Reviewing standards

[Andy Ven]

[ROBCamra]

Possibly going off at a slight tangent, one thing I'm becoming increasingly uncomfortable with is the age of some of the reviews being submitted. The review of the Bear & Staff in Strand www.pubsgalore.co.uk/pubs/53792/ that appeared yesterday is a perfect example.

The review was from March 2007 and yet appears above one from Feb 2010 (albeit composed in Dec 2009). As these 'recent' reviews are the ones that appear on RPOTD I don't think they are doing the image of PuG any favours. I would be the first to agree that where a pub has no review these old reviews are better than none. However, if a pub already has a recent review I would question the relevance of such old copy. For that reason I never transferred many of my reviews over from BITE, reasoning that things are likely to have changed with the passing months.

For the record, if this appears to be targeted specifically at JAQPTIO/rpadam then I apologise. That was not my intention. However, it's a topic we all need to think about.

I've just reviewed The Castle in Manchester where an OK review from March 2010 has been superseded by a hopelessly out of date review from March 2007. It's been closed for quite a while since then, changed hands, been refurbished and reopened.

Sorry guys I don't see the point unless it's a virgin pub when March 2007 is better than nothing.

Personally I think the 2007 review should be deleted as it's pointless.

Feel free to disagree

[Conrad]

I suppose I agree with your ROB, but taking a slightly broader view. If a reviewer is reviewing a lot of virgin pubs and also enjoys and wants to transfer the rest of their reviews to have a complete collection here I would rather have all and know they are enjoying the site than have some and degrade their investment or worst of all have none, particularly as they are not being disingenuous with the dates clearly on the review.

With regards to the Castle Hotel in Manchester I have now corrected the review time (and thus you may wish to amend your review ROB), if you find others that are irritatingly appearing out of order I can similarly correct these. Please do only request it on ones that have specific issues as it requires me to fiddle directly with the database which is both time consuming and raises the possibilities of me doing something silly and of damaging other records.

[ROBCamra]

I have now corrected the review time (and thus you may wish to amend your review ROB

And I've amended mine as well. Cheers

[rpadam]

As the 'guilty party' here, I have generally only added old reviews where they refer to 'virgin' pubs (of which I must have contributed more than most), provide a bit of context (i.e. in the case of the Castle, before the refurb which had been mentioned by another reviewer) or show that little has changed over time (as in the Bear & Staff). All such reviews have been considered before submission and each clearly indicates the date to give the reader a perfectly clear indication of what was being said (and when). Numerous other reviews have been left on the shelf (for various reasons, including some being pretty rubbish in hindsight), and I certainly wouldn't wish to waste my time (and other people's) if I thought that adding a review (even if old) was "pointless."

Reviews, such as those for the Castle and Bear & Staff, will be re-dated as/when I get the chance.

[Conrad]

Of course, I agree that it would be best if these were in date order but (as far as I know) I have no facility for changing the date without overloading the administrators with individual requests, and my personal opinion is that this is only an issue (if at all) when a pub appears as the random pub on the front page.

I sent you a PM about this that the forum is suggesting to me you read.

Let me know if you need me to resend it.

[Soup Dragon]

have i missed something!

[Conrad]

No, it is just the standard PM sent out to the new members who joined around the time you did Soup, offering a solution to the aged review issue. You did get it, but decided (quite rightly) that it wasn't worth the hassle at that point.

[RogerB]

I've still got about 9 pages (of my initial 50ish pages ) left to get through but I'm gradually getting there, re-writing and updating them where possible. (NB Response to thread dates from May 2010).

[ROBCamra]

(NB Response to thread dates from May 2010).