How OpenVibe.Reviews works

Signals

A signal is one observation a source made about one thing: a Steam reviewer recommending a game, a shop page stating "4.2 out of 5 from 1,234 ratings". Signals come only from items that OpenVibe.Sources retrieved, and each keeps its source, the item and its revision, when it was retrieved, when the source published it, and the licence note the source was ingested under. Reviews keeps the numbers, never the review text: the words belong to the people who wrote them.

When a source updates an item the old signal is marked replaced and a new one takes its place; when a source removes an item its signal is withdrawn. Both stay visible in the entity's history.

The aggregate (method reviews-aggregate@1)

• Recommendation share: positives ÷ total over individual recommendations (1 of 1 or 0 of 1) and sources' own recommendation counts. When a source states its own count, its individual recommendations are not counted a second time.
• Rating: the count-weighted mean of value ÷ best over single ratings (count 1) and aggregate ratings (count = the number of ratings the source states), shown as a percentage, and on the source's scale when every input shares one. A rating whose source did not state the scale is left out, and the page says so.
• Editors can exclude a source or a single signal, always with a reason shown on the page.
• With no qualifying signal there is no aggregate. Not zero, not a placeholder: none.

Each change to the inputs produces a new aggregate revision; the entity history lists them all.

Summaries

A summary is text written by an editor (or drafted by OpenVibe.AI and approved by an editor) whose pros and cons each cite the signals they rest on. A summary never carries a rating. If a cited signal is withdrawn or replaced, the summary is flagged on the page and a revised version waits for an editor.

Entities, merges and splits

Items are matched to entities by deterministic rules: a source bound to one entity, the item's URL, a GTIN, SKU or MPN. A name alone is never enough: an editor confirms it. A merge never rewrites anything, so a split restores the earlier attribution exactly; both are recorded with who, when and why.

Corrections and discussion

Anyone signed in can send a correction to the editors from an entity page. What you send, and who you are, stays with the editors. When an editor corrects a published summary, the correction is a new revision published with a note saying what was corrected; the earlier revisions stay readable in the summary's revision history. Discussion lives on OpenVibe.Community and is shown here, never copied.