Two things.
First.
Up until now it has not been clear to me that "Your review, your rating" was editorial policy. The headline to the Punting Wiki Guide to Writing Reviews has this caution written right at the top.
Based on experience over the past few days I take it that "your review, your rating" is editorial policy and will now only change ratings with the agreement of the writer.
Fair enough, you didn't know, now you do. To be fair to you, I don't think it's written anywhere easily accessibly/obvious however I'm sure admin has stated his opinion on review ratings in the past (hence why I was confident the policy was "your review, your rating").
I can also understand how you got confused given that you thought the review rating guide was solely opinion. However just because the whole essay isn't policy doesn't mean it doesn't include things that are actually policy. I'm sure you can also understand how it would've been your difficult to predict your issue (especially since no else seems to have had a problem). However, clearly the guide could do with clarification that when it says "The overall rule is “your review, your rating.”" - that actually isn't just an opinion like the rest of the guide, it is actually an official rule.
I utterly disagree. The overall rating is very important, the most important part of the review because it is recorded in the aggregate. I wrote this a couple of weeks ago to another fucker on the board looking for recommendations in the London market.
If you want to view it as the most important part of the review that's fine but it's still useless in isolation. There are MANY important aspects to a review, hence people need to read the bloody review - it's that simple. If they don't read it then they only have themselves to blame.
I totally understand that when a girl has many reviews, people aren't going to read all the reviews and perhaps what should be a "noteworthy review" can easily get lost in the girl's list of reviews/go unread. If that were to happen a few times then it would distort the overall aggregate and give a misleading impression. However the fact remains, if you're just going off "impressions"/headline numbers and not reading the reviews or at least the most recent ones (plus all the negatives and neutrals) then it's still your own fault.
What you're arguing for is basically never ending debates on what a review should be rated. Regardless of whatever rules, policies or guidelines that are made it's always going to be subjective and up for debate. By leaving the rating totally up to reviewer, it eliminates those issues. One can still have a debate about the rating if you want - people are free to comment. If you really want to help then you should try to educate the OP by explaining the importance of ratings and how you think they should be done. I personally am not arsed and just stick to giving my opinion on what people should include.
Perhaps taking your argument to the very extreme, one could make a case for deliberately rating reviews more harshly than you'd normally choose (e.g. as a neutral or negative) just in order to ensure people are more likely to read it in full. I know that's not what you're saying but I think what you've said could be used to justify that.
Anyway, I personally have only ever had issues with potentially "misleading" review aggregates a couple of times in the fairly distant past (basically extremely rarely) and each time I rightly blamed myself for being lazy and now I've learnt my lesson. I still don't always read all reviews (when the girl has a lot, especially old ones) but I make sure to read plenty. Now, even if I have a bad punt, reading more reviews wouldn't have "saved" me - and I have checked that's the case.
NigelF when I write a positive review I am recommending that SP to other punters, not something I do flippantly. Personally my mindset is would I recommend this SP to a mate if they asked me about visiting her. I appreciate a similar level of diligence in the recommendations of others here. If you really don’t think the rating is that important then we will have to agree to disagree and I will weigh your reviews accordingly.
I don't particularly view my positives as "recommendations". I usually make it clear why I rate my reviews how I have in the review. Often my expectations play a big part in my rating. Things like price don't because I like to leave it up to the reader. However, if a punter only wants the services I describe in my review and is happy with both her photos and my description of her appearance (plus my commentary on how accurate her photos are) as well as her price and location, then in probably 95% of cases my positives can be taken as recommendations but only within those fairly narrow parameters.
The reason I said that is to illustrate just a small slice of the myriad views and opinions people have on ratings (even though our opinions probably aren't too different). It's just not something worth debating endlessly.
I do put quite a lot of thought into my ratings but there are a good number of occasions where it simply doesn't/can't convey what I want it to. People must read my review to get all the relevant information.
Anyway, please do have a look at my reviews and feel absolutely free to comment on my ratings or indeed any part of the reviews. I would be interested to hear your opinions (as I am with others too). Also feel free to be as blunt as you want (but do also try to explain yourself too).
