Top 5 Ciao Sins

The Devil is a sinner, of course, and as I got my lowest PF for two years on ciao this month from quite a few good reviews its time for a general grumble as some other things have also made my horns twitchy. That £19 for 20 pieces of work was going up against that tidal wave of girly cosmetic reviews and geeky video game content so fair enough but it did feel like something has changed on who gets the PF. Yes I did well in the competitions but the PF remains a mystery to many and is certainly unpredictable. I wonder if any of you felt ciao had cut back on the PF?

But here are my five sins…

####1####

I don’t do reciprocal E rating…

If you stuffed a piece of coal up Dooyoo’s bottom they are so tight with rewards it would turn into a diamond! And it’s those diamonds and plentiful lucrative competitions on ciao that make it worthwhile to come here more and more and why Ciao have stormed past dooyoo in the popularity stakes with me. Unless you are one of the in-crowd on dooyoo or prepared to cheat there is little money to be made now under their new rules. But ciao is far from perfect. You don’t have to be a Large Hadron Collider scientist at the CERN Institute under the Alps to realise you can’t win a Ciao diamond unless you get thousands of rates or are involved in some way with this reciprocal E rating culture, whether you are aware you are or not. Getting the required 50 plus rates to be even considered for a diamond is hard enough and unless you make a good review ‘deliberately long’ with ‘lots of bold headings’ and a ‘cute picture’ and only write four of those reviews a month then you can forget it. There is the occasionally ‘eek’ from a newbie that gets one but its generally a perfunctory safe list like the England football squad under Sven Goran Ericcson, the reliable but over-rated Steven Gerrard’s and Rio Ferdinand’s always in and the young talent of Jones and Welbeck left to stewing on the bench until they are old enough and wise enough in the politics of ciao to make the first team. That’s not to say everyone who gets a diamond doesn’t deserve it, far from it, but you must play the game in some way. I think Ciao need to have a serious look at the clicking cartels and dump email reminders that your friends have written a review.

The E cartels are obvious and a quick peek at their statistics backs it up. I don’t get involved in ANY rate back nonsense myself and always set about rating fairly and widely from the Newest Review list to get new and old members alike a good spread of ratings. That democratic method has 100% affected my chances of getting a diamond though as I have NEVER had one in 1200 solid and often good reviews here. Those 1200 reviews have produced 212 crowns on the other review site we don’t mention. But I have my integrity in place and if the diamond system is there purely to encourage members to reciprocally rate then so be it, and in Ciaos defence at least the rules to get a Diamond are 100% open and democratic, unlike dooyoo, their crown policy akin to something the Masons drew up in 1456 with blood on pigskin, a frightfully prejudice affair practised through their opaque guiding system. Dan Browns next book is rumoured to be about dooyoo.

#####I like to win competitions and sulk if I don’t####

With the Diamond system geared towards certain member’s, competitions are the only way to get the money back up for me. The ‘Current Issue’ one is my favourite and I have won 50% of them I have entered, and only just missing out on the hatrick this week by rounding the keeper and hitting the post on the population growth one. I thought mine was one of the best three (as you done when you have a gob and ego like mine) but some interesting rating and ciao obviously questioning my brilliant facts saw the ball bounce out off that upright and into the relieved goalkeepers mitts. It’s the third time my hatrick has been denied by some questionable refereeing in the Current Issue.lol. How I didn’t win the nuclear power one after the Japanese tsunami remains a mystery worthy of the X-Files!

I haven’t had a Dooyoo Lounge (Ciao Café here) crown for six months now, leaving me just one behind dooyoo and ciao legend (and religious head case) in the now deceased Ken John, his all-time record of 55 agonisingly close, Dooyoo determined not to let me have that 55th crown for some reason. Because of that bias I have concentrated my opinions on what Ciao Café have to offer and its great fun too. If you ask for any topic here ciao mischievously put it up. And I mean anything! They seem to be more relaxed about what we can write and so creating a better feel here to dooyoos stuffy snobbery.

Somewhat refreshingly the dooyoo guides have little sway on here to hoover up the prizes for their work on site as there is no guide system and so you get a fairer chance of winning rewards in the competitions, and because Ciao Café reviews don’t pay miles the people who enter the competitions are there to win and not relying on favouritism. Ciao say they solely judge the work in its own right and the rates and influence accrued are not relevant, which sounds about right. That is often not the case on dooyoo. There is also a sweet side to ciao in that they like to share out the prizes on the competitions to make everyone feel they can win prizes, like they do at posh primary schools where all the kids in the egg and spoon get a rosette on school sports day! lol. Because I did the ‘Pros and Cons’ this week for a fiver they may have thought I was being greedy and so I lost the Current Issue competition on a technicality. As far as my huge ego is concerned that’s exactly what happened. No offence to the other entrants. You know what I’m like.

I have to say the new ‘random pick’ method for the ‘Product of the Week’ competition is a bit bonkers, the wrong way to stop the cheaters winning that particular competition. Before with the POW you were getting members entering who didn’t have the product and so arguments flared over how legit the photo of the featured product was. It didn’t come down to your integrity on who won but on whom ciao thought had integrity. I was robbed at least three times in my opinion with some rather ridiculous interpretations of those rules, the most bizarre being I failed to prove I had access to the Bing website by not showing a photo of it, the same website that sponsors the site!!!!!!!!! If I’m online contributing to ciao it’s IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO HAVE ACCES TO BING!!! Even Ciao will admit they got that one wrong.

Ok, they didn’t.

To stop arguments Ciao chickened out and went with the silly lottery system and playing safe by picking Microsoft products and music CDS that only the less truculent middle-class would ever buy. The day I review a Coldplay record is the day the Devil gets frostbite!!! Needles to say I rarely enter the POW now.

#####I flirt with ciaos beautiful people####

What guy doesn’t like sexy, intelligent fit birds, flocking to places like Ciao so they can be themselves and show off those brains with their curves. It’s a real chocolate box for guys who like to talk with smart girls, the type of chickie poo that is worrying absent in the real world. I could give you a long list of them here on ciao but the last time I mentioned member’s names in a review I was told off, even though sexy Staffenburg won a sports competition by breaking that cardinal rule that you cant use members names in reviews, ciao again selective with those rules in competitions. Yes it does rankle losing that Xbox! Well they all fancy him at ciao and so what do you expect. Lol.

My old gran told me all girls want to be called pretty and that’s the best way to cheer them up. There are certain gals on here I like to flirt with and most reciprocate with rates, the ones I don’t flirt with often the most aggressive against me. They are usually cut from the same cloth. But at the end of the day flirting with hot girl’s increases your rates and that beats any clicking cartel.

#####I hate bullies#####

There are certain members here who pick on other members here and yet never get thrown off. Most of them are female and some like to revenge rate to make their point, the rather pathetic action of giving members they don’t like lower rates for good work. If you take them on at dooyoo then dooyoo often backs them and you get told off and warned. I presume it’s the same on ciao as they are still here. But both sites need their enforcers and these guys and girls seem to have filled that role. These members need to be publicly named to clam them down but again you can’t do it, an unfortunate paradox that earns you a warning. They are all over ciao and dooyoo message boards and they are intimidating to many, especially to new members who may not know the ropes here, cackling away as they stir the caldron. Ciao have made that very point this week that we should be nice to new members although as I don’t speak the various languages of South East Asia I cant blame regulars here who do get fed up with the amount of copied and auto-translated trash we get to sort through, innocents unfortunately caught up in our ire. But if these same old faces are bullying new members with aggressive comments then how about some action on it Ciao? I may leave the odd cheeky comment on poor new writer’s reviews but that’s only because I know they are timewaster ones. I’m a pretty fair rater and judge with newbie’s and mentored a few in my time. But I do think the collective membership has got it just about right in the way they rate those lazy short reviews and if Ciao don’t want us to do it then extend the minimum words limit for each review to 500 words to discourage short and unedited work? I see nothing wrong with writing ‘Not Useful’ in the comment box when the review is gibberish or copied. The reason we do that is we presume the account will be deleted. Saying that maybe we should give the marginal ones more chance to make it here. My first ever review on dooyoo was 200 words in block capitals!

####I like to suggest new rules#####

Dooyoo have finally made the leap and gone with anonymous rating. It doesn’t really make much difference there as the nasty raters now go unseen and the review still shows an average rating that speed raters can quickly copy and it also doesn’t deter that rating reciprocation. Like I said, ‘You rate me and I rate you’ culture seems to be an integral part of these opinion sites and, one suspects, ciao and dooyoo quietly want to encourage it through the Circle of Friends and email updates. It guarantees a certain amount of rates per day and so critical traffic for those algorithms. But now is the time for Ciao to take the same leap of faith and go to anonymous rating so we can see who the best writers really are, especially as the ‘E Rates’ are so crucial here to make any sort of money. This would be a game changer and the diamond list and the whole site ethos would start to change for the better.

Alas, just as dooyoo have refused to go the other way and list nominations under reviews (because they may expose a bias to certain members, presumably) we will probably not see anonymous rating here as it will bu**er the established hierarchies. But if Ciao did take the plunge then people would actually have to read all the reviews they rate and so put the best reviews at the top of the lists and so spend less time rating their mates. But speed and friends rating has always been the elephant in the room on review sites and sadly can’t survive without them, why they are tolerated.

Please feel free to comment…..lol!!!