Review: Review

Agree, damn fine idea...........

I was thinking the same John. I liken it to getting junk mail in the letter box or some one ringing up to sell me something. If i wnted to buy something ill go and look for it. When i bought something from eo the question was posted to me to make a comment. I did not realising it was going on the forum. Sorry EO for being negative.

Yes agree strongly, I've been "invited" to review products that I've purchased from the shop but have declined as I believe it is an attempt to increase the forum postings and site hits.
At one stage the other day there were 10 posts titled "review" in the 25 posts on the page which smacks to me of self promotion and is enough to put me off participating in the forum.
As Hairy says it just clogs it up and makes a huge percentage of posts worthless.
The reviews should only be attached to the actual items in the shop, nothing to do with the forum.

Hairy, I wrote this in a followp above but thought I would post it as a direct answer to your question.

------------------------------ Copy from Followup Above ----------------------
I can assure you (and everyone else) that the review comments and questions forum interface has nothing at all to do with increasing site traffic or page views. We have way more page views per month then we can successfully deal with. The interface has been provided to allow for not only the consolidated storage of the data but to allow users to interact within the reviews, questions and comments system as in a number of cases we do not use every product nor are we the experts on everything so in many cases "your" (meaning all forum users) answers to peoples reviews, comments and questions can be most beneficial.

I do agree that a number of the Reviews are light weight and have no real content however an automated system cannot understand this in every case and we are working on a method to prompt people thru a system to provide a more concise review. We must remember however that reviews are only a part of the review, questions and comment system that is provided on almost every page of the ExplorOz system. The system is basically a categorisation method for linking forum posts to articles, products, places, treks etc and in all cases is bi-directional (thus a review on the Battery Power article will appear in the article with a link to the forum and visa versa, same as product review or questions).

We have just had a meeting in the office about this issue and I have been strongly disagreeing with supressing this data from the system as to me there is nothing different from someone asking about a tyre choice as someone talking about a product they have just purchased or reviewing say, the Battery Power article. But we have compromised and have decided to add an option to the forum index to allow members to suppress all Review, Ratings and Questions posts in the index view. This will be an optional turn on/off type check box on the forum and will be implemented in the next day or so.

David

I looked at a couple reviews but as they didn't make any sense I now don't bother to open them. To me they are a waste of space and as has been said before they just clutter theforum and force more meaningful posts down the page.

Hairy...you must have influence in high places...congratulations on prompting the EO owners into action to remedy a silly situation.

Before Xmas I started a thread saying the reviews were light weight and cluttered the forum and detracted from the generally solid content. It was promptly MODERATED for what was perceived as criticism of the forum.

Rather than starting an arguement with the MODS ..I wrote a polite email to the forum owners, laying out my concerns and asking that my comments be considered as constructive criticism. To date I have had no reply.

So it's good to see that sense has finally prevailed and the silly one or two word"reviews"are finally being dealt with by the owners.

Thank you to all involved.

Well said Hairy

How ya been Mate ?

Cheers
Bucky