Mental Meanderings

Auto-Rewarding Reviews

I'm really disappointed in the minority who abuse the review system. I've had to report a few situations recently and it saddens me to think there are people who are so greedy for a few GP's. What causes people to get so creative to gain what equats to a matter of cents?

As I get new works into my port I tend to be interested primarily in the reviews for those items and I've taken to occassionally sponsering and/or auto-rewarding a few specific pieces to encourage them to get more hits and reviews. Usually these are the ones which I love and want to be reassured they're as great as they can be, or ones that I feel have potential but that just aren't quite right and I'm hoping I'll get lucky and have a reviewer point out where it's not working.

I'm pretty generous with my GP's, especially for this sort of thing. I consider it an investment. I mean if I offer 2,000 GP's per review then I'm paying someone 20c US for their time. This is totally undervalued in the greater scheme of things but the people who put more than their dime worth into it I reward with more GP when I've read their review.

Of course, people don't realise that I give even more reward for reviews that I feel are constructive. The ones that help me are the ones I appreciate the most. All those fluffy, "OMG I think this is brilliant you're the next Yeats." Just great on my nerves. Especially when I 'KNOW' there is something not working with a poem and am looking for someone to help me figure out what it is. But I don't begrudge the 2K for even the extremely positive reviews cause hey, we all could use the ego boost of those from time to time and at least these people read the poem and offered their feedback.

But lately I've come across a few unscrupulous people. Today's has to be the lowest and most dismal of the lot. Actually, perhaps not. No the other is probably an ickier life form. Ok, let me describe both.

A few days ago I got a review that said, "Blah. Blah blah. That's all I really heard. I couldn't understand anything at all, an don't say it's because I have a weak intelligence. The truth is, everything on the forum is like complete gibberish to me. Every absolute thing. I'm only doing this for the 2,000 GPs."

Ok, this guy needs one of those idiot signs. I mean if you're going to write blah blah reviews to get GP's at least do what everyone else does and don't actually SAY that's what you're doing. In fact, if you go with positive feedback instead of be an asshole about it you're more likely to get away with it. But not this guy, BEEP Reviewing System Abuse Report Filed, USER DELETED!!! GP refunded. *smiles* Thanks so much SM for being right onto this one and dealing with the issue within minutes of my submitting the report.

Then today I had three more reviews for each of the three things I currently have set to award 2K each. This time the reviewer was even more blatantly abusive and obvious. This time however they refrained from being an asshole and just went for vapid. The reviews were perhaps the best yet, "


Character Count: 251"

That's right people, some of these morons are now resorting to two hundred and fifty one spaces to earn 2K GP's. BEEP Reviewing System Abuse Report Filed, USER DELETED!!! GP refunded. *grins* OMG SM is my hero. I think I'm in love. *chuckles* I wonder if SMs would mind if I tried to steal him away from her.

BTW along with refunding the GP 'stolen' by these auto-reward system abusers SM gave a little extra as reward for reporting the issue. So, if you come across people abusing the review system please REPORT. It's a really simple form to fill out. If we can keep nailing these people they'll have no reason to keep attempting to cheat the system.

What I wonder now is if SM then goes on to track these users. Each time I've had a problem it's been with a free account usually gray case. It seems obvious that these people have created illegal secondary accounts for the purpose of harvesting GP's in this way. I expect they probably feed their GP's back to their original accounts since there is very little else you can do with them to benefit yourself. Perhaps they award themselves with awardicons and merit badges from these secondary accounts?

No matter what they do there is undoubtably a way to trace the progress of these illbegotton funds and put a stop to it from the source account. If they're resorting to earning GP like this then obviously their writing merits aren't upholding them in the community so I say, "Here, Here SM" Cancel those accounts and shut them down. Give the world of modern literature one less vapid retard to listen to.

Now, onward with the reviews that I'd gladly pay 2K and more for. *grins*

Ohh and before I go, a link for you all to make it super easy to grab these guys by the short and curlies: "Submit a Complaint"