Comments by Harderlap (page 5)

Don’t drop the Sig.

One thing that is often glossed over in these reject/publish discussions is that publishing of a review has a real measured value to the reviewer; a months VIP membership, currently valued at $8 or so. Although not a fortune, one would expect that, in exchange for a month’s VIP membership, the review have substantive value and meet some minimum guidelines. Some approver’s standards for publishing are higher than others, but I don’t think anyone has set standards that exceed those recommended by Founder. The member making the publish/reject recommendation gets no compensation, and that is probably right.

Ishmael - Good points. And yes, that big fat middle part of the bell curve is what makes the peer review process work.

Faggot, errr Harderlap here. The review was published, so three out of five reviewers thought it was OK. That is fine and that is how the review process works. It does not need to be unanimous, and is probably best if it isn’t. I am OK with that. I didn’t think there was much useful information in the review other than “I went to the strip club and saw three dancers.” When I read a review for a club, I want to know how much fun I am going to get for the money I spend. That can be conveyed in many different ways, but it does require one to talk about the costs, and some information, even in general terms on how much fun can be had for those dollars. That review failed to convey that information, so I rejected it, with information on how to improve the review to make it publishable. Others felt it was or would be useful to them, so they recommended it be published. That is OK too. I follow the guidelines for reviews in making my recommendations. I find those guidelines make my reviews useful. The big question I ask myself when reading a review and recommending it or rejecting it is “Does this review contain enough useful information to help me make an informed decision as to whether or not to go to the club?” I didn’t think the one in question did. When I reject a review I usually try to provide information for improving the review. If I am in doubt as to whether or not a review should be published, I just skip it. Reviewers of reviews don’t need to make recommendations on every review. Although I try to follow the guidelines for reviews, I do not do so religiously and if a review is good in meeting most of the guideline points, but not all, I usually recommend it for review. We have discussed this a lot here lately. The discussion does not seem to converge. I think that the bottom line is that the vast majority of reviews that get published follow the guidelines to some degree or another and are useful. Some get published that shouldn’t and some get published that are of marginal utility. But, overall the system seems to work. Peer review won’t work if reviewers stop rejecting bad reviews because they are attacked publicly for doing so. It isn’t worth the hassle for them.

I rejected it for being incoherent. I don’t think it got published, I haven’t seen it on the daily reviews.

Yes, a San Diego strip club experience isn’t much as far as strip club experiences go. Pacer’s for Topless and Cheetah’s for nude is about as good as it gets.

Yeah, I have done that too. I hope other reviewers have a better attention span. It would be nice to be able to double check what button you pushed, or recall a wrong entry.

How does one access the edit button?

TFP - You are right, hence my use of the qualifier “often”. I am talking about a review that mentions a dancer in nearly every sentence. I don’t mind reviews that enthusiastically mention a single dancer if it can be justified, but I start to think it is a shill when the review talks about a dancer incessantly, not only to the exclusion of other dancers, but also to obscuring the other aspects of the club. Electronman - good summary and glad we could help you understand the thinking. I think that some reviewers improperly use shill review/club ad to reject reviews that they don’t like, but don’t know why, and some seem to use shill/ad reject to reject reviews by reviewers they don’t like. I think the three out of five scoring has helped weed out club ads and shills. If your review gets rejected for this reason, but is not a shill or ad, it should be pretty easy to identify the problem, fix it, and resubmit. Electronman’s summary should help in that aspect.

Whenever I read a review that is overly positive and contains no negatives, alarm bells go off in my head. Few, if any cubs I have been to have had no negatives. Also, if the review is written lastly from the second person imperative of, “You should go here”, rather than the first person declarative, “I went here”, that is almost always a red flag for a shill review or ad. Shill reviews often compare the clubs to others in the area, claiming that this club is the best. Shill reviews are usually short and don’t hit all of the review guidelines. Club ads usually contain no information on dancers offering high mileage or extras. Shill reviews use superlatives that one does not find in normal conversation or writing, but often in advertising. A review that focuses on a single dancer, heaping praise on her to the exclusion of other dancers, is often a shill for that dancer, either by her, one of her friends, or her significant other who thinks it will be a way to bring in more money. Some club ads or shill reviews are blatant and easy to spot. I usually reject these by checking the shill review/club ad box. If I suspect that one is a club ad, I usually reject it for not enough details and state what I think is missing. If I am uncertain that it is a club ad, but several indicators point to it being one, I usually don’t approve or reject it, but let others, who I hope are more familiar with the club take action. It is usually easy to spot an ad or shill review for a club or dancer you are familiar with. These often occur when a club changes management or owners, when a club is going downhill and losing business, or a club is losing business because a new club opened. New dancers sometimes post shill reviews or recruit shill reviewers. So do ROBs. If you spot an ad that mentions a dancer positively that you have had dances with that were mediocre or poor, that is often a shill ad. If you spot a review that sounds too good to be true, it probably is, and is probably a shill review or club ad. I hope this helps.

How hard is it to find rhymes for the cover, drink, and dance costs? The owner is a hero, the cover is zero The drinks aren’t free, but only cost three The dances are twenty, but for that you get plenty Or something like that?

By getting a review approved and published, you are receiving a monthly subscription to TUSCL which is worth $7.95. For that value, which is roughly 45 minutes of your time at minimum wage, it is reasonable to assume that the writer of the review will cover all, or nearly all of the guidelines. Think of what value you are receiving for your review and take a few extra minutes, which you are essentially getting paid for, to make the review comply with the guidelines. This is a reasonable expectation.

When you click through from teh club listing to review a club you get a link to review guidelines, which I have cut and pasted below. If you follow these guidelines, you will likely have no problem getting your review approved, although there are always the outlier reviewers. Note the third sub bullet under the fourth bullet: “*A third paragraph should be about value. Don't say drinks, dances, cover charge, etc. were cheap or expensive. Tell us the actual costs!“ So, including the costs is in the review guidelines and is expected. Guidelines follow: “Your review will be sent to our community members for approval, so it is suggested that you read our review guidelines. *Content and length are the two most important factors to consider. *Be wordy. Fill the review box. One or two sentence reviews aren't helpful to anyone. *Give a LOT of details in your review (club layout, atmosphere, dance quality, etc.). *Your review should be at least 4 solid paragraphs, with 4-7 sentences each. *One paragraph should describe the club vibe. Mention cleanliness, thug factor, music level, dj annoyance factor, lighting, etc. *Another paragraph should describe the dancers and their vampiness. How many were there? What ethicities did you see? Did they seem happy to see you? *A third paragraph should be about value. Don't say drinks, dances, cover charge, etc. were cheap or expensive. Tell us the actual costs! *At least one paragraph should summarize with three or four sentences describing why you would or would not return to the club. *Be honest. You can go into detail of the private dances. Just be careful with names if it may get your ATF in trouble. *Spelling, grammar, and punctuation count. Do not use ALL CAPITAL LETTERS! When composing a review, spell check it. Pro Tip 1: Think about what you would like to tell your good buddy about a strip club he's never been to. Pro Tip 2: Think about the business traveler that is sitting in his hotel room with only time enough to hit one club in this new town. Let him know why or why not he should visit a particular club. We have a zero tolerance policy for plagiarism. If we find out you submit a review as your own from another site, your account will be deleted.” Keep the reviews coming, it is what makes this site great!

Nofuglies - Yes, but there are a lot of club listings that read like this, with much information missing: EthnicityUnknown Lap Dance Cost20,40,100 Avg. Drink Cost Cover Day: Cover Night: AlcoholFoodPool TablesDJTopless Lap DancesNude Lap DancesPrivate Lap Dance RoomsCouple FriendlyVIP RoomFeature Dancers Nothing about the cover charge, and the dance prices are not clear as to what you are paying for with the different amounts. If one goes back two reviews, the dance price structure is explained, but it is slightly different than what is in the club listing. And, if one wants to know the cover charge, which is not in the club listing, one has to go back 14 reviews, or a year and a half. Perhaps it has changed in the meantime. I am not saying that pricing is the most important thing in the review, but it helps to include it, particularly if everyone else reviewing the club is ignoring the cover charge. I was also trying to explain to the original poster, ArtCollege, why some think including prices is important and why those people were apparently critical of his reviews. Just because it is of lesser importance does mean it can be excluded with impunity.

Different readers expect different things in the reviews. A good writer (reviewer) writes to his audience and include the things that the reader expects to see, whether or not the writer himself thinks that they are important. The nice thing about a peer reviewed web site is that there is a wide variety of styles and viewpoints. We should all respect this. Nofuglies - There are Google maps and directions given in the club listing, so that base is covered. :^)=

When I read a review, I expect it to be self contained. If I have to go back to previous reviews, then that decreases the value of the review, particularly if other recent reviewers have adapted the same philosophy, of “if you want to know how much it costs, look at previous reviews.” It is obvious that approach may be good for you, but if everyone took that approach, then nobody would post anything about the cost. When I read a review, I want to know if I am going to have a good time at a club and if so, how much it is going to cost me. So, to me, when I look at a review for approval, I want to see the prices of cover, drinks, and dances covered, some description of the dancers, and some description of the dance. If all of these are there, I approve the review. If any of those items are missing, but the other items are covered thoroughly, I may approve the review. And, if I am approving the review, I shouldn’t have to go back and look at the last 10 reviews to see if the missing items are covered. It takes too long and by the time I get back to the review, there is a good chance that others have either approved or rejected the review and it is no longer there for my input. Make it easy for the reviewers to approve your reviews. How hard is it to start the review with “I went in the afternoon, so there was no cover, but if it had been after 500PM, cover would have been $8. I had a domestic bottle of beer and it cost $5.75.” And to include in the review, “I had a lap dance on the floor for $10 and then we adjourned to the VIP room for $25 a dance sessions.” It may be repetitious to you, as you go there all the time, but for someone new to the club that kind of information helps a lot, particularly if you don’t have to go digging back through other reviews to find out. Plus, including details in your reviews, like prices, gives the reader some confidence that you have actually been in the club. For what it is worth, I think your reviews are OK, but they would be much better if you included prices, which in addition to giving the reader more information, would result in them getting approved easier. Keep reviewing. That is what makes the site great.

Actually it didn’t look fine 15 years ago and was pretty much the same as now. It is a dump and a poor strip club experience. I am not sure why the numbers come out so high, but it is pretty far down the list as far as strip clubs in NM go. TD’S North is only 45 minutes down the road and is a far better time.

If they scan licenses or IDs it is easy to flag assholes in the database and have them pop up as don’t allow in when they show up. I have been told that sister clubs can share this database, so if you are banned from one club, you can be banned from others that have the same owners. As to reasons for being banned, most likely are blatantly illegal activities such as selling drugs, disorderly behavior, stripper’s significant others that can’t handle her job, and disputing credit card charges.

It has always taken a long time for them to get published, but eventually they get published. If there are ones published more recently than the one you submitted go ahead and resubmit, perhaps accompanying it with a PM to Founder.

I notice that the review was pulled when I checked for it. I see several problems here. 1. The review was bad and should not have been published. Apparently it has been pulled, so that problem is apparently resolved. 2. The reviewers did not do due diligence in recommending it be published. For example, it is clear from what iceyloco says above that he did not read the review. He refers to the reviewer in terms of masculine pronouns, “his experience” and “He’s from Scotland”, yet the review was obviously written by a female, that is a dancer looking for a place to dance. Iceyloco is the only approver that has contributed to this thread, so I can’t tell if the others have read it or not, but I suspect not. 3. While I appreciate the hands off approach Founder has to the site in general and the reviews in particular, it seems to me that some form of simple oversight is acceptable, and even necessary, particularly when people are recommending reviews to be published that they obviously haven’t even read. I wonder if Iceyloco has recommended any other reviews to be published that he hasn’t read?

To be fair, any Cincinnati area strip club will be a disappointment.

That is easy - they approved it because they didn’t read it. I am not sure why people do that, other than to feel that they are contributing, but in reality, they just make getting information about a club harder to get. With a few exceptions, I think that the members publish/reject works OK, reviews get published pretty quickly, but there are still duds, like the one you cite that get through.

San Diego law with the three foot rule pretty prevents tipping at the stage without strictly prohibiting it, hence the only way for dancers to get a tip is to walk around requesting it. When I was last there several years ago some of the dancers would give you a little extra touching or short dance for the tip.

I suspect that it was just coincidence that no one tipped your first set and lots did the second and that this seemed to you. To correlate with your attitude. I am not sure what drives patrons to tip at the stage, but I suspect that attitude is pretty far down the list. Looks, dance ability, any extra attention at the stage, and feeling a duty to tip, all are probably more important than attitude, but one does like a dancer to be appreciative of the stage tips if no bubbly.

Nicespice - Absurd would be a square dance at a strip club.