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A 10,000 Word, 17 Page Traveler Review
Posted by Scott on 21st May, 2008 | 18 commentsCruise Critic is a great site to read traveler reviews of cruise ships. It’s one of many sites that offer travel user reviews, like Trip Advisor and others. I have seen some long winded reviews in my day but I found one that is the king of all reviews. I have read thousands of reviews on hundreds of sites including my own, ResellerRatings.com (featuring consumer reviews of online retailers), but I have never run into such a monster. At a typing speed of 75 words per minute, this review took “jrbeccles” 2.4 hours to write at full speed with no pauses.
Sorry but what a waste of time for both the user who wrote it and everyone who tries to read it. I get that the person loved their trip, but please, boil down your experience to a few paragraphs and spare us! Reviews are supposed to save us time - I feel like it would have taken me less time to actually go on that cruise and experience it than to read the review. If you run a user reviews site, keep in mind that more is not better - cruise critic would be well to cap the length of their reviews, forcing users to focus on the important stuff.
Update 5/21: Fixed review link.
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Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Web Business. If you like this post why not subscribe to my full text RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Don’t know where you found more than 10,000 words - when I checked the review you linked to it only contained 3,099 words. but the cabin-number is above 10,000 (10,103)
Sorry, wrong review. this is it.
[quote]Sorry but what a waste of time for both the user who wrote it and everyone who tries to read it. I get that the person loved their trip, but please, boil down your experience to a few paragraphs and spare us![/quote]
I don’t think it is a waste as such a long review provides the publishing site with many long tail keywords and phrases. I would be happy to have visitors to my network of sites that would leave such positve comments.
On the other hand, where is the proof that the review is even legit? It could well be provided by the cruise line itself.
Anyway - lots of keywords
Maybe they just posted their diary that was written during long and boring cruises. They obviously had a lot of time for this, so paradoxically this may be a bad critic for the cruise!
It will only bring some useless reviews with the 10000 words.
A short review is OK for someone who is researching a topic. There’s only so much information you can read about paperclips for instance.
A long review is perfect for people who need detailed information.
When booking my honeymoon recently, I looked at the longer reviews on cruise critic. I found the shorter ones to be lacking in detail.
The short reviews were great for deciding which type of holiday to go on with the longer reviews better for deciding which exact holiday to pop for.
I think you are right. For the internet-surfer who is not really interested it is much too long. But when you want to make the same trip you will read every bit of information you can get. And for those it is not too long. Hell, people even buy books about one town!
This looks more like a diary entry.
Don’t agree with you.
I read lots of pages with my girlfriend when we were looking for a travel destination. And we couldn’t stop to watch it because we liked it!
Of course reviews are helpful - I read lots of them too when planning a trip. But 10,000 words? It’s nuts.
I dont know but i like the comment. It is personal and interesting. But of course it is only for people who want to take the same trip.
I agree, it will interest only those that are planning or taking the same or similar trip.
Yes, but thats the strength of the internet. Not everything must be shortened to 10 lines. Does who are interested will happily read the whole story, and those who dont want to take the same trip wont read it anyway. So why shorten it?
Hm, you think that they were writing for anybody else???
Of cours they were writing only for them.
Your right I hate reviews that are so long. So annoying to read
Anything review longer than 1000 words I don’t read
God that must be one boring review.
I’ve been browsing some of your older posts … hope it’s OK to comment so late in the game.
I tend to agree with you about the length of the review, but noticed as I skimmed it that she refers a few times to people she met via the site’s discussion boards.
Seen in that light, the review makes a little more sense … she’s writing for an audience that’s already plugged into a community, it’s part of an ongoing conversation.
But still: It’s goofily long.