Just wondering what is going on with these categories. Seems to me that the site isn't taking these categories very seriously because they combined the two rather than enlarge them individually, and now the popular hits, top earning reviews, and most popular reviews in sports and outdoors do not even show up on our home page or even in our member center.

This issue has been discussed a bit over on this thread, but the basic answer is that the fix is coming...

At first when the categories were merged basically all Advisor and TR bubbles disappeared from reviews and from ratings (Advisors didn't have a Most Helpful button either).

When Epinions pushed the bug fix for this, the Sports & Outdoors category disappeared from the rankings (as did a few other categories including Health & Wellness). What that means is basically your Sports & Outdoors reviews don't count in the MPA/MPR rankings and have disappeared from the rankings.

Garrett (Epinions) has said that they know about this and are working on fixing the problem for the Sports & Outdoors and the Health & Wellness categories, though I don't think they've really given a time frame for the bug to get fixed.

When the problem is finally fixed I think we should be pretty well off. The database update added thousands of products to both categories (or now the new, single category) and the new SAP request for products not listed is up and running and Openroad (Abraham) can use it to add more products.

Jeff

Thanks for the great update, Jeff. I think I can expand upon the answer slightly. My understanding is that all of the categories will eventually be updated to reflect the shopping.com database. Sports and Outdoors was just among the first to go through this transition and is feeling the growing pains as a result.

It isn't that Epinions doesn't care about the category, it's just the result of some growing pains that have in many ways already improved it. The database has grown quite a bit already. Once the final bugs are worked out, we will be ahead of the other categories and in essence the rulers of the epinions world sitting at our computers laughing evily, "muhahaha!"

That's my two cents anyway,
Scott

I see that the message boards can be incredibly helpful for finding out information about the site as well as certain categories, thanks again guys.

No problem - just ask away in the future - we're here to help.

Jeff

I was looking over my history yesterday and despite some speculation that hits are down, noticed that they were up quite a bit in both December and January. Despite the issues, things seem to be looking up in sporting goods and outdoors.
Scott

berniez40 has asked about the status of the Sports and Outdoors Category on the main Epinions Message Board.

Is There ....

At the moment the category is still not registering for MPA/MPR, though hits are being counted and IS is still being earned on reviews. Those stats just aren't helping you on the most popular author and review lists.

Jeff

I have some SPorts/Outdoors reviews with zero outside hits in the last couple of months. These reviews must be ''hidden'' in the database. It was fun while it lasted! -Dave

Yep,
I've noticed that my newer reviews have had zero outside hits. I don't plan on posting anything new until they get it fixed.
Scott

Here is what Almar (from Epinions) said about the current situation...

I'll be as candid as I can in answering these questions with the knowledge I have now:

1) Is this is going to be a permanent problem (aka, are the currently dead categories dead forever);

I'm told no. In fact, when the catalog fixes go out, this should fix a lot of the problems. For the "dead forever" ones, I believe we're looking into ways to at least salvage the review and give you the ability to move it (better than the way it works now) if the product no longer exists.

2) If it's not a permanent problem, when will it be fixed?; and

The engineers are working on this right now (and trying to solve the issue of the greyed out reviews) and a bunch of other stuff including missing hits.

3) If it can be fixed, will the hits that are currently occuring but not registering going to be credited back? Will there be any IS credit and will the future, properly credited hits earn IS?

I hate to say it, but I don't think we'll be able credit back the missing hits (hopefully I'm wrong but I doubt it on this one). But if we're able to fix the missing hits, then yes, I think it's safe to assume you'll be properly credited for hits moving forward from the period it's fixed.


Please keep in mind that the answers might change depending on what they discover to be the root of the issues. As with the greyed out reviews, it turns out there was more than one cause to that but what you saw as a result was the same. Hopefully that isn't the case for everything mentioned but unfortunately it's not that straightforward (from what I'm told).

-Almar


That was said in this thread

I really hope that fixing the bugs in Sports and Outdoors is a priority. It seems like there is a huge focus on attracting new writers. But if these issues aren't resolved it's a waste of money. Why bother paying $10 for 10 mediocre reviews that no one will ever see?

I know that $10 for 10 reviews hasn't motivated me to write anything. I'm not going to work for 50 cents an hour to write a review that no one ever sees. It's frustrating to the point that I've considered pulling all my hockey reviews to post on a site that I control.

Scott

There's been some more discussion of the issues over on the Outdoor Gear Boards...since I think most of us noticed that without any recorded hits on our Sports and Outdoors reviews, there's been no IS for May.

What's Epinions doing with the Sports & Outdoors Category?

Holding Back?

Jeff

There was a rumor that a fix will be pushed out at the end of June that will allow the reviews to start counting hits again and hopefully earn some IS. I'll believe it when I see it. That info came from this thread.