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Review Issue (Sort of a Repost, Mod Needed)

A topic by JonSpencerReviews created Mar 28, 2020 Views: 796 Replies: 15

Viewing posts 1 to 4

JonSpencerReviews4 years ago (1 edit)

EDIT - Now that I'm more awake, I posted a far better summary of the issue and what I need done. Please refer to the second post.

Hey folks,

So I previously posted about this "mystery" review I've received where it says I have 6, impacted my star ratings, but when I check the actual "ratings" page, it says I only have 5 ratings. Thought that was weird, maybe even a bug. Did some digging, found the guy who gave me the review and was going to leave it alone EXCEPT I learned something that has me a little irritated and confused.

This guy has had his review privileges revoked for giving 1-star reviews to games that are FREE and tied to COVID giveaways. I can prove it if mods need, I don't really want to shame this guy publicly. That's really messed up for one, but two, it's actively hurting my best performing game because I haven't received a ton of ratings from folks. Can I get some help with this and sorry for posting twice, I did not realize this was going to be a whole ordeal...

JonSpencerReviews4 years ago

I would still like help with this please. This was posted last night when I was more tired so I just want to offer some more clarification/information so Mods can help me better.

As stated above, I noticed that one of my games got a "review" but it wouldn't show when I actually click on the review portion of the game itself. I will provide images below so you can see exactly what I'm talking about:

This is weird enough on its own but I wasn't really all that worried about it. I figured this was just the internal servers being slow, some minor bug, or whatever. However, I went to check the game's page to see if the "review" was reflected there. Turns out it WAS and I'm not very happy about that for a few reasons. First let me show you the evidence that it is posted there:

As you can see, this also says 6 reviews instead of the 5 that I can see as a creator when actually checking reviews. Again, not a problem except I know that dropping to a 4 star on this title is IMPOSSIBLE unless I received an exactly 1-star review. This is what lead me to track down the review and see what was up. When somebody hates your game that much you kind of want the feedback, especially when all but one of your reviews up to that point has been 5-star.

So I did exactly that. Since I knew roughly when the "review" came in, I searched the "Global" feed to find it. It was exactly where I thought it was and I grabbed a screenshot of said "review" and the user who posted it. As stated above, I don't want to put this guy on blast so I will NOT provide the photo here unless the mods request it. I think this guy is pretty rude for what he's doing but I'm not here to be malicious, I just want his "review" removed from my game as he was NOT supped to be able to even leave one in the first place.

Let me explain. Doing some basic investigative work, I found that he was going around giving 1-star reviews and complaining on other game pages, notably FREE games related to COVID giveaways for games that were not claimable. This prompted moderator response where his review privileges were revoked along with commenting privileges (to my understanding, on the second one). This was approximately 9 days ago, you can also see his posting activity ceases there as well reflecting that this went in place.

Moderator involved was Leafo, response was verbatim this:

"Stop spamming on people’s pages, and, even worse, stop rating them 1 star because they don’t want to permanently give you the game for free. Your posting privileges have been disabled along with all of your ratings."

Despite this, he seems to still be able to leave ratings that are invisible to the creator but visible to the public. Why? He should not have been able to leave a review on my game in the first place, not withstanding the actual harm it's done to my title. There is sufficient proof that this user is leaving bad-faith reviews that are, as far as I'm concerned fraudulent. The system should not allow this when the user is a known issue who keeps repeating the same offense. I as a creator should not be punished as a result of one bad actor (who shouldn't have even been able to act) either.

Hopefully this provides more information and speeds up the help I can get.

Thank you for your time,

-JS

No Time To PlayModerator4 years ago(+1)

Sorry for the delayed response. I've let an admin know.

JonSpencerReviews4 years ago

Thank you very much for taking the time and updating me.

JonSpencerReviews4 years ago

Hate to trouble you again but it's been over 48 hours with no update or contact of any kind. Can I get an ETA on this or if there's anything else I need to do on my end?

No Time To PlayModerator4 years ago(+1)

I don't have an update, sorry.

JonSpencerReviews4 years ago

Thanks for replying regardless. Please keep me updated in regards to any new developments.

JonSpencerReviews4 years ago

It's been almost a full week now and no word. I don't appreciate this just nebulously being handed off to admins with no communication. Can I be put in contact with admins in some way as to resolve this more quickly?

No Time To PlayModerator4 years ago(+1)

Yes, you could contact support, which is the proper channel for this anyway.

JonSpencerReviews4 years ago

Awesome, thank you. I didn't know how to do that.

JonSpencerReviews4 years ago

Hey, me again. Really sorry to keep bothering you but it has been another week and I just want this resolved. I've put in a ticket like you suggested (number 44743) and nothing. I've pinged the ticket since it has been over a week a few days ago, and nothing. I just want some basic communication and resolution regarding my issue. I'm not trying to be rude but I'm getting pretty irritated because I've outlined the issue thoroughly, have offered additional information and clarifications, but am getting nothing in return. This is something that is a problem on your end, not mine, so I can't really do much about it. If a user, who has been banned from reviews and comments, can still review (and not only that, publicly DAMAGE a person's project), then this should be of some concern to your staff. It means your solution to people doing what this guy did doesn't work. I want to not only get this sorted for myself but to help folks who may also be dealing with this issue.

Please let me know if there is anything I can do to get this moving. Leafo was the admin involved with the original case, maybe mention this to him? I just don't know what to do and want something to happen. I'm tired of being ignored (intentionally or not). Thank you once again for your time and patience with my pestering.

-Jon

No Time To PlayModerator4 years ago(+1)

I pinged Leaf again.

JonSpencerReviews4 years ago

Thank you, and again, really sorry to keep bothering with this. I appreciate the patients and assistance.

JonSpencerReviews4 years ago

It's been over a month now, I've contacted support in every conceivable way multiple times now. What is the deal here? Why am I not getting any response? I've tried being as patient as possible and as nice as possible about this as I can but at this point I'm ready to stop using this website altogether. It simply should not be this difficult to get support. I'd be a lot more understanding about the wait if there were ANY communication whatsoever but there isn't. You know what the issue is, have acknowledged it even, and so it seems pretty simple to me to just fix it. I really cannot understand why I'm out here in the wind like this after, what, 35 days? That's absurd!

For the record I have:

Made a post here, outlining everything (which was not a small task, this took actual work due to the issue) and have offered even more information and assistance on my end to resolve this issue.
After being told to contact support, I did so... TWICE, pinging the first ticket as well. No answer!
I even tweeted as the alternative contact method, as your support page indicates, said tweet even got a decent amount of attention from my following asking for a response and still, you guessed it, NOTHING!
Beyond that, I've waited patiently and asked for updates. This is completely reasonable, but I'm actively being punished for this since response and action don't seem to come unless I make a big fuss. Why? How does that help anyone? I'm sure you are irritated with me constantly pinging you about this.

Look, I'm not trying to make anyone's life difficult here and I don't enjoy doing this sort of thing but I'm at the end of my rope on this. There's enough garbage going on that I shouldn't have to put up with this. It's an issue created on Itch.io's end, an issue that NEEDS addressing since the action your staff takes to deal with this issue only punishes creators, not the abusers. I've provided the proof, gotten the acknowledgement, so...??? Though I'd be pretty irate after all this, even a negative response would be better than the deafening silence I'm getting now.

Just help me, seriously, I'm practically begging... I feel like I'm screaming into an uncaring void though and depending on what happens next will determine if I ever come back to this place. I'm not going to put in all this time and effort on a platform when said platform doesn't seem to care about its users. I'm not the only guy who has been trying to get support (though I am sure their issues are different), and seeing that only reaffirms this frustration.

Sorry for rambling a bit, but at this point I've given up on trying to even provide a careful response.

leafoAdmin4 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

Hello,

Sorry for not getting to your issue sooner. I’ve refreshed the cached value on your page to represent the removed rating. The bug that originally caused the issue should have been fixed a while back.

Keep in mind the number of ratings you have is very low, so the confidence interval is low. Generally what we recommend to people who are unhappy over a single review is to reach out to their players and ask them to leaving a rating. This can help show a more accurate rating on your page by having a larger selection of ratings to average from. Our popularity sorting algorithms skew projects that have a lower number of rating s to neutral rating despite what their average is.

Hope that helps.

Thanks

JonSpencerReviews4 years ago

Thank you very much for the response and for resolving this issue. It's greatly appreciated!

As for ratings, I really wasn't worried about one bad rating, I was more irritated that this user was able to leave one when he wasn't supposed to. I'm not worried about driving metrics or anything in that regard but I suppose the advice is nice. Either way, I'm very glad this is resolved now, thank you once again.

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