EN World Gamestore - Review Question

[Man-thing]

Hello,

I was wondering if there was a way to have my product reviews deleted. When I originally wrote them they were not intend to be part of a store's advertising plan, they were written to say what a felt about some products.

That said, I'm not opposed to writing reviews that will appear in the ENGS in the future. I just want to be clear when I'm writing how my writing will be used.

- Thanks

 

[Morrus]

I'll delete your reviews when I have a moment.

 

[Man-thing]

Thank you Morrus.

 

[Morrus]

Incidentally, I'd rather you didn't write any more. Thanks.

 

[Twin Rose]

Hello,

When I originally wrote them they were not intend to be part of a store's advertising plan, they were written to say what a felt about some products.

When you write reviews, you expect they'll be used in marketting. Unless they are bad reviews - people don't like to use those in advertising. When I used to write for RPGNow's ezine, I knew that I was trying to push PDF products on people. I didn't expect to see my article used in individual publishers product pages. But it happens. Would you rather they take a little piece of your review, and quote it? Or simply quote the first few hundred characters - no matter how bad what you had to say was?

 

[Bardsandsages]

At least in the standard publishing industry, it is pretty accepted that if you write a review, it can and will be quoted. Though I always try to contact the reviewers before using parts of a review, just as a common courtesy, the rules of fair use allow a publisher to quote reviews (though there are some copyright issues with reproducing entire reviews). So if you fear some publisher making a profit off of your comments, perhaps it best not to post reviews. Though in reality I have yet to see reviews for my RPG materials have nearly as big an impact as reviews for my fiction work in other venues.

 

[Roudi]

There was a really good example of this a couple years back, when a certain publisher (now banned from this forum) was consistently writing scating reviews of other publisher's products. One product happened to be one of the Quickshots Mission File line (by Tim Willard, of Year of the Zombie fame). Tim used the ENTIRE scathing review as an advertisement for the product, and said ad brought in more sales.

The bottom line is this: if you write a review a product, even a negative one, you are already writing a promotion for the product (the review does, after all, serve to inform people of the product's existence, its merits, and its drawbacks). Because reviews are posted in public forum (they'd be useless if kept private), they can end up used in weird ways.

 

[madelf]

This didn't sound to me like someone concerned about his review being referenced (or even quoted) to promote the product he reviewed. This sounded like someone who didn't appreciate his review being adopted as a feature of a store he may or may not choose to support. And I can see his point.

Providing a review on the ENWorld News & Review site (as a contribution to a community) is a bit different than providing a review for the benefit of a retail store. As the writer of the review (and therefore the copyright holder), Man-thing has every right to decide how and when it will be used. As does the writer of any other review. Just because someone posts something for public viewing doesn't mean it's fair game for people to do anything they want with it.


I thought the reviewer being effectively told that his future reviews are not welcome here anymore is a nice touch too. Very professional. It inspires me with such confidence in the new ENWorld store.
:\

 

[Morrus]

I thought the reviewer being effectively told that his future reviews are not welcome here anymore is a nice touch too. Very professional. It inspires me with such confidence in the new ENWorld store.
:\

General practice here. If someone asks to have their reviews deleted, we ask them not to post any more. If someone asks to have their account closed, they're asked not to return. Been that way long before the store was ever conceived.

Nobody's arguing with his request, but he's not a "special case" and is subject to the same rules as everyone else.

 

[madelf]

General practice here. If someone asks to have their reviews deleted, we ask them not to post any more. If someone asks to have their account closed, they're asked not to return. Been that way long before the store was ever conceived.

Nobody's arguing with his request, but he's not a "special case" and is subject to the same rules as everyone else.

Understood.
I apologize for my incorrect assumption. (I'm not sure it makes sense to me, but that's hardly a requirement). It seems you have a slightly terse (for lack of a better word) posting style which has actually tripped me up before, so I really should remind myself of that when reading. It sometimes throws off your meaning, for me at least. But I'll try not to jump to conclusions in the future.


My comments to those posters who seem to think the reviewer should expect people to use his writings as he didn't intend, so suck it up, still stands though. Unless he's contractually assigned his rights to someone else, he gets to say how his work is used.