Idiots Reviewing things
 

Pretty much any time I read "reviews" of anything on the Internet, I think "someone, the gov't or someone should step in and regulate who can and can't offer opinions."

It never ceases to amaze me how someone will purchase the wrong item, and then provide it a bad review because it didn't do what they wanted or thought that it should.

For instance, I have been looking at miter saws online. There are sliding miter saws and non-sliding miter saws. Depending upon what you want/need, you can buy either one.

I just read this review of a non-sliding miter saw.

"poor design, fence moves instead of saw. each time you change the miter angle the workpiece or the entire saw must be moved. vewy awkward when working indoors with large pieces such as basecoards and crown moulding. i returned the this saw and bought a 10' slider instead"

Come on, seriously? So apparently all non-sliding miter saws are poor designs? This sort of review is everywhere on all sorts of stuff.

Yes, clearly government regulation is the best solution here. :rolleyes:

I think the problem is self-correcting. If an idiot wrote a review, ignore the review.

When I read online reviews of a product, I always read all of the poor reviews. If all of the poor reviews were written by idiots, then I know that the product is probably pretty good. (Meaning the poor reviews were otherwise devoid of legitimate gripes.)

I remember a review around 1994 in the Pittsburgh City Paper the day after Rush played. I was at the show, had probably seen Rush 20-25 times by then and they'd had a good night. Critic spent the whole review complaining that Neil Peart was a terrible drummer, didn't know anything about keeping time or making songs interesting. Could have been an Onion article, but he was dead serious. You don't have to be a Rush fan to know Neil is the man and on his worst night is better than most.

I came to the conclusion that a good portion of the reviews on the travel sites for resorts in Mexico are probably written by guys that work for the resorts in Mexico.

You could find a glowing review or a terrible review of any resort. And so many that the reviews become meaningless.

OTOH, I didn't buy a particular electronic gadget a while back because one of the reviewers pointed out that it didn't do something that he thought it would. Something I also thought it did and should have known that it did not do ;)

The Internet has turned every turd with an opinion into an expert.

Ian

let's dump html and go back to the REAL Internet


this all started with the PDP-8 -- with that thing, every frickin' little junior physics dept. could stash a computer in a closet or back room somewhere

it used to be so's only real men could have computers - dang modernity!

even worse is that site give "top reviewer" status to people because they have nothing else to do but buy stuff then write meaningless drivel about it. I typically look for the negative ones and see if there are commonalities between them and then decide if it matters to me.

oh yeh - almost forgot...

Eat flaming death EBCDIC Users!

What is this word buy? I routinely deliver stuff to reviewers, set it up so it works (very, very important step), buy them dinner, take them on factory tours . . .

It's a lot of work to get a good review. ;)

Ian

Because condescending Unix users are so much better? ;)

(I use EBCDIC every day.)

it's an old old internet thing - maybe even a wiki on its history

No, I know exactly what you were talking about. IIRC, the quote was originally said by Unix people in a comic.

ok good grep