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| morilla |
Original Post: Jun 05 '08, 12:52 am |
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Reviews written: 144 Member since: Oct 09 '04
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Holding Back?
I've noticed that the Express Reviews for S&OG has dropped to almost nothing. Understandable in that one only needs to add an extra few words and it will qualify in the 10-4-10. However...
I'm curious. Is there anyone, besides me, who is 'holding back' posting reviews on products that they think/feel/know will be (or would have been prior to "Black Tuesday") a long-term, steady IS producer until/unless they fix those issues which are now, effectively, killing most of the IS for the category?
The crux of the question has to do with being an Advisor in what has been termed a "dead category" and how we are going to survive and thrive if there is a pervasive sentiment that it may not be worth the trouble to post reviews at this time; other than reviews on innocuous items that would probably never see $1 in total IS. In other words, how many are writing on products that generally don't produce a lot of hits/IS, hoping that maybe they'll get 10 reviews cranked out in a month, but holding back on the 'good stuff' until the usual incentives of hits/IS are reinstated? |
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| jps246 |
Posted: Jun 05 '08, 6:40 am (Updated: Jun 05 '08, 6:41 am) |
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Reviews written: 783 Member since: Jan 25 '01
 in Outdoor Gear, Sporting Goods |
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RE: Holding Back?
Quote: morilla I'm curious. Is there anyone, besides me, who is 'holding back' posting reviews on products that they think/feel/know will be (or would have been prior to "Black Tuesday") a long-term, steady IS producer until/unless they fix those issues which are now, effectively, killing most of the IS for the category?
Like I said over here, up until now I haven't really been avoiding the /review/ topics since I've been hoping that it'll get fixed. The longer that it's been though, the more I've tried to get away from those reviews with /review/ in the URL. This month I've been making a concerted effort to find items without the /review/ in them, which means really not writing in several categories, of which Outdoor Gear is where I really love to write.
Quote: morilla The crux of the question has to do with being an Advisor in what has been termed a "dead category" and how we are going to survive and thrive if there is a pervasive sentiment that it may not be worth the trouble to post reviews at this time; other than reviews on innocuous items that would probably never see $1 in total IS.
I see it as a serious problem. We've had some veteran members in the Outdoor Gear/Sporting Good categories basically stop writing. This problem is continuing to grow and is continuing to disillusion people on the site, causing them to reduce their writing or stop it and in some cases leave.
Quote: morilla In other words, how many are writing on products that generally don't produce a lot of hits/IS, hoping that maybe they'll get 10 reviews cranked out in a month, but holding back on the 'good stuff' until the usual incentives of hits/IS are reinstated?
I have a lot invested in Epinions. I've been here almost 8 years, I've got lots of reviews and I've always loved the Outdoor Gear category. Now I find myself avoiding the category because I know anything I write there is dead at the moment. I do continue to post here and there, just in hopes that when the /review/ bug is finally fixed, the reviews will pick back up and start earning their hits and IS again.
Jeff
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| jps246 |
Posted: Jun 05 '08, 6:50 am |
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Reviews written: 783 Member since: Jan 25 '01
in Outdoor Gear, Sporting Goods |
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RE: Holding Back?
There was a rumor that a fix will be pushed out at the end of June that will allow the reviews to start counting hits again and hopefully earn some IS. I'll believe it when I see it. That info came from this thread.
Jeff |
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| trailhound |
Posted: Jun 06 '08, 8:44 am |
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Reviews written: 617 Member since: May 21 '04
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RE: Holding Back?
Quote: morilla In other words, how many are writing on products that generally don't produce a lot of hits/IS, hoping that maybe they'll get 10 reviews cranked out in a month, but holding back on the 'good stuff' until the usual incentives of hits/IS are reinstated?
That was exactly what I was doing for about 3 months. But it seemed like a waste to spend 60-90 minutes writing a review that would disappear after it dropped off the Recent Reviews page (and some Sports/Outdoors reviews never even hit that page). I may still post the occasional review, or read & rate here and there, but for the most part I've thrown in the towel. -Dave |
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| trailhound |
Posted: Jun 06 '08, 8:51 am |
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Reviews written: 617 Member since: May 21 '04
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RE: Holding Back?
Quote: jps246
I have a lot invested in Epinions. I've been here almost 8 years, I've got lots of reviews and I've always loved the Outdoor Gear category. Jeff
You've been one of the biggest boosters for the category and I appreciate that. In my experience a lot of people who do outdoor activities are ''gear junkies'' and love reading about the equipment. We see (used to see?) that on Epinions, where even a review of plastic tent stakes will collect hundreds of outside hits! But for whatever reason they aren't exactly in a hurry to fix the category, and at this point the prime season for outside hits is passing by. -Dave |
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| Dargen |
Posted: Sep 23 '08, 10:02 pm |
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Reviews written: 120 Member since: Nov 26 '99
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...
Anybody heard of any updates? I'm getting sick of seeing my reviews get half of their normal hits or seeing "Category Temporarily Unavailable" next to most of my bike reviews. Back in the day, when Epinions actually worked these were decent money makers. My most popular bike review has about 11,000 hits and seems to have disappeared when it comes to IS, hits, and MPR/MPA ratings.
Answers?
Anybody? |
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| jps246 |
Posted: Sep 24 '08, 6:08 am |
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Reviews written: 783 Member since: Jan 25 '01
in Outdoor Gear, Sporting Goods |
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RE: ...
Quote: Dargen Anybody heard of any updates? I'm getting sick of seeing my reviews get half of their normal hits or seeing "Category Temporarily Unavailable" next to most of my bike reviews. Back in the day, when Epinions actually worked these were decent money makers. My most popular bike review has about 11,000 hits and seems to have disappeared when it comes to IS, hits, and MPR/MPA ratings.
Answers?
Anybody?
I've seen some improvement overall in my earnings/hits for Outdoor Gear stuff since June when they started recounting hits for the Category. Some stuff is down, other stuff is up - probably a toss-up overall.
If you know of problems, it's probably best to contact yoelc, who's the Epinions Product Manager and jump_chump (Damon), who's an engineer and they can look more closely at the problem or at least try to give you a better answer than any of us can.
Jeff
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| trailhound |
Posted: Sep 28 '08, 6:43 pm |
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Reviews written: 617 Member since: May 21 '04
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RE: Hits
My most popular review in the category had 211 outside hits in August 2007, and 92 outside hits in August 2008. IS was also lower in 2008. I have a very similar pattern in all my reviews in the category (with one or two exceptions). I guess I'll just live with it. -Dave |
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| morilla |
Posted: Sep 29 '08, 4:45 am |
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Reviews written: 144 Member since: Oct 09 '04
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RE: ...
Quote: Dargen Anybody heard of any updates? I'm getting sick of seeing my reviews get half of their normal hits or seeing "Category Temporarily Unavailable" next to most of my bike reviews. Back in the day, when Epinions actually worked these were decent money makers. My most popular bike review has about 11,000 hits and seems to have disappeared when it comes to IS, hits, and MPR/MPA ratings.
Answers?
Anybody?
There have been at least three threads regarding the category unavailable issue on the general board since the middle of August; although, the focus in those threads has been in the books (media) category(ies). In theory, the impression I have is that Epinions considers SOG to be 'fixed' insofar as recording outside hits. However, there is repeated mention of finishing the "uncatalog" (completing the database merger, 'mapping' or SAP'ing back in the 'grayed out' products, etc.) by the end of the year. Unfortunately, it is unclear as to whether this 'uncatalog' is category specific or sitewide.
Frankly, I don't think that the registering of hits is fully fixed. Some are still noting a difference in rates vs. hits. Others have noted a sharp decline in hits on once popular products. (For me, this isn't just since Black Tuesday; though it is particularly notable as a reference point. I also noticed a stark difference on a couple of my more consistently popular reviews between the hits they manually allotted with the 'fix' in April/May/June [or whenever it was] and the following month. Given that, at the time, others noticed a similar differential, I suspect that the fix wasn't as 'complete' as was thought.)
IS & MPA/MPR? My graffitti disappeared with Black Tuesday, reappeared briefly at the beginning of this month, then disappeared again with the 'fix' to books/media MPA/MPR. Yes, my placement was very wrong in books. But, the SOG placement was correct. However, both disappeared again.
As I noted, while IS is dependent to some degree on the hits/missing hits, there is another factor that I think plays even more heavily in SOG since the change. Bike reviews (not to mention fly rods, tents, etc.) were part of Outdoor Gear. Now, they are part of SOG and stratified insofar as IS against all the former OG products AND what used to be sporting goods (e.g., exercise machines, golf clubs, etc.).
While it has been claimed that the total money available to the merged categories is the same or similar to the combination of the two prior categories, my guess is that the weighting of the products is skewed more toward former 'sporting goods.' (Note the top earning products in the category over the last couple of months.) Also remember that OG was a 'minor' category in the sense that even 'hatted' people in the category were somewhat less well 'muscled' (smaller WOT, fewer reviews in category and across the site, etc.) than many of those in Sporting Goods. We also saw far fewer reviews contributed than did SG. While we will never know the formula for IS, I've got to believe that these factors account for a significant percentage of the decline in IS for formerly 'productive' OG reviews. |
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| morilla |
Posted: Sep 29 '08, 4:56 am |
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Reviews written: 144 Member since: Oct 09 '04
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RE: ...
Quote: Dargen Anybody heard of any updates?
Answers?
Anybody?
Of course, there were/are the misassigned products, 'unavailable' products, etc. Just like I noticed with this shoe promotion that shoes that only recently were in SOG are now in Wellness & Beauty; with the brand/pair/style I actually wear daily disappearing with that move. So, when others note that 'some have gone up and others have gone down,' it would be interesting to see some stats on which were OG and which were SG, which were in SOG and which are now moved to another category.
We could also get into the issue of old reviews paying while a rather sizeable percentage of new reviews are being assigned $0.00 IS; even with hits comparable to those that used to generate IS prior to Black Tuesday. But...
In the end, I've got to go along with Trailhound in that my IS has not increased commensurate with the increase in the number of my reviews and, if anything, my hit numbers have, overall, dropped noticeably since this time last year for most of my reviews. Those notable exceptions which actually show a significant increase in traffic over previous months are generally showing no IS - not just decreased IS, but $0.00 assigned IS despite, in the case of two reviews in particular, having DOUBLE or more the hits they had when they actually produced IS.
Does any of this constitute 'updates' or 'answers.' Nope. Just a little guesswork and some observations that may provide food for thought or may be anamolous and only indicative of my personal karma coming back to bite me. |
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| jps246 |
Posted: Sep 29 '08, 8:42 am |
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Reviews written: 783 Member since: Jan 25 '01
in Outdoor Gear, Sporting Goods |
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RE: ...
While I consider the IS formula pretty much a black box (stuff goes in, stuff comes out, we have no idea what goes on inside), I think there are some rational explanations for the reduced hit counts...
I know our monthly hit counts are down versus last year and I know we had the issue in Outdoor Gear with the non-counting of our hits (I was one of the people who pressed for an answer/fix back in May and June), but I think a large part of the reduced hits lately is just the status of the economy.
I am seeing a drop in hits pretty much site-wide on my reviews (which I guess the internet traffic sites back up on Epinions as a whole). I just don't think people are shopping as much online and I doubt they are researching as much because they probably aren't buying offline either. Hence fewer eyeballs are looking at our reviews.
So I don't know if the hit counting problems have been totally fixed (I wonder on some of my reviews), but I do think some of the reduction is just because of drop-off in the economy lately and people just not shopping and researching as much as they might have in the past. I know personally I've cut way back and if others do the same, that can make a marked difference in hit counts and the like.
Jeff |
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| trailhound |
Posted: Sep 30 '08, 7:30 pm |
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Reviews written: 617 Member since: May 21 '04
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RE: Hits
Quote: jps246
I am seeing a drop in hits pretty much site-wide on my reviews (which I guess the internet traffic sites back up on Epinions as a whole). I just don't think people are shopping as much online and I doubt they are researching as much because they probably aren't buying offline either. Jeff
I did a quick check. On my last twenty reviews, which goes back to early July, only two reviews have more than a handful of outside hits. Some have none and have earned no IS. Whatever the reason, I would agree that traffic is way down. -Dave |
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| jump_chump |
Posted: Oct 06 '08, 7:32 pm (Updated: Oct 06 '08, 7:33 pm) |
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Reviews written: 0 Member since: Oct 04 '05
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RE: Hits
Hi folks,
I am aware of your concerns about the fate of S&O hits. I have no answers at this time, but I did want to let you know that tracking this issue is high on my list. Along with Health & Beauty and other migrated categories that have seen a down trend in hits.
This week, I'm working on income share again, and I'll be looking at S&O reviews as examples to see what and how things change from month to month.
If there's a problem, I am looking for it.
damon
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Epinions Engineer
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| jps246 |
Posted: Oct 20 '08, 10:07 am |
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Reviews written: 783 Member since: Jan 25 '01
in Outdoor Gear, Sporting Goods |
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RE: Hits
Quote: jump_chump I am aware of your concerns about the fate of S&O hits. I have no answers at this time, but I did want to let you know that tracking this issue is high on my list. Along with Health & Beauty and other migrated categories that have seen a down trend in hits.-
Thanks for staying on top of this!
I would ask that you look into IS distribution for a lot of S&O reviews too - it just seems that most new reviews in the category don't earn anything, even with some decent hit numbers.
Jeff
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| jump_chump |
Posted: Nov 14 '08, 9:29 pm |
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Reviews written: 0 Member since: Oct 04 '05
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RE: Hits
Quote: jps246 I would ask that you look into IS distribution for a lot of S&O reviews too - it just seems that most new reviews in the category don't earn anything, even with some decent hit numbers.
Let's see how this month's IS works out. I haven't had a chance to look yet. I would expect that more reviews are getting IS.
damon
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Epinions Engineer |
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| jps246 |
Posted: Nov 15 '08, 3:53 pm |
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Reviews written: 783 Member since: Jan 25 '01
in Outdoor Gear, Sporting Goods |
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RE: Hits
Quote: jump_chump Let's see how this month's IS works out. I haven't had a chance to look yet. I would expect that more reviews are getting IS.
Looking a lot better!
Thanks Damon!
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