User reviews disappearing from profiles again

12 of my 38 reviews have disappeared from my profile, leaving me with 26.

Pretty ridiculous that this is happening again...

It got to me too. Yeah, it's happening again. *Sigh*. :|

Also, the GameSpot team is just coming back from E3. Heck knows how long before this problem gets looked at - again.

@Kevlar101: I understand if you're upset, that still doesn't grant you permission to be disrespectful.

As far as missing reviews goes. I'll alert the dev team that this issue is happening again and see if there's something we can do.

Hmmmm, well since the comment has been deleted (and I posted it farther than my memory remembers) , I do not actually remember what it is that I said. Could you elaborate?

Oh, and by the way.....yes, it totally does. I will totally explain how, if you wish.

I know that this is directed at Sophia and her colleagues, but I would say that you should go ahead - after all, you didn't even say "if you wish" when you made your first remark here, did you?

@DigitalDame:

Some people take their reviews seriously.

Most user reviews are poorly written, sure. But not all. Some users actually genuinely care about writing solidly written and well paced reviews. Why? Let me explain.

Users write reviews for different reasons. For some, it's a memory log that they write mostly for themselves, to keep track of all their gaming escapades. Others write to get noticed. See, Some users really care about writing a quality review....they try to write reviews as professionally as they can. This next part may sound silly, but some even put their hearts into it.

It's true. For example, I want to be a games journalist. I love writing about games, documenting them, and reviewing them (even the bad ones). Being able to write my own user reviews here on GameSpot is what inspired that career hope. I have heard that the pay is bad and the hours are inconvenient, but I don't care. I have a passion for this, and writing reviews prepares me. It lets me practice. It lets me keep track of everything I have written. It really means something to me. Hell, a few months ago, I actually deleted ALL 30 or so reviews I had published because I thought that they were just so poorly written. I started re-writing them ALL. I was (and still am) just THAT dedicated to it. I had ended up writing and re-writing a few reviews 3 or 4 times for crying out loud. Then, GameSpot glitched out and started making reviews disappear. Then, when they started reappearing, it showed links to reviews I had deleted. Anyway.... there are others like that. Others who take the time and put in care and effort to write quality reviews, because it matters to them. It is important in it's own way.

And so...you know what I think? I think the fact that the programmers manage user reviews so poorly is disrespectful. Yeah, I do. I think it is at least borderline disrespectful that something so important to some users so often disappears. After all the time and care that some of us put into these reviews, it is disappointing knowing that it could all disappear at any time because of incompetent programmers. It stings when it happens.

I am not justifying the fact that I lashed out, and I do apologize for it. However, you say that I do not have permission to be disrespectful, and yet, look at how glitchy this site is and how much work could potentially be lost. With all that in mind, can you honestly say that somebody in charge hasn't been at least inconsiderate of the people who put their work into this site? I mean honestly....

@Kevlar101:

Thank you, I suppose, for the explanation?

However, I have to say here that I don't share your regard for user reviews on GameSpot: I personally don't see them as a stepping stone to getting on a career for reviewing games (but then I already have a job which I want to keep). Instead, I see it as a hobby of sorts, or if I want to be more cynical, a self-gratifying waste of time since I am not getting any tangible reward for the time which I spent on writing user reviews.

With that said, if you want a career concerning game reviews, you are going to have to do more than just writing reviews, e.g. building up a profile for yourself or getting some other skills which employers may want.

You should certainly not be lashing out at people who may well offer you the job that you want. In other words, you may have just blown your chance with GameSpot here, not even for freelance reviews. You are probably better off trying to be the next AngryVideoGameNerd, like Joe Vargas and John Bain had, though good luck with that if you lack the charisma.

Also, I wouldn't be deleting older user reviews to make way for new ones, if I were you - I would edit and rewrite them instead; that overwrites the data for the older user review. The only reason that I could think of for you deleting older user reviews and writing new ones is so that the new ones appear on the top of your list, together with the usual notifications for anyone who may follow you.

Furthermore, when you submit a user review, it becomes data on GameSpot's servers, and only those with administrator/maintenance access to those servers can delete that data - "deleting" user reviews user-side only deletes the pointers to them.

I suppose that you don't know this before this glitch happened yet again.

As for the GameSpot staff not "respecting" user reviews, what do you expect, really? It's not like user reviews are getting GameSpot - or rather, CBSI - the Internet traffic which it wants. I personally wouldn't expect Lark and his team to put them high on their priority list, especially when there are more "critical" content like the previously concluded E3 event.

In other words, don't be thinking that lashing out would get things fixed - that just pisses off staffers with administrator privileges like community manager Synthia Weires who know that their colleagues have very limited time to "Ramirez, do everything!" when they have to comply with job obligations placed by their employers in addition to user complaints.

To put things simply, you might want to build up the thick skin and/or patience to put up with shit like this.

Well it's my good friend 'tis but a barren wasteland!' arrived again.

@fishysquash15 mate - not sure why you called him a loser though. He's passionate about his work - there's nothing wrong with that.

@Gelugon_baat - hello 'barren wasteland' friend!

Ratings are still gone though, "as soon as we're back from E3".

Oh come on, this bug has been going on for almost two months. That's more than enough time needed to fix it... 10 times.

@Kevlar101: With all that in mind, can you honestly say that somebody in charge hasn't been at least inconsiderate of the people who put their work into this site? I mean honestly....

I'm not saying that people who have been in charge of these features in the past have been less than responsible with their duties and unfortunately I don't have the power here to demand developers stop what they're doing to work on the features that I think are important.

Perhaps you're unaware of how often (and in which ways) I've supported the community and their contributions. Heck, the very fact that I'm one of the only staff members you see posting regularly in the forums should be an indication that what I'm saying is fact. To be perfectly frank, user features on this site have always been an uphill fight, pure and simple. As Gelugon_baat pointed out earlier some of the features that mean the most to users are not given proper priority for reasons that suck but are very, very real. This is why I make it a point to never promise anything that I know I can't personally deliver (Which I learned from back in the day when Jody was around).

I'm not saying you can't be upset, you have every right to be upset. Hell, I'm upset. There were features that I've poured my heart, and my soul into to help support the community that were steam-rolled in the name of the sites progress. Chalk Talk, Artist Arcade, Video Drome, GameSpot Players Network.... I could go on. And yes it sucks, it really, really sucks. And yes it makes me very, very angry. I'm just asking that you remember that at the end of the day, these are people working on this site, these are people trying to help you. And again, all I'm asking is that you keep that in mind.

You are right ...... I apologize :( I guess I kind of made an ass of myself here lol .

I should have thought through what I said a bit more...I probably offended you, and others. I will try to be more understanding of things in the future. I know that this is probably a lame apology but I don't really know what else to say.

I personally wouldn't apologize for your initial comment. It was true.

I mean, it's normal for websites to have some technical problems, but this site is an inexcusable mess.

@GreySeal9: Yes the site is a broken mess, but we are working towards fixing it. There were basic functions that we only recently got back to where they needed to be. These are baby steps and I know I appreciate you guys sticking around. While I can't / won't speak for the greater GameSpot brand, but I will say that even when you're mad at me. Even if you're calling me (or the site) names I'll still forward the message in some fashion. I might remind you from time to time that there are still rules, but I will always continue to listen to what you're saying. Even if what you're saying gets distorted by frustrations.

@Kevlar101: There's no need to apologize, I'm just letting you know that despite the fact that I might seem like one of "them" I'm on your side. I want things to work as well as they need to if not better. I want you to feel encouraged to create things. I want the community to feel like their voice matters to GameSpot because you all matter to me. Trust me when I say that I know for a fact that without a strong community we become nothing more than more noise rattling around in the giant empty can known as the internet.

Having a strong, creative and supportive community is what sets a site like us appart. Not animated gifs for reviews or hip and trendy hosts. So yes, without you, the user, we are just white noise. I don't want us to become like that. I'm just asking that when you're being upset, that you try and be specific with what's bothering you. It's like if you go to a doctor and you tell them "it hurts" instead of specifying what "it" is. And yes, we should be omnipotent in knowing what's bothering you all most but we're not always.

Yep My reviews have disappeared again please fix it. Here's the link.

http://www.gamespot.com/profile/reviews/

Now only 1 review (out of 38) is showing up on my profile.

@GreySeal9: @AQWBlaZer91: Hey you two. Could you both PM me with a list of the games that you're missing reviews to?

@DigitalDame: That will be very difficult to list cause I've done about 157 reviews so far.

@DigitalDame: That will be very difficult to list cause I've done about 155 reviews so far.

@AQWBlaZer91: Oh wow. Yeah that's a lot.

UPDATE: I'm still waiting to hear from the development team on a global fix for this.

HOWEVER! On the plus side I can manually restore a review (though I they have to be done one at a time and I need to know which game you reviewed). I'll be creating a sticky thread at the top so I can help users get their reviews back. Thanks for hanging in there everyone!

*Sigh*... right, here goes something that I have noticed about the listing of user reviews at this time of writing.

I have noticed that for my case, the user reviews which I have written which are not listed as "user reviews" under the reviews tab of my profile have been listed as merely "ratings" instead, as seen here.

This has happened in the past, at least for me.

I can't say the same about other people's listings though. For example, Azghouls' listing is completely blank when sorted to either reviews or ratings. No amount of hitting the "Apply Filter" button would refresh the list and display something as other than the snarky "wasteland" phrase.

@DigitalDame: I'll start with reviews I worked on that are:

Fatal Fury for Neo Geo and SNES

Tales of Phantasia for PlayStation, SNES and Game Boy Advance

Tales of Destiny for PSOne

Orcs & Elves for Nintendo DS

Golden Eye Rouge Agent for Nintendo DS

I'll work on a list later on.

Mine is back again.

My list appears to be working properly.

Fingers crossed that it won't happen again. :/

I was about to post another review and then boom head shot, barren wasteland...guys what's going on?

@Azghouls:

It happened again, apparently.

I get the impression that some people's attempt at doing the maintenance of the directories for game-pages is causing more problems than it solves.

UPDATE: Editing a review of mine which has been downgraded to "rating" status" does nothing. Also, some of these reviews had been affected by this recurring problem many times over, especially the Spellforce 2: Shadows Wars one.

I am not sure how this information would help any staffer which is listening, however - considering that this problem has been coming back again and again.

'tis but a barren wasteland!

Alas yet again none of my 100+ reviews (and/or ratings) are accessible via my profile's "Ratings and Reviews" tab.

Hmmm, OK now the reviews and ratings are back (again) ... but something is still not right.

Background: I stopped writing full reviews before the site was "upgraded" in late 2013.

Here is what I see under my profile at the moment depending on how I sort them:

• 169 ratings AND reviews across 74 releases - I have written ~95 (PC game) reviews which covers base games and/or expansions/add-ons and all are PC games and have since rated about ~15-20 (PC and PS3 games).
• 116 ratings across 21 releases - ??? some full written reviews are included in this sorting which I believe should only include games I rated without reviews.
• 53 reviews over 53 releases - I began using reviews (only) from about mid-2013 and since the site "upgrade" and some of my recently rated PS3 games have their ratings against XBOX, IP, AND, GC and BB, none of which I have, which probably relates to the period post-site update when one could not select platform when rating.

So the numbers of ratings and reviews versus releases and my own records/recollection do not seem to reconcile. A number of games are showing separately as reviews and ratings when sorted but on different platforms (which I do not have). I do have about 10 identical titles on both PC and PS3. I wonder whether "releases" just means the base game (eg. Battlefield 2 has 3 major add-ons/expansions which for me would equate to four reviews)?

I suspect I'll be PDF-ing copies of my full reviews for my own use so I can recreate them just in case they are "lost" in the more literal sense rather than going AWOL from time to time..

A ton of my reviews are gone again. I only have 17 out of 38 on my profile.

I know you guys can restore then manually, but is there anything I can do to restore them myself?

This is very frustrating.

I had over 200 ratings, and now they're all gone, except for the one new rating I just did. This was something I enjoyed doing.

"Hmmm, OK now the reviews and ratings are back (again) ... but something is still not right."

Well, yeah, the fact that they're not back at all.

Screw you, gamespot. You showed us enough disrespect by totally pissing over this issue for months. I really can't believe there's a good (kinda popular) alternative to your site where I just wanted to rate stuff I played and/or read other people's thoughts about 'em.

True they are gone yet AGAIN ... but they were there, albeit messed up, when I posted (about 12 hours ago).

Yup, this is very frustrating.

My reviews seem to all be back, but I'm not going to get my hopes up that they'll stay this time.

If someone restored them manually, thank you. I appreciate it.

My reviews are back again. (not that I had much to begin with)
The ratings, however, are still missing.

Yep - mine are back too...but for how long?

reviews back, ratings still MIA

Further to my post above, reviews are back but ratings AWOL:

I now have 104 unique reviews covering base games and expansions/add ons showing (but no ratings) which reconciles much better with my own records ... and yes I am busily PDF-ing the reviews just in case.

That was 3 weeks ago. The problem is a month old now. Last time this happened I stayed at GS because there was an awesome developer on the forum who actually informed people of what was happening and said there was a plan to fix it in the following few weeks. This time there's been no communication from developers whatsoever. I appreciate that a staff member has tried to help out but honestly it sounds like the devs and her are not even part of the same company. apparently no communication between the two.

I've added the following users to the list of cases that need to be examined by devs regarding the state of their reviews:

Thanks, my reviews are fine though, since there's only two of them. Back when everyone was saying their reviews were gone, I had 1 out of those 2, now I have them both.

It's ratings that concern me. Still missing just as they were.

Edit: Lol, I just found out they aren't really "missing" but there's something definitely wrong involved. The charts show there's only one game I've given a perfect 10 to, while what's underneath the charts shows that's not the case. Sorting is obviously wrong, both for 'highest/lowest score' and 'newest/oldest rating'. That + charts. Annoying.

I haven't been able to access my reviews ever since the big update. Sucks.