Reviewing

Reviewing is a feature on Newgrounds which allows registered users to leave reviews on all submissions to all Portals. These reviews are viewable to all users and a list of the most recent ones left appears when the submission is displayed. The review system is a major part of the function of the Newgrounds Portals, with thousands of reviews being written each day. Since feedback is a major attraction to people to submit work to the site, reviewing is a way of supporting Newgrounds As well as typing comments on the submissions, reviewers can score the submissions in a 0-10 review score, the average of which forms a separate score from the main score by which submissions are judged. This average score is used to create two of the weekly awards on the Flash Portal- Review Crew Pick and Underdog of the Week. The authors have the chance to reply to their reviews and those replies are also viewable by all users. Various rules and controls exist governing the review system and the reviews are monitored by Review Moderators.

Reviewing Submissions -according to FAQ:

This is the Newgrounds FAQ on Reviews retrieved and edited September 2010:

Q: Do you have review guidelines?

A: All {registered} 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.

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 are 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.

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.

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.

Do not flood the review title or body. 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.

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.

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. 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, or have the whistle blown on it. 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 Flash and where you think it was stolen from.

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.

If you see other users violating these terms you can help report them by clicking the "Abusive" link under the review. Clicking "No" only states the review wasn't helpful and not a violation; be sure to use the "Abusive" link if the review needs to be brought to our attention.

Q: How do I respond to my reviews?

A: Users can respond to reviews from their account pages. The Flash Submissions and Audio Submissions links, located in their respective Portal Options sections, contain links to respond to reviews for each submission. We added this feature so artists can get in the last word. Let's face it, NG users can be pretty harsh when they write reviews.

A page of top scores

Review Scores

The Average Review Score is shown in grey at the top right of the Review box on the opening screen of a submission.

The Average Review Score is the current mean of all the review scores given to a submission. To give a review a score, click "write a review." After that, you will see stars that you can click. You can give the submission from no stars all the way up to ten stars. This score is used for two weekly Awards called Review Crew Pick and Underdog of the Week. Despite the general impression that "everyone" scores at either 0 or 10 in the worst and best movies, Review Mods report that reviews scores for the average movie are much more varied.

Review Quality

If a user posts a lot of low-quality reviews, they may be contacted by a review mod. Persisting with this can result in reviews being removed. Certain reviewers specialise in high quality reviews, which involve reviewing many aspects of the submission, commenting on lots of detail and giving detailed advice on how to improve a submission. Such people as Bezman and Fro are known for this, including recognition by the Review Request Club. Other users such as KWAS (2nd on the Top Reviewers List) were known for rushing their reviews and not deserving a high ranking spot, thus creating a rumor that KWAS was Perma-Banned.

Review Crew Pick

Main article: Review Crew Pick

This is one of the higher awards a submission can gain. As a weekly it has some notability, but will reflect the opinion of a much smaller group of people than the Weekly User's Choice and the opinion of only those who are most interested in the submission. Since 2010 the Review Crew Pick has no longer been handed out.

Underdog of the Week

Main article: Underdog of the Week

This is a secondary award handed out weekly for a submission that has the highest difference between score and review score. It showcases a movie that the general public dislikes, but the reviewing community enjoys.

Reviews as a Statistic

Number of Reviews is viewed by statistic enthusiasts/Stat Whores as one of the statistics to be proud of and a list has been maintained on the BBS since 2005 by Auz although for the patch of 2008-2009 users Dew, Metal-Therapy and Aci6 maintained it. A user BlackPlastic created a list showing the top reviewers for "audio" reviews here XwaynecoltX has had the record for the largest number of reviews for years with over 19 thousand to his name, though other top reviewers may generally give more detailed reviews.

Review Replies/Responses

Some people particularly value the number of reviews a reviewer has replies to, as these tend to suggest reviews with enough significance to warrant a reply from the Submitter. Scores exist on the BBS and elsewhere of the number and percentage of Replies to reviews. A number of factors influance the percentage of Replies that a Reviewer gets:

• The people who tend to review submissions in Judgment will tend to get a lot of replies, simply because the submitter is sitting waiting to get through Judgment with nothing to do but read their reviews.
• Saying something original helps
• Reviewing only submissions with few reviews
• Choosing people who tend to reply- as has been said here
• Asking questions about the submission, according to Haggard, in the Top Responses List

Whilst the two people with the largest number of reviews also have the largest number of responses, as of 2011, Rebecca Rose, who has over 200 reviews, consistantly maintains a remarkable 100% rate for Responses from her detailed reviews.

Review Clubs- The Review Request Club

• See Review Request Club for more details.

The RRC is the foremost club on the BBS dealing with reviews and has amongst its small group of members, some of the most notable reviewers on Newgrounds. Between them its members review many hundreds of submissions a year. There have been previous threads, including the long-running thread The Reviewers Club back in 2006.

Further Info on Reviewing

• The submission Expert's Guide to Newgrounds has a section advising on Reviewing from the author's experience.
• Xwaynecolt, the top reviewer, has a guide to reviewing.
• Malachy, a Review mod, wrote this News Post about the quality of NG reviews in general.