.
I don't think anyone here expect spam reviews to stop existing, it's impossible, but we do feel like not much has been done to make them less prevalent and to make it harder for people to write them.
And I totally understand that for the website it's better to have more engagement and more reviews - that's how websites grow. But there needs to be a balance between trying to get more quantity without ruining quality, and for the past few years I feel like quantity was prioritized.
The same way some restrictions has been placed on who and how can write articles, something can be done with reviews. Obviously not to that extent, reviews overall are supposed to be open for everyone to write.
Delaying visibility is something we already do to some extent by not pushing ongoing reviews to the front page, but fully hiding them for months or even years isn’t ideal.
I understand your concern, and I’m not trying to argue against it. There’s definitely a balance to strike, and we can’t make everyone happy. I agree that quality vs quantity needs improvement, but fully locking or delaying reviews isn’t the right approach, especially for long or ongoing shows.
Part of the reason I posted is to say that we are aware of the issue and do plan to improve it. From what we’ve seen, a lot of good reviews are getting buried not because of ongoing reviews, but because people are gaming the system with multiple accounts and vote abuse.
The first thing we need to focus on is adding some form of reputation or trust system to better rank reviews and reduce that kind of abuse then we will tackle the other issue next.
From what we’ve seen, a lot of good reviews are getting buried not because of ongoing reviews, but because people are gaming the system with multiple accounts and vote abuse.
that is also true. I'm happy to know there are some plans to minimalize the issue.
Don't know about others, but I understand the issues happening in the review sections are impossible to deal with completely and that's for sure not what I'm expecting.
It would be great if there were at least a way to stop the "rush to the likes"...I feel that a lot of people are writing very quickly reviews on ongoing shows, just to be certain that their will be on top of the page 😅😅😅.
Like Kate said, there are many place to share about ongoing shows, so imo one of the main motivation of people writing review early is for "clout" 😅... Maybe removing the Like system or generating at random the display on the first page could help reduce the need for some people to be "first".
Not sure how you are going to go about ordering the review differently, because I guess quality of review is subjective...but at least if a way to filter on our friends review existed, that would be a clear improvement as it has become more and more difficult to find relevant review in the pile of early reviews never really updated, AI generated ones and so on...Filtering on friends would definitely be a positive.
Another thing that would be helpful is preventing people to mark and review the show as "completed" when it is still ongoing. That would highlight when the review has been made and if the person never goes back to update. (And could be nice if you could filter out the "ongoing review" as well as others filters like "friends" ones and so on)
That being said, good to know that MDL plans to work on this 🤞🤞🤞
(And could be nice if you could filter out the "ongoing review" as well as others filters like "friends" ones and so on)
That we can do, tho the option is in a "weird" place coz it's under filter for languages:
Ah good, not sure if I knew that at some point and forgot about it, or if it is a new learning unlock but good to know, thanks Kate 😉
Now if the platform could prevent user to mark their review as complete when the show is ongoing and they write their review, that would even improve that filter 🤞🤞🤞
Blocking reviews until completion sounds good, but it creates bigger issues.
People drop shows early, and that feedback is still valuable. Removing it biases reviews toward only fans who finish, making ratings less trustworthy.
It also doesn’t work for long-running or ongoing shows. Expecting users to wait months or years kills engagement and discussion when interest is highest.
And it doesn’t actually stop abuse. Spam and review bombing can still happen after completion.
The good news that we’ll be looking into this and improving the system over the coming months.
Thank you for your explanation and also for the on going efforts to improve the system. Please look into deliberate down ratings and up ratings before the drama finishes too. This kind of fake ratings by haters or manipulators can effect the opinions and experience of watchers of ongoing dramas.
I am glad to hear that this issue is getting attention. It can only get better.
Ji-N:
Delaying visibility is something we already do to some extent by not pushing ongoing reviews to the front page,
It's clearly not working.
I am really not fond of "ongoing" reviews, and I agree with Kate, that there are so many places where engagement can happen that I don't understand why it has to be reviews.
I mean, it's in the word! It's "re-view". That means a "look-back". Remarks about ongoing things are a live commentary, not a review.
Ji-N:
but fully hiding them for months or even years isn’t ideal.
Why?
If a series has, say, 16 episodes, and one episode per week is released, then that's four months. Is that really that long to become a problem? And if it's about "engagement" (what a terrible neo-capitalist word): I don't often watch ongoing dramas, so my sample size might be too small, but I've found that most of the engagement / discussion took place in the comment section, about what is happening now, not in the review section where people usually post their general thoughts, and get maybe two or three replies, but there's rarely a discussion.
And I'd like to know how many titles out of the thousands on here are really ongoing for years? And how many of those have that high of an engagement rate that the comment section isn't enough to post your thoughts and be seen?
Heracin:
It would be great if there were at least a way to stop the "rush to the likes"...I feel that a lot of people are writing very quickly reviews on ongoing shows, just to be certain that their will be on top of the page 😅😅😅.
That's what irks me the most too.
With the default sorting it means that early "reviews" have a much greater chance to be seen while otoh the later a review was written, the less people will see it -- a problem that's much longer lasting than just because of ongoing reviews but it's definitely made worse by them.
Also, I've seen reviews that praised a drama with a 10/10 in every category get quite a lot of upvotes -- only to then be completely rewritten and give a 1/10 for every category. I don't think that's fair, either for the people who voted on something that now says something else or for the readers who want to trust the voting system.
Ji-N:
The first thing we need to focus on is adding some form of reputation or trust system to better rank reviews and reduce that kind of abuse
Hm.
Sounds good. But would need some thinking about possible implications. The first thing that came to mind is: How would new reviewers be able to gain trust / reputation points?
Ji-N:
people are gaming the system with multiple accounts and vote abuse.
That's probably true.
If hiding reviews or disabling "on-going" reviews to reduce upvote farming is not an option, then I think the most viable long-term solution might be to rework how reviews are displayed.
letterboxd displays the three "most liked", "most recent" and "from friends" reviews on a film's landing page [link goes to an example page]. While I know that this can't be copied 1-to-1, it might bear thinking about doing something similar. I can imagine that showing the most recent two reviews on a title's page might be an interesting thing to do -- it would lower the value of having the most upvotes and give a chance to new reviews to be seen.
Or, in the review section, change the default order. I can think of:
Most recent first
Reviews which were written after the title has finished airing first (within that category ordered like it is now), then the reviews that were started before the date (within that ordered like it is now). That would reduce the "rushing to the likes" and keep the option for the people who think it's neessary to write a review early. "Dropped" reviews are pushed to the back anyway, so it doesn't make a difference for them.
completely randomized. "Votes" (whether up or down) would even lose more value, and maybe people would give them out with a bit more thought.
And then give people an easily accessible option to sort to their own liking -- "most popular", "most upvotes", "most downvotes" -- or whatever else one can think of. Add to that a filtering option "friend's reviews", and status ("completed", "dropped"), and whatever makes sense as a filter.
(btw, I would not mind if the "not helpful" votes (downvotes) would be discontinued.)
And I have one last question: Is this still part of the plan?
Ji-N:
Next Major Updates:
Ongoing reviews will expire after 30 days, becoming hidden, and a notification will be sent to update them.
At least one episode must be watched to write a review.
Review overall scores will sync with the title's rating score.
Overall rating will be optional.
Category ratings will also be optional.
A history of edits will be available when you change the rating or the content.
Delaying visibility is something we already do to some extent by not pushing ongoing reviews to the front page, but fully hiding them for months or even years isn’t ideal.
I understand your concern, and I’m not trying to argue against it. There’s definitely a balance to strike, and we can’t make everyone happy. I agree that quality vs quantity needs improvement, but fully locking or delaying reviews isn’t the right approach, especially for long or ongoing shows.
Part of the reason I posted is to say that we are aware of the issue and do plan to improve it. From what we’ve seen, a lot of good reviews are getting buried not because of ongoing reviews, but because people are gaming the system with multiple accounts and vote abuse.
The first thing we need to focus on is adding some form of reputation or trust system to better rank reviews and reduce that kind of abuse then we will tackle the other issue next.
We will process through every reviews again.
While Reputation or trust system does sound good, I am wondering, would it be disadvantageous to the new writers, in fact, the review section might actually get taken over by the reviews of selected few users. It might not be a problem in the start, but in a long term, won't users find it annoying to see the top reviews being taken by same bunch of users in every drama?
What I mean is the reputation of the people voting not the writers.
I think voting is one of THE worst parts of MDL when it comes to reviews. Why? Because it's just like rating. It's unreliable. Haters will like hateful reviews, and lovers (okay, not the right word, anyway😅 ) will like the positive reviews.
I think it's better to remove the like or dislike review option. I feel like many people are just writing think pieces to gain likes or something. If someone actually takes it seriously, they will write a proper review, and the same goes for people who want to read it.
My problem is that there are a LOT of ongoing reviews and some that are flagged as dropped, but if you look at their watch list, you can see they didn't even rate the show, and it's not in the dropped list. I think if someone actually drops a show and wants to write a review, the system should only allow them to write a review after they put it in the dropped list and rate it because I can see multiple dropped reviews on the front page, and not all of them are well-written or real, valid opinions. A lot of those are just typical hate. Almost like bots.
Also, I've seen so many people rating shows 10/10 and then writing a review and the rating is much lower. I hate this inconsistency. That's why I always said the two ratings should be the same always. When a score is given on the review page, it should be automatically applied to the main page rating. Or at least people can only start writing a review if they give the same score on both sides.
Ji-N:
People drop shows early, and that feedback is still valuable. Removing it biases reviews toward only fans who finish, making ratings less trustworthy.
Kate:
Heracin:
