Getting More Review Votes into the System

When I take the time to post a review on RIA, it's nice to know that people read it. RateItAll tries to provide a couple of different ways that readers of a review can react to reviews on the site. There's the commenting feature, which I think has been a great addition. There's the compliments feature, which is a little more buried, but which is also a nice way to tell folks that you like what they have to say. And then finally, there is the voting feature, which allows people to vote on if a review is helpful, funny, or if they agree with it.

This last feature has been the source of much entertainment and drama over the years. There are some people who can tell you how many votes they get on a daily, or even hourly basis. There are others who will get enraged if they get a disagree vote. There are some that like to drop funny votes at unexpected times. And finally, there are even those that have undertaken elaborate and sophisticated schemes to get, or give, a few more extra votes than they were entitled to.

This fascination with votes might strike outsiders as odd. Why should we care what others think of our reviews?

I know I care.

I think it has to do with the fact that when you take a time to write a review, it's nice to know that people out there are reading it. Even more than if people find my review helpful or agree with it, I care that they read it. I'll take a "disagree" vote over no vote any day of the week.

So with this philosophy in mind, we are going to try out a couple of different things this week to see if we can get some more votes into the system.

The first change you'll notice later this week is a design change that allows for one click voting. Currently, you have to click a link that says "vote," and then choose your selection. That means it can take up to four clicks to react to a review. This will be changing soon.

The second change has to do with expanding the universe of people who can vote on a review. More on this to follow.

Here are RIA HQ, we are curious as to whether a couple of simple changes can bring more votes into the system. There is only one way to find out.

Getting More Votes into the System

One of the things we are looking at right now is how to get more votes (helpful / funny / agree) into the system. Currently, voting on a review is a multiple click process. One click to open the voting box, and then more depending on how you are voting. We are going to try and make this simpler.

The second piece of this is looking at how we might expand the universe of people able to vote on the helpfulness of a review.

As a fairly prolific RIA reviewers, I know I enjoy getting votes and comments on my reviews. Making this feature easier and available to more people should help me (and everyone else) get more votes.