Opinions are like....uhm, you know....
I have less of a problem with peoples' biases, or even their agendas, then I do with the poor quality of effort and time taken which is being displayed in 90% of these so-called "reviews". A heck of a lot of the responses are more informative and thoughtful than the "reviews"! I at this point frankly think that there is a higher percentage of worthwhile user reviews to be found on Audioreview.com, which is very disappointing to realize.
I believe the easiest way around this situation is for Audiogon to institute a "peer-review" system for the "reviews" themselves. Each review should have, right on the page with it, a box that permits the readers to vote on two catagories:
1) The quality of the review from a standpoint of thoroughness, informativeness, thoughtfulness, how well-written, and how enjoyable it was to read.
2) To what degree they either agreed or disagreed with the writer's findings and opinions.
Both catagories could be represented on a 5-point scale, and the site would automatically compute a running tabulation of the average reactions of Audiogon members to any review. The average result for both catagories could be shown by a pair of decimal numbers between 1 and 5 that would be displayed in the title line of the review, helping browsing A-Gon members to search out quality work, and avoid the dogs.
But more importantly than that last benefit, the review-grading system would have the immediate effect of greatly encouraging review writers to take their time and do good work in the first place, so that it would preemptively weed out all the worthless one-paragraph, unsupported quickie opinion-mongering jobs that are badly written and painful to read (and in my opinion, basically somewhat disrespectful by the "reviewer" of the members such a "review" seeks to be read by).
Without something along these lines being implemented, it's already clear to me that this whole feature is fast turning into mostly a waste of time, and something that will simply begin clogging up the site. To facilitate better reviewing efforts being successfully attempted and completed, however, there are also two things that Audiogon needs to do about the way reviews can be written and posted on the site (I have not yet written a "review" under the new catagory as such, so if I'm about to mention features already in place, please forgive my ignorance):
1) The site needs to be constructed so that a review writer can draft their article over more than one session if need be. The writer must be able to save the current draft of their article on the site, and be able to return to it later to continue writing and editing, submitting the finished work for posting on the forum only when they are satisfied that it is ready. This feature should not be limited in number of sessions or days that it can be used.
2) The writer must further be able to add footnotes or corrections to the body of the original article once it has been completed and already posted as the thread-head, for the life of the review in the archives. These additions should be automatically dated just like a member response below would be, but will have the 'privilege of place' of being located with the original article, for the reviewer to add any pertinent addendums, references, links, corrections, or follow-ups to the review. Reviewer replies to member responses should still be located below with the all the responses, however.
P.S. - Alternatively, we could just send all of our equipment to Clueless for him to review and be done with it. ;-)
