Domsson Lean

One more thing came to my mind. I once wrote a lengthy post about issues with the marketplace search (focus on how reviews seem to affect a listing's position). I wrote it up in 2012, so not sure if it still applies, but it includes lots of actual practical suggestions on what could be improved and how: https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Product-Reviews/td-p/1582283/page/2#M24887 It is a long read, but there is a tl;dr at the end, so maybe just check that. To directly bring one suggestion over here, I would love to see the "Was this review helpful? [Yes] [No]" buttons actually have an effect - one that also influences the search algorithm. Late edit: Reading the initial post again, I just realized that my comments are pretty much out of place, as they are not within scope of this project. Sorry for that. I'll just let them sit here anyway, because I don't like deleting stuff. Just ignore me for now.

Sorry if this came up before, didn't have time to read through the 8 pages, but here goes: What I'm wishing for ever since the introduction of mesh is a search filter for "100% mesh only" (and maybe also "no mesh"). Given the fact that products have a field for this, this should - hopefully - be trivial to implement.

Efficient unwrapping / reasonable texture footprint I see teh most horrible unwraps, even from creators who I thought were experienced. Often, the unwrap doesn't even cover half of the texture space. And then, most would also go with the maximum texture resolution of 1024 × 1024 px for each and every small piece. I often see objects that would use 8 × 1024 × 1204 px texures for one single mesh object, where each texture ist mostly pitch black (unused). People need to realize that this does not only increase lag (because you need to download all of these textures), but also is a heavy burden for your graphics card (they all have to be loaded into memory, they all have to be rendered and recalculated in real time). That's one of the biggest (but sadly also one of the most common) No-Gos I see in SL.

Intersting how many of you prefer 2.B. I'm starting to wonder if the main reason for that could be the fact that it has a backdrop, where all the others don't. Anyway, my personal favorite was 2.E. Since 2.B and 2.E share the same font and symbol, I think I might experiment with a mix of both of them. I will also try to make the font a bit bolder, but to be honest, I think being so slim is what mainly makes this font look nice. Using the lightning as the 's' isn't something I would want to see, but using all caps might be worth a try. Again, thanks for all the input - I really appreciate it as this is a very difficult decision for me!

Wow, thanks for all the "votes" so far. Seems like 2B really is the favorite here so far. I wouldn't have guessed. Keep it coming!

Back when I started my store on the Marketplace, I "designed" a logo with the help of good old MS Paint. Now, I think it is time for a touch up. Only problem: I have such a hard time deciding between all the ideas I've come up with! So, hopefully you can give me your opinion on these? I'd appreciate any kind of input. Here you go: 1.B: 2.B: 2.E: 2.F: 3.B: 5.A: That's all so far. If you wonder, here's what I'm trying to go for: Somewhat professional lookA bit of retro wouldn't hurtSimple & cleanI guess it would be nice to keep the lightning as well as the color from the current design. However, I'm basically free to change these and in fact, I've played around with changing both. The reson I put them all up in orange here is because I don't want you to favor one design over another just because it has a different color. Looking forward to any input! Cheers :)

- "That's deceitful and lies." - "indeed and in the buisness world thats how most things work" I can't tell you how much I hate this kind of attitude. What kind of justification is that, "that's how things work"? If one does the wrong thing, one does the wrong thing. Gnnnh, really, it makes me so angry. I will never ever get along with that kind of people.

Gaia, a feature to reorder the materials would be awesome. How often did I go to the struggle to manually remove, then re-assign the materials again, just to please the mesh uploader? Two simple arrows, as Drongle suggested, would be really helpful there.

Wow, you're giving up fast on this one. Why don't you try and supply Drongle with a bit more info? He's like a mesh physics magician so chances are he might be able to help with more input.

Hey Drongle, I just ran into the very same issue you discovered and described here. A simple 2-plane physics shape that gave me physics cost greater than 1000. I take it by editing the collada file in a way that there will only be nicely rounded values is a workaround, right? Other than that, did you file a Jira on this one? If so, what's the status on it? Thanks in advance!

Yeah, I'm currently adding steps to the wall piece, which will solve the problem without using hidden faces. Still, it's uncool that one has to work around this (adding a hidden plane will still leave the physics shape at <0.5m, hence the performance problems are probably not helped) and to dig trough forums to even get to know about it.

My approach of making the hole for the door bigger by 0.1m in each direction, then hitting "Analyze" on upload gave a pretty pleasing result. However, the physics cost - when turned to "Prim" - are 0.4 for the un-analyzed and 2.1 (!) for the analyzed model. I feel like destroying something.

Hey you both, the inivisible face was my first idea, too, though I can't help but feel it's a pretty dirt workaround for something I would call a bug rather than a restriction. Again, it's just unintuitive (if not pointless) that the same model will work or not work depending on whether one hit the "Analyze" button or not. And it's also highly unintuitive that the Analyzed model will apparently make the model "thicker". By the way, this might be the reason for it letting you through - if the process of analyzing really adds 0.1m (and that it seems to to according to my tests and prim-measurings) to all faces, then my physics mesh with a thikness of 0.4m would end up being 0.6m, hence the "Prim" option wouldn't be changed by the server. Again (2): Any place where all these oddities are documented? I'm losing the overview. PS: Good catch with the triangle, Dongle. I removed that just seconds after taking the screenshot.

Also, I wish the whole physics business was more intuitive. Without reading through the wiki and dozens of forum posts, it is impossible to just "understand" the physics stuff. And even then, stuff like the .5m minium size will kick in and ruin your day. Instead of a Jira request to display the switch, shouldn't we request that the minium size is changed to, for example, 0.1m? And what about Analyze - why does that give basically the same result as without, but about 0.1m thicker in each direction? Is stuff like that discussed at the mesh meetings? I haven't been there in a while. Or is there some wiki (or whatever) page (or other resource) that documents all this in a comprehensive and readable manner?

Hey Drongle, thanks for this very, very important piece of information. This puzzled me with previous projects, too, but I was able to work around it there in other ways. It's still weird that when hitting "Analyze", the physics shape will *not* turn back to convex hull silently, although the piece is still just 0.4m thick. Is there an explanation for this behaviour, too? Anyway, now I'm wondering what to do in a case like this? Here, the piece is 0.4m and has to be 0.4m thick. I can't just make it 0.5m. Isn't there some smart way to solve this? I thought about making the doorway about 0.1m bigger in each direction, then hit the "Analyze" button on upload. I'll do that right now to see what result it gives.

Hey again Aquila! I rarely post in the forums but when I do I perform a search prior to posting - and fail. Seems like your post describes the exact same problem, so I'm going to read it all right now. Thanks!

So far I was able to solve every problem on my own. However, physics are giving me major headaches right now. I've got a piece of wall (just one side; the other side is taken care of by a seperate mesh) with a hole that will, later on, hold a door. The Physics shape is a simplified version of that wall piece and the uploader is happy to swallow it without a problem. What I already figured is that with a proper custom physics mesh, you better not hit "Analyze", let alone "Simplify". Now, in SL, I put the physics type to "Prim", of course. Guess what happens? Yep. Can't walk trough. Now, what's really creeping me out here is the fact that when I activate rendering of Physics Shapes, I can see that the hole for the door actually is there. It just won't let me walk trough. A bad workaround is to hit "Analyze", but for some reason that will make the hole smaller by some amount, which leads to a "bump" when walking trough. Not what I want. Any suggestions? I'd be happy about every hint.

I haven't read through all 9 pages of this thread, but I discovered the Jira announcment just yet and simply have to let some steam off, so sorry for saying everything you already said for the thousandst time. Ok, so nowadays, there a basically two ways to run a company: The old-fashioned way, where you make up some kind of product/service behind closed walls, then get yourself some agressive marketing that will advertise your product in hardly legal ways just to make the most money possible. All this involves "making much with less", for example regarding your employees, as well as trying to make it hard for customers to get back to you or let their opinions about your product get public. This worked well for many years and still does for a lot of companies. The "new" way, that will be suggested by almost every PR/Marketing consultant: instead of producing a somewhat marketable product and spending lots on the ads, try to really craft a good product - a product people will notice and love without too much advertising whatsoever. Also, try to stay in the most direct contact with your customers as possible, be at eye level with them, don't be afraid of critizism (instead, take it as a chance to improve), be as transparent as possible. In the days of the internet, where companies have Facebook profiles and the like, this makes a lot more sense. Now, with SL, we've seen a company and product that pretty much followed the "new" way, where even the product itself is OpenSource, where the employees - think of Torley, for example - really now their product, their world and are on eye level with the users - where emplyees are users themselves. There was lots of exchange between users and LL, and that's great. However, with every new step, it seems LL tries to regress to that "old fashioned" way, that - nowadays - can ruin you pretty fast if done wrong, or at least will change the face, the nature, and also the userbase of your product for good. The changes that are made to the Jira are the most clearest steps towards this poor vision. It really is insane and a huge punch in every user's face. Seriously. Of course I see the motivation behind it - it's understandable that LL was overwhelmed by the sheer number of Jira entries popping up; they just couldn't react to all of them in a fashionable time, hence people starting to blame them for that, so I can literally see someone in a big position calling a meeting, and saying: "Guys, our users are ranting because of all the bugs and because we're reacting too slow or not at all. What can we do to make this problem go away?" - and, eventually, some couragous person even answered: "Well, what about we hire some more people that would, at least, answer on the Jiras, telling people about the current state of work, so they know we're not forgetting about them?". I guess this person was fired later that day, and instead, they agreed on: "Let's just take the user's possibillities of complaining away - or at least make it so noone else will see it! Yay!". Still, as stated and explained above - and as you all feel alike - this is unbelievable stupid. Let's just make a pro/con list - I'll try to make it from a LL/Users mixed point of view. Pro (LL) You can only submit bugs, not feature requests. This will help concentrate on the real issues instead of nice-to-have features that can't be worked on anyway. Noone, but the reporter, can see his/her bug report. This will help silencing the user's comlaints, because it will be way harder for them, to even spread the word about an issue. Contra (LL) Instead of one (and maybe a few duplicates) bug report on an issue, LL will have to handle dozens, maybe hundrets or thousands of bug reports on a single issue. This will, again, require manpower that would better be spent elsewhere. Where smart user's and TPV developers would give important input, sometimes even ready-to-implement solutions in the comments, LL developers will now be completely on their own, no input at all. Generally, the decisions will generate lots of anger within the users, which - obviously - isn't good, as this is what they're trying to prevent. Since we can still exchange via Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums, In-World IM's and Group, (...), this will not work anyway, as people's anger will find a way to spread in any case. Without public bug repots, there won't be any votes/watches either, so LL can't judge about the importance of an isse, other than by their own perception, that - naturally - is very limited. Contra (Users & LL) Where people were once able to find workarounds to their problems in the Jira, they will now simply have to wait for a fix to be deployed, which - as we all know - may take so long that those users may instead decide to leave SL. I, for example, am only able to use SL because of a workaround suggested in a Jira, and that's true for several month now! Users can't know if their issue has already been reported, so often they'll just assume someone else did, which means issues will go unreported. On the other hand, ofthen they will do, although it has already been done, hence they'll spend their time filing a report (just so that a LL employee has to spend some more time to notice that it's a duplicate). Being unable to scan the Jira for existing problems and possible workarounds, this will also often make it harder to develop new stuff in SL (think about the numerous references to the Jira from the LSL wiki!), so it actively handicaps the user's creation process. (and lots more) Bottom line: I have got the strong feeling that LL has changed their nature. They lost the ideals, lost the vision, lost the connection the user base. Instead of staying open and on eye sight, they're shutting themselves up, closing every door and window. Instead of keeping SL the amazingly open platform it was, where everything goes and nothing can't be done, where the users can help to develop that world, they're now heading towards a closed product that no longer sees users as participants, but simply as a source of income. A closed product, that will be handed to us as is, "eat it or leave", where - instead of believing in the creative power of the users, they are generalized as stupid consumers. I got the feeling they really try to make SL more of a game that will give you a certain set of possibilities rather than an open world that will give you any possibility. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but that's the feeling I get - that's what steps like this suggest. What will be next? I don't even want to think on it. Seriously, I'm angry. And I don't get angry too easily, believe me.

Regarding the legal concerns: I've got a "showroom" in SL, which means that you can only have a look at the products there but not buy them. Instead, there is a link to the item's Marketplace page. Now I wanted to craft a display that would, when given the item's marketplace ID, automatically fetch the item's price and prim count and display that. I can't imagine that would "hurt" anybody's feelings - still it's good you're pointing it out. Other than that, good catch with the Marketplace API - so there *is* one. However, I doubt it will do what I'm looking for, but input from some TPV developer would be greatly appreciated here.

Okay, this is a question that concerns Marketplace, LSL and PHP: I'd like to create a script that, when handed a product ID for a product listed on Marketplace, gives the price (in L$) and prim count of that product. My approach was a PHP script that would read the product's page (via curl, for example), then strip out the relevant info. Theoretically, that works fine, however, there is a problem: when curl tries to access the page, it is first directed to id.secondlife.com, which then, in return, would redirect back to the Marketplace. Having only a low budget webspace (PHP running in safe mode), I cannot get curl to follow redirects, and - to be honest - even if I could, I wouldn't know how to do that exactly. So, is there another possibilty? Maybe there is some Marketplace API I do not know of? Let me know what you know or can come up with!

By the way, do you think it would make sense to put my little essay (plus your additions) in a Jira, or maybe even a letter to LL? I know, they've got hundrets of more critical Jiras (bugs, actually), so it is highly unlikely that they would start working on stuff like that anywhere in the near future, but still it might be good to put all the ideas in one place, bring them in a nice format and deliver them to LL's hand as such a nice, tight bundle - not? To be honest, most of the stuff is probably already in the Jira - I've got no overwiev regarding that - but still, maybe it needs some kind of Meta entry? Just a stupid question/idea, waiting for your input.

Also, did you ever realise that an item without any reviews has "0" (zero) stars (it even reads that when you hover over the stars with your mouse), which is somewhat confusing in itself, because without knowing that you have to give at least 1 star, you might think these items only got the worst possible rating. But, to be honest, that's picky as hell and not really important whatsoever.

I'm not looking for someone to craft what I'm going to describe (I wouldn't want to pay custom work), but I thought maybe some hair creators will find this interesting anyway, so: I was able to find shoes, jeans and a hoodie for my Avatar in no time. I couldn't find nice glasses but I was able to craft them myself. However, I'm still walkin around with a beanie on my head because I couldn't find any I that I liked, although I've searched a lot! So, let me describe my initial criteria (and dilemma): In RL, i've got very long hair and I'd like my Avatar to be somewhat authentic to me in RLI'm extremely picky about performance, so most (flexi) hair is out of the questionEspecially long hair looks **bleep**ty without being flexi, but again, that's a performance problemI love mesh and mesh can't be flexi either wayStill, I don't want short hair for my AV when I've got long hair in SLSo, that leaves just few possibilities: Put the "long" hair under a fat beanie. I often do that in RL (in winter), too. So that would be okay.A bun!Now, I always thought about getting myself dreadlocks. So I thought, having long dreadlocks, bound to a bun, in SL - that would be a pretty good solution: Since a bun is more or less static, no flexi is neededSince no flexi is needed, it could be made from mesh (I love mesh!)It would still resemble long hairEspecially dreads with their huge streaks, the geometry could be even simplerPlus: most of the times people with dread buns will use some bandana, too. This way, the hard-to-do part where the hair joins the head would be even easier. So it seem, the perfect SL hair for me would be something like this, made from mesh: http://api.ning.com/files/kfVmgBLn3r8Wq-*zWquFPrlwVu8HZaqbAQVwrv3KpHlgtts36Rnkaa4qDPeefHYqK6F76HYWVSKxp7LKZu3OpHIFg*vagFOu/100_3520.jpg In case you're a mesh hair designer and your bored right now, looking for a new task... maybe you wanna try this. I'd be happy to see hair like that in SL. :) Cheers!

For a long time, I've been someone who always tried to defend LL when people started with their bashing again, because I realised what a huge project SL is and how much work there is, handling everything that comes with it. However, since a few weeks, I can't help but at least agree in one critical point: It's unbearable how uncommunicative LL is! I know, even communication takes time that might be better spent on fixing bugs. However, a small status update will help so much to keep the masses informed and therefore calm. Or, the other way round: having no info about the progess at all makes me feel like LL doesn't care about a specific problem at all. So, although I still think it is unbelievable what amount of work LL's employees have to accomplish every day, their policy of "not informing the users about what's currently going on" simply seems stupid to me. This is not only true for the progess on Marketplace issues, it is true for SL as a whole. How can we make LL finally understand this? Darn it.

I've got a lot to say about Product Reviews. Let me start with a little story that will introduce you to why I think the current rating system is even worse than the one before: I'm selling a product which I listed when the old review system was in place - the one that asked customers to "rate" (click 1 to 5 stars) a product, "review" (write something) a product or do both. I sold pretty exactly 500 copies of this item during the time the old system was in place and I in the same time I received 50 reviews on it, most of them being just "rating", i.e. without text. Then, LL decided they only want written reviews from now on, so they changed the system: now you can only rate and write, a review without text can not be added. 500 sold copies later (now with the new system), I have gained exactly 1 more review. One. The same trend is true for my other items, though I have no other item with that much sales. So, the bottom line of the story is: with the new system, customers are way less likely to leave a review. LL reched their goal to only get written reviews, but at the same time, there are less reviews now. Now, is this necessarily a problem? What is a rating system for, anyway? The primary target of a rating system - I guess we don't need to argue about that - should be the possibility of a customer to give some detailed insights about the product from a customers view, so that other customers can inform themselves even better. Also, knowing that a bad product will result in bad reviews and therefore in way less sales, it motivates merchants not to sell faulty / low quality products in the first place. From this point of view, having only a few reviews doesn't seem to be too much of a problem. However, on the SL Marketplace, reviews have another consequence. No reviews - no sales! (Fair approximation) I had a close look at the way reviews seem to affect the position a product will have in the search results and though I don't know what really is going on behind the scenes, there is one thing I can say for sure: a single review seems to have a huge, sometimes monstrous impact on the search result position of a product. An example? Here you go: I started to list a Product, and to check it's position, I entered the very same search string into the Marketplace search for several days. The Product started on the very last result page (63, in this case!) and didn't move a single bit. After several weeks, it was still there, but someone finally managed to find it and bought it. The next day (Marketplace seems to refresh it's search stats once a day), the product was to be found on page 24. Hey, what a huge improvement! However, several sales later, I found that it only climbed to page 21, so that wasn't too much of an improvement, really. I decided to ask every single customer to write a review - and one of them did. The next day, I couldn't believe my eyes: my product was on the second result page. The 2nd! Bottom line: while sales actually will get your product to a "more reasonable" position, especially the first sale (without it, you're absolutely invisible, really), it's the reviews that hold the power to instantly boost your product to a somewhat prominent position. A single review seems to have a way larger impact than a dozen sales. And that means: reviews are not only important, they are vital! The impossible customer Most of my listings are very reasonably priced, yet I put a lot of work into them. Every product comes with instructions, my descriptions on the Marketplace are thorough. It even says that people can contact me anytime - and I do check my IMs as often as possible. With all this in mind, I thought it would be practically impossible to get a bad review. It is not. People actually manage to amaze me over and over again. I got several one-star reviews - most of them complaining about mysterious or stupid things. One time, it read: "vanished from inventory! useless!". I was angry, because the customer didn't even try to contact me - and the problem turned out to be the customer's fault. I spent 3 hours chatting with the customer (I initiated this, of course), in order to get things straight - and I had to ask the customer to at least remove the bad (and wrong!) review. All this effort for an item that is listed for L$9! Another time, a 1-star review read: "its mesh, my viewer cant display mesh, totally useless! at least point out that its mesh in the description!". Well, guess what: the description said it twice (!), the info box on the right read "100% Mesh", the title of the product began with "Mesh" and the accompaning notecard had 2 paragraphs about the product being Mesh. I had a hard time to talk the customer to remove the review. I think those examples are enough, but believe me: I've got plenty more. What does this mean? Well, people are most likely to write a review when they are either overwhelmingly pleased with the product, or not pleased with it all - for some reason. And that might not even have anything to do with the product, but - as the thread opener said - could also be because the customer had a bad day or just feels like f*cking you up for no obvious reason whatsoever. And the problem about all this is: often, you can't do much about it or you have to spent lots of time, just to get rid of a wrong bad review that could cost you lots of sales - could possibly ruin you, even. Being unable to state a direct, clearly visible answer to the customer's review surely is a problem here. Not being informed about new reviews is one, too. Bottom line: where bad reviews can have a huge impact on other customers and the product's position in the search - plus given, that there are lots of "impossible" customers - it is vital to have a better chance to react to these reviews - and do so in an equally prominent place, not hidden in the comments. Agreed. Was this review helpful? I couldn't help but notice the two buttons underneath any review that give you the possibility to tell Marketplace wheather a certain review was helpful to you or not. I clicked those buttons a lot - not only on reviews written on my own products. However, I was not able to figure out what they actually do and to be honest, I doubt they do anything at all. Does anyone know anything about this? I hoped they would make "unhelpful" marked reviews go to a less visible position (in case there are more than one "pages" of reviews), vanish or something like the "This comment got too many negative ratings" feature on YouTube, where comments with lots of "thumbs down" are hidden by default and can be made visible by a click. This would be a very nice feature to see on the marketplace, because it would show other customers that a certain review might not be very reliable and can therefore be ignored. This, combined with "hidden" reviews having a lowered impact on the overall rating - and therefore search result - would be a huge improvement already! Why isn't this in place right now? Bottom line: elsewhere successfully used features that help to weight the "reliability" of users' feedback could easily be used on the Marketplace, too - the buttons are already in place. But wait, we can do even better! I'm not here to write this endless post only to complain and criticise. I'm here to make suggestions, as I just did. And here is even more. Reviews are vital for merchants and customers and regardless of whether their current "weighting" is okay or not, it would be desirable for all parties (customers, merchants, LL) to... ...get as much of them, as possible and ...having them reflect the actual facts / product quality as good as possible. For the second point, I already suggested something (make the buttons function!). So, in order to adress the first point, we need to motivate customers to write reviews! Since LL already stated that they will insist on written reviews, no matter what, we have to think about some additional measures which will make customers write those valuable little snippets of text. And there is no need to invent the wheel all over - good examples are already to be found all over the web. One example would be my local food delivery website. It's a site where local food delivery services can register themselves and they will then be listed on that page, which makes a very good job with listing all these services, sorted by kind of food, area code of the customer and so on. Now, as a customer, you can leave a review for every single order you placed, so other customers will know if it's common for a certain food service to deliver merely cold food, if the usual delivery boy might be rude most of the times, or if there usually is too much salt on everyting. Therefore, reviews are important and helpful. However, the site was confronted with the same problem as Mplace: customers are lazy, so they tended to only write reviews when they were disappointed. The site had a genuine idea, that even had a great side effect: They introduced a ranking system for the registered customers, where you would gain certain ranks for certain amounts of reviews you wrote. The ranks were simply colored dots that would be displayed in front of the username everywhere it appeard. So, a customer that had written 0-20 reviews had an orange dot, for example, then it would turn yellow for 20 to 50 reviews, then green for 50 to 100 and so on. Now, although there was no reward connected with your "rank" (other than the dot itself), people started to write reviews like hell - stats showed, some even seemed to order food more frequently now; apparently just to be able to write a review again. And - again - there was no discount or any other benefit connected with a high "rank". However, reviews - positive and negative alike - started to come in and thanks to the dots, people would automatically know if a certain review-author was an "experienced" food orderer or not. Now, let's think about how a system like this could work for the Marketplace: The before mentioned buttons could not only be used to tell if a certain review might be "out of place", but also in order to tell if a certain customer seems to be a realiable review writer or not. For example, for every click on the "not helpful" button, the author would get -1 "review reputation" points, of every person who rates one of his reviews "helpful", he would get +1 "review reputation" points. Writing a review in the first place could, for example, add 2 points. Now, reflect a customer's "review reputation" with a colored dot or some other kind of icon in front of his name, and merchants and other customers could easily tell if this person is likely to be reliable or not. This sure is just a first thought and would need to be thought trough and refined, but I think it could be extremely helpful. Also, I can already think of a lot of things that could be added in order to further motivate customers: How about adding a benefit for those customers with a high "review reputation" balance? Like a discount or bonus coupon or whatever. I guess the possibilities are endless here. Bottom line: there sure are ways to motivate customers to write reviews and to make sure they don't use reviews in order to vent their unrelated anger, but to actually write something reasonable that will be a useful feedback for other customers, as well as the creator. The above idea is just one possible approach. Okay, fancy. But let's not forget about the simple things! Most customers just don't realise that they haven't yet written any reviews on most purchased products. How could they? There is no prominently placed info message about this found. So, LL could just implement a nice message at some prominent place, that would remind the customer: "There are still 12 products you haven't reviewed yet. Click here to do so now!". I'm certain this would already help a lot! Also, what about this: when a customer chooses to give just one or two stars, the Marketplace could react with a dialogue, asking: "You're about to rate this product very negative. Please make sure to first contact the Creator, he might be able/willingly to solve the problem. Do you still want to rate with 1 star? [Yes] [No]". They could also put a link in there to a document where a more thorough description is found on how to proceed when one is unpleased with a product, a delivery failed or whatever. This might avoid some awfully bad reviews, for example those that were written just because the customers didn't even bother to ask the creator for help / a fix first! tl; dr - so here is the short version! Problem: It's extremely hard to gain reviews Most reviews are extremely positive or negative Negative reviews are often unjustified and you can only do little about them At the same time, reviews heavily affect a product's listing position Possible solutions, general: Motivate customers to write reviews Make customers think twice before they write Eventually reduce the impact a review has on a product's listing position Give Merchants a better way to react on (negative) reviews Possible solutions, tangible: Make the "Helpful Review?" buttons have an effect, i.e. hide a very unhelpful review and exclude it from the overall rating of the product Implement some kind of "ranking" system for customers, where writing reviews and getting people to rate your reviews as "helpful" will make you advance - possibly combine with a benefit for the most creditable customers Show a merchant's comment to a review directly underneath Ask customers to first contact the creator (or generally, think twice) when they attempt to leave a 1/2 star review Remind customers to write reviews with a prominently placed message Alright, that's it (finally). I know, the initial topic wasn't as general as this, but I just had to write it down, so I did. Oh, and to let you know: when there was this survey on the Marketplace, where merchants could tell LL what they like/dislike and so on, I wrote about the same thing to them, although in way less words. Cheers!