Is ciao still crap?

Used to love the place years ago but it went so cliquey it became unbearable. It was also buggy as hell and more of a popularity contest than Dooyoo could ever be. So the question to any current ciao ers is. Has anything changed?

Yes, it's got even worse!!!

Been away for a couple of years and even though I'm posting on there again, it's really only to try and gain a few extra pennies for reviews I've already posted on Dooyoo. Used to be the other way round, but I can't be bothered with Ciao anymore.

I have never really thought it full of bugs, there was one earlier in the year when the newest reviews listing did not work though, that was annoying. I used to find it quite hard to get to the suggestions page but that has been changed and now it is very easy.

It is such hard work though, newcomers writing decent reviews are generally welcome on dooyoo, but I don't think it is the case on Ciao. If you want reads, then as far as I can tell you really have to work at making friends first.

It's not crap at all - it's not perfect and the navigation is clunky but no, it's not crap.

And since Microsoft took over, the premium fund has leapt in value. Many people - myself included - make a lot more money on ciao with a lot less effort than on dooyoo.

I always thought the neavigation was much better than Dooyoo's and that it was easier on the eye (I always thought Dooyoo was very cluttered).

However, in nearly every other respect, I thought Dooyoo was better - the Admin team, lack of "Queens", the appalling PF/Diamond system, Community points, Guestbooks...

*shudder*

I went on a self-imposed exile a few years ago. I returned one day and read a grand total of three reviews, at least one of which was SU (a phone review where the user admitted they didn't use the phone). Account locked. Snotty email from Ciao. When asked to be more clear why I was blocked, they then started talking about stuff that couldn't possibly be true.

So actually what you're saying is you aren't active and therefore can't really comment on whether or not the site is currently crap?

The PF is very generous and also now transparent - they published the details of how it's worked out and all that secrecy has gone. The search function is a zillion times better than dooyoo's and the category structuring of the categories I bother with (travel and books) is infinitely superior to dooyoo where the whole of the world other than the UK is all dumped in together and every writer of every book all in one place.

What I find hard is the number of clicks it takes to get back and forth to read and rate stuff - so I rarely rate any more and they still pay me well. With that attitude on dooyoo I'd be lucky to get more than a couple of quid a month.

Neither site is perfect and both have their pros and cons - however neither is CRAP.

Like I said I've been away from the site for a couple of years so can you give me a link to where they published the stuff about how the PF is distributed, cos I've never seen it and can't find it.

koshkha wrote:

So actually what you're saying is you aren't active and therefore can't really comment on whether or not the site is currently crap?

What I'm saying is that the "customer service" levels are easily the worst I've seen from any online website in my time I've been on the internet and that alone is enough to stop me from posting. What's the point in posting work if the admin team are going to arbitrarily ban people from posting then invent excuses why they do so?

The other bits are, as far as I can see from the odd time I do log in, still completely valid.

sandemp wrote:

Like I said I've been away from the site for a couple of years so can you give me a link to where they published the stuff about how the PF is distributed, cos I've never seen it and can't find it.

Yes please!

The PF was in a newsletter from a few months back - I'll track it down and be back later with the details. It's interesting stuff.

Got it!

I posted it on the dooyoo lovers forum so it was easy to find:

"Basically we can tell you that the Premium Fund on ciao.co.uk (£ 2000 a month) is subject to a automated and database related process. The list of the Premium Funds is generated automatically at the end of every month. Manual interference, by our Community Management, is only carried out at the very end when we check that no copies or meaningless reviews are rewarded with a Diamond.

Generally all reviews of one month stand the chance of becoming part of the Premium Fund (the category Ciao Cafe and also Ciao Specialsare excluded). The most important influences on the pre-selection for the monthly list are a review's positive ratings through other members("very helpful" to "helpful"), the product's quality rating within the Ciao criteria (economic utility), the amount of community points of the members who rated this review and the length of a review and readings. A review about an electronic product (e.g. a LCD TV), for example has more economic utility than a review about a chocolate bar. Once the list is created the rating is the only thing that counts. The better a review has been rated on average the higher it climbs on this list.

The £ 2000 a month is distributed as follows: 10x £ 15 (Diamonds), 20x £ 10 , 40x £ 5 and 725x £ 2. So month after month exactly 795 reviews are paid extra whether the related product is.

795 reviews with 5000 published reviews on average added every month, that means every tenth review benefits from the Premium Fund. "

This will have changed slightly since they introduced the 'Short but good' which takes another £70 out of the fund and it's not clear where that cuts into the total £2000 - i.e. whether it means seven less payouts of £10, 14 less at £5 or 35 less at £2.

That should give some food for thought!

Well that's as clear as mud.

So to get a good pay out from the PF I need to write longer reviews and be a 'community' member to get loads of reads, and make sure only metallic dots rate it. Personally I think that their statement shows just how unfair the PF is.

I have always found the PF quite generous. I am a purple community member, not a well known face on ciao but last month I got £15 on three reviews that received on average 30 rates each.

I'm not saying it's not generous, I've always done well out of the PF, but it doesn't always reward the best reviews. I once got a diamond for a review that I would only rate as SH at best, but it ticked all the boxes, in that it was a tech product, very long and had loads of rates of VH and above. The only problem was that there wasn't actually very much opinion in it.

sandemp wrote:

I'm not saying it's not generous, I've always done well out of the PF, but it doesn't always reward the best reviews. I once got a diamond for a review that I would only rate as SH at best, but it ticked all the boxes, in that it was a tech product, very long and had loads of rates of VH and above. The only problem was that there wasn't actually very much opinion in it.

But that was in the old days - I don't actively read the diamonds but I believe there's a lot less of that these days.

sandemp wrote:

Well that's as clear as mud.

So to get a good pay out from the PF I need to write longer reviews and be a 'community' member to get loads of reads, and make sure only metallic dots rate it. Personally I think that their statement shows just how unfair the PF is.

Yes but at least you now KNOW something. In the past the PF was a total mystery, diamonds got given out for political reasons or to placate people who'd been caught up in dodgy vendettas and stuff like that. They were even giving diamonds to reviews that had been on Product of the Week which was just stupid.

You don't need loads of reads - I get about 30-40 max on most reviews. You don't HAVE to write about mobile phones - most of mine are travel and books - and I can still clear £20-30 most months. You'd have to crown on every review on dooyoo to come even close to that.

I don't see that criteria as being hugely different to the hypothesis bandied around Optors and FOIB, to be honest, so while it might be a little more transparent, it's as unfair as I expected. Or at least, it doesn't reward quality.

We all knew that stuff like Electronics was better to write about than Food, for example and we all suspected that review length rather than review quality (which is the inference here, I think) was what was important to Ciao. The community points thing is interesting, and not in a good way as is the product quality. How does a one star product affect my ability to write a good review? It doesn't, so why does it count?

It's interesting (though probably not shocking) to see that Ciao's algorithm pretty much renders peer review obselete by mentioning that only positive ratings count.

If a review is well-written, then all ratings should be counted. It is possible (and should be more often) for a well-written review to get a range of ratings.

Oh, and with reference to what Cat said, I used to get PF for 1 review per month, irrespective of what I'd posted that month, so when I was still posting reviews, I never posted any more than one or two per month as it really wasn't worth it.

yes, but again you are saying 'used to'.

My point is that since the microsoft takeover, the PF has become a lot more generous.

I used to get utterly ticked off to post 10 reviews, get a tonne of E's and earn £5 if I was lucky. The same number can now earn you £30 in a good month.

And the 'short and good' (lousy name) means they are addressing the perception that only long reviews get rewarded.

Ciao's not perfect but it does seem to be trying to improve itself and reward members more. There's more money to be made and the new suggestions system is stunningly fast and effective. Dooyoo payouts get worse all the time and it takes WEEKS to get suggestions through the pipeline. I spend a lot more time on dooyoo than ciao but I make more money from ciao.

koshkha wrote:

My point is that since the microsoft takeover, the PF has become a lot more generous.

I used to get utterly ticked off to post 10 reviews, get a tonne of E's and earn £5 if I was lucky. The same number can now earn you £30 in a good month.

I don't know that it has though, K.

It's still £2000 per month, which it has been for years, since before Microsoft came in. You might be lucky and have gotten more, but that means other people are £25 worse off.

I might give it a go though. I've a couple of year's worth of excellent reviews that I could potentially cross post, so I might see if anytihng's changed, but I'm still expecting "The Ciao Team" to be at my door within hours of me posting, the bunch of 'tards that they are.

Well I'll see what the PF has in store for me this month (if it hasn't already been given out). But as things stand I've been back on both sites for six weeks and have earnt over £60 from dooyoo compared to a measly £8 from Ciao. At the moment Dooyoo's winning hands down but we'll see.

Why would they be at your door Camp Freddy?

Sandemp - no it has not been paid out yet. To be honest review for review, I find ciao pays better, especially with the cut back on dooyoo crowns which many people have noticed.

Camp Freddy wrote:

I might give it a go though. I've a couple of year's worth of excellent reviews that I could potentially cross post, .

Modest as ever I see!

Cat19 wrote:

Why would they be at your door Camp Freddy?

The last time I was active, I had posted a review, rated about three others (one of which was SU as it was a mobile phone review where the author didn't use the phone or send texts) and got banned for antagonising members with low ratings... then when I asked to clarify what they meant started making up stuff about reports of my beahviour in the previous six months when I hadn't even logged on to the site. Cretins.

koshkha wrote:

Camp Freddy wrote:

I might give it a go though. I've a couple of year's worth of excellent reviews that I could potentially cross post, .

Modest as ever I see!

What can I say, K. I am a superstar.

Fred

Cat19 wrote:

Sandemp - no it has not been paid out yet. To be honest review for review, I find ciao pays better, especially with the cut back on dooyoo crowns which many people have noticed.

I can't say that I've noticed a cut back on crowns, I'm still getting about the same hit rate as when I was on the site a couple of years back. But there again maybe I'm just lucky. There are, however, a lot more reviews posted on the site than there was, so maybe it's a little harder to get one now.

As I said, as things stand, I'm currently getting almost 10x as much for the same reviews on Dooyoo as Ciao and am really only posting on Ciao to try and get a few more pennies towards Christmas presents.