Ok here's how it is. The voting system on comments is fundamentally flawed.
I made a real review that conformed to the rules yet my review was deleted. Was it becasue of too many people hitting "abuse" and staff having to shuffle through thousands of these things and just mass-dump them into delete status? Or what?
Well Tell me what you think, be honest, I can take it. Just not bent over, you pervs. At least buy me dinner.
I quote from copy/paste:
" This message is to inform you that the following review, which you left for Manimal on 3/20/12 at 9:44:40 PM, has been deleted:
===============
Score: 1 / 10
Review: Well here's my review:
The plane sounds seemed a tad off.
Complete nonsensical storyline.
No character development. So there is no way we care about any of them. If his daughter was less derpy looking and more innocent looking and if the guy was leering at her, slobbering, then maybe yes, the defenseless girl would make us care. As it is, it just looks like a badly animated looney toons moment.
I give this half a star for effort.
On the positive side, Kelsey Grammer is awesome :)
===============
Please read the review guidelines to ensure that you're following the rules and to prevent any further action being taken against other reviews you make."
Oh fine. I checked out the review guidelines. Nowhere did I see any violation in my review. Do you see any?
From the review guidelines:
"Stay on the topic of the submission and do not make personal remarks or insults towards the author. This is a big offense. Telling artists "You suck!", "You should go kill yourself!", "You're gay!" etc., will get you banned and you may lose your account. Without our contributors Newgrounds wouldn't be what it is, so we take seriously any insults directed at them by reviewers. "
+ ok I think I did good with this one. No violation, I stayed on topic and didn't address the author.
"Do not post TONS and TONS of crappy reviews just to get high in the rankings. If we catch someone doing this we will delete all their reviews - wouldn't that be a pain in the ass? Take your time and write a sincere review for every movie you wish to critique. Make sure your review is relative to the submission. Reviews that are found to offer no benefit to the author may be deleted."
+ No problem there. I rarely post any reviews.
" Do not use the review space for the purpose of promoting things. Stick to reviewing the movies - we don't want to hear about how great your website is. Also, posting links to websites that reward you for sending hits is prohibited; we will delete your account for the first offense with no warning. Posting unrelated links is also prohibited and will result in a ban."
+ Again, no issue here. I never did nor ever intend to do such things.
"Do not flood the review space. Examples would be long strings of characters or words with no breaks or repeating words or phrases over and over. Do not submit images made from text and characters, as this will also get you banned."
+ El Nope-o! I wrote legibly and was clear in what I had to say.
" Do not use reviews to express your feelings that the entry should be BLAMMED. If you post "BLAM this" or something similar you will be banned. Use the review option to tell the author how they can improve their work."
+ I expressed that the flash should be improved and listed the flaws as I saw them. Nothing on wanting it blammed.
" Do not use the review field to address other user's reviews you didn't agree with. You are to be reviewing the submission, not other people's reviews."
+ No problem there. I addressed the flash only.
" If you believe an entry is stolen, do not comment about it in your review. If you are wrong, you may convince other users that the entry is stolen and you may cause a legitimate entry to receive an unfairly low score. Use the whistle option, if available, to flag the entry as stolen when you believe that is the case. If there is no whistle option available (the entry is no longer under judgment) contact Wade with as many details as you can about the stolen submission and where you think it was stolen from."
+ Obviously I never had a beef with that.
and finally,
"If you think a submission doesn't belong on the front page of the site or shouldn't be featured in special sections of the site, keep it to yourself. The submissions on the front page and in special sections of the site are put there by our staff, not by the author. Keep your focus on how the person who submitted might improve their work. "
+ Nope, I saw that it fit fine in the section it is in.
So where exactly does my review fit in as a violation of the Review Guidelines. Plus there is no recourse to contest a deleted review. To me this allows abuse to happen. Abuse of the system. For example, if say a few people HATED a guy on here and wanted him gone. Say these people recruit their friends to help them get thier review deleted by spamming the abuse button. So its many peoples button mashing vs your review getting deleted. Thats it, no chance. Well not a huge problem, right? Wrong! Take it a step further. Say these misfits decide to target said guy EVERY TIME or nearly so on most of his reviews. Whats to stop them from completely getting him banned merely on the fact that his reviews get mostly deleted? The rule is right here at the top of the Review Guidelines:
"All users are given the privilege to write constructive reviews for submissions. However we do have guidelines that must be followed. If you violate any of our guidelines your account may be temporarily or permanently banned from reviewing and the offending review(s) removed. Multiple offenses may result in all of your reviews being removed, or your account being terminated. Creating multiple accounts to evade bans and commit multiple offenses may result in your ISP or the authorities being contacted."
This is why I care. I dont want random immature idiots in control of my account like that. My only other option is to NEVER write a review. THAT is my only recourse.
So in all, even when I do my best to abide by the rules, I'm still fucked.
Your thoughts?
(I delete idiotic comments btw, THAT I can have a right to. Only sincere replies with real thought behind them are welcome.)
CIAO,
MORDOZ