Suggestion Box

First of all, I do very much appreciate you taking the time to lay it all out like this. It's very clear to me now how "rating requires a review" items can be skewed higher. I’m starting to question the usefulness of that option at all, but that’s just for myself. I understand there are plenty of members that find much use in it.

After re-reading the link you sent (and it had been a long time since I read that), I can certainly understand why ratings are important...to some members -- members who promote their items and are here to get as many opinions as they can. I don't want to sound like I want the rating system gone. I understand this site offers a lot of methods of promotion and I know from experience that when one sets his or her mind to it, they can achieve a large number of reviews and ratings.

But some of us aren't here for that. We spend the time others spend promoting attempting to get the best, most helpful reviews we possibly can and we do spend a lot of time and energy finding groups and friends who want the same. We either know our audience or aren't even yet to the point of being confident enough in our writing to worry about comparing who's viewing versus who's rating. In such cases (or on such items, as I go a different way on different items), we're looking for a lot of one-on-one type help and we don't want to worry about the rating just yet. And we don't want the reviewers who help us to worry about the rating. In our case, because we've gone through so much trouble to seek out other members like ourselves, we know who's reading.

You’ve won me over on the importance of ratings when there are a lot of them, but they can be misleading on items where there are few ratings. And for those of us who seek out specific reviewers for the reviews that help us the most to improve, we already know that we’re going to get less feedback. We’re okay with that because we feel it is quality feedback, and though we may not want to worry about stars, we do want those reviewers to get credit for what they do.

Now I see what I should have asked, but in a way I’m glad I asked what I did, because the answer did enlighten me. I should have asked why the “comments only” option keeps an item off the public listings (though I’m asking that part for other members, as I don’t mind that detail for the kinds of items for which I’d use this setting), why it doesn’t count toward a member’s review stats (though I can guess that one has to do with skewing rating to reviewing stats or something similar, as I know that no matter how many individual chapters a member reviews of a book item, it only shows up as one review on our main stats and I do understand why that’s the way it is), why a “comment only” review can’t be made public (this one matters very much to me), and why a “comment only” review can’t be saved to an item the way “real” reviews are saved to it (i.e. why it comes through as an email, only. This one also matters very much to me.)

Again, I thank you for repeating yourself. Sometimes saying it in a different way loops in more people, as it has done me. The usefulness of ratings, item stats, and especially extended stats is not lost on me. I just have so many items on which I don’t need it, and it’s more important to me to keep “rating” out of a reviewer’s head while they’re sending comments. But I would like to encourage them to send those comments, by allowing those reviews to be made public and by having them know that the review will be saved to my item so that when I go into it, it’s convenient for me to open up that review and perfect my trade.

Thank you for listening, and for not getting frustrated with me. (To this point, anyway. )

~Chy