Alright, so I stumbled across this in the "Up and Coming Good Reviewers" thread in a list of people who'd been shouted out in the first 11 or 12 pages:

-----------

Dave242 - 276 - 1905 thumbs (needs 1648 thumbs to go straight to diamond)

-----------

Is there a magical number up there that pushes you straight to diamond? I assume it isn't actually 3,553 as that math would suggest, maybe 3,500 or 3,550?

It's always 1000 with the unique votes requirement. This particular case falls under the following part of the formula though:

"In addition to the above requirements, your unhelpful vote count must be less than 45% of your total helpful vote count to qualify as a trusted reviewer."

So doing the math with the numbers at that time, Dave would need that amount of votes to get to 45%. Normally the percentage part isn't really an issue for people on diamond track.

Dave is from the golden age when we were throwing around negative votes consequences be ****ed. We were living for today, never thinking a day would come and our votes would be seen publicly. That, and a lot of the perpetual negative voters 'left' the site. If Dave was turning out the same reviews today, he'd still get his fair share of negative votes, but he'd be in the 80 - 90% positive vote range.

Oh wow. I hadn't looked up his thumb ratio :thmbdown:

Yup. I haven't had a downvote since 2019.

We all chickened out (or manned up?) and stopped giving negative votes once they were made public. I also like to think I no longer get angry/upset when someone writes a review/gives a rating I disagree with.

on good behavior ...
 

We haven't upset the locals recently for writing a review suggesting that Harmon Hills isn't a Top-10 course either. ;)

or choose to not vote at all. I read one this morning that wasn't particularly helpful, but didn't merit a down vote either.

Maybe I take the concept of "helpful" too literally...I read some where I think "That's interesting, but not particularly helpful."

I've haven't been downvoted much, but I think it's funny that 4 out of 5 of my downvotes for reviews written since 2020 are from one person. Half of mine are also from the few reviews I did in 2010-2011, and were pretty earned on my part.

Dave changed his review style up at some point to include more than just his rating rubric. Those initial reviews included zero information about the course he was reviewing. If he was still churning out his "reviews" in the original style, I'm sure they'd get more down votes than up.

Don't get me wrong, I though he brought an interesting perspective, but it mostly came through in forum posts and not in reviews.

Harmon is fun, but still not in my personal top ten.

I actually like reading the differing views. Sometimes I read something about a course I've played that I did not see the first time.

I'll still downvote the reviews with no substance that target courses though.

I read a bunch of short ones recently where I was left asking "Yeah, but what is the course like TO PLAY???"

Descriptions of tees, baskets, signs, garbage cans and bathrooms all have their place, but when the majority of the review is about stuff that's listed in course descriptions I want to tear the little remaining hair I have out of my head...

"Play"?

Oh, wait, this isn't publicparkbathroomandgarbagecanreview.com? :\

Shucks. :D

"Garbage cans catch okay with some spitouts."

I should have used this line in my Piasa Harbor review.

I don't usually like to blow my own horn, but... I just got my 1500th upvote! Thanks to everyone who has voted on my reviews and hopefully I have helped other DGers as I continue my quest to conquer Florida and beyond!

Working on joining the 2 carat Diamond Club...

I guess that makes me 1.5 carats?!?

A carat and a half is still a pretty nice stone. ;)

...but we've ALL got to admire (envy?) TVK's bling!
He's approaching TEN carats!

1500 courses and 1500 reviews. [whew]

... and the reason this thread was started.

TVK's a course baggin,' review writin' machine!

VK is what we all aspire to be. GOAT

I believe Crooow is our newest Gold Level TR! Congrats and well deserved!!

Is Diamond TR obtainable anymore? It seems as though some people are qualified but have not received it. Or was it only obtainable to the first 50 people?

It's available. Biggest hurdle is unique voters.
As fewer people frequent DGCR, harder to pick up votes from a bunch of different people.

Ah I see.

It’s definitely possible, the unique voters are the biggest thing to overcome as Bogey said. Most of the folks that have achieved Diamond have a combination of reviewing over a longer period of time and/or reviewing courses that cover a larger swath of land. If you look at a profile of a Diamond reviewer, chances are they started reviewing back in between 2008 and 2012, or have covered a larger area with their reviews, or likely have done both. The folks that have yet to reach Diamond but have large thumb/review counts are likely lacking a bit in one of these areas.

Reviewing popular or highly rated courses can be a big difference maker. More popular courses like Idlewild, Foundation Park, and Harmony Bends both provided a lot of thumbs for me, but also individually provided a solid number of unique voter additions. I’m sure a lot of other folks would say they’ve had similar experiences.

Overall, it’s just a process that takes a lot of time. The jump from gold to Diamond is huge, which is why you see some folks with over a thousand thumbs but not enough uniques, especially folks like HyooMac and Shadrach3.

Gotcha. Thanks :thmbup:

I've been reveiwing for just shy of 3 years, and with your upvote (thanks for that, btw) I still only have 122 unique voters. The site just isn't as popular as it once was, so us cubic zirconias just sit and wait.

i think it might be instructive to have the date a member joined DGCR on the TR data spreadsheet. i think i will add that when i have a chance to get around to it. i'm pretty sure it would show that the majority of diamond TRs were reviewing for 8+ years before gaining that achievement. wellsbranch250 probably has the record with only 2 years but that is by far the exception not the rule.

the cubic zirconia situations have happened before but never as many as there are now. i think it's more to do with the small army of dedicated review thumbers that is now a thing than it has to do with site traffic. it has always taken quite a few years to get to diamond and i think 1000 votes might be the easiest part now.

A lot of the earlier TRs reached it within a couple of years, but I believe the diamond tr tier was easier to achieve back then (less unique votes required, IIRC).

^ Juke's correct.

Tim never dreamed site would take off and become as popular as it did, and he realized Diamond was a but to easy to achieve, so he increased unique voter reqt's.

Those who've joined the kast few years may have a hard time appreciating how much DGCR memberships increased from about 2010 - 2018 or so, but once DGR went under, DGCR was pretty much the predominant DG site for real content.

Also, the longer your review stays on front page.
the easier to get thumbs. It's a simple matter of visibility.

Lately, reviews have been staying up for days, piling up thumbs. But since those thumbs are mostly coming a "core group of DGCR members" seemingly on here all the time, prolific reviewers arent getting many unique votes.

It's those "fringe member" votes that are needed to turn cubic zirconia reviewers into Diamonds.

Lots of fringe member votes.

I'm certainly not the most deserving cubic zirconia reviewer (there are currently 19 gold level TRs who have written more reviews -- kudos to HyooMac, Shadrach3, pmay5 and the rest), but at 224 unique voters, I might be the closest to Diamond thanks to writing a handful of not-that-great reviews between 2008-2015.

My approach is to prioritize writing reviews for new courses, courses with few reviews, courses far from my home base, and/or courses with a rating that I can make a compelling argument should be higher or lower. Also, I try to upvote all the new decent reviewers, and I've even PM'ed a few of them to encourage them to keep up the good work!

That's my strategy. I'm hoping it turns into some more unique voters, even though there are a few "non-fringe members" who I haven't received a "thumbs up" from ........ yet.

My path to Diamond reached a new level today: 200 uniques by my count.

On average, it's been taking 3-5 new reviews to gain one new unique (mileage varies at times based on travel to new regions and reviewing popular courses, but it's been pretty much in the "write 3 to 5 to get 1" territory for the last year or so).


So, at this rate, I can expect to reach Diamond in another 150 - 250 reviews - or somewhere around 500 total.


<sigh>

Not even worrying about the uniques anymore. But I did just recently cross the 2000 up thumbs. So....I've got that going for me... which is nice.... did it with my review of a course in Hawaii!