signifying that the member is an Advisor; similarly his or her ratings are marked by the blue badge and by placement at the top of the list of ratings. An Advisor's comments also display the badge. This is the case only in the category(ies) in which the member holds the position of Advisor.
on their 
. The dolls, which are foam discs some three inches in diameter, feature black legs and arms with white hands and shoes (the hands and shoes are infamous for falling off). According to some, they are named (presumably from left to right) Eenie, Meenie, Miney, and Moe.
accompanies all Moderator posts anywhere in the message boards, regardless of the category for which the member is a moderator. These badges do not appear anywhere else on the site. Moderators may lock, pin, delete, and move message board threads (within their specific category/ies only) in accordance with community standards and the site posting rules.
displayed on the Profile Page of a member who is among the 1000 
on their - Loading...
- No images or files uploaded yet.
|
|
Glossary
10-4-10: A month-long promotion that pays a bonus above and beyond Income Share. Members earn $10 for each block of ten reviews submitted during the month that have attained an Overall Rating of Somewhat Helpful or higher on the date checked (usually early in the following month). Maximum payout is $100, regardless of the number of qualifying reviews submitted. Payout is made only in increments of ten dollars. Payout is credited to the member's Eroyalties account in the middle of the following month.
10-4-20: A month-long promotion that expands on the 10-4-10 promotion. In addition to the $10 bonus for ten qualifying reviews, members may earn an additional $10 for each group of ten reviews that have attained an Overall Rating of Very Helpful at the time the review is checked (usually early in the following month). Maximum payout is $200 and payout is made only in increments of ten dollars. Payout is credited to the member's Eroyalties account in the middle of the following month.
100-Dollar Rule: A corporate policy requiring any member who lives outside the boundaries of the USA to accrue $100 in his or her member account before being allowed to Redeem the earnings. The reasons for this policy are detailed here.
100-word Rule: Loophole in submission policy that allows submission of near-Duplicate Reviews of near-identical or closely related products provided there is "100 words of difference" between the two reviews. Documented in the official epinions.com FAQ on writing.
A: slang for Advisor
aaaaaa Review: A submission that does not contain any real information. Usually consists of made-up words or copy-and-paste snippets of the Epinions interface. Name comes from reviews in which the letter 'A' is repeated (a a a a a...) enough times to meet the minimum word criterion.
Abuse: general term for violations of the Terms of Service. Also used when referring to the department at Epinions.com that receives handles complaints about such violations. Abuse may be reported from the customer feedback forms.
Account Options: A series of tasks that a member may access by linking from within the shaded box on the upper left of his or her Profile Page. Most may be accessed from elsewhere on the page as well. Includes links that will take the member to pages for changing Site Settings, managing Alerts, changing one's password, editing the Public Profile, and reviewing or changing Member Information. Also includes links to the member's Wish List, Web of Trust lists, and Block List.
Account Summary: The section of a Profile Page containing member information such as member nickname, name, location, Contact Email, numbers of reviews and visits, etc. Titled "Account Summary" when viewing one's own profile page, "{membername's} Profile" when viewing that of another member.
Ad or AD: slang for Advisor.
Advisor: A member whose contributions to the site have resulted in increased responsibility for setting the Overall Rating of the reviews within a given category. This is accomplished by assigning greater Rating Weight to the Ratings the Advisor applies and by imparting relatively greater Ratings Weight to the ratings of members on the Advisor's Web of Trust. Advisors are also charged with assisting members in the improvement of their submissions through constructive Comments. Selection of a category's corps of Advisors is made by Epinions with the assistance of the Category Leads. For their efforts, Advisors receive a monthly Advisor Bonus . An Advisor's Profile Page is marked by a blue Badge
The official epinions.com statements of criteria for selection as Advisor may be found here, and a category-by-category list of Advisors here.
Also called AD, A.
Advisor Bonus: A small monthly stipend awarded to each Advisor in each category. Intended to offset any loss of Income Share that might result from time spent at Advisorly duties instead of writing reviews.
Alert: A daily email sent by Epinions.com on one of several topics. The email contains that an action about which the member has requested alerts has taken place on the previous calendar day; all alerts are grouped into a single daily email for the type of alert. Alert types:
Alerts may be turned off individually or suspended entirely from the Site Settings page, which is reached from the Profile Page. Alerts are sent to the email of Record, which is the email address provided by a new member at enrollment. Alerts may be Suspended if a member wishes to take a vacation or simply stop receiving any such notification.
An alternative to New Review Alerts is the use of the notification site.
Anonymous Rating: see Hidden
Archived Review: A review whose topic has been declared obsolete by Epinions; such as older versions of computer software. Archived topics cannot be found using the Epinions Search Engine but are visible from the user's Profile Page. Although they still accumulate Visits, Archived Reviews do not earn Income Share. Members have no say in whether a topic will be archived.
Auto-VH: The practice of automatically placing Very Helpful Ratings to content on the basis of the author instead of the content. Common among Click Circle members; also common when rating the work of Advisors, Category Leads, and Top Reviewers or other "highly-placed" members.
Badge: a rounded, colored rectangle containing the name of site "title." Badges may be blue (Advisor), orange (Top Reviewer), green (Moderator), or red (Category Lead). Members whose total count of Visits are among the 1000 highest on the site began displaying a gray-on-white rectangular Popular Author badge in 2006. The places at which the badge appears depends on the position held, however all badges except Moderator appear on the member's Profile Page and on all reviews.
Balloon: see Badge
Base Eroyalties: A program of payment that awarded amounts ranging from one to ten cents per visit on reviews. It was discontinued in 2001. The term still appears on Earnings Details pages to allow for correct display of earnings on reviews written before that date.
Also known as pennies-per-hit.
Black Tuesday: October 28, 2007. On this date, the epinions.com review database was "soft-productized" (no glossary entry) into the shopping.com product database. Several side effects of this operation ensued, including the mergers of the Wellness and Beauty categories and the Sports and Outdoors categories. Other side effects include an overwhelming number of reviews that became invisible to the site's search engine, and many that became entirely invisible (the "Gray Ghosts").
Merger with the shopping.com catalog resulted in many new products to review, especially in the area of food (by one estimate, 11,000 tea reviews were written in the next few months). In the Pets category, products for pets other than dogs and cats became available for review, resulting in a flurry of reviews of curry combs, ferret chow, and lizard rocks.
Some longtime members contend that the reappearance of multiple 10-4-10 and the later 10-4-20 promotions were intended to distract membership from the state of teh catalog. Statements from Epinions.com were not forthcoming.
Block: A member may chose to Block another member whose contributions or actions he or she finds objectionable. If sufficient members block another member without offsetting Trusts, he or she may become Community Blocked. By default, all contributions, including Ratings, Comments, Message Board posts, and reviews submitted by your blocked members are not displayed. This default can be overridden by altering one's Content Filters.
Block List: The list of members that a member has chosen to Block. Accessible only from a member's own Profile Page; it is never accessible to other members.
Sometimes called WoD or Web of Distrust.
Brisbane: A reference to Epinions staff, management, and/or decision-makers. Derives from the geographic location of the Epinions.com corporate offices in Brisbane, California, USA
Bubble: see Badge
Cash Out: see Redemption
Catalog: see Database
Category Lead: A member chosen by Epinions to assist their staff in managing a category. Category Leads assist Epinions in the selection of Advisors and Top Reviewers, and have the ability to add new products in their category through the Suggest a Product function. Leads are also charged with helping ensure that every review in a category is rated by at least one Advisor.
Each category has at least one lead, and most have two. A few categories share leads with a "daughter" category, such as Books sharing Leads with Newspapers & Magazines. In this case, there are often three Leads for the multiple categories. The total number of Leads on the site is approximately thirty-five.
Category Leads receive a monthly stipend for their work, which - like the Advisor Bonus - is intended to offset any loss of Income Share resulting from time spent on managerial duties. Category Leads are indicated by red Badges
Also called CL, Lead.
Category Manager: Epinions staff member in charge of the database for a given category or categories. Position deleted in 2000; a function replaced in part by Category Leads.
CL: slang term for Category Lead
Click Circle: An organized, albeit sometimes loosely so, group of members who Pimp their Reviews to one another, most often via email originating from groups on Yahoo, MSN, bbboy, and other "community" sites. Click circles originated as an effort boost their members' Base Eroyalties during the days of pennies per hit. Most withered and died when Epinions.com discontinued base eroyalties; a few are, however, still plying their trade.
Classic click circle behavior includes using the Rubberstamp and Auto-VH methods of rating as opposed to reading content. Group emails often contain little more than a link to a new review or reviews and the phrase "Thanks to all who r/r/c." It is also common to submit older reviews for the members' perusal, either to boost one's hit count or in an effort to force a review higher in the ordered list of reviews. Members of click circles may submit the same review month after month until they have as many as 250 or 300 ratings on their review, which can easily wipe out the review placement advantage conferred on Leads and Top Reviewers.
Click circles are hotbeds of Reciprocal Rating and Reciprocal Trusting, which behaviors tend to have undue influence on the "quality of reviews" and "strength of Web of Trust" criteria used by the Hatbot and Category Leads when selecting Titleholders. To strengthen this influence, organizers of click circles often seek out new members from the ranks of titled members or those who are widely trusted.
Comment: A method by which members may attach communication and other feedback to the reviews of other members. Links to read or place comments are displayed at the bottom of the text of a review, above the report of Overall Rating and the list of individual Ratings. A comment may not be edited, but can be deleted by the member who placed it. By default, members receive Comment Alerts on all reviews they have written.
Comment Alert: see Alert
Comment Section: The sum total of all of the comments and answers attached to a Review. Comment sections, ostensibly intended as a vehicle for feedback between reviewer and reader, are sometimes the site of extended flame wars or long off-topic chats.
Community Block: Status conferred on those who have been placed on the Block Lists of many members. The Profile Page and any submissions (Ratings, Reviews, Comments, and Message Board posts) of community-blocked members cannot be seen by Nonmembers. Non-scientific studies indicate that it takes several blocks to place a member on Community block, and it also takes a number of blocks to override each Trust that the member has acquired. It is unknown whether "powerful" members carry more weight in whatever calculation is made when determining community blockage.
Community Care: The department at epinions.com responsible for liaison with the membership. Community Care personnel are ultimately responsible for selecting the Category Leads and Moderators, and help Leads select the Advisors and Top Reviewers. Community Care also manages responses to the bug and reports of Abuse or other violations of the Terms of Service.
Members and non-members alike may communicate with Community Care via the General Feedback form.
Concept Review: A reviewing style that relies more upon imagery and storytelling to convey something about the product, rather than by relying on more traditional reviewing elements. Restraint is advised when deciding how to rate these reviews, no matter how well-written they may be.
Contact Email: the email address that shows to visiting members on a profile page. Not to be confused with the Email of Record.
Content Filter: A means of screening out objectionable and otherwise undesirable contributions. Filters are set from a member's Site Settings page, which is reached from the member's Profile Page. There are three possible settings:
Content Partner: A discontinued program that awarded members who directed traffic from their sales websites to Epinions.com. Reference to Content Partner Earnings still appears on the Earnings Detail page, but only to allow for correct display of some members' earnings dating from before the program was discontinued.
Database: The entire list of products and topics on which members may write reviews; millions of topics overall. The list grows daily via bulk adds from industry data feeds, and via individual items added using the Suggest a Product function.
Distrust: Obsolete term for Block, still used by some.
Don't Show: see Rating
DS: Slang for Don't Show. See Rating
Duplicate: see Multiple
Duplicate Review: A review whose content is identical to that of another submission by the same member. A violation of the site’s Terms of Service, even if the product is by some accident listed in the Database twice. See the 100-word Rule.
EA: see Epinions Addicts
Earnings Details: Summary page detailing a member’s current earnings balance from Base Eroyalties, Income Share, and other sources including the now-defunct Referral and Content Partner programs. Also includes details of other payments, including Advisor Bonus(es) and miscellaneous payments. Linked only from a member’s own Profile Page and therefore inaccessible to other members.
EBD: The "Epinions Blows Dog" writeoff held in October, 2001. The writeoff was held to protests Epinions.com's unannounced decision to rescind members' ability to update or delete the content they had submitted. Writers across the entire spectrum of the site submitted reviews and essays stating their displeasure (an archive of many of the entries is available here).
This particular revolution was fomented by sordid-1 beginning with a post to EA on 26 October. That post is archived here.
The cessation of Base Eroyalties some five weeks later (30 November, 2001) is presumed coincidental.
Editor: Defunct position that combined the functions of Top Reviewer and Advisor.
Egoboo: Slang for "ego boost." The warm, fuzzy feeling that a member receives from being recognized for some reason by the community. For instance, when being praised by other members, when a review is rated Most Helpful, or when a review receives a large number of Visits (hits).
Email of Record: the email address that Epinions.com uses for communication with a member, which is set at the time of enrollment. This should not be confused with the Contact Email, which appears on the Profile Page. This address can only be changed from a member's Site Settings page. This is the email address to which Alerts are sent, as well as any communication about Abuse or other official communication.
Epi- or epi-: Prefix for anything Epinions-related, such as epi-addict, epidictionary, etc.
EpiDictionary: An invaluable reference to all things Epinions, the Epidictionary is perhaps more accurately called the "EpiEncyclopedia." It's impossible to summarize or explain, so here: go look at it.
EpiDoll: A toy figure, similar to the animated M & M dolls of television commercials, designed to resemble the four colored dots which comprise the Epinions logo
Epinutia: a small, minor, or trivial detail specific to Epinions; plural "Epinutiae"; an Epi-neologism for "minutia". The term was apparently first and quite probably last used by joyfulgirl91 in a message board post.
Epinions Addicts: Bulletin board popular with members early in the website’s history. Now known as "EA Forums," its main focus is no longer on Epinions.
EPs or EEPs: Slang term for Epinions or Epinions.com. Also lower-case: eeps or eps.
Eroyalties: Income earned on epinions.com. Currently limited to Income Share, but has in the past included funds from Base Eroyalties, Referrals, and the Content Partner program.
Express Review: A review 20 to 199 words in length. Longer reviews are considered to be Regular Reviews. Express Reviews appear after the Regular Reviews in the review listings and have their own rating system. Visits are not tracked on Express Reviews, nor do they earn Income Share. See Rating for details of the Express Review rating system.
Gray Ghost: A review that appears "grayed out" on a member's profile page or list of reviews with the notations "Catalog temporarily unavailable" and "Product temporarily unavailable." Such reviews are invisible to both internal and external search engine and typically receive zero visits. When somehow reached from an external link, the page does not load. Believed a side effect of the events of Black Tuesday.
H: Slang for Helpful. See Rating
Hat: Slang term for the position of Advisor, Category Lead or Top Reviewer. To "have a hat" means that there is a badge next to the member's name on his or her Profile Page. Officially called "title." Origin unknown.
Hatbot: The name given to an automated process that is run by Community Care to begin the process of selecting Top Reviewers and Advisors. Little is known about the executable, but anecdotal evidence indicates that it is quite fallible.
Help Center: Official Epinions answers to some of the most frequently-asked questions.
The Help Center may be found here.
Helpful: see Rating
Hidden: Placeholder name used instead of actual member name when a member has place an anonymous Rating. Members who wish to place an anonymous rating or ratings may do so by checking or unchecking the boxes found in their personal Site Settings.
Hit: see Visit
Hitnosis: A condition where a member feels an overwhelming urge to monitor hits (Visits) as they come in for a newly published review. A condition that generally affects new members and those particularly addicted to egoboo
Home Page: see Profile Page
HR: see Rating
Hundred-Dollar Rule: See 100-Dollar Rule
Hundred-Word Rule: See 100-Word Rule
Inactive: Technically, the site has the right to designate any member Inactive if there has not been a login to the member account in three (3) months. In practice, the period seems to be longer. Note that, according to the User Agreement that all members electronically sign on enrollment, all accrued income expires when an account is designated inactive.
Income Share: Payment to members for the portion of corporate income their submissions have generated in advertising, referrals, and other sources. Little is known to the membership about the methodology of calculating the dollar amount. Disbursement is made monthly, and reflects activity on the member's reviews during the previous month. Submissions in the Writers Corner, Express Reviews, Archived Reviews, and reviews with an Overall Rating below Helpful do not earn Income Share.
Ingredient List: Literally, a listing of the components or ingredients of a product, copied directly from the packaging or cut and pasted from the manufacturer's website. Ingredient lists are derided by some as pure padding; while their supporters claim to be performing a public service in "warning allergy sufferers of potential allergens."
Members in the habit of including ingredient lists are prone to the inclusion of similar lists regardless of the product, leading to review sections entitled "What's in the Box" or "What's Included." By extension, then, an ingredient list is any lengthy listing of parts, equipment, sections, or other components; particularly when many or all of the items in the listing are offered without comment as to their meaning, function, or importance.
A special case of Ingredient List is Music's "track-by-track review," also called "TBT." The reviewer simply discusses each song in the order the tracks appear on the recording. In theory, this music review format is just as valid as any other, but in reality, experienced music writers consider the average TBT review to be rather dry and not very creative.
In-Line Filthter: slang for Objectionable Word Filter
IS: slang for Income Share
Lead: see Category Lead
Lean-N-Mean: A movement to reduce the size of Epinions reviews while still retaining usefulness to a consumer. A "Lean-N-Mean" review, as defined here, achieves a Helpful or Very Helpful Rating in 666 words or fewer.
The founder of the Lean-N-Mean movement is sleeper54.
Link-Pimping: to post a link to one’s review on a bulletin board mainly for the purpose of collecting Visits and Ratings, especially on a bulletin board that mails the link to subscribers. Messages often contain little more than the link and the phrase "Thanks for the r/r/c."
Also called Pimping.
Logged In: State attained by members after providing member name and password. Logged-In members may write reviews and Comments, post to the Message Boards, place Ratings, add products to their Wish Lists, and Trust or Block other members. Members may also access their own Site Settings and all aspects of their own Account Summary. When Logged-In, a member’s chosen Content Filters are activated.
Contrasts with Logged Out, the state in which a member sees the site through the eyes of a non-member.
Logged Out: State in which a member is not recognized by the server and therefore has the same viewing and action permissions as a non-member. When logged out, members use the default Content Filter. Contrasts with Logged In.
Member Center: Site of official communications between Epinions and the membership; the newest postings will be found at the top of the page. Also provides links to such topics as Member Advice and the lists of site Titleholders and of the monthly updates of the Most Popular Reviews and Authors and Top Earning Reviews lists.
A link to the Member Center may be found at the bottom of every page; the page may also be accessed by following this link.
Member Hit: see Visit
Member Information: Information about a member’s identity, Email of Record, and physical (snail mail) address. For security reasons, this information cannot be accessed without the member’s password. Member Information may be changed by accessing the "Update Member Info" link within the Account Options area of one's Profile Page
Message Boards: An area of the Epinions site set aside for communication and discussion among the membership. In addition to a group of general forums under the simple heading "Epinions," each category also has a set of forums of its own. Categories also each have one or more Moderators, who are charged with keeping the peace in their assigned area and with enforcing the site standards. All members are welcome to post in the Message Board area. A link to the Message Boards is at the bottom of every page; the boards may also be found by following this link.
MH: Slang for Most Helpful. See Rating
Moderator: A member of the community selected to maintain order within the Message Boards. A green Badge
Most Helpful: see Rating
Most Popular Author: Status accorded to the 1000 members in each category and site-wide whose reviews have received the most Visits. Lists are reported in the Member Center and summarized on the member's Profile Page. Since 2005, the most popular authors by category by year are also browsable, but these standings are not displayed on the member's Profile Page. Lists are updated monthly near the middle of the month.
Also called MPA.
Most Popular Review: Status accorded to the 1000 reviews in each category that have received the most Visits. Lists are reported in the Member Center and summarized on the member's Profile Page. Since 2005, the most popular reviews by category by year are also browsable, but these standings are not displayed on the member's Profile Page. Lists are updated monthly near the middle of the month.
Also called MPR.
MPA: see Most Popular Author
MPR: see Most Popular Review
Multiple: any member account created in addition to a member’s one account permissible under the Terms of Service. Multiple accounts are grounds for immediate termination of member privileges.
Naughty Words Filter: see Objectionable Words Filter
Newbie: general Internet slang term for a newcomer. Loss of newbie status corresponds more with sitewide activity than with length of enrollment, although the "new" tag on the user's Profile Page and Review disappears after 30 days.
New Review Alert: see Alert
NH: Slang for Not Helpful. See Rating
Not Helpful: see Rating
Notification: synonym for Alerts
Notification Site: an offsite utility constructed by early member ptiemann, its main function is to allow a user to view links to multiple members’ most recent reviews (up to two weeks old). Used by some long-time members as a backup to the occasionally undependable New Review Alert system. Interested parties may sign up here. As of this writing, the site is down; however, this happens periodically.
Also called "Peter’s site," "ptiemann’s site," "ptiemann’s notification site"
NR: see Rating
Nonmember: A person who has not enrolled as a member of Epinions.com; a consumer who is using the site to research items for purchase.
Nonmember Hit: see Visit
Objectionable Words Filter: Filtering software applied to content submitted by members in Reviews, Comments, and Message Board posts. Upon encountering a word on the site's "objectionable" word list, the member is warned that the material contains an unacceptable word or words. In reviews, the word is highlighted red and marked by a strikeout, e.g.,
This filter is intended to make use of gratuitous profanity more difficult on a "family-friendly" site, although many members routinely circumvent the filter. Members are reminded that the use of profanity is prohibited by the Terms of Service and, should a visitor to the site object to a member's content, that member is liable for Ticketing.
Also called OWF, in-line filthter.
Off Topic: Specifically refers to a review that has been written on a product that is not the one to whose Product Page it is linked. Off Topic reviews can be moved to existing topics, or if the product is not in the database, a new listing may be requested via Suggest a Product (SAP). See also Rating
OT: Slang for Off Topic. See Off Topic, Rating
Overall Rating: The weighted average of all Ratings on a Review, it may range from Not Helpful to Very Helpful. Only reviews with an overall rating of Somewhat helpful, Helpful or Very Helpful are visible to nonmembers. Note that unless a review is rated Helpful or Very Helpful, it will not earn Income Share.
OWF: Slang for Objectionable Words Filter
Pageview: see Visit
Pennies-per-hit: see Base Eroyalties
Pimp or Pimping: see Link_Pimping
Popular Author: Badge
Product Alert: see Alert
Product Page: The "home page" of a Product, as opposed to an Essay or Writer's Corner topic. A product page displays the product's picture and general information about it. Prominent links in the header of the page will take you to places on the page at which you may compare prices at participating online merchants, view additional product details, and read reviews about the product. Three other links are also displayed; these allow you to add the product to your Wish List, subscribe to Product Alerts, and Write a Review.
Profanity Filter: see Objectionable Word Filter
Profile: see Profile Page
Profile Page: A customizable page reserved for a specific member, with a unique URL of the form http://www.epinions.com/user-membername.
When viewing any member's profile page, an Account Summary displays member name, enrollment date, number of reviews written, number of member visits and total number of visits, links to the member's five most recent Reviews (if any), and the names of the five most recent people to add the member to their List of Trusted Members. If the member has chosen not to hide his or her list of trusted members, the five most recent additions are displayed. The full list of the member's reviews and trusted or trusting members are also linked from the profile page. If logged in, a member may choose to Block or Trust a member from the profile page and may also place a New Review Alert. If a member chooses to display his or her Wish List, it appears immediately above the Recent Reviews. If the member enrolled within the past thirty days, a small red "new" flag appears adjacent to his or her name.
Members may customize a profile page to add a picture, name, location, Contact Email, homepage link, favorite website links, and short and long biography. The long biography section of many profile pages has been customized to include pictures, hit counters, lists of reviews, and other bits of information to help make the member more "real."
Epinions adds additional data to some profile pages. Badges for members who have attained Category Lead, Top Reviewer, Advisor, and Popular Author status are displayed to the right of the profile picture (if present). In the long biography section, Epinions also lists a selection of the member's Most Popular Reviews and the member's Most Popular Author ranking by category. If the member is a Category Lead or Advisor, his or her 100 most recent ratings placed in the pertinent category(ies) may be surveyed from a link immediately below the Recent Reviews list.
When Logged In and viewing your own profile page, you may access your account data from the shaded box in the upper left corner labeled Account Options. You may survey your list of trusted members and members who trust you, and may also survey the list of members you Block. You may edit any information shown on your public profile, such as your contact email. You may change your site settings such as Email of Record, and access your Earnings Report. There are also links to the Help and MemberCenters. Advisors and Category Leads see a link (Review Ratings) to their 100 most recent ratings in the pertinent category(ies). You may access your Wish List. Your profile page also displays a Site Status board to the left of your list of Recent Reviews.
When viewing your own profile page, you see your own Wish List, the name under which you enrolled, Visits and Earnings information on your Recent Reviews, and an overall report of your earnings. None of this personal information is visible to the membership at large, except your enrollment name, which may be optionally displayed.
Nonmembers and members who are Logged Out cannot see the email address field, the New Review Alert link, or the link to Advisor/Category Lead ratings.
The profile pages of members who have not Logged In to their accounts for more than (approximately) six months are considered Inactive and their profile pages are flagged with the words "Note: This account is no longer active," displayed in red at the top of the page. The profile page of a member who has been reported for violation of the site's Terms of Service and has chosen not to clear the violation bears a red box containing the word "Tickets" and a list of the violation(s).
Members who have incurred the wrath of the community for (perceived) violations of the Terms of Service or for violations of community standards of conduct may be under a Community Block, which makes them invisible to non-members. Instead of a profile page, visitors see a page marked by the words "We're sorry, but this profile cannot be displayed," followed by explanatory text.
Also known as Profile, Home Page
Public Profile: the Profile Page seen by anyone other than its owner.
R: see Rating
Radio Button: Circular check boxes used on epinions.com for applying ratings to Express Reviews when viewing them in page mode. These buttons are a standard web and GUI programming tool. The name "radio button" derives from the fact that, like tuning buttons on a radio, only one may be clicked "on" at a time; as differentiated from check-boxes, of which any combination may be clicked "on."
Rating: Epinions members use a system of ratings that indicates their opinion of the helpfulness of a Review for the hypothetical average consumer. Ratings are placed by clicking the pertinent button from the group of buttons found at the bottom of each review. For Regular Reviews, the ratings system allows all members to place one of five ratings: Very Helpful (VH), Helpful (H), Somewhat Helpful (SH), Not Helpful (NH), and Off Topic (OT). Advisors and Category Leads may also place a Most Helpful (MH) rating for one review (at a time) on each topic. Express Reviews may be rated Show (S) or Don't Show (DS). On occasion, members refer to unrated reviews as Not Rated (NR).
If you have already rated another member's submission, the corresponding button shows as colored when you finish reading the review. You may change your rating by clicking a different button.
Things to know about ratings:
R/R/C or r/r/c: common abbreviation for read, rate, comment
Rating Alert: see Alert
Rating Weight: Not all Ratings are created equal. Within the pertinent category, an Advisor's or Category Lead's rating carries more weight in determining the review's Overall Rating than that of a non-Advisor. The ratings of members who are Trusted by Advisors and Leads also have greater weight in the pertinent category. Members who are Blocked by Category Leads and Advisors have reduced weight in that category. The relative order of weights (the actual value of the weights is proprietary) is approximately Category Lead, Advisor, members trusted by Leads/Advisors, members with neither trust not blocks from Leads/Advisors, members blocked by Leads/Advisors.
A member's weight varies from category to category depending on whether or not she or he is trusted or blocked by that category's Leads and Advisors. It is never a function of how many of the category's Leads and Advisors the member trusts.
Redeem: see Redemption
Reciprocal Rating: The practice of perusing the Ratings on one's reviews, clicking on the linked member names, and "paying back" the member for his/her rating with a return Visit and rating on his or her most recent review. Dates back to the days of Base Eroyalties when one was literally paying a visitor back for the rating.
Reciprocal Trust: The practice of "rewarding" a member for adding you to his or her List of Trusted Members by automatically adding him or her to yours. Widely practiced by Newbies and those addicted to egoboo.
Redemption: The act of requesting payment of your Eroyalties. Payment of eroyalities is limited by policy to members at least 18 years of age. Members residing in the USA may redeem after their account has accrued a minimum of $10; members living outside the USA must accrue at least $100 before redeeming (see 100-Dollar Rule)
Also called "cash(ing) out."
Referral: A discontinued program that awarded members for enticing new members to sign up. Reference to Referral Earnings still appears on the Earnings Detail page, but only to allow for correct display of earnings from before the program was discontinued.
Regular Review: An opinion composed of at least 200 words, as distinct from the shorter Express Reviews. Only Regular Reviews accumulate Income Share and Visits (aka "Hits"). Regular Reviews may be either product reviews, essays, or submissions to the Writers Corner (the latter no longer earn Income Share as of 2005).
Revenge Rate: the act of placing a low Reciprocal Rating for what a member perceives to be undeserved low ratings. Unusual but not unknown in long-term members; generally the act of a Newbie. Considered a violation of general community standards by most.
Review Alert: see Alert
Review Order: The order in which reviews of a given product are displayed are controlled by several factors. For nonmembers and members who are Logged Out, reviews written by a Category Lead are displayed first, followed by reviews written by Top Reviewers. The remaining reviews are then ordered according to their Overall Rating, from Very Helpful to Not Helpful. Unrated reviews appear at the end of the list. For members who are Logged In, their own reviews appear at the top of the list followed by reviews written by members they Trust. Submissions written by members they Block appear last in the review list, and all other reviews fall in between in the default order.
Contrary to popular belief, reviews written by Advisors do not have the preferential placement accorded those written by Category Leads and Top Reviewers.
It is possible (and occasionally happens) for a review by a non-Titled member with a very large number of high ratings to override the additional "weight" of a Top Reviewer or even a Category Lead.
Rubberstamping: Placing a Rating without actually reading the Material being rated. This most often occurs on reviews that have already received several ratings, especially ratings from Advisors and/or Category Leads. A rubberstamper simply applies the same rating already applied by a favored member or Advisor, or applies a rating that corresponds to the present Overall Rating shown on the review. If a habitual rubber-stamper accidentally happens on a review for which neither technique works, s/he will generally use the Word Count method instead.
S: Slang for Show. See Rating
SAHM: Internet acronym for Stay-at-Home Mom. Many Epinions members are SAHMs and some are SAHDs.
SAP: Slang for Suggest A Product
Search Engine: The library function that allows members and non-members to locate products within the Epinions.com Database. In reality there are two means of searching:
Other search protocols are also available:
The Epinions.com search engine is the target of frequent complaints by the membership, and upgrade of its functionality is a perennial promise by the company. See also vaporware.
Site Settings: The area in which a member controls his or her preferences regarding content visibility and rating anonymity. All members control their own site settings.
To reach your Site Settings area, log in and visit your ProfilePage. In the upper left-hand part of the page (the area marked "Account Options", click the link for Site Settings and follow the directions. Remember to click the orange "Update Site Settings" link to leave.
Site Status: The yellowish boxed area on the left-had side of the profile page below the Account Options section. In this position it is visible only to members, and only when they are Logged In. The Site Status box is also visible to all on any Epinions.com "official" pages, including the Member Center and FAQ pages.
The Site Status box serves to make announcements to the membership at large concerning site-wide problems or scheduled outages, and of the status of Eroyalty disbursements. All other announcements to the membership are made from the Member Center.
SH: Slang for Somewhat Helpful. See Rating
Show: see Rating
Somewhat Helpful: see Rating
SR: see Rating
Street Team: an organized group of persons who are dedicated to spreading messages about a product throughout the internet. Some street teams are dedicated to positive promotion of a certain product, while others may be dedicated to spreading negative information about a product. Street team reviews are often short, over the top declarations of love/hate for the product, and usually contain the same basic phrases and catch-words as other reviews posted by other street team members. (see also Swarm Reviews)
Street teams are often seen in media and electronics-related categories. Street teams are probably most heavily utilized in the music industry, where fans are organized by an artist's management company to go out and spread the word on new album releases.
Suggest A Product: A method by which new products requested by members are added to the Epinions Database. The suggest a product process is available only to Epinions staff and Category Leads, who can add only in their assigned category. Note: not all products in all categories can be added.
Also called SAP.
Suspend Alerts: To turn off all Email Alerts temporarily or permanently. To do so, visit your the "Email Alerts" link in your Site Settings and click the blue-gray bar inscribed "Suspend Alerts". When you are ready to resume alerts, visit the same location and click on the orange bar inscribed "Resume Alerts."
Note that no alerts of any kind will be generated for your account while your are in a suspended status: unlike the post office, epinions.com will not save them all in a paper bag and give them to you on your return. This proves useful for extended vacations, epi-burnout, busy seasons, and the like.
Swarm Reviews: A coordinated and most likely electronically generated mass posting to Epinions of hundreds of spam messages masquerading as reviews. New member profiles are created to enable the posting agent to post the "review", and in what would be a new twist if the agents are bots, also rate reviews posted by other agents. In a message board thread opened at 09:35 PM PST October 14, Freak369 was reportedly the first to use the term "Swarm Review" to describe the phenomena after first seeing it in the Kids and Family category. (see also Street Team)
TBT: see Ingredient List
Terms of Service: Officially called the Site Usage Policy, this takes the form of a list of actions that are deemed "inappropriate" by Epinions.com. Upon receipt of a complaint from a member or nonmember, the company may at its discretion
Details of the Terms of Service may be found here; an abbreviated version dealing specifically with submission content may be found here.
Ticket: Punishment issued by the Epinions.com department that enforces adherence to the Terms of Service. The ticketing process consists of:
At the discretion of Community Care, receipt of a ticket may result in immediate removal of a Titled member's titles. Tickets are cumulative, and repeated violators are subject to removal from the site; again, at the discretion of Community Care.
Titleholder: Someone who is an Advisor, Top Reviewer, Moderator, or Category Lead. Also called "hat."
Title: Any of the community leadership positions bestowed by Epinions, including Advisor, Category Lead, Moderator, or Top Reviewer. Sometimes called a "hat," although that term is normally reserved for the Advisor and Top Reviewer positions alone.
Top Earning Reviews: A list, by category, is posted in the Member Center each month. The list details the member name, a link to the review, and the number of hits garnered by the review in the month. Vague wording in the page's header mentions the approximate Income Share paid on the number one review for the month. This data is updated each month near the middle of the month, so month-to-month comparisons are up to the member's memory.
Top Reviewer: A member selected for the quality (and/or quantity) of his or her writing in a specific category, which gives that member's Reviews prominent placement at or near the top of any listing of reviews of a product or service. Top Reviewers are identified by an orange Badge
A member may be a Top Reviewer in multiple categories, but preferential placement of his or her reviews is effective only in the category or categories in which he or she is so designated. For further information, see the official epinions.com FAQ on Top Reviewers.
Also known as TR.
TOS: Slang for Terms of Service
Troll: General internet term for a person who (metaphorically) lives under a bridge, has orange hair, and wears only a pair of baggy shorts. The term derives partially from that mythical creature and partially from fishing terminology, in which "to troll" means "to drag a baited line behind you as you move slowly through the water." Trolls, often Multiples, typically make themselves known in Comment Sections and on the Message Boards, often by making outrageous and inflammatory statements in hopes of stirring up trouble. The best defense against a troll is to simply ignore it.
Trust: As a verb, to add a member to one’s Web of Trust. As a noun, a relationship marked by the presence of the other member on one’s list of trusted members. Compare to Block.
UA: Abbreviation for the User Agreement
Unacceptable Words Filter: See Objectionable Words Filter
User Agreement: The full legal agreement between Epinions.com and the public, whether member or nonmember.
The User Agreement may be viewed in its entirety here.
Vertical Rating: The practice of reading and rating all (where possible) Reviews of a product or service in order to ensure that (in one's own opinion) the reviews are properly ordered. Considered a duty for category Advisors but may be performed by any member. Often necessary because older reviews of a product either do not have a rating by a current Advisor, have not had ratings assigned in accordance with current standards, or both.
Very Helpful: see Rating
VH: Slang for Very Helpful. See Rating
Visit: a visit is credited to your review each time the page containing that review is downloaded to a browser. Visits are reported on your Profile Page and on the Review Detail Pages.
A member visit is credited to your review when a Logged-In member views your review. A member may visit you review as often as he or she wishes, but your review will be credited with only one member visit per member per calendar month. A Rating is not required for the visit to register as a member visit, and a member visit is credited regardless of the rating given.
Nonmember visits, contrary to the belief of some members, are not directly counted - only member and total visits are counted. The two numbers reported on your profile page represent member and total visits, not member and nonmember visits.
Also called Hit, Pageview
Web of Trust: The ultimate basis of the Epinions review-ranking model, the site-wide Web of Trust is used to calculate the weight of any member’s ratings and for assessing one’s "strength of Web of Trust" in the selection of Titleholders.
An individual member’s Web of Trust is technically divisible into two parts, the List of Trusted Members and the List of Trusting Members (both of which may be viewed from links on that member’s Profile Page); however most members consider it to be a single entity. This is in part because many members practice Reciprocity in trusting.
The visible effects of Trusting, that is, adding a member to your list of trusted members, are as follows:
More importantly, the invisible effect of adding a member to your list of Trusted Members is the basis for the overall ranking of reviews. A member who is trusted by many other members accrues a larger Rating Weight. The increase in Rating Weight is even larger in categories where the member is trusted by Advisors and/or Category Leads. When the Overall Rating of a review is calculated, a rating by a powerful member may override opposing ratings of multiple relatively weak members. It is in the best interests of the site for all members to bestow trust upon members who use that Rating Weight responsibly rather than upon members who are simply "nice."
A member may choose to "Hide his WOT" by unchecking the box on the "Edit Public Profile" page, accessible from one's Site Settings. This has the visible effects of:
No changes occur in the rating weight of trusted members. Note also that one cannot hide the List of Trusting Members.
Also known as WOT or WoT.
Wish List: A function that allows a member to capture links to products in the database for research or other purposes. Members may choose to display their Wish List on their Profile Page or keep it hidden. Used by some as a reminder of products for which they wish to write reviews, by others as a shopping list.
WoD or WOD: slang term for Block List, it derives from the phrase "Web of Distrust."
Word Counting: A practice akin to Rubber-Stamping, except that the member simply estimates the number of words and applies a rating in accordance with his or her personal sliding scale. Occasionally made obvious when a member applies a high rating to a long review that contains no information or somehow violates community standards or the Terms of Service.
Similar to the college TA's practice of taking a stack of research papers to the top of a stairway and giving the ones that fly furthest the highest grade, word counting is equally suspect.
WoT or WOT: slang for Web of Trust
Writer's Corner: A free-form area set up by Epinions.com as a forum for creative writing and the sharing of information on topics unrelated to the site. Submissions to the Writer’s Corner originally earned a small amount of Income Share, but no longer do so. Visits to them count toward most popular Author and Review tallies. Though some hold that the site’s Terms of Service are suspended in the Writer’s Corner to encourage creativity, Tickets have historically been issued for violations reported in content submitted to that area.
Also known (to the amusement of European members) as the WC.
|
Anonymous
Create an account or Log in
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.