Review system is fouled up

[Lasseter]

This is my first time posting, so I hope I haven't overlooked anything and wound up posting in the wrong place or violating some other matter of board etiquette.

I was a bit disappointed over the weekend, after having taken the time to write a review of a book I bought here, to receive the message: "Your Review is no longer visible by others because it contains inappropriate language which violates our Terms of Use.   If you update your content, it will be reconsidered by our moderators within three business days. This message will be removed when your content is approved."

Now there was absolutely no inappropriate language or any other violation of the Terms of Use in that review.  I chatted with a couple of customer service representatives.  One gave me a means of editing the review, but that feature was inaccesible.  So much for updating the content.  The other representative told me that there were currently problems with reviews and that B&N was going to have them fixed in the coming weeks.  I hope so.

In any case, I don't know whether writing a review for some of the here-today-gone-today books one buys, reads, and soon forgets is particularly worth the effort anyway, although perhaps someone might have found it helpful.  It certainly wasn't worth the effort, if the review can't get posted, though.

[deesy58]

The review system uses a list of keywords to filter out "inappropriate" reviews.  One of those keywords is the word "price."  If you include this word, for any reason at all, in your review, it will be rejected. 

There are other keywords that will also cause a reader review to be rejected.  As of yet, unfortunately, B&N has not chosen to share a list of them with us, making the writing of a reader review somewhat chancy. 

There are at least two other threads in this forum that address this topic.  One of them is about "censorship," and I believe that another is about an opinion by a Mr. Adler.  You should be able to find both threads if you look for them.

[Ya_Ya]

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deesy58 wrote:

The review system uses a list of keywords to filter out "inappropriate" reviews.  One of those keywords is the word "price."  If you include this word, for any reason at all, in your review, it will be rejected. 

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Actually, we don't know that.  We've just speculated based on the [small sample of] evidence collected.  

[Nallia Distinguished Bibliophile]

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Ya_Ya wrote:

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deesy58 wrote:

The review system uses a list of keywords to filter out "inappropriate" reviews.  One of those keywords is the word "price."  If you include this word, for any reason at all, in your review, it will be rejected. 

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Actually, we don't know that.  We've just speculated based on the [small sample of] evidence collected.  

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The information came from Alex in a different thread. I linked to it in the B&N Censorship thread in this forum.

[deesy58]

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Ya_Ya wrote:

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deesy58 wrote:

The review system uses a list of keywords to filter out "inappropriate" reviews.  One of those keywords is the word "price."  If you include this word, for any reason at all, in your review, it will be rejected. 

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Actually, we don't know that.  We've just speculated based on the [small sample of] evidence collected.  

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Actually, I think we do.  I verified it by posting a single-sentence test "review" that included the word "price," and it was immediately rejected by the review system.  The evidence seems to be convincing.  One also might ask how else a computer program might be designed to discriminate between "acceptable" and "unacceptable" reader reviews.

Plus, of course, we have the post by Alex to confirm it.

[Ya_Ya]

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deesy58 wrote:

Actually, I think we do.  I verified it by posting a single-sentence test "review" that included the word "price," and it was immediately rejected by the review system. 

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Alex's post confirming it means we know it.

Your "test" doesn't confirm it.  Your review wasn't a review.  Its rejection could have been based on that.    Alex's post confirms it was the word "price", but without his post, we wouldn't know it we could just hypothesize it. 

[Lasseter]

Well, I did not use the word price anywhere in the review, but it seems beyond almost all doubt that this rejection process for "inappropriate language" is automated.  My review was instantly rejected on a saturday, and the review used most of the character limit.  It's highly unlikely that an actual human being read the review and rejected it in the about ten seconds it took for the thing to be rejected.

It's funny, Amazon seems to have a thriving review system--probably so thriving as to be a bit inane, I'll admit--and yet books that get tons of reviews over there, I have noticed, get few or none here.

Anyway, I think this is stupid, and I confess I'm even more vexed, because I put a bit of my time into writing what I hoped was an intelligent review.  Shame on B&N for this.  In any other place where users' opinions are valued, messages can be flagged for possible deletion by human beings who have actually read them.  Apparently that policy is not so appealing to Barnes and Noble.

[Doug_Pardee Distinguished Bibliophile]

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Lasseter wrote:

the review used most of the character limit.

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You probably would've been disappointed in the results, anyway. B&N's review system takes your entire review and jams it into a single paragraph. A paragraph that long pretty much falls into the "tl;dr" category.

[Lasseter]

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Doug_Pardee wrote:

 

You probably would've been disappointed in the results, anyway. B&N's review system takes your entire review and jams it into a single paragraph. A paragraph that long pretty much falls into the "tl;dr" category.

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Funny, I noticed that very problem with the rejected review on the page in my profile that contains the rejection notice, but it was not the case with the one other review I have posted (and which went up successfully).  The other review (which was considerably less than the character limit, by the way) had three paragraphs, and it shows up on the book's Web page as three paragraphs.

Perhaps my last review, since it came within, oh, maybe a couple or few dozen characters of the limit, would have been squished together.  That would be another thing to complain about, I suppose.  I don't get the impression the reviews are a high priority (or an intelligently managed priority anyway) to the overlords around here.

[Ya_Ya]

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Lasseter wrote:

Shame on B&N for this.  In any other place where users' opinions are valued, messages can be flagged for possible deletion by human beings who have actually read them.  Apparently that policy is not so appealing to Barnes and Noble.

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Yeah, B&N used to give users this option, but, um, never responded to the reports, leaving non-reviews visible for months, or forever.

I've quit buying anything at B&N because of the previous flawed review system; any system which allows "readers" to post reviews such as "Stupid Free Friday Choice; I wanted a Romance book" and leaves them up despite multiple reports doesn't deserve my money.