Reviews: Setting default review settings to Prolific

Hi Simon, I've marked this as an Idea, as there currently isn't a way to change the default Review sorting. You'll need to select what you want to sort by each time you're reviewing reviews.

Thanks Ava, is this a recent change, I’m certain i had ‘prolific’ set as the default previously

Hi Simon, I've followed up with the team that manages this and the default setting was removed awhile back. Reviews are automatically sorted by Helpfulness, but you can also sort by: Date, Total Votes, and Prolific Reviewer by selecting it from the drop down menu.

The default sort by "useful" is inherently bad, because it encourages an echo chamber effect where if the majority of users like a movie then all positive user reviews bubble up to the top. Then, because people often only read the first few reviews, only these reviews get favorited, so the echo chamber effect grows exponentially. It is the worst possible default for an opinion-oriented forum like this. The most democratic sort would be by date, although back when you could set a default sort I always chose prolific, which gives you the most thoughtful and experienced reviewers and helps to avoid reviews by a friend of someone in the cast who signed up just to praise a movie. (Note that the helpful sort could easily be gamed.) It is hugely annoying to have to change the view every single time, but if you're not going to return the functionality to change the default sort anytime soon, at least change the default for everyone to date or prolific to stop the echo chamber.