RFC - Review Shakeup

[carrieres]

hi,
wooww when everything will start ?
great idea !
thanks Ben
chris

[Ben [KVR]]

Come on PPL, more comments.

I'm moving it to the instruments forum to get some more feedback.

[Sicklecell666]

That appears to be a well thought out solution, Ben.

Go for it.

[original flipper]

HI

What more can I say?

I asked the question a while back about review content - perhaps some others did; which maybe helped raise the question about the usefullness of the current way reviews are delivered?

I don't profess to be a particularly good reviewer but I do try to put enough information together to give people a balanced view of how an application worked for me, of course an opinion is necessary but IMO the important thing to get accross is functionality and the quality of the components that make up a product; then people can use the review as a guide to if they might find the product usefull - rather than just slamming a product because it doesn't suit your idea of how it should have been.

The opposite of that view is Oh my goodness this rocks; buy it!

So hopefully more content, a little less bias, some quality time spent using the application and a balanced view of its potential - there are still going to be bug ridden, unresponsive, dire sounding and near useless programs out there that people are going to be unfortunate enough to (impulse) buy, but hopefully at least they might be nice enough to explain it in a coherent and substansive way !

Flipper.

[Rabid]

I would like to have numerical ratings for stability and support. That is two important areas that can be measured and is good to get an average among many customers. These should also be limited to owners and not people trying the demo as demos are frequently older versions of the product. The third useful measurement for me, usefulness, falls into your monthly system very well.

Overall I like you new ideas and it will be interesting to see how new products peak with hype and then fade while others prove popular in the long term.

As for rating demos, this needs to be an all or nothing per developer. I don't like the idea of developers having a choice to delete bad reviews of the demo and keep good reviews.

Robert

[original flipper]

HI

I don't see support as a good review marking item, simply because it can be a very underused resource - I can think of many 'good' and 'bad' programs that I have where I have never seeked support.

Some companies are simply known for top drawer support - irrelative of whether you call on them - why not have a kinda support pole where peoples experiences of support are looked at and perhaps companies could be voted a gold support rossette or something that could be applied to the review - IE '2004 july support award'?

Seriously - I think that would be better, the problem with not using support and then giving a 10 because we know a particular dev is tops for support distorts the review - there is no guarantee that should a problem develop for this product that it will be resolved - although we know it probably will.

Flipper.

[Stupid American Pig]

Can you think of any better ones?

• Suitability for tarnce/curnk out of 5

This might need to be a gradient scale like below:


Tarnce----------------------------------------Curnk
<------------------------------------------------>
10----------------------0-----------------------10

[ChamomileShark]

Hi, as someone who has just done a couple of basic reviews.. I'm happy the individual scoring went because it sometimes the categories don't apply, but I like the suggestion of some overall assessment/score, and I like the several good things several bad..but like someone else mentioned I'd rather that as 3 things..if it's good I'd be stuck to find 5 "bad" things and vice versa. I also use the reviews so I'm all for something that will increase the number of structured reviews

[shamann]

Something like:

• ThumbsDown-Neutral-ThumbsUp
• unHappy-Neutral-Happy
• StayAway-TryFirst-GetNowWhatAreYouWaitingFor
• Dislike-Like-Love
• etc.

Maybe something like:

• Use regularly
• Reserved for special use
• Use occasionally
• Will Keep, but rarely use
• Will not use, deleted

Or if giving out catchy titles:

• Heavy rotation
• Secret Weapon
• S'alright
• To the archives
• To the bin

[Rabid]

Useful monthly awards though developers may not care for some of them.

Rock solid.

Would be great if it did not crash my system.

Smooooooooth.

Everything is great but the sound.

Best bang for the buck.

Most over priced.

Best return on your CPU cycle.

Biggst CPU hog.

[aMUSEd]

Much better - glad that devs can review and that reviews are able to be more substantial.

[donkey tugger]

2000-10000 words? Do we get a certificate and a gold star?

[ugo]

this sounds like it will be great ben.
also, i second devon's suggestion of adding a 'most underrated' to the monthly list.

-ugo

[shamann]

this sounds like it will be great ben.
also, i second devon's suggestion of adding a 'most underrated' to the monthly list.

-ugo

But then as the scores add up, they will no longer be underrated. If the score gets too high, will it then be bumped over to the most overrated category until its reputation has cooled off some? We could call that section the chiller, from the main page you could see a link that says "See who's in the chiller this month."

[brok landers]

Seriously, one more category that would be nice is

Most Underrated VST/DX?

Lot of us have favorites that NO ONE talkes about, and it might get some more chatter around some of the more obsure plugins.

Devon

highly seconded.
and the reviewer shoud explain why this is ...
edit :
and a good thing would be if the reviewer could add a note for what kind of "job" he uses the plugin as favourite, i.e. "i use it a lot for basses" etc.

reg,