# Volunteer help needed importing reviews by hand



## Morrus (Aug 29, 2008)

Hey guys,

It looks like the old reviews data will need to be imported by hand.  There are thousands of reviews, but due to the way the data was originally entered, there's no direct way to simply imoprt the information across.

So I'm hoping a few people will volunteer to help import them by hand.  The more people who help, the quicker it will get done.  Basically, it's data-entry: a crapload of cutting and pasting.  

If I can get some volunteers, I'll give them temorary mod permissions in the reviews area.  That will enable them to delete the old reviews data as they copy it, to prvent confusion.  

I'd guess it would take about a minute per review.  The only thing that would add to that, I think, it the quick Google Image Search you'll need to do for each,a s each review needs a graphic uploaded.

For review ratings, unless the original reviewer actually mentioned his/her rating in the text of the original review, the best you can do is attempt to determine what score they'd have given based on the review itself.  Since you'll be able to assign reviews to the original reviewer, they'll be able to go in and adjust that at any time.

Anyway, if you have some spare time and are willing to help out, please let me know here.

Thanks, guys!


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## Rodrigo Istalindir (Aug 29, 2008)

Morrus said:


> Hey guys,
> 
> It looks like the old reviews data will need to be imported by hand.  There are thousands of reviews, but due to the way the data was originally entered, there's no direct way to simply imoprt the information across.
> 
> ...




I can do some.  Boards willing, of course.


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## Morrus (Aug 29, 2008)

Rodrigo Istalindir said:


> I can do some.  Boards willing, of course.




Tell me about it.  I've done three, but I think i'll wait until the boards are a bit quieter.

Here's the process I'm going through:

1) Each thread in the old data category is a product.  Each post in that thread is a product description, a review or a comment on a review.  We only want the reviews.

2) Create a new review in the relevant category.

3) Google image search to find a nice big image.  200px is standard, it'll resize larger ones down, so just err on the side of too big and you'll be fine.

4) Scan the review and pick a sentence or two to put in the byline field.  The find a short paragraph to put in the short synopsis field - most reviewers have a decent intro or conclusion paragraph you can copy/paste.  

5) Copy/paste in the name of the reviewer.  That's gotta be exact, as it'll match that to thier member acvount.

6) Copy/paste in the entire review.

7) Use your best judgement to rate the product accoridng to what they've said.  So, if they emntion the artwork was crappy, give it a low score on Production Value.  If they say they're pleased at paying $10 for 300 pages, give it a high score in the Value for Money category.  Sometimes they'll actually tell you how they arrived at their score, which helps.  Bear in mind it used to be 1-5, and now it's 0-10.

8) Hit submit.  Once you see it's gone through OK, delete the original and any corresponding comments so that nobody duplicates it.  Plus we get a sense of satisfaction as we watch the number sin that forum dwindle towards zero.

I'll give you mod powers in the reviews section, so you should be able to do all of the above!

Thanks, I really appreciate this!


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## Morrus (Aug 29, 2008)

Oh, couple of notes I forgot:

1) You'lll notice that with mod powers you'll ahve an entry whereby you can "feature" a review, and it's already filled in.  Edit that to some date in the past so it doesn't show up in the Featured Reviews block.

2) I'm trying not to do two reviews of the same product close to each other, to avoid a whole page of reviews of the same product on the Recent Reviews display,  I'm pretty much picking a thread at random, grabbing one review from it, deleting that review and then moving to another thread.


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## Mark (Aug 30, 2008)

Email sent.


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## Blackrat (Aug 30, 2008)

I have quite a lot of empty time on my hands when I'm at work, which is luckily even on the quiter hours of ENW, so I could give you a hand in this, starting on monday .


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## Angel Tarragon (Aug 30, 2008)

I've got lots of time on my hands and would love to help out.


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## Morrus (Aug 30, 2008)

Fantastic1  Thanks, guys!  I've set you all up as reviews moderators so you should have all the required permissions.


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## Blackrat (Aug 30, 2008)

Okay, I tried to port one and just wanted to make sure I did everything okay before I set out to sort these in real.

Here's the original: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=154990 as you can see edited it to notify that it has already been ported. I'll delete it once you've approved that I did everything right.

And here it is in the new reviews section: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=239863


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## Morrus (Aug 30, 2008)

Absolutely perfect!  The only thing I'd have done differently is the Short Synopsis, where I'd have put a paragraph of text, rather than listing the credits and pagecount.  But that's no biggie!


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## Blackrat (Aug 30, 2008)

Alright, I'll start tackling them on monday. Couple of observations I already made.

- When I deleted the original review, the site asked me to re-login. Is this intentional or a bug? It did delete it though when I did.
- Is it possible to specify the ratings as N/A in the new review? In some cases it might be quite hard to guess whether the writer liked a product or not.
- As I am only a temporary staff member, and not actually even paying member (which has been a distress to me for the last 1,5 years, since I'd like to support the site but can't) I don't want to take advantage of things. But I noticed that that my permissions has been upgraded to include also PM's and staff-forum. Just to let you know, if I'm not supposed to have those .


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## Mark (Aug 30, 2008)

There seems to be a bunch toward the dead end of the list by Messageboard Golem that are simply placeholders.  Are they to be inluced in the update along with their N/A ratings?


*edit* Also, no way to import the comments and attribute them fairly so they have to get dropped, right?


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## Morrus (Aug 30, 2008)

Blackrat said:


> - When I deleted the original review, the site asked me to re-login. Is this intentional or a bug? It did delete it though when I did.




Yep.  Mod and admin functions often require to to re-confirm your password to make sure it's a valid request.  Security thing.



> - Is it possible to specify the ratings as N/A in the new review? In some cases it might be quite hard to guess whether the writer liked a product or not.




It's not, unfortunately.  Just make the best guess you can.  5 is average, if the review gives no clue.



> - As I am only a temporary staff member, and not actually even paying member (which has been a distress to me for the last 1,5 years, since I'd like to support the site but can't) I don't want to take advantage of things. But I noticed that that my permissions has been upgraded to include also PM's and staff-forum. Just to let you know, if I'm not supposed to have those .




I plan to give you that permanently as a thank you, so don't worry about it. 



Mark said:


> There seems to be a bunch toward the dead end of the list by Messageboard Golem that are simply placeholders.  Are they to be inluced in the update along with their N/A ratings?




Messageboard Golem generally posts the product data, not the reviews themselves.  We don't need that.  In some cases, where Mike was originally unable to match a review to a poster, Messageboard Golem serves as a default username for a review.

You can usually ignore a thread if it has zero comments, as generally, that thread will only have the product entry, and no reviews.  In general - and it is a little scrambled, so this isn't 100% true all the time - a thread is a product, and posts/comments are reviews or comments on reviews.


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## Morrus (Aug 30, 2008)

Mark said:


> *edit* Also, no way to import the comments and attribute them fairly so they have to get dropped, right?




Yeah - there's just no way to do it, unfortunately.


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## Mark (Aug 30, 2008)

I see.  Thanks.


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## Morrus (Aug 30, 2008)

Just a quick note, guys - the "Feature Until" field is one you have access to with the mod permissions.  Unfortunately, it comes pre-filled; so unless you actively alter it to a date in the past, every imported review will be "featured".  

I've made the mistake a few times myself; but we don't want 3000 6-year-old reviews "featured", so please keep an eye open for it.


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## Mark (Aug 30, 2008)

I've been using the date when the review was originally posted.  I think I noticed that it also resets when you preview, and you have to adjust it again, so keep an eye out for that.

Also, I noticed a comment to a review that was actually quite a decent review (as in substantive), though under messagebard golem, so I promoted it to review status, as well.  The shorter comments, and direct comments on other reviews, I am just removing (as per above) since there is no real way to re-attach them to the review they cite and include the original commentors name.

I'll also remove the messageboard golem placeholders for products that do not include a review as I come across them.


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## Angel Tarragon (Aug 31, 2008)

Morrus said:


> 1) Each thread in the old data category is a product.  Each post in that thread is a product description, a review or a comment on a review.  We only want the reviews.



All right I understand everything. I'm just unclear as to where the data catgegory (forum? sub-forum? thread?) is.


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## Morrus (Aug 31, 2008)

Reveille said:


> All right I understand everything. I'm just unclear as to where the data catgegory (forum? sub-forum? thread?) is.





I've attached a screenshot.  Are you not seeing that?  Maybe I have the permissions sent wrong.


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## Angel Tarragon (Aug 31, 2008)

Morrus said:


> I've attached a screenshot.  Are you not seeing that?  Maybe I have the permissions sent wrong.




You've got them set right right. I just wanted to make sure of things before I got the fiirdt one done. And it is:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?p=4447882


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## Morrus (Aug 31, 2008)

Reveille said:


> You've got them set right right. I just wanted to make sure of things before I got the fiirdt one done. And it is:
> http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?p=4447882




Hmm... that's not exactly a review.  Just a comment.


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## Morrus (Aug 31, 2008)

Hey guys,

I've noticed a few mistakes (I don't know who did these, but since the same mistakes are repeating, I'm guessing it's the same person).  No big deal, just a heads-up to take care - I made plenty of mistake as I started to learn the system, too!

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=239892

Title is misspelled, and has been entered with a rating of zero.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=239890

That looks like it's a comment, not a review; plus entered with a rating of zero again.  Also title mispelled again (apostrophe missed).

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=117682

That's one of the old system data threads.  Somebody has gone in and "featured" the data thread, so it's showing up on the Featured Reviews section.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=239898

Again, title misspelled (no apostrophe) and rating entered as zero.


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## Mark (Aug 31, 2008)

Morrus said:


> http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=239898
> 
> Again, title misspelled (no apostrophe) and rating entered as zero.





This one is mine.  Copied as it was with no apostrophe.  I should have caught that.

However, I had a question about that one in regard to rating it.  It kinda looks like no more than an extended summary.  I do not see any qualifying statements on which to hang a numerical hat.  Should it just be removed?


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## Blackrat (Aug 31, 2008)

I was thinking about one thing while I ported few today. Finding image seems to bog down on the time that it takes to move a review. Since the default image is pretty recognisable and the image can be later on edited, I was thinking if one of the other volunteers would like to do some cooperation. As I already said I have much time on my hands during my work-hours so I can port the reviews in masses. This could be hurried even more if I just ignored the image and someone else would just come and edit in the images later. This would have the advantage of getting the reviews themselves moved faster, which I gather is the priority.


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## Morrus (Aug 31, 2008)

Mark said:


> This one is mine.  Copied as it was with no apostrophe.  I should have caught that.
> 
> However, I had a question about that one in regard to rating it.  It kinda looks like no more than an extended summary.  I do not see any qualifying statements on which to hang a numerical hat.  Should it just be removed?





Yeah - that's not a review, it's the product entry from the old product database.  Every product in the old system had a product entry (soe long, some short- depends what the publisher posted), and they appear in the data threads along with the reviews and the discussion.  90% of the time, it's the first entry in the thread (sometimes it's the _only_ entry in the thread, if the product had been added to the old database but not reviewed yet).


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## cougent (Aug 31, 2008)

I sent a PM with contact info if you still need / want more volunteers.


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## Angel Tarragon (Sep 1, 2008)

Morrus said:


> Hmm... that's not exactly a review.  Just a comment.



I'm aware of that. I just wanted to do one as a practice to make sure I got it right.


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## Blackrat (Sep 1, 2008)

If we happen to come across thread that only contains the Product Info, shall we delete it?
Examples of such:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=204551
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=204552
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=203624
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=203623

EDIT: Well these examples have now been removed.


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## Blackrat (Sep 1, 2008)

And another question. If there's multiple reviews of the same product, like here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=118172 , do we create a new thread for each or post them as replies after the first?


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## Morrus (Sep 1, 2008)

Blackrat said:


> If we happen to come across thread that only contains the Product Info, shall we delete it?
> Examples of such:
> http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=204551
> http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=204552
> ...




Yes please!



Blackrat said:


> And another question. If there's multiple reviews of the same product, like here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=118172 , do we create a new thread for each or post them as replies after the first?




New threads, please!


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## Morrus (Sep 1, 2008)

cougent said:


> I sent a PM with contact info if you still need / want more volunteers.




Great, thanks! - I'll set you up.  The more, the better!


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## Blackrat (Sep 1, 2008)

. Okay, that clears things out. I've already done few today, and the speed at which these get moved is picking up for me. Now that I know how to handle those it will become even faster. Cheers.


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## Blackrat (Sep 1, 2008)

I'm having another question. This time I'd only like your ruling Morrus. I'm having difficulties deciding whether this constitutes as a mini-review and product info stuffed together, or just well described product info: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=189948

Most of the WorldWorks Games' products seem to be same kind.


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## Morrus (Sep 1, 2008)

Blackrat said:


> I'm having another question. This time I'd only like your ruling Morrus. I'm having difficulties deciding whether this constitutes as a mini-review and product info stuffed together, or just well described product info: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=189948
> 
> Most of the WorldWorks Games' products seem to be same kind.




Yeah - they're just the product entries.  Often we'd give publishers the ability to enter their ctalogues into the database - from the looks of it, I'd say Andorax works for WorldWorks.


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## Morrus (Sep 1, 2008)

cougent said:


> I sent a PM with contact info if you still need / want more volunteers.




OK, cougent - you're all set up and shoould be good to go!  Thank you1


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## Blackrat (Sep 1, 2008)

Yeah, I figured that's the case but decided to make sure . I've been scouring the database from entries that have nothing else but the product info. I'll include those to that scourge then also.


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## Blackrat (Sep 1, 2008)

Well the scouring is complete. There should be no more entries that consist only of the product info. Knocked about 80 pages off the list. Now to do some actual importing .


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## Mark (Sep 1, 2008)

Blackrat said:


> Well the scouring is complete. There should be no more entries that consist only of the product info. Knocked about 80 pages off the list. Now to do some actual importing .





I had reverse ordered the list and did the same thing.  I thought at one point it was odd that I would remove about ten entries and a couple of pages would disappear instead of just one.  I continued for a while from the back of the list to go through and remove comments, leaving only the reviews to transfer but started running into more and more where there were no comments (though sometimes it was a thread with ad text up top, then a review as the only entry, so those I left alone for the time being).  Anyway, the old databse is down from 292 pages (almost three thousand entries) to just around 200 pages left.  That's about it for my availability for the time being.  Feel free to nix my mod status and if I get more time next weekend I might be able to volunteer again.


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## cougent (Sep 1, 2008)

Here is my first attempt, feel free to critique as needed.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=240040

The original is here, which I will delete as soon as you OK the new one.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=206886

Am I correct in understanding that you DO NOT want the comments?


EDIT:  Also there is a second review in the comments that i have saved and will post after some more appear to keep from having them right together as you mentioned earlier.


EDIT 2:  I went ahead and did another one for Lords of Darkness from the last page of the original list, but when I tried to delete it it did a soft delete and left a placeholder, is that what it is supposed to do or did I miss something?  [I said I would have lots of questions  ]


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## Blackrat (Sep 2, 2008)

Bah! Sorry, I can't seem to do any today and tomorrow. Well okay I can do the review moving itself but I can't upload pictures since I don't have enough permissions on the computer I have to work these two day :/. I frigging hate when I'm stuck on a 'puter that has IE, and locked almost everything...

EDIT: Well I decided on a solution to this. I'll move the reviews now, and when I'll get home I'll upload the pics to them. (Unless someone does that for me )


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## Blackrat (Sep 2, 2008)

cougent said:


> EDIT 2:  I went ahead and did another one for Lords of Darkness from the last page of the original list, but when I tried to delete it it did a soft delete and left a placeholder, is that what it is supposed to do or did I miss something?  [I said I would have lots of questions  ]




When you choose to delete something you should have a choice of doing a "Soft Delete" or "Physical Delete". The latter removes it completely. Now that you mention it, Morrus never said which we should do but I assumed the physical delete.


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## Morrus (Sep 2, 2008)

cougent said:


> Am I correct in understanding that you DO NOT want the comments?




That's right.  Just the reviews!



> EDIT:  Also there is a second review in the comments that i have saved and will post after some more appear to keep from having them right together as you mentioned earlier.




Yep, each thread is a mix of reviews and comments.



> EDIT 2:  I went ahead and did another one for Lords of Darkness from the last page of the original list, but when I tried to delete it it did a soft delete and left a placeholder, is that what it is supposed to do or did I miss something?  [I said I would have lots of questions  ]




You get two options - the one you want is the "physically remove" option, which totally vapourises it!  You can either do that to an entire thread, or you can selectively remove individual posts from a thread (if there are other reviews still in the thread).


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## Blackrat (Sep 2, 2008)

Blackrat said:


> EDIT: Well I decided on a solution to this. I'll move the reviews now, and when I'll get home I'll upload the pics to them. (Unless someone does that for me )




Heh, I see someone did. Cheers .


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## Morrus (Sep 2, 2008)

Yup, that was me!


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## cougent (Sep 2, 2008)

Morrus said:


> You get two options - the one you want is the "physically remove" option, which totally vapourises it!  You can either do that to an entire thread, or you can selectively remove individual posts from a thread (if there are other reviews still in the thread).




I am only getting the "soft delete" option.  This is the case from both the review tools menu and the moderator tools menu (tried both just to see if there was any difference)


EDIT:  The site has been (almost) intolerably slow all day today, but it has been working.  It may take 3 minutes to switch pages, load a new review, or practically do anything... but they are going through.  I have managed to get about 4 done today and will keep chipping away.  I am doing the soft deletes for now until I get the "physically remove" option, then I will go clean up the mess being left behind.


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## Blackrat (Sep 4, 2008)

cougent said:


> I am doing the soft deletes for now until I get the "physically remove" option, then I will go clean up the mess being left behind.




Don't worry about that, I just cleaned them out while I moved one .

And to the subject I came here now: I have suggestion, if it's possible to do. Right now I have to first download image to my harddrive and then upload it from there. It would save considerable time if images could be uploaded straight from links. Is this possible?


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## cougent (Sep 7, 2008)

Morrus -

I just did another review move from old to new and I still don't have the "physically remove" option to delete the old one, just the "soft delete" option is all it allows me.  I should be able to move several of these over the next few days, but I can't really clean up the old section completely as it stands.  I will press on either way, just wanted to let you know.


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## wedgeski (Sep 12, 2008)

I don't know what level of commitment you're hoping for but I can certainly contribute to this little project during quiet lunch-hours at work. Let me know!


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## Blackrat (Sep 15, 2008)

Who's been uploading images to the reviews I moved? Not that I complain, saves me the job of doing it later at home . Just wanted to know who to thank. Thanks anyway .


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## Blackrat (Sep 17, 2008)

I ran into troubles here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/old-reviews-system-data-ignore/118353-library-altinum.html

I can't find the publisher of that product anywhere. Actually, google-search only came up with few torrents and that's it. Is it possible that it's misspelled?


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## Blackrat (Oct 14, 2008)

Hey Morrus. A question about speeding up the process. I noticed that one of the moderation options is to simply move posts to new area and make a new thread for it. What's wrong with doing this? Is it because it won't add the details to the review?

This is what happened when I tried this.
I took one post from here:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/old-reviews-system-data-ignore/189558-barrow-forgotten-king.html

And chose move > make new thread > and chose the rpg book reviews section. And it went there.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpg-book-reviews/242919-barrow-forgotten-king.html?ltr=B

The curious thing I noticed is that by this way it won't change the time tag when the post was made, so it moved to last of the rpg books section...


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## Morrus (Oct 14, 2008)

That method hadn't occurred to me - if it works, it works!  Presumably, you'll still need to edit it to rate it, though?


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## Blackrat (Oct 14, 2008)

Yeah, it doesn't add the product details nor the ratings, but even so it speeds the process quite enormously. It takes 10 secs to move a review in this way, as the other way takes nearly 5 minutes. But let's say I'll start moving these first, as it is the priority I presume, and worry about editing in the ratings later. That okay?


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## Morrus (Oct 14, 2008)

Sounds good to me!


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