If you consider how many concerns we get about icky written reviews and questions about having a review removed, this tip pretty much hits two birds with a couple of stones. What can I say: I've never been good at aiming rocks at birds.

　　The first question I have is directed to the readers of the player reviews (known as user reviews these days). How many of you notice the "time spent" indicator found on the user review pages?

　　For the writers of reviews, how many of you truthfully share the hours you spent playing the game?

　　We have the "time spent" indicator in user reviews for you to consider the player's background with the game. While this might mean some user reviews are first impressions of games, we never want to turn away your opinions about the final product of the game while forcing you to have a career in writing. We want your opinions about the games even if you played less than what a professional reviewer would play. Nor do you need to scrutinize every little detail and compare games based on your experience playing numerous types of games and genres for many years.

　　Before I give you some general pointers about how to read other GameSpot members' opinions, let me remind everyone about the purpose of user reviews. The following tips were provided by Bethany years ago, but they can still be applied to the moderation policies we use today.

　　Does it belong? - We have a full suite of community features on GameSpot, including forums and blogs. Historically and by design, blogs and certain forums are where rants about industry practices go. Your thoughts on why consumers and critics are rating the game differently, why games are so short these days, how they're easier than they ought to be, how they employ copy protection, why you think Miyamoto isn't nice, how Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft is turning on its fan base, and so on should be kept out of user reviews and should be in the forums or a blog.

　　Focus on the game - User reviews on GameSpot are intended to be about the gameplay experience: what you liked, what you didn't like, and how you evaluated the game based on the whole of its substance. If your review is not about the game itself, it's a candidate for removal.

　　Where's the beef? - Any technical issues with the game should be folded into the meat of the review and explain the impact on gameplay, if any. It is reasonable for these issues to be a component of reviews, but reviews themselves are about the games first and foremost.

　　You can also read the general rules for user reviews by going to any review submission page. Here is an example of what the rules state prior to submitting a review.

　　Now that you understand what user reviews should consist of, here are a number of tips I use prior to reading through a review written by someone I don't know.

　　1. Know the game - Spoilers don't always happen in user reviews, but if I want to keep from stumbling on them by accident, I start with a trusted user or with professional critic reviews first. Once I have an idea about some of the concerns or highlights about a game, I have something to be aware of when I check out other people's opinions, but I do it through a type of skimming method because I don’t know the user nor do I trust that they won’t have me wander into spoiler territory.

　　2. Don't read. Skim! - Get in the habit of skimming when you view pages because you can save yourself the trouble of reading into possible spoilers or getting upset about a person's rant. Instead of immediately reading through other people's opinions, check the hours spent and then skim the start of each paragraph, while skipping sentences and skimming for keywords. If most of the structure looks normal, I might start reading the user review, but many times I still want to know who is reviewing the game. Also, if the person spent less than 20 hours, maybe they won’t know the full game features compared to a person has played 20-40 (or more, depending on how long you know the game will be, based on former research).

　　3. Who is the writer? - Reading a random person's user review might not be nearly as fun as getting to know who's writing the review, and we all know that some people might have biased opinions about a game franchise or platform. Check their profiles to see their blogs, other reviews, game library, and even their in-game and GameSpot achievements. You might agree with their platform choice, but still, if there is one franchise heavily influencing them, maybe they won't like any other game franchise. I also check into registration dates to see if someone registered just to write the review. Is the person reviewing an X360 version of the game when they only have PS3 trophies or games? Are they writing about only one publisher's games or only one franchise? Are there too many high scores being handed out to favored platforms or franchises? Getting to know who is writing the review can save you time, and you can track this person if you find that many of their game reviews seem solid.

　　4. Beta and demo reviews don't belong - Reviews that have a user claiming to have never played the retail game and to have played only a beta or a demo should be flagged for abuse. Review writers can share some insight about playing the beta or demo, but if they don't share that they have played the retail game, that's something that doesn't belong. You don't have to worry about them being too heavily moderated for this, though, because some users get away with numerous warning marks that might get overlooked if it's a mistake or until we notice that they are ignoring former review moderations. We do remove these kinds of user reviews from the site because this is not a community feature to be used as a beta or demo review. If you notice any user review stating this, please report the user with the "other" field stating "only played the demo version," "claimed that they never played the game," or "only played the beta," and we'll investigate if it should be removed.

　　5. Pull the fire drill! - Player reviewers who rant about other reviewers or about the publisher need to consider that the content is better suited for their blog. Nobody wants to go to a user review page and find rants that are dedicated to other players, critics, or the creators of the game. Report these reviews as abuse, because they do not belong in the user reviews.

　　6.Track and rate - Once you have figured out that you can trust a particular user, you might consider tracking them and heading back to read through the game review along with rating it.

　　Feel free to share additional tips you might have involving user reviews!