Ask a Guide.

that blows that conspiracy theory out of the water then

Presumably there just weren't as many Crown-worthy reviews posted on Tuesday as there were last week. No conspiracy. No new rules. Simples.

I've had it confirmed from Dooyoo Towers there are no new rules. A review gets nominated, and the dooyoo staff look at it and make a call as to its crownworthiness. The number of nominations and the number of ratings and the time of nomination make no difference.

DS, you have made no difference. Live with it.

How come he gets an answer? I asked first!

Obvious favouritism! He gets everything his own way! Etc etc.

A solitary new DVD addition has appeared today. Once again, could a guide please ask why items are being added to categories that are supposedly automated? (Unless, of course, that one DVD is the update we were promised for this week.)

It's almost three weeks now since they added anything in the music, films, or books categories. There must be a lot of people waiting. I can understand that people might be impatient. But I can't understand why some people are allowed to get items added outside of the process that everyone else has to wait for.

Surely a better idea would be just to run the automated process now, allowing everyone's suggested items to be added, than seemingly singling out some members and giving them precedence.

Is the added DVD available through Amazon? If not, that is the reason why it might have skipped ahead.

Apparently the Amazon additions are only semi-automated... it all sounded rather too complicated!

Yes it is - but are we now allowed to suggest things that aren't on amazon? That certainly wasn't the impression we were given when this process was introduced.

'Semi-automated' implies it requires someone to press a button (or whatever) to run it - why don't they just do that now, rather than adding individual DVDs, presumably at the request of the people who suggested them?

It would appear that if a product is not on amazon but is available for sale on UK sites then the team will consider listing it. That DOES seem to be a departure from what was said previously (months/years back) but appears to be the case now.

The semi-automated bit was described thus:

Quote :

make sure there isn't a duplicate in the catalogue, find the product on Amazon etc, put that data into a spreadsheet and then our auto upload finds the products and merges them into our database

I suspect it's different people doing the different additions as we were given the reason that the database techy had been away as to why the auto uploads hadn't happened. We're told the intention is to clear the backlog by weekend.

OK. I'd still like clarification on why people are jumping the queue, please. If it's just a case of people being given preference because they make more noise than other people, then that could lead to all kinds of problems.

I really don't think it's queue jumping - just different people performing different duties. But I'll ask.

Queue jumping possibly isn't the intention, but if almost all additions in certain categories are made by an automated process, and some people are getting things added outside of the process, then that's how it's going to come across.

your post reflects almost exactly that which I have already posted on the guide forum!

Good stuff!

I was chatting (on line) to another member earlier and they mentioned that they had been waiting five weeks for some Travel suggestions to come through. So they dropped a line to dooyoo and were essentially told that Travel suggestions are low priority and they would just have to wait. Looking at the latest suggestions added, it seems that the food and drink writers are not having the same problems.

Whilst I appreciate Travel is not up there with laptops and household appliances for items researched, I do think people research their holidays far more than their grocery shopping and there is plenty of opportunity for click throughs. Please could a guide ask dooyoo towers if there is any rationale for this seemingly new policy.

I'm not sure about that Cat, my last food and drink suggestions took about 6 weeks to come through.

Books seem to get added quite quickly, from my personal experience.

Ah well, different experience for me recently.

A food suggestion through in a day and a book took two weeks plus.

Books is one of the automated-but-actually-not-automated categories, so in theory they should get new additions each week. There was a three-week gap before the last batch went up on Friday.

marymoose99 wrote:

I'm not sure about that Cat, my last food and drink suggestions took about 6 weeks to come through.

Books seem to get added quite quickly, from my personal experience.

Well I was just looking at the number of food suggestions that have come through versus the number of travel ones. Also just reporting back what dooyoo actually said to another member about travel being low priority.

Not disputing it Cat, I'm curently waiting for travel suggestions to come through! My personal experience though is that food suggestions take the longest, and rightly so!

Travel is a lower priority than food? I notice dooyoo keep crowing food reviews, maybe we're all wrong about them.

It is scary, the amount of food categories being added.....then again if dooyoo keep adding them and keep paying them , and other people then nom them, nothing will change. What a waste of cyberspace.

I can't access the Guides Forum this morning - just me? Or does anyone else have a problem?

Guides is OK for me

Then dooyoo should get on there and tell people what's going on - it's the only means they have of communicating with members right now, and it's the perfect opportunity to show people how useful the guides system can be. Even if it would only mean posting on here and the MSE forum, at least people could be reassured that the problem is being worked on. Assuming it is.

The miles and your own reviews is fixed - they are working on the new reviews issue.