Updates to User Reviews

Thanks for the feedback so far.  The team is monitoring this thread, although focused on launching the new review contribution experience right now, so detailed follow-ups may be delayed.  Some quick follow-ups now ...

• As explained on https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/upcoming-changes-to-several-imdb-features-du6man1opd5q0 this is part of an essential technology migration -- there is no option to go back.  We appreciate that changes to familiar interfaces are always difficult, and there are some painful casualties in terms of feature / sorting / filtering losses.  However, we need to start with a common review platform across the main web site, the mobile site and the iOS and Android apps.  Once we have this, we can build a better review experience for everyone more quickly than ever, providing review features consistently and everywhere instead of only on the web interface. 

• One change already live in the latest app versions (updates to these are rolling out now) is that all customer reviews are now available on the popular IMDb iOS and Android apps as well as the IMDb mobile site. Until this change, only a subset of reviews were available on mobile.  Far from limiting the audience of your reviews, we have more than doubled the audience with this single change.  This also clears the way for reviews to be written and submitted on mobile which is also a popular customer request. 

• The new system enables us to fix a longstanding issue with reviews containing spoilers; please see https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/reviews-without-spoiler-warnings-on-overview-page

• For those people who think reviews have been removed from the main title pages, this is probably because you are using the old, unsupported (7+ years out of date) version of IMDb.  Please go to your site settings at https://secure.imdb.com/register-imdb/siteprefs and ensure both "Always display full cast and crew credits" and "Show reference view (old title/name page layout)" are unchecked.  We will shortly be making changes to the "Always display full cast and crew credits" view which will move it onto the new technology platform and will restore more direct access to the reviews. 

Please continue to provide feedback as this will guide us on where next to take the new system.

Thank you for the on-going feedback on user reviews (and a reminder to see https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/upcoming-changes-to-several-imdb-features-du6man1opd5q0 for the wider context).  This is an update for 12 January outlining the progress so far: 

Already implemented:

• Make all user reviews available across all IMDb platforms (web, mobile web, iOS, Android)  [DONE]
• Allow voting for reviews from user/reviews pages  [DONE] 
• No longer display reviews with spoilers on the main title page [DONE]
• Integrate reviews into main IMDb database to improve management and processing [DONE]
• Add reviews and “Report This” to the “Track My Contribution” feature for better feedback on processing [DONE]
• On the iOS app, add sort orders: chronological, by rating given to title by reviewer, by helpfulness (all in both directions) [DONE]
• Fix “Load more” functionality on Internet Explorer [DONE]
• Allow IMDb mark-up in review text to link name/title pages from inside reviews [DONE]
• Increase default view of reviews shown before “Load more” from 10 to 25 [DONE]

In progress across Q1:

• On the web site & mobile web, add sort orders to the title/reviews page,  ideas under review include: chronological, by vote volume, by rating given to title by reviewer, love/hate view, by volume of reviews by reviewer, by helpfulness (all in both directions)
• On the web site, add sort orders to the user/reviews page, ideas under review include: alphabetical by title, chronological, by vote volume, by rating given to title by reviewer, by helpfulness (all in both directions)
• On the Android app, add sort orders: chronological, by rating given to title by reviewer, by helpfulness (all in both directions)
• Allow review contribution from mobile devices (mobile web, iOS, Android)
• Fix known issues posting new reviews with certain browser / system combinations 

Ideas for the longer term:

• Allow helpfulness voting on mobile devices (mobile web, iOS, Android)
• Improve the algorithm used to determine default helpfulness sorting

Please bear with us while we work through the above list (and equivalent lists for other impacted features).  Our aim remains to make IMDb the best place to read, write and discover reviews of movies, shows (and other title types) ... both on the web and on mobile.

Finally a reminder from the above list: the IMDb iOS app already supports sorting of reviews by three options if you have access to an iPhone or iPad.

Hi everyone. Here is the progress update for the week ending Feb 2.

• We are still working on re-enabling additional sorts and filters on user review pages and will have updates to release next week. To start, you will soon be able to filter out spoilers, sort by date and helpfulness score (both ascending and descending). You can get a preview of a title review page with spoilers hidden, sorted by date here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/reviews?spoiler=false&sort=date&dir=desc
• We continue to investigate isolated reports that some users are unable to submit user reviews. See the thread here: https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/blocked-by-content-security-policy

Hi everyone. The update to support filtering out spoilers, and sorting by date (not just helpfulness) is now live.  

Hi everyone. I don't have any new functionality releases to announce today but am posting to keep the Friday announcement cadence consistent. We have additional sorts in-progress and I'll announce those as soon as they are available.

Hi everyone. Here is the update announcement for this week (the week ending Feb 23):

• We have added "Total Votes" to the sort option drop down on title/review pages.
  

Hi everyone. No updates to Reviews today (Mar 2) as we're prepping for Oscars.

Spoiler for next week though -- we are currently testing the sort functionality for prolific reviewers. I'll post an announcement as soon as it's available.

Hi everyone. I'm happy to announce that the 'prolific reviewer' sort is now live (Mar 7). To try it out, go to any title/user reviews page and use the dropdown which now contains: Helpfulness, Date, Total Votes, Prolific Reviewer.

Hi everyone. I'm posting the weekly Friday update for completeness (Mar 9). No additional updates today since we launched Prolific Reviewers earlier this week. We are currently working on Love/Hate.

Hi everyone. No updates to Reviews this week (week ending Mar 16); posting for completeness.

Hi everyone. I have a mid-week update on review sorts (Mar 20).

You can now sort by review rating on title/reviews and user/reviews pages (IMDb desktop and mobile web site). For example, if you go to https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111161/reviews?ref_=tt_urv  you can choose the sort option "Review Rating" and see all reviews rated 10, 9, etc. You can also sort in the opposite direction and see reviews that are rated 1, 2, etc. Unrated reviews appear at the bottom.

Hi everyone. Here the update for Mar 23:  You can now sort by title (aka alphabetical). On user/reviews pages you can sort by the first letter of a film or show title, ascending or descending (on desktop and mobile web).

Note that if you have 7500+ reviews we aren't able to enable this sort for you at the present time. This is on our list of future fixes.

Hi everyone. Here is the update for Mar 30. On both title/reviews and user/reviews pages you can now filter by rating. For example, you can see all reviews with a specific rating e.g., all reviews rated "8."

Thanks for your patience and feedback as we've released Reviews features over the past three months. This will be the last of the weekly updates to this announcement thread, but please keep adding ideas for future ideas here: https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb?topic-list[settings][type]=idea I'll post new announcements on Get Satisfaction as we release new features and functionality in the future.

A further update ... we have restored the option to view / link individual reviews:

To view an individual review, simply click the review title.  To copy the URL of a review, click on the "Copy link" label under the review.  For example from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5580390/reviews?sort=reviewVolume&dir=desc&ratingFilter=0 (see red highlighting)



which will lead you to or will copy -> https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4063416/

If there is now a push to align the desktop site with the mobile app, then it devalues the desktop site.

This is not always true and is something we are trying to avoid.  Over on https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/update-to-list-pages we wrote this a couple of days ago:

"In the meantime, do you have an iPhone or iPad? The list implementation on our iOS app is actually the best one -- Android, mobile web and the desktop web are playing catch-up with the power of iOS.  One the advantages of the new changes is that they clear the path for the same powerful list experience on all platforms."  

The iOS app is already (IMHO) the best implementation for many other things, including: sorting & filtering filmographies; viewing showtimes; ticketing; box office; and locations.