Review comments

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Users who have signed up and are logged in have the option of commenting on and rating reviews on the site. This exists primarily to encourage people to give reviewers some feedback on their efforts, and neatly organise it in one place. In addition, it serves as a mechanism to order reviews on the page with those that users have found most useful at the top, to give readers an idea of which are most likely to be helpful. One of the most important principles is that the rating given with a comment should be based on the quality of the review, not how closely their opinion of a particular anime conforms with yours.

How to comment

Screeny of page, post etc.

Note	Line breaks didn't work previously, long comments from a while ago might be a little hard to read.

Comment guidelines

Comments and votes should be based on the quality of the review, not your agreement or disagreement with the writer's opinion on the anime. Some useful questions to ask:

• As a reader, are you given enough information to associate with the reviewer and how he or she feels about the anime?

• Was the review interesting to read, or boring?

• Did the review convince you to try watching the anime, or to avoid it? Or was there too little information to help you decide?

• Are the reviewer's praises or criticisms of the anime reasonable? Is the reviewer being fair, or arguing from unjustified assumptions?

• Did the reviewer watch the entire series, or enough to establish a legitimate perspective on the anime?

• Does the review express himself or herself clearly?

Note	Some commenters believe it's appropriate to judge reviews on grammar and spelling and grasp of the English language, while others believe these issues are aside from the point as long as the reviewer can make a coherent statement.

Based on questions like these, you should assign a vote and comment on why you chose the vote you did. The available votes are:

• Excellent (10) - A vote of 10 should be reserved for the best of the best -- reviews where you'd say, as one top reviewer put it, "I actually feel guilty for giving a 10 to a different review before this." Use this vote when you feel like saying "wow!" after reading the review. The difference between 8 and 10 is very subjective so use your own good sense. When voting 10, try to express what aspect of the review made you feel inclined to giving it a 10 rather than an 8.

• Good (8) - This is the vote that reviewers should normally be aiming for, and which they should receive if you find their reviews helpful, informative, enjoyable to read, funny, moving, etc. Even when voting 8, it's nice to make a few comments on parts you didn't like, as well as the parts you found especially good, so that the reviewer can keep these in mind when writing more reviews in the future.

• Above average (6) - Vote 6 if the review does the job well, but you still don't find anything particularly good about it. Perhaps it just follows a formula that works, without being fresh and original. The difference between 6 and 8 can often be somewhat subjective, but as always, it's nice to leave constructive comments if possible.

• Meets minimum requirements (5) - Vote 5 if the review has no glaring errors and objectively satisfies the requirements for what a review should do, but otherwise has no good qualities. When voting 5, it is polite to leave comments on how you think the review could be improved. However, the reviewer should not expect you to increase your vote automatically just because improvements are made.

• Needs some revision (3) - Use this vote if the review has some merit, but also serious problems that need to be addressed before the review belongs on AniDB. A vote of 3 should always be accompanied by a list of exactly what aspects you believe need to be corrected in order to meet the minimum requirements.

• Needs complete revision (1) - Reserve this vote for so-called reviews that do not serve the purpose of a review whatsoever. Pure plot synopsis, a few sentences about how the anime being reviewed is the best/worst thing in the world, random banging on the keyboard, plagiarism of another reviewer's text, and completely off-topic writing are some examples but not the only ones. In addition, a vote of 1 may be appropriate if the person commenting believes that, aside from extensive problems that would justify a vote of 3, the review has little or no redeeming qualities, such that a total rewrite would be necessary in order to provide a useful review.

Reacting to comments

Most comments and their associated vote should be taken as just that - a comment. If someone praises your review, then you can feel proud, and move on with your life. If someone thinks it's bad, then as long as they pointed out what they thought was bad about your review, you might want to have a look at figuring out a better way to get your point across. These examples are obviously only for good comments, that is, comments that actually have a message and a point.

Sometimes users leave comments that have nothing with the actual review to do, say if they completely disagreed with the review, and they voted a low score just because of that, and probably didn't write a very informative comment either; if this is the case, you should ask one of the active mods (Der Idiot and rar) to delete the bad comments; this will not be done frivolously however. Unless the bad commenter has spammed a lot of reviews with 1s if he disagreed and possible 10s if he agreed, the bad commenter's comment will likely be inspected, and if found bad, the bad commenter will for starters just receive a message asking him to rethink his comment; if he does, hopefully all will be good and well, if he doesn't, the comment is likely to be deleted.