Positive rep will be given for good ideas here, folks

Our Forum Review process simply does not work here at AdminFusion, and we have no clue what the best way to fix this would be.

To summarize the current process for those who do not know...We have a team of voluntary reviewers who "commit" to making 2 reviews per week. In exchange, they receive: a Forum Reviewer badge, a colored username, moderating privileges to the Review Squad forum, links in a stickied thread in the review forum, and a link in our Affiliates box. There are three big problems that we are seeing with this process.

1) Reviewers are not consistently making their 2 reviews per week
2) Not very many people are interested in becoming a reviewer
3) Other members (who are not Reviewers) do not review forums

How do we solve these problems? Numbers 1 and 2 are related...There's basically more demand than supply...More people are requesting reviews every day, we don't have the reviewers to handle them, and the reviewers who we do have cannot fulfill their commitment. If you don't know what I mean by the number 3...well, before we had official reviewers, many of the members would participate in review threads by giving their own short review. Now, that almost never happens...It's as if people feel that they aren't allowed/entitled to give a review or there is no need to because it is the Reviewers' job.

There are 3 general solutions I have to the problem:

1) Eliminate the review team and have no official process

This, I think, would encourage all members to make their own short reviews. The downside to this is that nobody is guaranteed to get a review or at least not a great review.


2) Force people to review a forum(s) before they are able to have their own reviewed.

This is what SitePoint does...I've never really loved the idea of doing this, but it probably works. You've got to give to receive, right? I think the best way to do it would be to say that you must have reviewed 2 (or 3) forums within the last month to have your own reviewed. What constitutes a review and what does not would be up to the staff. The downside to doing this is that we would probably have to create a custom point/credit system to handle this, but that really wouldn't be too difficult.

3) Keep the current system but create better incentives for Reviewers

Ideally, this would entice more people to become Reviewers and it would encourage current Reviewers to make their reviews. The problem is that we're out of ideas for incentives. Our reviewers get recognition and multiple links (some PR5). I think that the only thing that's left is $$, and it just doesn't seem very smart to invest money in this kind of thing.

4) ?

Do you have any other ideas?

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4) Payment

25 cents per review, two a week, per reviewer. ?

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I went to Vegas, and all I got was this Blister. - true story!

Hey now, don't try to take credit for your own idea...that was part of idea #3 for me

That is a possibility, yes...it really wouldn't become too much of a financial burden on us, but would it be enough to encourage our Reviewers to make more reviews and also encourage more members to become Reviewers? I guess the only people who can answer this would be our actual members/Reviewers. We obviously wouldn't pay you $0.25 at a time, but instead would probably pay out monthly if you've reached a certain minimum payout.

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Well being a former reviewer and know first hand how hard it was to make it to the then 3 reviews each week, especially when I was the only one doing it for a while there. It just became to much. I didn't feel appreciated by the admins of the forums I reviewed. Sometimes I would get a thank you, other times I would get nothing. It was very frustrating to say the least. I know you guys appreciated it as you told me often, but as a volunteer taking my time to review someone else's site and for them to not be happy about it was a kick in the face and I felt that my time was just being wasted.

So my point is, I think the admins of the sites that are requesting a review need to give something in return. This is a two way street and then this way the reviewers don't feel as though their time was wasted on someone who could care less kwim? I think this will also turn off those people who come in every 3 months for another "official review" without contributing to the site.

So with that said I would review again in a heart beat if some things were changed. I loved doing it and took pride in doing it. Maybe cut it back to a minimum of 1 review a week once you get more reviewers added.

I am still iffy on paying anyone to do this. On one hand who is to say that one reviewer will be as thorough as another reviewer, then arguments will start on who is better and so and so deserves more money, etc. Then again money might be incentive enough to get more people reviewing. Maybe you could do a trial run with monthly payouts. Say $.25 a review with a minimum of 1 review a week, but if they do more than lets say 10 a month, give a bonus to them of whatever you think it fair, but they do need to be quality reviews not something that is just thrown together for the sake of getting money.

Anyway, those are my thoughts, you can take them or leave them..

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Thanks for your response Cori...some of the griefs you are expressing are the same ones that I have witnessed. Up to this point, it has been the Reviewers and AF who have been "doing all the work", so to speak, and the members requesting Reviews who are reaping all of the benefits. Granted, there are some members who review other forums when not asked or required, but there are far more who request a review, receive it, and never give anything back in return...and that is the core of the problem here. If we could create something where everybody is contributing, the problem would be solved...Not only that, but everybody would benefit much better through a better system because we would all receive better reviews.

When you were there, Cori, we required 3 reviews per week...that has since been bumped down to 2, and I would have liked to bump it down to 1, but we simply don't have enough people willing to review to do that.

I, personally, am leaning towards requiring people to review other forums before they have theirs reviewed...It's a very fair request if you ask me. We're all about helping out our members, giving free advice, etc., but the fact of the matter is that, just as you've pointed out, there are too many "freeloaders" roaming around who will request a review and never come back or never contribute any of their own reviews.

Anywho, still looking for suggestions.

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I think number 2 is a good idea but the only thing is that their review may not be that good, since they are only doing it to get access to get their forums reviewed..

Maybe for encouraging users to give reviews you could offer if they would give a review to X amount of forums they could get their forum reviewed again less than 3 months but the only problem would be more forums to review... so thats not that good

So i think go with the requiring members to review other forums before having theirs reviewed

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Will Stumpf - TalkNikon
Submit your sites -> Quality Link Directory

I agree about requiring to review before getting reviewed... that way, you know what it's like to review and will appreciate it more, maybe? I think it would have to follow the regular guidelines for reviewers, though - the separate categories and all. That way, someone couldn't just give a short little review in order to get their own reviewed.

Also, I'm not sure if its still like this, but I think when I had my forums first reviewed many, many months ago, I had replied with a question or two, but I didn't receive a reply in return answering my questions that I had about the review. I don't know if it's still like this now, but I'm pretty sure it is - I just think it would be nicer in general if the reviewer replied to any questions. Just a thought...

Personally, I don't think payment should be necessary...

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Justin S. / MyBB Wiki Lead / RCTgo.net

I really don't think the 2nd one is going to work to be honest. Some members may only post small reviews, in the hope it may be enough to get there's reviewed. Some people may just not bother with the reviews here at AF and go else where for a review.

How would you keep a track on how many reviews people have done, and how many they can get, will you create a hack or something, that increments/decreases a number depending on how many reviews they have done/have left? (Similar to the Trader Rating number, where it could be X|Y, X = Reviews done, Y = Reviews can request)

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As far as requiring people to give reviews before receiving them and the quality involved...We would provide general guidelines on what constitutes a good review. We would require that people make x reviews in the last 30 days or so, but just any review will not do. All reviews would be monitored by the staff and when we believe that a review is good, then that review will count towards that person's total...If we don't think that the review is good, then it won't count.

Again, if we were to do this, we would probably create a very simplistic feature where people can earn "review credits"...You get 1 credit per review and it expires in 30 days...in order to create a new thread in the Forum Review section, it would cost you 2 or 3 credits.

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While some users may not like option #2, I think it's the best way to go in this case. I don't think getting rid of the official review team is a good idea. And I don't think there are any more incentives you can offer reviewers besides payment, and I don't know that that should be an incentive.

You could keep track of their reviews by just requiring them to post the urls to the threads they reviewed in their own review thread. I think that would be easier than making a points system.

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