No standards for web reviewing

Recently, many web page review sites have been popping up, and even the so called “personal sites” of the young blogging community have their own section for reviewing others. I like getting my website reviewed, it helps me improve. I also love reviewing other websites when I have the chance. The downside of all this is that the vast majority of the web reviewers have no standards or valid criteria, nor the experience necessary to criticize websites without sounding utterly stupid.

I went on a quest to find web review site that were open to find apply for a couple of reviews. The first problem seems to be the lack of consistency of these kind of websites. One day they open a WPR (web page review) site and two months later it is closed, apparently “just because”. They get bored one summer so they open a review service, and before school starts they close it without even telling the persons in the queue. That is a bad sign; keeping a page for two months just because you felt impulsively like opening it and impulsively like closing it? What happened to dedication? I applied a couple of these review sites that I found, and when I went back two weeks later to see if they had added me to their queue, more than half of them had already closed. So I am not just making this up.

The second problem with the mass sprouting of WPRs is that they are created by bored people with no experience whatsoever on web design. If they have experience, they’ve been resisting at all costs to do something productive and improving for themselves; like acquiring and applying knowledge on web standards, accessibility and even some basic aesthetics. I am graphic designer, I have school education on it, and I don’t expect everyone to have the same experience as I have -or anyone in the field has. But even after a couple of months of visiting websites, a person with a fully functional brain knows what looks good and what doesn’t. Beyond the looking good or bad, most of these reviewers have absolutely no consideration of their visitors and don’t care of usability.

Next, the third problem with today’s crappy WPRs is that once they decide that they are “good” reviewers and they actually open their review site/section, they go an try to bullshit people. This is basically because everything (or most of what) they’ve learned is wrong. So, trying to be “honest” reviewers they go criticizing everything that doesn’t fit into their pre-established model of an ideal website. Expressing your “honest” opinion doesn’t make you less of a bullshitter if everything you know is bullshit. The translation to fairer language is that, they either see errors where there aren’t any, and don’t see them where they are.

So here is a list of bogus suggestions or stupid comments from real web page review sites.  Except for the first one, these quotes are not part of reviews on my website; they come from reviews to other websites that I’ve found randomly browsing WPRs. I won’t mention names, for now :P“Original” Ideas for “visitor content” :

Things like interaction, premade graphics, reads, tutorials etc

Lolz yeah I want you to be hacked:

Well about coding you use haloscan which is great did you not have cutenews?

I wouldn’t feel so proud if that guy said this to me:

Grammer: Well, hate this section,but here we go: your grammer is briliant, i can understand it properly, and its all really good. Just make sure you dont forget full stops and things.

On a site that didn’t have a celebrity blend as a header:

Theres no layout

What the…

Ok now theme one ok layout not made by you nice blog table nice layout made by Tom.

Is this “reviewer” for real?

GOSH! I almost forgot this section lol it was late when i wrote this i was feeling sad lol so i did a review anyway enough about my sadness.

I will add more as I find it, but right now my eyes and my brain hurt for reading those.

The fourth and last problem with today’s reviewers is that they are not open to suggestions and they seem to deny that they have room for improvement. As a reviewer, you are advising people on how to improve. You are pointing the faults so they can work on them, and highlighting the good points so they can make the most out of it. If you are giving people feedback, and expecting them to listen to you, you cannot be closed to suggestions yourself. Most reviewers say in their rules page that they are going to be honest and blunt and that the person submitting for reviews should be able to handle and accept criticism. Saying this without being to handle criticism yourself is being a hypocrite.

In conclusion, people that are not experienced enough or don’t have knowledge of web standards, accessibility or basic aesthetics should not review websites, because basically what they do is splat a lot of bullshit and give bad suggestions to the even less experienced people that are being reviewed, or anyone else that reads the review in the archives. Their inconsistence and constant bullshitting are making the Internet worse and they would do all us a favor if they just stopped advising people until they have acquired enough experience and knowledge to judge others fairly without making a fool out of themselves.