June 23 2021 – July 22 2021
Probably, this was our the biggest maintenance ever. Making this website few years ago we didn’t expect this to be that popular. At the post time we have nearly 55000 (!) comments from users. Such a big amount causes too much server load so we had to re-build the whole website reviews system.
Proudly announcing, the website became 15x faster. Now you can leave and read reviews without any delays and boring page loads.
Another important changing is the way we show the average rating of the link. We noticed that despite of implementing new security features and spam filters, bots still can ruin some links’ rating. To make it useless we decided to pick up the last 200 reviews for calculating the average rating. This make a rating much more relevant, especially when services could change with time: become better or worse.
From May 28 2020 till June 7 2020 we’ve been working under implementing the chain technology to our reviews platform. Briefly, here is the list of changes:
- All reviews are stored in a blockchain which makes impossible for users or admins to delete then. Seriously, don’t even try to offer us millions of dollars to delete the comment – we can’t do that.
- Each comment has a unique CID (Comment ID) aka HASH. It is required for the blockchain.
- On the link page the number of comments are limited to 30 for better relevance but the full list is available on the blockchain explorer page (releases soon).
- There are 4 types of users on Hidden Reviews: Guests, Users, Link Owners and Administrators.
- Each user (except Guest) gains Reputation Level (RL) depending on the Reputation Points collected.
- Each user (except Guest) collects the Reputation Points (RP) by leaving the comments. Each 1000 points collected move the account to the next level. With every new level reached the amount of RP earned is decreased.
- Every rating leaved has it’s weight which affects the link final rating different. The higher the author’s Reputation Level, the higher it’s affect to final link rating. It is made to avoid bot voting and spam – it is useless now.
- Link owners may apply for a special dedicated account to talk to it’s audience. It increases the reputation of the link and also prevents from spoofing the official point of the link owner. It is free for non-commercial websites. Owners must leave us a message to have such account.
- Some time ago we noticed that some users used other’s name to post comment. To prevent this we added unique avatars generated on user’s email. For even better security we recommend to register an account.
That’s all for now, we hope you like this update and our platform. We continue on working on our service. Together we will make TOR better!
