Guidelines for Reviews on Webwiki

General Information

Dear Webwiki user,

On Webwiki, you can rate websites from the World Wide Web. Whether it’s an online shop, business, forum, restaurant, or event, all entries listed on Webwiki can be praised or criticized by you. Webwiki thrives on contributions from its active users and appreciates every review. Criticism and sharing negative experiences are also welcome, as long as they are formulated objectively and truthfully.

A fair review culture is particularly important to Webwiki. For this reason, every submitted review goes through an approval process before being published. For a review to be approved, it must meet certain criteria and be free of certain content. These criteria are summarized here in our review guide.

What characterizes a good review?

Objectivity

Reviews should be truthful, neutral, and factually written. However, it is not always easy to remain objective, especially with negative experiences. You can certainly express your subjective perception and opinion, but please describe factual events truthfully and objectively.

Added Value

Good reviews are interesting to read, provide detailed information, and offer useful insights for the reader. This way, they can learn about a service or online shop in advance and benefit from others' experiences.

Personal Experience

Please only describe what you have personally experienced in your reviews, not third-party experiences. Also, avoid rumors, hearsay, or unverified statements. This ensures the review reflects a truthful personal experience.

Fairness

Criticism and personal opinions are allowed, even encouraged, as long as they are expressed objectively and relate to the provider or a specific incident/event, and are free of insults or abusive criticism. Stay fair and, for example, mention if the provider accommodated you.

Privacy

The protection of privacy must be respected in every review. Please avoid publishing private information such as addresses, phone numbers, or full names of third parties, unless absolutely necessary. Official representatives of companies (e.g., managers or business owners) are, of course, exempt if the person is mentioned in a business context.

When is a review not approved?

Insults, abusive criticism, and curse words

Reviews must not include highly derogatory language or curse words. Defamation, slander, threats, or insults are not tolerated by Webwiki. Avoid statements like “Scammer! Stay away!” as they may not be protected by the right to free speech under Article 5 of the German Basic Law.

False factual claims

Please ensure that the claims you make in your reviews are truthful and, if necessary, verifiable. If the subject of the review disputes the claims as false, you must confirm their accuracy separately. The reviewer is responsible for the statements made.

Multiple reviews

Multiple reviews for the same entry by the same person, even under different names, are not allowed. In particular, multiple positive or negative reviews by one person to skew the overall impression of a provider are not permitted.

Inappropriate reviews

Unintelligible, incoherent, or irrelevant content that does not contribute to a review or opinion will not be published. Reviews written in a language other than the language of the review platform will also not be published, except for reviews written in English.

No contact

Direct contact, such as complaints, cancellations, job applications, or inquiries, through the review function on Webwiki is not possible. Incorrectly posted content intended for another purpose will not be classified as a review and will not be published.

The Comment Function

In addition to writing reviews, you can also comment on them. This is useful if you want to respond to a review or ask the reviewer a question. The same guidelines apply to comments as to reviews. If you want to reference an existing review, please use the comment function and do not write a new review. If you want to add to your own review later, please also use the comment function.

The Review Approval Process on Webwiki

  1. Submission of the review

    Once a review is submitted, it is stored in our system and goes through an approval process. Email verification is required for the publication of a review. Additionally, the reviewer is informed that their submission will be reviewed by our team before being published.

  2. Review of the submission

    Our team checks submitted reviews and comments against the criteria mentioned above. Our support team is available during the day from Monday to Friday. Therefore, reviews submitted on weekends may take up to three days to be processed. However, reviews are generally processed within 12 hours.

    • Approval of the review

      If all guidelines are met, the review will be approved and published by our support team.

    • Modification of the review

      While we encourage as many contributions as possible, if a review contains content that does not comply with our guidelines, we may shorten or reject it depending on the severity of the issue. If a review is detailed, credible, and plausible but contains warnings or other inappropriate statements, these parts may be removed by our support team before publication.

    • Rejection of the review

      If a review violates our guidelines, its publication will be rejected by the support team.

Reporting a Published Review

Email to the support team

If you have a complaint about a published review, please send us a message to emailspamprotection. Since reviews and comments are usually protected by the right to free expression, they cannot be removed without appropriate justification. Please provide specific details on where within the review a legal violation has occurred so that we can investigate the matter.

Webwiki review process

If there is sufficient justification for a potential legal violation, we will contact the reviewer and ask for a statement to confirm the accuracy of the claims. If the reviewer does not respond within four business days or cannot confirm the truthfulness of their statements, we will remove the review. However, if no obvious legal violation is found and the reviewer confirms the accuracy of their statements, the review will remain published.


Last updated: February 2023