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[wallworm]

Why would you write a review of software you've never tried? I got a review on the WW store last week from someone who reviewed one of the plugins with a low rank. The reason was that the individual felt the marketing material was not good.

I am just curious about the mentality. I certainly understand reviewing things with positive light when I enjoy something, or giving a poor review to something I've paid for and I feel dicked around by the company... but what is the impetus for anyone to take time to give something a poor review when the user has never touched it.

For all the time I've spent as a web developer and all the time I've spent online supporting and promoting 3ds Max / Wall Worm... I still just don't get the Internet.

Share your thoughts.

[Joris Ceoen]

I remember that there was a time Youtube had a star rating. Whenever a popular channel was in the run, it would get 'star-bombed' by a lot of jealous channels that didn't even watch 3 seconds of the video, one of the reasons it never lasted. Now we have a thumbs up or down which from a few indivduals of that mentality won't hurt the video in any way.

The thing is that I feel a lot of people just have fun doing this... with games, with movies, with products and so on. As long as they can find a reason to critique some of them will give a 0 or abysmal review.

My sister works at Thomas Cook and has heard stories of ratings on vacations that are just mind blowing. People giving a 0/5 because there was as example 'no airconditioning' in a climate that didn't require it and where it specifically was said on the site that there was none. Things like these are endless.

What's the point? Having the power to boycott out of frustration or boredom. I feel that a lot of the younger generation of my age have so much now that they don't even know what to do, so they resign to practices like these that they can freely do on the internet to spend their time. It's also often a way to get attention as many people think that's actually the only way to possibly get it through the internet, whereas the opposite is often true.

It's around every corner and impossible to stop. Unless you can approve reviews, this is a major problem. I'm happy Steam Reviews actually has a policy for this that prevents some of the most ridicilous stuff to be told as a way to prevent people from having fun of it. Then you have people saying it's unfair as the person in charge could possibly only allow good reviews. I disagree. Sure there have been cases with developers seriously exgaggerating with this (Garry's Incident: Day One...) but in general I'm surprised that so many people are honest with a system like that, only allowing constructive criticism.

I had to learn this through Aperture Tag with some people really saying incredibly stupid things, some that were outright wrong. However many also criticised in a good way that allowed us to fix some of the things, so I would say that energy spent into such silly reviews is not worth it. At least that's what I've grown to accept.