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A Review Proposal: Minimum Length

AnonymousJim

Scanning the room from the back

It's understandable that Founder might not want to be as hands-on with the reviews forever, and crowdsourcing their approval is, theoretically, a solution for that.

But it's been noticeable that the quality of some of the "approved" reviews lately has gone down. The approvers don't seem to be doing as good of a job as many of us would hope.

Some of the reviews I've seen lately both appear to be written by guys who aren't interested in actually giving any details and might qualify under Twitter's character limit for a single tweet.

Short reviews with little content aren't what most are looking for when it comes to this site. People want details: Is the club upscale, rundown or somewhere in-between and why? Is it a big place or a small place? Are the women generally well put-together and classy or skankish, smelly and just there to get the job done? Is the staff friendly or do the bouncers look like guys you want to stay at least five feet away from at all times for your own safety? What are the club-stated prices for above-board services? How good is the service for what you're paying? Do they have specials? Do you sense extras or OTC might be available? (This is where you probably want to start leaving details like negotiated prices and specific services out, but can at least elude to possibilities for the more adventurous of us mongers.) And so on.

There are some steps that could make the process better: Only allowing VIP or verified members to approve/deny reviews is one. Maybe a "what makes a good review (and what doesn't)" tutorial page. I'll let other powers-that-be think about what could be entailed by such decisions, good and bad.

But I think there's one thing that could help that I see zero bad in: A minimum character count for each review.

Short reviews just don't work. I've never read a really short review I've considered really good.

When the advice section in the text box says "give details" and "be wordy," it's for a reason. I think that's important. Reviews aren't meant to be Tweet-like and something you put together quickly on your phone. They're meant to be *written*, as in given some thought, probably typed out on a real keyboard, and cohesive.

I think all club reviews should be at least 2,000 characters, spaces included. That's equivalent of a little over a half a page in Word. I even thought 3,000 characters, or about a full page, might be a good recommendation, but I'm willing to budge on the number for scenarios where something keeps you from getting service altogether. I do think there should be a minimum, though.

It was said in the last thread that "some folks just aren't good writers." That's fine, but then they shouldn't be *writing* reviews. There's always the option to pay for a subscription to view reviews if contributing good content isn't your thing.

I feel like such a limit would be easy to implement in terms of coding (it doesn't let you submit the review unless it gets to the mark) and would allow us to much more quickly suss out reviews that are just poorly worded attempts at getting VIP for a month. Sure, some might just add a lot of spaces or periods to get to the limit, or duplicate sentences, or whatever. But you know what? Then those reviews are that much more obvious to get the thumbs down.

Quality matters, guys. Not everything in life should come easy, and quality usually doesn't. I think a number of us want to make sure the quality of what we see on the site stays high so the site itself stays helpful. Quality means thought, work and detail. I think a minimum length would help ensure we keep the quality high. My two cents.