Reviewing is a feature of 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 them 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. 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 seperate score from the main score by which submissions are judged. This average score is used to create one of the weekly awards on the Flash Portal- Review Crew Pick. 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 Review Score is an average 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 it no stars all the way up to ten stars. This score is used for the weekly Award called Review Crew Pick.
Review Crew Pick
see Review Crew Pick for more detail.
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.
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. 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
Some people particularly value reviews with replies, as these tend to reflect on reviews with enough significance to warrent a reply from the Submittor. Scores exist on the BBS and elsewhere of the number and percentage of Replies to reviews.
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.