3 submission regarding user reviews rejected

Hi @Marco,

I can confirm this submission was declined due to a processing error. We have now removed the user review.

I hope this helps!

@Ozzy​ Thanks a bunch!

I see it's still listed, but I guess it'll disappear shortly.

Hi @Marco,

I can see that the review is no longer listed on the title page. If you are still seeing otherwise, please let us know.

Thanks!

@Ozzy​ I also don't see the review anymore.

@Marco​ Hi! Just to clarify I merged this thread here since they were all regarding same issue. This one was deleted for the terms used in it. Not because of the character limit.

Thanks!

@Bethanny​ Why is that? It doesn't make any sense. The reviews mentioned go against the (current) guide. Therefore, they should be deleted. Keeping them simply isn't logical.

Apart from that, it can lead to confusion when customers encounter reviews below the minimum number of characters. It can also lead to complaints when people want to enter a review that isn't 600 characters long while there are reviews out there that aren't that long.

Also, if I'm not mistaken, this is the first time a change in IMDb policy only applied to new submission. In all other instances, it has been of no concern when something was added, so what makes this any different?

And does this also mean that reviews that use the term Woke and/or are very negative about diversity cannot be deleted when they were added a year ago?

@Marco​ Hi!
Reviews that don't meet the current minimum length requirements and were posted prior to the introduction of that requirement have been grandfathered in and will not be deleted.

Thanks for understanding.

You've never heard of the grandfather clause principle, Marco?

@jeorj_euler​ I have heard of the concept, yes. However, I think it would be better if this approach hadn't been chosen for reasons I've mentioned upthread.

The thing is more of a mechanism than a guideline too. The IMDb developers can design the system to block all manner of content from being submitted for evaluation in the first place, rather than rely upon automatic declining of unacceptable submission, but either way, such an approach effectively leaves alone anything that was approved and went live before the conditions of blocking or declining were put into place. For something that is really serious, the IMDb company would not only order the implementations of policy change and mechanism change, somebody would be contracted or otherwise employed to proceed forward with a mass data transformation. Thus rare, the "serious" approach is rarely done, except for official "cleanups". Situations like the one revealed at "New rule regarding the display of Chinese and some other Asian names" are very common.

@Bethanny​ It is of course IMDb's choice to do with these reviews what they want. It is also of course IMDb's choice not to give answers to questions raised by contributors, but it doesn't come off as very respectful if IMDb ignores these questions...

I fail to see why IMDb won't tell us why it has decided NOT to delete user reviews that DO go against the guides.

Hi @Marco​ -

We appreciate your feedback.  To clarify a bit further here, if you observe user reviews on the site that are less than the minimum length of 600 characters, this means that these were reviews added to the site prior to the new guideline. 

Instead of removing the previous reviews with less than 600 characters, we have elected to retain them on the site and have grandfathered them in, as my colleague mentioned above.  While you may disagree with this data retention, this is our current approach as the previous data offers value to our customers.