Reviews Error Page

Upon posting a review, I was brought to an error page. I tried to post it again to the same result. When heading back to the main page afterwards, I found that the review posted twice. When I tried to access one of them to delete it, I was brought to the same error page.

And, upon posting this, the exact same thing happened, except I didn't try and post it again.

The stars ratings system isn't shwoing up for me using the latest version of chrome. I've tried to "rate" something and guessed where the indicators would be but nothing all I get is an error that you can't rate something less than 1.

I'm having the same problem too.

Trying and Failing too. We need a fix guys.

Same here as well. Also is anyone else not able to "edit a already completed review" to add links to my other reviews? It refuses to edit and save the changes. That's a problem as well.

Sorry guys, not sure why this is busted but I'll file a bug for it. Not a fun error, apologies! Paging @mrpibb

@rorie: Thanks Rorie for your help!

Well, some of the glitches for the REVIEWS features seems to be fixed. I was able to post a couple of reviews but for some reason, it's refusing to let me see them on the REVIEW TAB on my Profile Page.

I also had a question, about the Reviews themselves as this is the first time I'm posting them. Do they actually get listed on the Reviews Page because they don't seem to be showing up there either. To be fair, most of the reviews that I posted aren't new nor are they comics but rather movies, the majority of which are a few years old except for my most recent one, for Justice League War which was released just last month. So does the Latest Reviews Page only list Comics and TV Shows only? Just curious.

@snowymountain: only staff reviews show on the review page, user reviews only show up on the page it was created for.

Not sure if this is new but two buttons on this page don't work, the create a review button goes to a blank page and the link has phoenix cms in it and the create a template button is not clickable.

@pikahyper: Ah. That explains it. Thanks for letting me know.

Just as a suggestion, maybe the mods can include regular users reviews as an option instead of just the staff reviews, I think some people might like having the option to see the opinions of non-staff members on certain things as well.

And is there any word on the fix for my Reviews Tab viewing problem?

@snowymountain: that's not a mod decision it was a staff one, I really wish user reviews got the attention they used to, it is disappointing, they are a big part of this site and they deserve to be seen as much as staff reviews.

@pikahyper: That's horribly disappointing to find that out. Is there any kind of poll or suggestion box around that we can use to vote to change that? I know that I've been dropping notes and comments to get things altered or changed here at Comic Vine and so far, I haven't heard a single thing about any of my suggestions or comments. Not even a "No, that's not possible".

@snowymountain: well there is the suggestion thread in editing & tools but honestly I'm sure it'll only change if enough users speak up about it.

Well, there is the community showcase on the front page, but I'm not sure who's responsible for updating that. Let me see if there's a process for getting that updated and maybe we can start using it again.

@renchamp: Can you link me to a user review of yours that you can't edit?

@snowymountain: Can you link me to a review that you wrote that isn't on your reviews page? This may just be an error specifically with your account's data.

@rorie: Community showcase hasn't been updated in like six months and spotlighting stuff is a staff only ability as far as I can tell. Even if the showcase is used though it would only be used on a small percentage of what is available on the site and probably only cover more popular and current stuff plus that would require a staff member take a lot of time from working to manually find reviews either by randomly looking at issues or user pages plus all the time they would spend reading all those reviews just to find ones to spotlight. Part of the fun of reviews is finding comics you'd never know to read, or find out more about what your friends like or for nostalgia, the community aspect of this site is very important to everyone and for bringing in traffic and it is mind-boggling that the thousands of user reviews that exist are not utilized to their full potential right along with staff reviews, the filtering system is already on the reviews page, you'd just have to add a second drop down with staff reviews set as the default when you view the page and then you can change it to user reviews and you just see user reviews, very simple and staff reviews still get priority.

I can look into something like this. I just always worry about adding even simple features because something else always seems to break. We're going to be concentrating on bug fixes for the next couple of weeks but when we have some time to look into features, remind me and I can see what we can do.

@rorie: I do understand but a site will never get better without taking some risks, we already deal with a lot of crashes and glitches already so everybody might as well get something out of them :P

@snowymountain: They used to have a user reviews area. It was intentionally removed from the site.

Well said, but remember, it once was that way - exactly as you describe it, with staff set as default but you could change it to user by drop down. Even that was considered too prominent for user reviews.

@etragedy: yep I remember. As of late I've been suggesting certain old features be brought back and this is one of them and I will continue to advocate these things even if I don't use them just because the community wants them or needs them (even if they don't realize it yet).

@pikahyper:
Thank you for that. It is very much appreciated.
But it's not that they don't realize it, it is that they don't care. I'm surprised user reviews haven't been removed from the site entirely. Every change to reviews/review system over the past few years has been to minimize their visibility and/or skew toward only positive. Reviews also are the last thing to get fixed when there is a site problem (for example the editing bug which I bumped today that has been persistent since January).

@etragedy: It's not that they don't care, far from it, everything has to be prioritized and there are only so many people in the engineering team and only so many hours in a day and CV is not the only site they have to work on, they work on like five or six sites so there is only so much they can do and right now before features they primarily need to work on things that are either the highest priority or that will make the entire site more stable for everyone and a lot of these changes are not things that most people would notice, for example the search engine, it is being tweaked on a regular basis, I talk to the guy who is working on it and he isn't in the office 9-5 he's there way more then that every day. The team is working very hard and while it can be difficult we all have to be patient.

@pikahyper: I believe that's true about bug fixes. I do not believe that's true about the marginalizing of user reviews. Remember there was once a time when user reviews and staff reviews had equal weight on the site and both appeared on the front page of the site.

@etragedy: well even with things like that everything has to be weighed, especially on the front page, every inch has value and analytics and other data that can be collected shows what visitors click on the most, what they look at first, how long they spend looking at things, and all of this influences what ends up on a site, now while something that was previously on the site may have been important to you or I it might not have been important to enough people to warrant its inclusion after the relaunch. None of us know what goes on behind the scenes but it is very possible that the things that are currently on the site are the things that they determined were the most important to the site or even more likely, at the time when they had to built this brand new platform and site from scratch in a limited time frame they had to make hard choices on what they could implement in the time they were given, there could be very practical reason why something may not be on this site any more, you just have to trust that no matter what it is there has to be a reason for it. The majority of the staff like comics just like the rest of us, they like the same kinds of things we do, they like seeing and using the same features and aspects of the site so why would they deliberately get rid of anything that makes the site better? Things will continue to improve, they want this site to get bigger and better just like the community wants it to.

@pikahyper: Because the staff maintains relationships with the companies (at the very least they get swag in the form of free comics if not more) incentivizing reviews that are overwhelmingly positive - you almost never see a below average mark given on a staff review I don't think I've ever seen a 1 star review. (For example, look at the front review page right now. Number of 1 star reviews = 0, 2 stars = 1, 3 stars = 2, 4 stars = 18, and 5 stars = 19!) With users that is not the case. Years ago when I worked in a bookstore our philosophy was to tell the customers the truth about books, good or bad, even if that meant dissuading someone from buying something, with the theory that they could trust our recommendations, and that they would buy more in the long run. But that's not the case when reviewers are incentivized to push stuff (it's the same reason pharmaceutical reps push free swag on doctors) if only to keep the gravy train rolling. But some DC marketing guy doesn't know which reviewers are which, they only know they saw a negative review for the latest Batman book on Comicvine, so let's not send as much promo stuff to them anymore, let's send it to this other site that always gives us high marks. While user reviews may have been taken off the front page for issues of 'real estate', that doesn't account for why they were continually hidden deeper and deeper. First separating users from staff, then moving them under a menu bar, then removing it default to staff reviews, then removing the user review feed entirely, then removing the top reviewers list, changing the star rating system so that half stars were removed thus skewing everything more positive (with no 2 1/2, the average 3 out of five is now above average), and finally an admonishment to 'not say anything dumb' and remember that 'creators are people' when you go to make a review. It's pretty clear why they would deliberately get rid of something that might make the site better for some.

@etragedy: eh that's going into journalistic integrity and paranoia and I don't see the staff here selling out like that, the relationship between a publisher and a news/review site is a two way relationship that benefits both parties, if that relationship gets out of balance or either side gets angry at the other retaliation is not beneficial to either side, incentivizing is also not beneficial in the long run because once it is discovered (nothing stays a secret forever) it destroys the reputation of the one being incentivized and that is not a healthy practice to built a business model on when you are running a small-medium site that lives or dies on your reputation.

Have you ever thought that like most comic fans maybe the staff tend to lean more towards reading books they like hence fewer low rated reviews? or going back to my previous post reviewing comics that are more popular within the community? They do only have so much time to read, I've never worked for a big corporation but being paid to read comics doesn't sound like a practical position, maybe they have to read the comics on their lunch breaks or at home and then they can review them on the clock. It could be that maybe the site just needs more journalists on staff with other tastes in comics or more time to read. What I'm getting at is that there could be a lot of things going on behind the scenes that are way less sinister then people would assume.

It's not a secret. We know it goes on - Sara Lima when she was here even mentioned in one of the videos that they get free comics. It may not be expressly stated, or even a conscious choice, but it's pretty clear that they aren't spending their hard earned money on every issue, which the readers are, and I'd be far more likely to give a negative review to something I felt ripped-off for buying.

As to the journalistic integrity and paranoia comment, bear in mind that it doesn't have to be some 'grand conspiracy' or 'selling out' in fact it's highly likely that it isn't for issues related to this one only needs to look at the recent flaps over RT TV and VOA radio.

All the more reason user reviews should be more prominent. And if one only reviews stuff they already like, it undermines the whole point of reviews in the first place.

Again, not a secret, it's been mentioned both in the podcast and in videos that reading comp comics is (or was) done at work - but where they read them isn't at issue, whether they have to pay for them is. Regardless of whether there is intentional bias or not the end result is the same, it's a disservice to the fans, although it may benefit the site in other ways.

@etragedy: I've worked in comic book stores for 2/3rds of my life, publishers and distributors have given us free swag for as long as I can remember, it means nothing, do they expect things in return? sometimes, do they do any thing if we don't do like they expect? nope. Sure it might not be completely the same with a news/review site but it is similar, I really don't think they are being influenced by anything they are given, back when they had those sponsored news posts they clearly marked them as such so would they show that and hide it for reviews? I could be wrong and so could you, you have to at least be open to the possibility that things could be perfectly innocent.

As for this bit, it is a very good point but at the same time there is a downside to it, giving the user reviews more exposure also means staff and mods have to spend way more time reviewing all of these user reviews to at a minimum make sure none of them are for comics with nudity on the covers or are for comics that are inappropriate to be seen on the front page of the site. Also a way to allow/disallow what reviews show on the front page would have to be built and that is just one more piece in the big puzzle that would need to be made to bring that aspect of the site back so more engineer time needed and less time for other things, everything is connected.

We should probably stop hijacking the thread though so I will take this as my leave and I will be heading to bed, good day to you.