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I am happy to say that our development team will begin taking steps to combat this now.



As with many changes to MAL as of late, I would first like to warn you that improvements and changes will be step-wise. In other words, it will be a gradual process. So please understand that this is an ongoing effort, and what you see today is not the final version.



Those of you involved with this, may remember I said almost 2 years ago that we would make an option for admins to see which users voted on which reviews, so that we could remove the offending accounts. While this would have allowed the Helpful/Not Helpful system to remain as is, this would put an even larger workload on the admins, with minimal deterrent.



Thus, the staff and I came to the conclusion that the best option would be to remove the 'Not Helpful' vote and display the usernames of all accounts which vote 'Helpful'. These two changes are very hand-in-hand. We didn't want to display the usernames of accounts which voted 'Not Helpful' – there is plenty of harassment and trolling between user profiles in the review system as is, we don't want to encourage more. Only removing the button doesn't act as a deterrent, however. Displaying the user accounts makes it obvious to both the admins and the entire community if someone is using 10s to 100s of accounts to up-vote their own reviews.



Removing the 'Not Helpful' vote will be the first step, then moving the 'Helpful' button below the read more (so the review must be expanded to vote). Displaying usernames will come later.



We realise that older reviews will have a strong advantage over newer with the 'Not Helpful' removed, so alternative sorting options are also high on our improvements list for the system. Quelling the voting raids is our first priority.



I hope these changes are the beginning of the creation of a better environment for reviewing on MAL. You can contribute to this not only through reviewing, but in being considerate when discussing reviews with their authors, and by not contributing to the vote cheating problem.



A big thank you to the reviewing community who stood strong and hopeful all these years.

I'm happy to finally have positive news for you.





Update: Further information on this topic. Anyone who writes reviews on MAL, knows someone who writes reviews, or regularly reads reviews, will know that we have had a problem with Helpful/Not Helpful voting raids. These raids can involve 10s to 100s of duplicate, troll accounts either up-voting or down-voting reviews at the whims of the malicious user. This has gone on for a number of years and has been a great source of frustration and anguish for our reviewing community.I am happy to say that our development team will begin taking steps to combat this now.As with many changes to MAL as of late, I would first like to warn you that improvements and changes will be step-wise. In other words, it will be a gradual process.Those of you involved with this, may remember I said almost 2 years ago that we would make an option for admins to see which users voted on which reviews, so that we could remove the offending accounts. While this would have allowed the Helpful/Not Helpful system to remain as is, this would put an even larger workload on the admins, with minimal deterrent.Thus, the staff and I came to the conclusion that. These two changes are very hand-in-hand. We didn't want to display the usernames of accounts which voted 'Not Helpful' – there is plenty of harassment and trolling between user profiles in the review system as is, we don't want to encourage more. Only removing the button doesn't act as a deterrent, however. Displaying the user accounts makes it obvious to both the admins and the entire community if someone is using 10s to 100s of accounts to up-vote their own reviews.(so the review must be expanded to vote). Displaying usernames will come later.We realise that older reviews will have a strong advantage over newer with the 'Not Helpful' removed, so alternative sorting options are also high on our improvements list for the system. Quelling the voting raids is our first priority.I hope these changes are the beginning of the creation of a better environment for reviewing on MAL. You can contribute to this not only through reviewing, but in being considerate when discussing reviews with their authors, and by not contributing to the vote cheating problem.A big thank you to the reviewing community who stood strong and hopeful all these years.I'm happy to finally have positive news for you. BBCode Modified by Kineta, Aug 25, 2015 10:24 PM



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