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!