The Review System (Suggestion) (Save SMF)

I mean obviously leaving comments when you up or down vote when you can is a start, but having a system built in would guarantee that it's always done.

I think all these ideas are overcomplicated. Isn't the main problem with the regular system of downvotes we have now, that people can downvote for no reason, and be trolls? So then, if people are downvoting for malicious purposes, why not have their account deleted and their downvotes erased? If it really is a troll, they're probably doing some other things that are punishable by ban, right?
Damnatio memoriae.

no, the problem is upvoting and not downvoting.

a lot of people on the site really dont like downvoting, so being able to see the reviews earlier should help that.

Maybe we could do something similar to what Wikipedia does. Don't let people vote or give rep until they have a certain amount of comments.

But then you have the problem that people can just comment a bit and get enough comments to vote.
+ Once these "trolls" do get enough comments they can just continue what they're doing now.

A system where people who downvoted can be viewed would help.

Perhaps there should be a slight overhaul to current vote system. Instead of the SMF system simply showing "X votes", it'd show "X up-votes" and "X down-votes".

When moving the mouse pointer over one of these vote numbers, you would get a drop down list of people who voted up/down?
The drop-down list would be max. 5 people, but would have a "show more" function to show them all, just to not make the drop-down list to long if a guide gets a lot of up- or downvotes.

And the idea I described above, where people are forced to leave feedback when up-/downvoting would perhaps help a lot, since people (and by this usually the "trolls") can no longer downvote anonymously, and thus have to expose themselves when they do downvote. (Or upvote, for that matter)

All I can say is that it'll be a matter of time and experimenting with different functions before one can truly say wether a system would work well or not.

the idea is that editors and up could mark them as reviews.

I think that having a preview above the guide will detract attention from the actual guide. So I don't really see that as a good idea. Besides, a review, from what I can understand of your explanation, is simply a comment with some sort of "approval"... That doesn't really change anything since we allready have comments and most of them are quite helpful. The only thing I see happening is more people will comment simply to get a chance for a rep point.

Not only that, if somebody has a review similar to somebody else's, what'll you do?
- Say: "Hey, that looks to much like the one from that guy over there", and not reward that person for their efforts, should that review actually be his and well thought out and calculated, but he just didn't notice somebody else posted one allready similar to it or came up with it before somebody else posted it?
Or
- Say: "Hey, good review, here's a point, it's similar to the other dude's review though but no worries", and give a point, but run the risk of somebody stealing a review of somebody secretly, and then get a similar scenario as if somebody would simply steal a guide?

IMO a "review" system has little to no benefits. If a guide gets ontop, regardless of it being "bad", because of its vote ratio, then the vote ratio system is what needs to be changed. If this occurs due to people simply not liking the "downvote", then make the downvote more attractive.

Can you list any and all benefits from the "review" system? Right now I have nothing but the fact that people who do comment with good answers get a little bit more credit, but that doesn't solve the problem of "bad" guides ending out on top, if that is what you're truly aiming for.

I'd agree with XZero that showing the reviews in the very guide tab would probably be a bit too "invasive", but overall I think such system could work (depending of course how difficult would it be to implement- I have no idea about it)- it wouldn't be about getting rep or approval; the motivation to make a review might come, as mentioned before, from a simple change.

If one wants to upvote/downvote/or whatever else would we call it- he has to justify his decision by commenting/reviewing- I'd say it'd be a fair deal.

And if all else fails, a good start would be to show the amount of up/down votes, instead of just "votes".

I think this is the best idea so far.
Better than mine, at least.