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roger_thornhill 
"'scuse me while I disappear..."
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 Posted - 02/11/2007 : 19:01:29
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quote:
Originally posted by Randall[/i
(2) I didn't see the point where PB was actually exonerated. I came to feel that his vast collection of 2-vote reviews was and is highly suspicious, but that's [i]all it is.
Exactly.
p.s. I just realized this took place two years ago, when Randall was "new"! |
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randall 
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 02/11/2007 : 20:33:41
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quote:
Originally posted by george_kaplan
quote:
Originally posted by Randall[/i
(2) I didn't see the point where PB was actually exonerated. I came to feel that his vast collection of 2-vote reviews was and is highly suspicious, but that's [i]all it is.
Exactly.
p.s. I just realized this took place two years ago, when Randall was "new"!
Almost three -- and yep, everybody started out as a newbie...
If you weren't around back then, all you're really missing is the fun of reading noncentz's latest reviews. The best fwiffer ever, and I don't see anybody seriously stepping up to challenge him on that score. |
Edited by - randall on 02/11/2007 20:42:19 |
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Demisemicenturian 
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 02/12/2007 : 10:01:02
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quote:
Originally posted by BiggerBoat
Really? I'm on a mac and have never had any trouble with this, and I do use it quite a lot. Then again I've got a swanky laptop with OSX.
I've got OSX too. Have never been able to figure it out. |
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 02/12/2007 : 10:03:41
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quote:
Originally posted by Shiv
Who's Paul Bennison? Why is Pall Venison funny?
It's just a great tribute. Not many people write them nowadays, but noncentz and thefoxboy (and others) have written plenty of good ones. They're an art within an art. |
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 02/12/2007 : 10:04:49
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quote:
Originally posted by Conan The Westy
He changed his four word self-description to "Unfairly treated by Fourum" or words to that effect.
After the back-pedalling, he changed it to "Now accepted by fourum".  |
Edited by - Demisemicenturian on 02/12/2007 10:11:38 |
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bife
"Winners never quit ... fwfr ... "
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Posted - 02/12/2007 : 10:47:31
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quote:
Originally posted by Shiv
quote:
Originally posted by Yukon
Here is why I don't think people should delete an identical review for a different movie.
(And I'm not saying this becuase I'm the guy with Brat out of Hell for The Omen, which I didn't know was used for other films.)
As someone who has been on this site for a year, I've come to realize that every single pun has already been used in one way or another so I think 90% of all reviews currently submitted could be declined as being too similiar. The first time I submitted a hare/hair pun or air/error pun I thought it was original now I know they are everywhere.
If I was just starting out on this website and I kept getting my reviews declined all the time because they were similiar to reviews on other movies I hadn't previously seen, i would be confused and wouldn't be on this site for long.
Having more funny reviews on this site -- even if they a similiar to others -- isn't a bad thing. Humourous reviews are why I love this site.
To add my two cents' worth (or is that two dollars' worth with inflation) about the same reviews for different films - I agree with the comment above that originality is hard to come by. Is the suggestion that people put in a search on the whole site for the exact review they want to submit? I usually only look through the pages of the film I'm reviewing (or a series of films in a franchise, which for me wouldn't include all Elvis movies).
Brat Out of Hell is appropriate for all the films above, and if someone comes up with that simply by thinking about the film they are submitting it for, without checking to see if other films have it, then I think that is 'original' in the context of the movie they are fw reviewing. So, I agree with Catuli in the original posting. 
I can see that the criteria for getting reviews on this site are getting harder - which is fine as the reviews need to be quality controlled. But as someone new I agree it gets frustrating when you can't seem to get reviews on that are structured like ones already on the site. You also can't be too linguistically clever in searchng for originality, because if you have to explain it too much for the MERPs it probably isn't valid for the site. (The only time I have been genuninely annoyed by a rejection is when a review was said to be 'not factual' despite many other reviews for the film refering to the same thing.  )
I have been pretty well absent from the site for the best part of a year now, although I still appear occassionally in the fourum or for writing reviews, so maybe my views don't count quite as much as when I was one of the more active fwfrs around.
But guys, you cannot be serious. I was addicted to the site from the first day I found it. I would spend hours pouring through the reviews of Noncentz, CP, Mr Stupid, RedKate, Slippy Tin et al. Not only did they write great reviews, their humour was fresh and original. Okay, part of that was that I was new on the site, so it seemed fresher than it was, and part of it was that the site itself was in an earlier stage of development, but I was knocked out by the ability of fwfrers to come up with surprising combinations of four words.
Nowadays, in all honesty, fwfr bores me most of the time. It hurts me to say that, because I have invested too much emotional energy and way way too many hours into it to dismiss it lightly.
But it seems to me to have become remarkably repetitive. I do recognise, as a long-time fwfrer, that it was bound to happen to a degree. There is only so much you can do with four words, only so many 'original ideas' that can be hatched within the confines of the site, having been here for three years, I am bound to have seen most of it before.
And that, really, is why I am no longer one of the more active fwfrs. I really can't be bothered reading the same puns over and over again
I am not advocating a new rule of 'no dupes or similar reviews across movies' - we have enough trouble agreeing on generic, or duplicates within a movie. So I am not suggesting benj 'ban' or forcibly remove duplicate 'Brat out of Hell' reviews.
But surely that doesn't mean that we, as fourumers and the most active fwfrers out there, should be condoning or recommending such blatant non-value-add reviews amongst ourselves?
Newbie submits 'Brat out of Hell' without realising it's on the site five times? No problem, let it through and say nothing.
bife submits 'Brat out of Hell'? Tell me, preferably discreetly, and I'll delete it. Fair play to sean, his review added no value to the site, and in fact detracted from rovark's review, he saw that and deleted it. I would like to think that I would do the same, and in fact have done maybe 15/20 times over the years.
Yukon wants to keep his review? Hey, I am not suggesting we should forcibly delete it, nor that he copied it, nor that we should be putting pressure on him to remove it. But we shouldn't be congratulating him on it either. It was already written by Rovark. |
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 02/12/2007 : 11:15:06
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Yes, I agree. The site still doesn't bore me, but as I essentially never get bored, this is not the best endorsement. From the short-lived votes-given stat, I was one of the biggest voters, but now I give fewer votes as I have got a good memory and recognise so many reviews as having appeared before. This also means that I look through fewer reviews than I used to, as I am indifferent to a much higher proportion now.
Further, so many reviews have votes these days. It used to signify something when someone had no reviews with no votes, but now I'm not so sure. (This is partly because there was a phase where lowest reviews were being highlighted by various threads - in the past it was only me who used to post my lowest instead of my highest in vote swaps.) I think that all of mine deserve votes, but I now think of about 5 votes as equivalent to what I used to think of 1 vote.
Having said all that, I hold my hands up to the fact that my own quality has fallen dramatically - my reviews from Spring 2004 are most of my best ones. I think this is because this was (i) before most ideas had got used up in general and (ii) before I'd used up so many of my own ideas specifically.
I'd also like to be told about any cross-film duplicate of mine (though I'd prefer here to a private message), and if I cannot honestly see any way in which it improves on the older one, I'll delete it. (I do know of at least one cross-film exact duplicate and at least one same-film near-duplicate, both submitted innocently, but where mine work better, so I've kept those.) |
Edited by - Demisemicenturian on 02/12/2007 11:31:54 |
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 02/12/2007 : 12:02:06
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| A particular trend is for originally clever ideas to be not only repeated but to be used in more rubbish ways. Notable examples are the "-umentary" and using Roman numerals (or numbers) within words. The former started off with the first part rightly having to share significant features with "doc-". Then, any old ridiculous "Bicycle-umentary" started appearing. (This then had a negative effect on the response to later valid examples.) With regard to the latter, noncentz was the master at this, and I also was in on it in the early days. Then any old spurious letter-number replacement started coming along. I recently submitted "Whiite noiise" half as a joke (although I did quite like the symmetry), and I think others have done this with other numbers. |
Edited by - Demisemicenturian on 02/12/2007 12:03:22 |
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Shiv 
"What a Wonderful World"
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Posted - 02/12/2007 : 13:21:47
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quote:
Originally posted by bife
But guys, you cannot be serious.
About what? About discussing a shared interest? Long-term fwfrers have the advantage of knowing what this site was like at the beginning. Good for you.
I would like to be treated the same way as everyone else and have accepted through a 65% rejection rate that I have to try harder to produce something acceptable - even though many of my rejected reviews were no worse than what is already on the site. But it just makes me more determined to produce something worthwhile. I won't be a newbie forever, so at what point do I get the PM rather than my review being accepted without comment? Isn't that elitism?
On Fourum I have asked for and received advice from others who have the skill of producing good reviews, which I appreciate  . I notice others doing the same all the time.
But, if you read Catuli's original posting, there is a genuine question there which generated this discussion. My post directly responds to the question posted. Please note, Catuli doesn't actually ask us to consider the review, but the general principle. So the original direction of this discussion was not about quote:
condoning or recommending ... blatant non-value-add reviews amongst ourselves?
And you know what? Benj makes the final decision whatever we all feel like waffling on about. But he lets us waffle. I assume if there is a change he wants to make in the criteria he will make his own mind up.
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 02/12/2007 : 13:39:01
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quote:
Originally posted by Shiv
many of my rejected reviews were no worse than what is already on the site.
I agree that it is a general problem that some (most?) of the highest-voted reviews would not be approved today. This makes it hard to gauge what is too generic without delving into threads like this that admit this historical change of policy. On top of that, reviews which are equivalent to recent approvals are also often rejected (presumably because of variations in MERP taste etc.), which is sure to make it even more frustrating for new users than old. |
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ChocolateLady
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 02/12/2007 : 13:52:41
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quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
quote:
Originally posted by Shiv
many of my rejected reviews were no worse than what is already on the site.
I agree that it is a general problem that some (most?) of the highest-voted reviews would not be approved today. This makes it hard to gauge what is too generic without delving into threads like this that admit this historical change of policy. On top of that, reviews which are equivalent to recent approvals are also often rejected (presumably because of variations in MERP taste etc.), which is sure to make it even more frustrating for new users than old.
True. You can't expect a site to stagnate. If it does, it will stop being challenging and people will leave. As the site evolves, it is only natural that writing a really good review that could get high votes is going to be harder to do.
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 02/12/2007 : 14:03:12
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| Yep, I think it's right to keep the old, technically 'generic' but good, reviews. I don't think we can get away from the confusion this causes for new reviewers, unfortunately. Is it spelt out in the F.A.Q.s that things have changed? |
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bife
"Winners never quit ... fwfr ... "
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Posted - 02/12/2007 : 14:10:29
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Hey shiv, sorry if i came off sounding elitist, or that i thought the discussion shouldn't be taking place - it's a valid discusssion, but I am surprised by the direction it has taken, that adding the same review to the site for a third or fourth time is somehow something good.
Newbie or not isn't the issue, we were all new once, and I wasn't here at the begining. If I remember rightly, there were already multiple reviewers on 1500+ reviews when I started.
But I wanted to point out the reason for my declining interest in the site. It is partly natural, having been around for a while, that the originality and uniqueness that so impressed me to begin with was bound to wear off even if actual quality and orignality was maintained, but it is also, I think, due to the high level of duplication and copycatting.
Again, this is partly a natural function of time - if a fwfrer can come up with Brat out of Hell for Little Nicky it is only a matter of time before someone independently thinks of it for Omen.
But it's also partly a function of accepted norms, and that is maybe why I overreacted to the flow of this discussion. I am sure that when I started out here as a newbie, it was not the accepted position that it was alright to use an already existing review, this seems to be a new view that has begun to hold sway over the past year or so, and is to the serious detriment to long-term interest in fwfr, in my opinion.
I know it is hard to get through those early rejections - my early decline rate must have been at least 65%, mostly because I couldn't figure out the generic rule (although since in those days there were no decline reasons given, most of the time I didn't even know it was being declined as generic). I am not suggesting that we create a new 'rule' forbidding the same review appearing on different films, nor am I advocating having the MERPs decline on that basis. But I would hate us to agree amongst ourselves that we should be posting the same review across multiple movies on the basis that more fwfrers will get to read it.
And maybe, finally, 'blatant non-value-add reviews' does sound like an overly harsh statement. I wish perhaps that I could take back the tone of it. But I stand by the substance - if a review has been posted four times already, the fifth time it gets posted, to a fifth movie, it detracts from the quality of the site.
Only my opinions, of course, and I am not always right |
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Whippersnapper. 
"A fourword thinking guy."
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Posted - 02/12/2007 : 14:56:14
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quote:
Originally posted by BiggerBoat
quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
quote:
Originally posted by BaftaBabe
Also, it's not that hard to run a search on a few multiple-page FWFRs to check one's own. It doesn't take that long!
As I've mentioned before, Apple F for some reason often does not work on the pages.
Really? I'm on a mac and have never had any trouble with this, and I do use it quite a lot. Then again I've got a swanky laptop with OSX.
For my two pence/cents worth, I'm all for not having to read the same review on different films, BUT, do also agree that the same review could have different meanings depending on the film in question. Wish I had an example to back my case up but I don't.
Here's an example, both from the House Of Whippa:
For Bugsy Malone
and
For City Of God
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Shiv
"What a Wonderful World"
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Posted - 02/12/2007 : 15:06:26
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quote:
Originally posted by bife
Hey shiv, sorry if i came off sounding elitist, or that i thought the discussion shouldn't be taking place - it's a valid discusssion, but I am surprised by the direction it has taken, that adding the same review to the site for a third or fourth time is somehow something good.
Okay, thanks. And I do see your point. In fact, I agree with you. I would say a review like 'Brat Out of Hell' that is reasonably imaginative deserves to be on at least once. I suppose the question is whether something that is clearly generic like 'Beautifual cinematography, well cast' deserves to be on at least once. I would say no to that one (although in the FAQs Benj says quote:
in the interest of trying to look like a legitimate film review site, we do occasionally let them in.
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Cross Pollination Similarity Decline Rule
