More options under "report a review"

Hello John,

But how do you (or anyone else) tell when a review is “fake”? It might be wrong or incorrect, not about the title. But in what way are these reviews “fake”?

Can you give some examples and say why you think they’re fake?

Steve

Well, I find it hard to believe I'm having to explain this, but 1) often times the review is a mirror of the official movie description, paraphrased, but a mirror 2) many times the grammar is bad, often a sign of engrish, and a reviewer that is being paid in a foreign country to write reviews and get these scores up 3) The score of 10 right out of the blue among many reviews that are low, or somewhere between 1 and 10, it is highly suspicious when scrolling through dozens of 3 and 4 star reviews to find a 10 4) they are very verbose, I know some reviewers out there take their job very seriously and will write an in-depth review that is long, but the fake ones do it to, usually throwing a lot of emotion and feeling into the review which is completely irrelevant. These are indicators for ME, not sure what other people use, certainly "gut instinct" plays a major part. The point is, you can't tell for certain, but there are indicators, and if the user community could vote on these reviews, then it would be a consensus of people who felt the review was suspicious, and that would be good enough for me. What are your thoughts?

Hello John, 
 
1) doesn't make it fake, it's a copy (possibly edited) of someone else's review, which is against the IMDb's rules. They're supposed to be original. 
2) doesn't make it fake. English isn't everyone's first language. 
3) doesn't make it fake. You can't tell who gave the scores to any title so you can't be sure that the same person gave the 10 score as is writing the review. 
4) doesn't make it fake. Some people are naturally very verbose. 

If you given me some definite examples of some of these "fake" reviews and why you think each of them is fake then I'll try to answer in more detail. 
 
Rather than trying to just label them as "fake" (which is a fairly meaningless designation without detailed reasons), why not just label them as duplicates of someone else's work or bad English (not in itself a crime) or suspicious scores or too verbose? 
 

    Steve

As I said in my post to you, none of these things are proof that it is fake, so thanks for your clarification on that. I'm trying to reduce the number of fake reviews on IMDB and this was my attempt at a solution. If you'd like to propose another, please do. The fall back, most meaningful part of my solution is that by tagging a review as suspicious, it allows other readers to essentially vote that they, too believe it is fake and that a review with enough votes could be removed. You don't seem to comment on that aspect.

You’re the one who wants to label some reviews as fake so it should be up to you to define what you mean by “fake” and to give some examples of reviews that you consider to be fake.

Steve

Just run a search for "fake review" and you will get pages and pages of reviews that other readers feel are fake.

HI, John. You may know some reviewers out there take their jobs very seriously, but does anybody know anybody who takes IMDb user reviews seriously? How seriously? A vast majority of the reviews on the site seem neither helpful nor well-written, but that of course depends upon to what "standard" they are held. IMDb used to provide tips on what might help make a review more interesting, but not enough people follow the advice.

i think you are very right. The fact that people can review a movie that hasn't even been released yet, in my mind, is pretty whack. But I thought if we could improve things around here than the reviews may get a little more respect and the stars up near the film title may actually mean something and people could respect it.

Instead of the option being worded as "suspiciously fake", maybe it should be something more like "feigns knowledge". There should also be options such as "violates copyright", "impersonates crew" and "libelous". These can be expansions of or alternatives to the option "inappropriate", in the current state: