clicky



An article like this, confirms why people should be allowed to write reviews. Only those who are deemed "intelligent" or "educated" enough or are part of a self selected group are allowed an opion?

A self opinionated, conceited numpty.

Nuff sed!

His conclusion is a bit pompous, but he does have a very good point.

A lot of reviews are written by sycophants, people paid to write a review or people with a grudge...

Not all customer reviews are bad, but the numpties who buy a wireless router and then complain it doesn't help improve the reception on their old Nokia 3210 should have their reviews deleted. Okay, an extreme example, but when you get fanboys fighting against each other over reviews of products, you might as well not have any reviews, the resultant garble is totally meaningless.

I like to think it's pretty easy to weed out the nutjobs from the real "fans" when reading reviews of music/films/games.

I think right now, there's a generation of casual web users who are just getting used to the idea of actually [i]contributing[i/] to the magical interweb, and so the novelty leads to them posting any old garbage....just because they can.

But it does drive me insane when people "review" online based on the fact that they got a beta test position. It can be a nightmare on places like Play.com, where a review of a game will be posted sometimes months before it comes out. I wish that they would have two categories, one for real reviews and another for people to post their boasts because they got a beta ticket

I fear that I agree with a lot of what he says there, especially the bits about learning to spell and grammar. I know I can come over as an intellectual snob at times, and I have had the benefit of an English teacher at primary school who taught with an iron rod, and we really did know how to use an apostrophe properly. Hell, some of us had a reasonable understanding of the semi colon because of her.

I am on another forum, and I am in the midst of finalising a web site for them. It’s on a CMS, and for the love of Mike, we seriously need to control posts - I feel my moderation hat will be firmly wedged on for that one. The grammar, spelling and negligent use of the apostrophe makes me weep. Creating a barrier between this and the outside world is vital. There is a lot of useful information to be imparted, but it will be lost in the miasma of poor English if it is not controlled.

I hate to say this, but not everyone needs to have a say on everything. As the article in the OP says, if you think that 59p for an iPhone app is too much, or a rip off, then you are a few pixels short of an icon. I know that you have spent at least £199 on hardware capable of running that app. Don’t moan about 59p.

The sad thing is that user reviews can kill years of hard work. There is no moderation, and certainly no form of verification or validation. If the problem is fixed, we rarely hear back from the complainer.

The point is, we shouldn't have to. It is a complete pain having to go through a bunch of reviews, reading the first sentence or two, realising that the review isn't serious, then skipping to the next review. I just want to see the "proper" reviews!

Separating the useful information from the background noise is just a complete pain. To be honest, I don't tend to read any reviews on e-shop websites. I'll go to a tech review website or similar, where I trust the writers to, generally, give a good opinion of the product.


And the relative anonymity means that they often rant on, in a way they never would if you asked them about the product face to face.


Exactly! Apply that to almost any product.

He doesn't have to read the reviews!


I agree but with products written by many people, you build up a more accurate picture. If you got a thousand people to review a single product, some would love it and give it 5/5. Others would would absolutely loathe it and give it 1/5. Between the two extremes lies the truth. The problem is there are some items with very few reviews, so you end up having to take a guess.


Agreed.


Yes but 'proper' reviews don't often reveal problems that other customers may experience. If I wish to buy a product, I will look for a some published 'proper' reviews online. Once narrowed down to a specific product, I then tend to look at customer review sites. Such reviews can reveal issues with the product or support, or other things you might not have thought about.

He is clearly opinionated, but I agree completely with him. Not everyone has enought knowledge to understand what they are reviewing, and not everyone has enough background knowledge to realise if a reviewer actually has no clue what they are talking about. I tend to err on the side of technology review sites, although I will look briefly at user reviews as well. It's often entertaining.

An ignorant moron trashing a product because they can't use is no different to someone maliciously lying on a review; it has the same effect. People are put off buying a good product. I know absolutely nothing about art or literature, and therefore I will never venture an opinion (beyond "I like that picture.")