SEARCH please use SEARCH....and Forum FAQ...External Review Links

[Blade]

SEARCH
This is not the busiest forum on the board, and one benefit of that is that the threads go back almost to the beginning of the board! So rather than starting a new thread, try bumping an old one if it exists and you'd like more info.
[list][*]Search Methods:
This forum has two methods of searching for information you are looking for.
[list=1][*]The easiest can be found on every thread list page. Just go to the bottom of any thread list page and you'll see a box in the lower right hand corner labeled "Search this forum." Just type your keywords in there and it will search the content of the posts for only the forum you're in, regardless of date.
[*]The other is at the top right of almost every page. There's a bar of gray buttons and the second to last one says "search" and looks like this:



Clicking on this button (the above is clickable, by the way) will take you to our search page which let's you search all forums, or one particular forum, and defaults to a search of the past month's posts. You can change that as well. You can also search only thread titles.[/list=1]
[*]A Note on Searching:
The engine requires a minimum of 3 characters to perform a search. So if you're searching for a word of less than 3 characters (like a 2 digit number) you're going to have to try using another word that is likely to only occur with this particular keyword or subject. For example, if you were looking for a review of V, the tv series, try doing a search on miniseries.

Also, the search engine does not do partial matches automatically. If you search on DVD it will only find DVD, not DVDs. If you're sure the word(s) you're searching for have been used, try adding "*" to your search. Either like this: DVD*, or like this: *DVD*.

LINKS TO OTHER SITES' REVIEWS
[list][*]Links to reviews on sites you aren't affiliated with:
Feel free to provide all the links to external reviews you want as long as you aren't affiliated with the site. Do not, however, cut and paste the entire review into our forum. These folks put a good bit of work into their reviews, they deserve the click throughs.

Posting a brief summary or explanation (ie. "these guys thought it was a good disc, with a funny commentary") is welcome and encouraged, however.
[*]Links to reviews written by you or written for a site you are affiliated with:
Normally, this kind of behavior will earn you a permanent suspension from our forums. Using our site for free advertising is explicitly against our forum rules. HOWEVER, the special nature of this forum has prompted us to create an exception:

If you write reviews for another site, or would like to post reviews written for your site, we ask three things.

1. Don't just come here to post your reviews. This is a fun place with interesting people. Take part in the community, don't just look at our members as potential affiliate fees and click throughs. If you don't care about our members, we don't care about you. Let's not waste each other's time. Thanks.
   
2. Don't do too many at once. Doing that looks like spam and will be treated accordingly.
   
3. Post a mini-summary of your review along with your link. For example:

   So-so movie, better if you're really into standard romantic comedies. Video/Audio transfer is terriffic as you'd expect for a recent theatrical release, though not without a glitch here and there. Special Features are mostly filler with one really decent featurette. link

   We don't expect you to give away the store, but give our members the option of deciding whether they want to read more or not.[/list=1]
   
   Please understand that we appreciate the hard work that goes into creating a good DVD review, and we also understand wanting as many people as possible to read it. But a lot of work goes into making sure our members are able to enjoy these forums, and a lot of money goes into paying for this bandwidth too. We think the above is a good compromise and one that has worked here for a couple years now. Thank you for your cooperation.
   
4. Final note, DVDTalk reviews are obviously exempt from the above.

REVIEW REQUESTS

Not sure how everyone feels about this, but if everyone could try to keep their review requests to about 5 a day, that would probably make it more likely that you're going to get quality responses. Posting so many all at once tends to push other review threads off the front page and (at least for me) tends to make you less likely to reply. Just to be clear, this is a simple request, not a rule. And posting 5 a day, everyday probably won't win you any friends either.

PARAMOUNT

Parmount does not send out DVD review copies until about two weeks before street date, and more importantly, they do not allow reviewers to post thier reviews until TEN days before street date. If you're wondering why a movie doesn't have any formal reviews available, see if it's a Paramount title.

[Cornfed]

Could my post from this thread have inspired this effort?

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...hreadid=186729

[Blade]

It could have....

Actually, I saw a complaint about this in Feedback last week or so, and since I've been spending a little more time in here, I thought it might be a good idea to see if it helps make the forum a little more useful.

"Do a search" is one of the more commonly made suggestions in all the forums, but no where else is it such a basic action before starting a new thread.

[Cornfed]

Yeah, not a bad idea....let's see how it holds up. The DVD Clubs forum has been getting flooded lately and the regulars constantly tell people 'read the faq.' Yet the same questions are asked every other day in a new thread each time.

[Blade]

Updated some of the info....

Originally posted by Cornfed
Yeah, not a bad idea....let's see how it holds up. The DVD Clubs forum has been getting flooded lately and the regulars constantly tell people 'read the faq.' Yet the same questions are asked every other day in a new thread each time.

We're bringing on another Mod to help out in there, so hopefully things will get better.

Also I think the faq in Clubs is a little harder to read than this one.

[Blade]

Originally posted by Blade
Also, the search engine does not do partial matches automatically. If you search on DVD it will only find DVD, not DVDs. If you're sure the word(s) you're searching for have been used, try adding "*" to your search. Either like this: DVD*, or like this: *DVD*.

Added the above to the "A note on searching" section.

We'll be updating our policy on links to reviews tomorrow.

[Blade]

Added the following clarification on Review Links to the first post:

LINKS TO OTHER SITES' REVIEWS
[list][*]Links to reviews on sites you aren't affiliated with:
Feel free to provide all the links to external reviews you want as long as you aren't affiliated with the site. Do not, however, cut and paste the entire review into our forum. These folks put a good bit of work into their reviews, they deserve the click throughs.

Posting a brief summary or explanation (ie. "these guys thought it was a good disc, with a funny commentary") is welcome and encouraged, however.
[*]Links to reviews written by you or written for a site you are affiliated with:
Normally, this kind of behavior will earn you a permanent suspension from our forums. Using our site for free advertising is explicitly against our forum rules. HOWEVER, the special nature of this forum has prompted us to create an exception:

If you write reviews for another site, or would like to post reviews written for your site, we ask three things.

1. Don't just come here to post your reviews. This is a fun place with interesting people. Take part in the community, don't just look at our members as potential affiliate fees and click throughs. If you don't care about our members, we don't care about you. Let's not waste each other's time. Thanks.
   
2. Don't do too many at once. Doing that looks like spam and will be treated accordingly.
   
3. Post a mini-summary of your review along with your link. For example:

   So-so movie, better if you're really into standard romantic comedies. Video/Audio transfer is terriffic as you'd expect for a recent theatrical release, though not without a glitch here and there. Special Features are mostly filler with one really decent featurette. link

   We don't expect you to give away the store, but give our members the option of deciding whether they want to read more or not.[/list=1]
   
   Please understand that we appreciate the hard work that goes into creating a good DVD review, and we also understand wanting as many people as possible to read it. But a lot of work goes into making sure our members are able to enjoy these forums, and a lot of money goes into paying for this bandwidth too. We think the above is a good compromise and one that has worked here for a couple years now. Thank you for your cooperation.
   
4. Final note, DVDTalk reviews are obviously exempt from the above.

[G. Noel Gross]

Originally posted by Blade
Feel free to provide all the links to external reviews you want as long as you aren't affiliated with the site.

How is this a good thing? I think these should also come with "content" blurbs ... If you're throwing someone a link, that's great, but tell us why. Pimping is pimping regardless of your relationship to the whores. Dang, I really should come up with a better metaphor.

[Blade]

Originally posted by G. Noel Gross
How is this a good thing? I think these should also come with "content" blurbs ... If you're throwing someone a link, that's great, but tell us why. Pimping is pimping regardless of your relationship to the whores. Dang, I really should come up with a better metaphor.

Are you more concerned about threads that essentially say, "here's the link dvdfile's review of xyz movie"? Or you want a content blurb on all external review links?

If the former, that's a good point, as this part of the rules was concerned more with threads that were requesting reviews, and I'll post an amendment about that when I get a chance.

But if the latter, then I can't really require people to post copyrighted material. A short blurb can fall under the heading of "not having enough time to read everything," but doing it on an extensive and regular basis would be something we'd actually have to discourage.

If I'm not correctly understanding your point, feel free to respond here or via email, and I'll try to give you a better response.

[Blade]

G. Noel Gross,

Thanks for the email. Very good point. I don't think making it a requirement is practical (from a moderating point of view), but I added the following to the rules above...hope that works for you.

Posting a brief summary or explanation (ie. "these guys thought it was a good disc, with a funny commentary") is welcome and encouraged, however.

[GuessWho]

How about if someone is asking about a review of the film itself, and not specifically the dvd, they get referred to a regular movie review site? Like: http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebertser.html

As a DVD forum, I believe the focus should be on the dvd aspects and not plot summary, etc

[Blade]

Originally posted by GuessWho
How about if someone is asking about a review of the film itself, and not specifically the dvd, they get referred to a regular movie review site? Like: http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebertser.html

As a DVD forum, I believe the focus should be on the dvd aspects and not plot summary, etc

Hi Guess,

Sorry I missed your post these past two MONTHS.

Generally, if the thread is just asking for a review of the movie, it should be moved over to the Movie Talk forum, though I'm pretty sure I've seen a few of those types of threads here without moving them myself.

Besides sheer laziness, since the purpose of this forum is for reviews, and given the level of traffic in here, I don't have a real problem with the occassional thread that says it just wants a review of the film. But, technically speaking, it should be moved to the Movie Talk forum.

Hope that answers your question.

[Blade]

Updated Search section to reflect changes in the forum's search function. The search now requires at least 4 characters, and wildcards have been disabled. System resources are being stretched a little too thin.

The following is just being saved for posterity.

Old search text:

SEARCH
This is not the busiest forum on the board, and one benefit of that is that the threads go back almost to the beginning of the board! So rather than starting a new thread, try bumping an old one if it exists and you'd like more info.
[list][*]Search Methods:
This forum has two methods of searching for information you are looking for.

1. The easiest can be found on every thread list page. Just go to the bottom of any thread list page and you'll see a box in the lower right hand corner labeled "Search this forum." Just type your keywords in there and it will search the content of the posts for only the forum you're in, regardless of date.
   
2. The other is at the top right of almost every page. There's a bar of gray buttons and the second to last one says "search" and looks like this:
   
   
   
   Clicking on this button (the above is clickable, by the way) will take you to our search page which let's you search all forums, or one particular forum, and defaults to a search of the past month's posts. You can change that as well. You can also search only thread titles.[/list=1]
   
3. A note on searching:
   The engine requires a minimum of 3 characters to perform a search. So if you're searching for a word of less than 3 characters (like a 2 digit number) you're going to have to try using another word that is likely to only occur with this particular keyword or subject. For example, if you were looking for a review of V, the tv series, try doing a search on miniseries.
   
   Also, the search engine does not do partial matches automatically. If you search on DVD it will only find DVD, not DVDs. If you're sure the word(s) you're searching for have been used, try adding "*" to your search. Either like this: DVD*, or like this: *DVD*.

[hokejka]

I tried to find some info on "Meet Joe Black" movie, but couldn't because ther search engine wouldn't search for "Joe"
not funny
searching for "meet AND Black" didn't help