What should be mandatory in every professional published review-

You may have misunderstood me. The issue I have is with publications who don’t pay what I would consider a proper rate for reviews, and instead take advantage of the willingness of reviewers to do the work for a low pay scale with some promise of discounts on gear. If the writers agree to do so, it is their choice.

@patrickdowns You are correct. Unless you write for the glossy mags you’re not gonna make money writing reviews. I did it because I love audio gear and writing, and the prospect of getting to listen to a lot of equipment in my room/system along with getting dealer pricing was something that was very attractive to me. But, after a while I got tired of humping equipment in and out of my system and spending tons of hours reviewing equipment to make someone else rich so I stopped but still very glad I did it. AFAIK the audio review industry doesn’t have any wealthy warriors undermining professional reviewers who do it as a career as in sports photography, but that totally sucks.

@johnread57 

where have I gone? Nowhere; just seeing how this has taken on a life of its own 

@soix

In 15 years of reviewing I was never constrained from saying anything negative. Over that time I only wrote one negative review

I guess everyone gets a prize, kinda thing. Everyone is above average. No normal distribution which may be described as a bell curve.

Never constrained from saying anything negative. No, a better way of saying it is that you were perhaps sufficiently rewarded by writing only positive things.

Fraud. Yes, you can quote me on that.

@noske So, you purport to know my actual experience better than I do?  You’re absolutely misguided and clueless, and you can quote me on that. 

@soix I know nothing of your actual experience.  I only know what you have written on these esteemed pages.

Should I be misguided, please share with the community here that in your 15 years of being a reviewer exactly why you provided only one negative review.

And for the sake of clarity and for the avoidance of doubt, define what constitutes a "negative review".