Equipment reviews, are they credible?

AudiogoN, thanks for weighing in on this discussion. Your post actually helped to clear up many of the questions that initiated this post I hope I was not misunderstood as condemning the reviews. I plan to do some of them in the future. Possibly even of equipment I own, but who knows. In my mind this has clarified some confusion or uncertainty. Keep up the good work. I hope to see some of the changes implemented soon and also to see reviews from some of the people who responded to this thread.

Cluesless: That would imply a having a working knowledge of how to use a computer. ;-)

Turnaround, your point is very well taken, and I was thinking about some things along those lines after I posted above. I think the pertinent difference in this case between Audioreview.com and Audiogon is the way the reviews are set up to browse. At Audioreview.com, you click on a particular brand and model of component, not an individual review, as with Audiogon. This means that at Audioreview.com, you don't in effect wind up wasting your time opening worthless reviews; as you scan the possibly long page of reviews of any one piece of gear, you can pretty quickly tell the wheat from the chaff as you go, and don't have to wait to open and close separate pages, which takes considerable time all together if you want to peruse many reviews. Here at Audiogon, you must open each review individually, so without some external indicator of the review's quality, you often feel gypped for having wasted the time.

But again, I want to stress that the main thrust of my review-ratings idea was to force an improvement in the quality of the articles themselves (it would probably also have the effect of reducing somewhat the total number of reviews posted - not necessarily a bad thing, IMHO). As for this idea's merely being 'opinion on top of opinion', I think it's much easier to have many people agree on the worthwhileness of an article, than on their assessments of audio gear (also not a bad thing).

Audiogon - thanks for pointing out that the feature allowing multiple writing sessions is in place (has anybody used it so far?). I actually suggested this in an older thread from several months ago that touched on these topics. Whether you read that then, and whether it was a novel idea at the time if you did, I don't know. But I'm glad it's here, and I for one will try to take advantage of it sometime soon.

I agree, a listing of reviews would be most helpful. In fact, if you wanted to search out a particular piece, how would you go about it? I was just looking at some of the reviews & when I tried to do a search for them I came up empty.

Zaikesman, I also like audioreview's format for quick scanning through to find the good ones.

As for a rating system, I've seen them work well on some bulletin boards for guaging which threads are worth a look. I've noticed, however, that on Amazon.com high ratings often go to very short but favorable revews. I suspect that it's because people who like the reviewed item want to support to the good reviews, just as people like to write positive reviews to taut their gear. On rollingstone.com, you'll often see an album get three (out of five) stars in the editorial review but five stars in the readers' rating (anyone with a modem connection can rate the album). So it rolls into more of the problem of self-justification that Nrchy pointed to.

I do like your idea about creating incentives for people to write better reviews in the first place. My suggestion would be for audiogon to add questions to the review form like "what equipment did you compare this against?" "what other similar equipment have you owned?" "how long have you owned the piece?" "Name the three greatest weaknesses of this piece?" etc.

These questions would encourage writers to include more information that would help us understand where they are coming from. They could also get the reviewer to confront common questions that a reader would ask as he or she writes. Most importantly, I think it will allow the reader to get a sense of the reviewer. Even if the reviewer enters "none" for weaknesses, you know something's rotten. More disclosure and information means more context for the reader to understand the review. Let the reader be the judge, but it helps the reader to have more information about the reviewer.

Going even further, I would say, don't let reviews be posted unless the author fills in all the blanks. It forces the writer to take some time with the review and discourages hastily dashed, "This is the best CD player ever. The end."

Of course, there will still be reviewers who'll just go enter "N/A" for every blank and write little more than "This is the best CD player ever. The end." And it doesn't stop people who have an agenda from posting. But I think it will be more obvious among the many reviews which writers have taken their time to craft the review an which ones havent'. In other words, we may not cut down the fluff, but it'll be more clear to the reader what is fluff.

Yeah, I think we're on the same page about this stuff, Turnaround. What you pointed out concerning a ratings system's being potentially biased towards favorable reviews of gear anyone rating the review personally happens to like, is why I proposed a two-pronged ratings approach as detailed above. One rating for the quality of the article, one for agreement or disagreement with the take of the reviewer. My idea is that this would tend to keep the raters more objective about article quality. I think your idea of some 'leading questions', as we say in sales, to guide the review writers is also not a bad idea.

P.S. - Nrchy, I'll raise a hand for Bishopwill based on my exchanges with him. You listening, BW? Get in here and defend yourself! :-)