Reviews

Audiolab

Audiolab

Messages
2,878
Location
Inverclyde
Guys,

Looking for opinions here, I know we have been discussing development of the site and I see that Neil has started contributing in they way of knowledge. Do we want to have reviews of products or does that just duplicate the B&B site?

If so do we need a formal review and scoring system? I would be happy to contribute at least one review every week (most weeks) I thing some content on the form of reviews for everything shave related would be useful but do feel it would end up duplicating the B&B review section so do we want to do something slightly different.

Let me know what you think and Boab if you have any technical input if it is possible that others can review my review and aggregate the score let me know.

I am interested in any comments on how we should move the site forward. Boab created this and I an very thankful to him for that but as I have seen discussed earlier we need content to attract people and I think how we could differentiate from B&B is within our links are evaluations os the retailer (with links) this would allow people to see where most have purchased from and report the experience with the retailer.

Here is an example, any thoughts


Proraso.jpg


This is one of those products that many will pass by. I felt that this was unfair, this is one of the unsung heroes of the post shave world and therefore deserved a review in here. I think it is one of the nicest splashes around, and is decent value for money. It comes in a glass bottle and can be had from many vendors, Paul at Connaught has an offer on this product at the moment and I usually add two to most orders because I end up giving or swapping a bottle of it. Mostly everyone who has tried it has came back to say they liked it.

One of the best things about this splash is that is effective in action and it also has a nice mild smell; you could wear it on its own. However if you choose to wear a cologne or other A/S on top it won’t compete with the scent. Just leave it ten minutes after application of Proraso and then apply any scent of your choosing, Maybe someone will disagree with me but I have not found an outright clash between this and any other aftershave or cologne I own.

The splash has quite a bracing effect especially if applied shortly after shaving. I have to confess I look forward to that splash in the mornings and after a few weeks of using this you will regret the day you do not have it, it now has to travel with me in a decant container.

We have not developed a formal review system yet, this is my stab at it

All marks out of ten

Price 10 (Cheap and lasts ages)
Gets the job done 9 (very effective)
Scent 9 (Proraso – need I say more)
Moisturising 6 (not a moisturiser I usually use a light moisturiser after)
No burn 5 (burns at first but then becomes very cold)
Cooling 9 (Lovely cooling effect on the skin)
Retailer 10 (Fast shipping, well packed and good prices)

Comments?
 
My only issue about a review system is that I never "felt" having read through the B&B reviews that the overall *star* rating gave me a true reflection of what all the reviewers actually thought of the product. I'm sure the ranking was statistically accurate but with low review numbers the *star* ranking system can be misleading. Maybe the rating scale should be limited to between 0 - 5 instead of 0 - 10 that way there should be more distinction between an avoid, very poor, poor, average, good or excellent product and no overall ranking in which case how can you at a glance get an idea of what this product is like?

As this is a trader friendly site, I like the idea of including the retailer's details as a part of the review, do we need to rate them ebay style?
 
Where reviews go, I'd prefer that they're descriptive as well (most especially in the case of low opinions) - someone else marking things on a scale where opinions and tastes are so different isn't all that helpful if you don't know why it got a low opinion then you don't gain anything from the review.

I have a soap here from Australia, I won't name it, but whatever I do with it (face, bowl, use it like a shavestick, hard water, soft water, distilled water) I cannot get any lather or lubrication from it at all - looks like soap, smells like soap, lathers like gravel. Without me telling you all that I could put a low score on "lather" down to water, technique or brush...
 
Thanks for the comments. I guess the thought was brought about by Neil posting the stuff on straights. I thought “I should look to see what I can contribute” I thought a bit about reviews and I will admit that the review section on B&B is comprehensive and structured well and there seems little point in trying to duplicate it.

The only thing I feel is missing when I use the B&B review section is where they bought it from and how good the retailer was (did they get a discount etc). That may be less of an issue in the US as there are plethora of retailers but for us over here we are limited.

This leads me to the question if we want to have reviews at all? or are we happy just to have any individual who feels motivated to post a thread on a product they found and liked?

I do agree with antdad in that marks out of 5 is a better scoring system as it makes it easier to differentiate the good from the bad.

With my limited amount of coding knowledge I know the review system on B&B where scores are aggregated up would be complex to write on your own but some message boards offer pre canned versions. That is why I was wondering more what Boab thought in terms of “is it easily doable?” If you don’t have that aggregation then you end up with 20 individual reviews on the same product and that can start to clutter up the board and search results.

So the question is do we do something specifically for reviews (section then off / or create a template type thing), or do we just let the content build some more and see where it goes. If there is an overwhelming urge from many for reviews then we could look at it again, but as I said the review system on B&B is more than sufficient but I do think it could be improved in several ways.
 
I have no issues about duplication (unlike the B&B mods). What I mean is that I am not overly concerned about copying the formats off B&B if they work. I suppose the beauty of a "scoring" system + written review is that you could spend 2 or 20 minutes doing it.

Write the reviews Audio... reviewing the reviewing process of something that is so subjective anyway. :shock:

We could be chewing the cud on this for a long time.
 
Audiolab said:
With my limited amount of coding knowledge I know the review system on B&B where scores are aggregated up would be complex to write on your own but some message boards offer pre canned versions. That is why I was wondering more what Boab thought in terms of “is it easily doable?” If you don’t have that aggregation then you end up with 20 individual reviews on the same product and that can start to clutter up the board and search results.
Click to expand...

Even if it's not possible to bolt such an mod/addon to phpBB, is it so onerous a task to merge the topics where multiple people review the same stuff in separate topics in error?

Also since tastes vary, aggregating the scores can lead to highly polarised opinions looking like mediocre average - of course no single person has anyway of knowing whether they'll personally be polarised one way or the other... remember you can "prove" (I prefer "suggest" I think) anything with statistics/opinion polls.

The only possible thing I can think that needs to be policed is if a hypothetical "Dave" from "Dave's Soapmakers" joins and starts reviewing his own soap that he needs to be identified as having a personal interest in the review - it doesn't need to be deleted, just identified as being posted by someone with an interest in the product (either by the original poster or by an admin edit). Just common sense really, or the reviews risk becoming valueless.
 
I don't think there is a review type add on for phpBB so unless you code it there would have to be a different structure to it.There could easily be a review section with someone reviewing a product and then discussing it through the rest of the thread.This may prove to be a more useful 'real world' review rather than seeing 10/10 ratings which don't really mean much.
 
Just a thought on that Boab - if you have review & discussion in one thread, subsequent reviews would appear scattered throughout the thread - if it gets to be a "busy" thread who will read to page 4 and spot the next review (as opposed to comments on the original)...

Perhaps it might be right (in due course) to have the review section and comments on those reviews running in parallel? (obviously if there are few comments or few subsequent review the point becomes irrelevant).
 
Yeah we could have a review then add a link to a discussion thread as the second post, subsequent reviews can only be added to the initial review thread with discussions added to the linked thread, lol does that sound clear as mud?
 
I have a thought...

Seeing as most of the other sites are US based, a lot of the products reviewed there (particularly drug store stuff) are only available in the US. Several vendors won't ship to UK (Nancy Boy, SCS cologne, etc)

Seeing as this site is based in UK, would be great to make it more UK-centric, with emphasis on products easily available in UK/Europe?

John
 
I think the idea of reviews is spot on. The questions for me are:
-Who writes them? (Is someone who has been using a Vulfix pure badger brush as their first brush for a week able to write a useful review of their new Jagger silvertip after using it once? Maybe yes, maybe no)
-How are the reviews stored and accessed on the site?

As far as scores go, I am happy to do away with them altogether as I do not believe scoring anything works without a strict and detailed criteria being agreed. And agreeing the criteria would take a wee bit of the fun out of this. All the reviewer needs to say is 'I love this stuff' rather than award it 9.5 out 10, or give the cost and amount instead of a mark for value for money.

Of course YMMV :lol:
 
philamac said:
I think the idea of reviews is spot on. The questions for me are:
-Who writes them? (Is someone who has been using a Vulfix pure badger brush as their first brush for a week able to write a useful review of their new Jagger silvertip after using it once? Maybe yes, maybe no)
-How are the reviews stored and accessed on the site?
Click to expand...

I've been proper wet-shaving for well over a year now and I'm just starting to feel confident in reviewing certain products. I am aware that just because I think something is great, to make my review as informative as possible I need to compare it to other products and experiences. There will be some that choose to review their first ever brush or razor, and that is fine too, because the reader can then interpret that review and decide how valuable it is.

However I agree that a ratings system is not particularly useful as it can be skewed by a few enthusiastic newbies (no offence to any here, we've all been there). If it was decided that ratings were the way to go though, I would definitely object to having lots of different categories. It just over-complicates the whole thing.
 
I thought it would be better to add subsection to each forum in order to keep the reviews for different products separate.Let me know how you think this looks or if it would be better having one review category with separate sub forums.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom