Doesn't Anyone Submit Reviews Anymore?

[Vintage VFer]

Originally Posted by Joni O

I just need to vent. People - VideoFitness began as a site to review workout videos. What happened? Does anyone realize that there is a separate, very well organized Reviews forum? If you're going to post a review in General Discussion, please just take 2 minutes to copy and paste it into the Reviews forum. It would be soooo helpful

Except for one more recent one, I stopped writing official reviews years ago. I got sick of the whining that I was "mean," etc. Nobody noticed that I wrote nice reviews, too.

I was told that instructors were crying themselves to sleep due to my comments. I even had a vendor email me that my negative reviews were hurting their sales.

I'll post comments here on the Forum, but that's it.

[Lisa C]

Originally Posted by dutchgirl

I've been guilty of posting a quick review in the General Discussion forum and not posting it in the Review forum. Wanting to correct this I copied my review of TXT from last week wanting to add it to the Reviews forum. I entered in the basic information in the first page of the Review submission form and got a message saying I'll get an email in 1-2 days letting me know I can post my review. So unless you're adding a review of something previously reviewed by someone else, you have to wait. You really can't then copy and paste from one forum to the other.

Is there any way to make it more expedient?

Sabine,

I am the one who accepts new workouts for the system.

Unfortunately about 6 months ago, the system stopped emailing me when someone submits a request. Now I have to remember to go and check, which I am obviously not very good at!

Sometimes Beth (Toaster) will email me and remind me. Anyone can email me at lisavf@wowway.com to let me know if they submit a workout that needs to be added.

I haven't had a chance to investigate why it is not working anymore. I am still emailed when people submit reviews, so it is very strange.

Also, one thing in the past that has made it hard for me to approve requests is when people have mistakes. Common mistakes are to mis-spell instructor names. If you type slowly, the system will find existing instructors and you can select their name instead of typing. Also, if there are multiple instructors, the names need to be separated by a comma.

The system is very dated and should be improved. But I honestly don't have much free time and/or motivation to do so since so few people are writing reviews. It is maybe a chicken/egg situation because if it was easier to use, more people might use it. But maybe not, so I'm reluctant to invest any time in even thinking about updating the system when I do the work as a volunteer.

[Lisa C]

Originally Posted by TinierTina

I did submit a review of a video to this forum a few days ago ...
and I would not be doing many... so maybe it landed in the wrong place?

I thought the place was in this forum!

This is where the Reviews section is:

http://www.videofitness.com/reviewsdb

You can also get to it through the "Quick Links" in the purple bar up top right before the "Log Out" link. It is the last link on the bottom.

The reviews is what started VF I think before there was even really a forum.

[Joni O]

Originally Posted by Vintage VFer

Except for one more recent one, I stopped writing official reviews years ago. I got sick of the whining that I was "mean," etc. Nobody noticed that I wrote nice reviews, too.

I was told that instructors were crying themselves to sleep due to my comments. I even had a vendor email me that my negative reviews were hurting their sales.

I'll post comments here on the Forum, but that's it.

Oh,Alta. I don't blame you! If you can't take the heat, don't put out a video is what my feeling is. Hurting sales - what happened to the first amendment!

[Lisa C]

Originally Posted by PeakFitness

They don't have to be long, complex reviews. 'I hate it because it's too high impact" is just as good a review.

This is very true. It becomes even more useful if multiple people submit short reviews and you can get an overall feel of the consensus on the workout.

[Paula N]

Originally Posted by Vintage VFer

I got sick of the whining that I was "mean," etc. Nobody noticed that I wrote nice reviews, too.

I really appreciate honest reviews, including the negative points. There is no such thing as a perfect workout, and if a review is honest about the drawbacks of a particular workout, at least I can decide if I can work around them. If a review comments on bad music, for example, or bad cuing, I can decide for myself how important that particular criteria is for me. I do appreciate the honesty, though. Nothing worse than a review that raves endlessly about how good a workout is but doesn't put it in any context.

[Vee]

As streaming becomes more mainstream in home fitness, I am less reliant on reviews. I have almost stopped buying DVDs. Streaming sites have such a large library of content, I find it more convenient to read comments within the site, under each workout left by others who use the site.

[dutchgirl]

My most recent GD forum reviews are now posted in Reviews section! Thanks for sending the email, Lisa, that I was good to go. I know all the moderators volunteer their time to make VF the great place that it is. Thanks for all you do in the Reviews section!

[toaster]

As some who submits A LOT of reviews to VF (I think I have the 2nd highest total, LOL ), the process really isn't that hard! Lisa C does a GREAT job of keeping things organized, but this isn't her day job, and so yes, sometimes it takes a few days once a new review is submitted. (But there is a HUGE advantage, as the new review is already categorized, making it easy to find later!)

If you are reviewing something that is already listed, the process is even easier, as you just search for it (by title, instructor, or other means) and then hit "Review this Workout"!

It's nice that people post threads to GD, but as already mentioned, these can be VERY hard to find later. First of all, when you do a search for the video title, you will get every thread about that DVD, so it's very cumbersome to sort through to get to the reviews. (Even if you include "review" in your search, you might still be out of luck, as it could just be a question saying "any reviews on this?") Plus, some titles are especially difficult to search for if they contain numbers, words with less than three letters, etc. The VF "tag search" feature provides a good workaround for this, but MANY users still are not bothering to tag their threads (or don't use common threads), rendering this feature much less useful than it could be.

So, the Reviews section is an AWESOME feature that would be EVEN BETTER if people used it more!

[sherry7899]

I just wanted to thank Lisa for all her work on the review section, and everyone who takes the time to write reviews. I find them all useful, whether they are long and detailed, or a few sentences.

Sherry