I don't understand DGCR reviews/ratings

[DavidSauls]

I'd love to see this site remaining the premier course review site for years to come. All one has to do is track the infrequency of new reviews (even with new courses popping up all over the place) to see something needs to be done to get that to happen. It's not a complaint, merely an observation.

I think it will remain the premier source of quality course reviews -- and detailed course information. At least for the foreseeable future.

I'm not sure what could be done to both maintain that quality, and increase the number of reviews, in a world where phones have overtaken desktops. Given that choice, I'd rather have the quality.

Perhaps some public service messages, on the home page or in mass PMs, imploring people to support this institution by doing more reviews?

 

[Three Putt]

I think it will remain the premier source of quality course reviews -- and detailed course information. At least for the foreseeable future.

I'm not sure what could be done to both maintain that quality, and increase the number of reviews, in a world where phones have overtaken desktops. Given that choice, I'd rather have the quality.

Perhaps some public service messages, on the home page or in mass PMs, imploring people to support this institution by doing more reviews?

I'll do more reviews. Right after, you know...pandemic and all. :|

 

[WD09]

Could simply removing the thumbs down option work? I think most people are smart enough to realize the lack of thumbs up means something needs to be added to their reviews. We don't have to thumb up a review we do not find useful, but specifically downing really doesn't do anything except discourage newer reviewers.

For me, the usefulness of the thumbs down comes when I am reading reviews to choose what course to play in an area I am visiting. If there are two reviews of a course, one giving the course 4 discs and one giving it 2 discs, I can tell which review is my best guide if one has 10 thumbs up and zero down and the other has 5 up and 5 down. If all the info I get is that one review has 10 up votes and the other has 5 up votes, that might just mean not as many people read that review. Also, if there are 5 reviews and I don't want to read them all, it's very handy to skip the ones with the highest percentage of down votes.

I don't think of giving thumbs up or down as giving feedback to the reviewer so much as telling other readers if the review is helpful or not. As a reader seeking good course info, that green and red bar at the top of each review has saved me a lot of time over the years!

 

[ray1970]

When I was looking at reviews for my home course here is what my take is on the thumbs up/down.

I saw some lengthy, well written reviews with quite a few thumbs up. Reading those reviews most of them really didn't do an accurate representation of the course overall but since they wrote lengthy reviews with lots of details then apparently people gave that review the thumbs up.

I also read other reviews that really hit the nail on the head describing the course and it's attributes but they were short and rather concise. These reviews had been given thumbs down.

I guess I don't see the point of rating the quality of the review itself as it has little bearing on the quality of the course being reviewed.

 

[DiscGolfCraig]

It's a slippery slope, but comments on reviews might be a better option. A way to respond directly there why we like/don't like certain aspects of a review, or just disagree with the rating overall. Maybe only TRs could comment on reviews, but making it public would be helpful instead of PMs.

Maybe we eliminate votes altogether….but increase the word count requirements for reviews. This allows reviewers to be completely honest in reviews without the 'scorn' of the DGCR community. If RedneckMachismo wants to give Renny and many other courses 0s and 1s because of trees, he can. Just as long as his reviews are longer. If people want to give their local courses 5s, go ahead. You'll just have to say more than 'it's close to my house' as a positive.

 

[BogeyNoMore]

would a word character minimum support this idea

Been mentioned at least a few times before. It would eliminate uselessly short, no content reviews.

Guess Tim doesn't want to impose a such a limitation. His site. He gets to make the rules. I guess another issues becomes, picking a number.


"What's the minimum number of words that can be used to create a helpful review?

100?
200?
300?

I'd imagine any useful review has to be longer than a tweet.

 

[Three Putt]

Guess Tim doesn't want to impose a such a limitation.

Tim started a course review forum. He likes the course reviews.

He set up a message board to go along with it because it seemed like the thing to do. He doesn't really seem to like this message board, which is why I've been lurking around here for the last dozen years. I read it so he doesn't have to.

Short story long, Tim is never going to see that comment. He's probably not seen any other discussions of it. You can't really guess that he does or doesn't want to do anything when he's not responding to the comments, it just means he's not reading the thread.

Tim generally watches the site suggestions, bugs and help forum. If you want to seriously discuss overhauling course reviews and engaging Tim in the conversation, you have to have a thread there. Otherwise you are depending on me to tell Tim he should read this thread and...I'm not going to. :|

 

[Jah Plastifari]

I guess I don't see the point of rating the quality of the review itself as it has little bearing on the quality of the course being reviewed.

It would be impossible to have TR's without having some way to rate the quality of the review.

 

[ru4por]

Useful is in the eye of the reader. I want to say, that the prevailing attitude toward what necessitates what's a good review, is likely one of the deterrents to new reviewers. Brevity does not mean the review has no worth. I am going to suggest that those who write shorter reviews, probably find short reviews more valuable. A short review could have a valuable piece of information, left out by those writing chapters. That small piece of info, combined with all the reviews, is what paints the picture I use.

 

[DiscGolfCraig]

It would be impossible to have TR's without having some way to rate the quality of the review.

How does every other site on the internet (Google, Trip Advisor, etc) have trusted reviewers? Isn't it simply based on a certain number of reviews/contributions? I don't see any place there people can down vote a review for a restaurant, hotel, etc.

 

[wolfhaley]

I feel like it's just fine the way it is. BUT, I can get on board with the idea of dropping the thumbs down. Click on a button if you found the review helpful, if you didn't find it helpful, don't do anything. I'd be more than fine with that.

If a review is truely terrible in whatever way, you can still always report it.

I've been writing reviews for a long time now. Ten years or so, and if you wanna see some crap reviews go and look at my first, I don't know, 150 of them :doh: I took the thumbs down as motivation to write better reviews because mine weren't very helpful. Which looking back is certainly the case. I'm not losing sleep over it either way.

All I know is it's damn near February, and I've yet to see a thread talking about using ribbons in the snow. Real issues lol.

 

[JuanA]

After a while, I developed my own TR list based on reviews in my local area. If I play the same course and align with their review, then I'm more confident in other reviews they've written.

Reviews may seem "wordy" to some readers who don't care about amenities being listed, but there are other players who do care about those things. A good reviewer should take all player's interests into account, and describe the course as a complete experience.

 

[Mando]

Mando, why are you here?

You complain about not enough reviews, you've added 27, yourself.
You complain about the weight of TR reviews over noobs, you want more reviews, they have to start somewhere.
You obviously have an axe to grind with TimG, why do to persist on his site, then?
You have such great ideas on how to run a site, step up, and make you own.

People use this site for different things. Some just to find courses, some to get an assist as to which courses to play (as in looking at the reviews), some to help others in those first two causes (as adding courses and writing reviews), some come to exchange information in the forums and some come to just blather away in the forums. There are a few that use all those tools.

I agree with Bogey that I would prefer less, but quality reviews. If I want homer and 2 line reviews, I can go to UDisc for that. The explosion of the sport is going to test this site, UDisc (especially with the PDGA pulling its support) and the PDGAs own site/app. If you don't like what you see, or how you perceive to have been treated, move on....

Hey newbie, I'm here because there's a foot of snow on the ground and there is a lock-out in major league baseball. You should treat your DGCR elders with more respect. Haha.

 

[NDABRUSH]

Hey newbie, I'm here because there's a foot of snow on the ground and there is a lock-out in major league baseball. You should treat your DGCR elders with more respect. Haha.

Yeah newbie, and don't make us angry. You won't like us when we're angry.

 

[HyooMac]

Been mentioned at least a few times before. It would eliminate uselessly short, no content reviews.

Guess Tim doesn't want to impose a such a limitation. His site. He gets to make the rules. I guess another issues becomes, picking a number.


"What's the minimum number of words that can be used to create a helpful review?

100?
200?
300?

I'd imagine any useful review has to be longer than a tweet.

The max CHARACTER count on uDisc is 450. Editing my DGCR reviews down to fit is a great exercise in rethinking what's "most important." With that upper limit, they end up being a squeeze to fit roughly 100 words.

 

[Jah Plastifari]

How does every other site on the internet (Google, Trip Advisor, etc) have trusted reviewers? Isn't it simply based on a certain number of reviews/contributions? I don't see any place there people can down vote a review for a restaurant, hotel, etc.

I don't use any other site with trusted reviewers so I can't say for certain. My assumption is that there is some type of quality judgement made by someone. Quantity alone isn't enough to trust someones judgement. If everyone who writes x number of reviews is "trusted" without any regard to content, the value of having TR status becomes next to meaningless.

The combo of quantity and quality, such as what is in place on DGCR, is the most logical way to judge if someone can be trusted. The thumbs feature could be replaced by a committee or a Review Czar to judge quality. Opening it up to all users is much simpler.

 

[elmexdela]

I don't use any other site with trusted reviewers so I can't say for certain. My assumption is that there is some type of quality judgement made by someone. Quantity alone isn't enough to trust someones judgement. If everyone who writes x number of reviews is "trusted" without any regard to content, the value of having TR status becomes next to meaningless.

The combo of quantity and quality, such as what is in place on DGCR, is the most logical way to judge if someone can be trusted. The thumbs feature could be replaced by a committee or a Review Czar to judge quality. Opening it up to all users is much simpler.

then the "judge" would be scrutinized and "biased"

aint no perfect answer it seems

 

[enragedmullet]

Boy, this is starting to seem like a complicated problem with no clear cut solution. Maybe we should all start our own dg course review sites. Dibs on www.dgcrimright.com!

 

[DeanMoriarty]

How come nobody talks about that other DG review site? That's actually where I got my start until I noticed there was maybe 10 active members left.

 

[BogeyNoMore]

then the "judge" would be scrutinized and "biased"