This subject is slightly controversial in the vine community. For a long time there was a way that sellers gamed the vine system. Normally they can offer up to 30 items to be reviewed. The idea is there would be one listing with 30 items resulting in sellers getting up to 30 reviews for an item. Sellers quickly figured out that they could list 1 item 30 times, then aggregate the variant and reviews. What they did was pick and choose which variant or other listing had the good reviews and aggregate those tossing the bad reviews. Sometimes they would change what the product was after they got reviews. Get a bunch of good reviews for some cheap throw away product, then change the product to what they really want to sell knowing that lots of people would not read the reviews and just look at the number of 4 or 5 star ratings. If anyone did read the reviews they would just assume there was a glitch or that someone got confused and reviewed the wrong product.
To combat this viners began putting a basic version of the product description in the title, and or inside the review. I personally do this, and make it as short as I can. This way if everyone did it then buyers might see large amounts of reviews referencing a different product and think something is up and go elsewhere. Some people don't like the idea and say it is not our business to police buyers. I prefer to think it preserves the integrity of my reviews.
At this time I do not know what sellers think about this. Sellers cannot easily get reviews taken down. contrary to what some viners think. In fact on the seller forums they complain that they cannot get reviews taken down that were left by someone who obviously should not have ordered something, or did not know how to use the thing they ordered. Reviews like that are often left by people who were too hasty in ordering things, and then realized they could not use the item, get mad, and leave a low star review for their own stupidity and greediness.
One thing that will get you lots of derision in the vine community is putting a disclaimer in your review, or explaining what your star rating system is. I do not do this, but I do not see a problem with doing this. Some of the people who do this are trying to protect the validity of vine reviews, and others are trying to point out that we do not get our products totally for free since we have to pay taxes, and have to leave a review. I agree we are not getting a product for free. if we were getting them for free there would be no tax and no one would leave reviews.
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