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What I find much more interesting than description/promotion, is one or more answer to these questions.
How is the product different from the average?
What makes it better, innovative?
How is it over time/use?
Sometimes, the useful infos are the weak/fail points of a product.
What fails faster than expected?
Bottom line is, having a 100 items with a ''rating'' of 7.5/10, is not very useful for the community.
Hey Joelf, thanks for raising this concern.
We here at BSC are always open to how we can improve things for our viewers and you have brought up a point that we have been thinking about lately. How can we make the product reviews more informative and also more valuable to our audience? That's what we want to know and you have given us some great ideas to work with. Just to let you know we do try and test products over the span of a few months but sometimes we do not have them long enough or the season is coming to and end like it is now. If we ever do experience a product wearing out or failing over time we will come back and post more current news.
One thing we are going to do is re-organize all of the reviews into sub sections so it is easier to find the products you are looking for. So for example the ski gear review page would be broken out into skis, bindings, boots, poles. This will happen this spring along with some other upgrades.
We have a team of prodcut reviewers and they are ready for your thoughts and feedback so chime in and let us know what you would like to see in our reviews or even something we can improve on the site. This site is for you the viewer and so we want to keep improving things but need your thoughts on how to do this.
Do you want more reviews of a certain brand? More reviews of a certain product segment? Less reviews and more backcountry news? More routes on the site? More competitions?
Let us know. Please.
I agree with jo, sometimes the reviews do seem a little on the positive side. Every feature of a product has good and bad consequences, and I think most people realize that.
Do the reviewers or the site have any vested interest in the products they're reviewing (ie is there a potential for conflict of interest?)
Here's a little more thoughts/input. Thanks admin for your concern! Hopefully this helps.
Sometimes, this is what I find the most useful: What gear does the reviewer actually chooses for his everyday skiing and why. Please tell if it's because it just does the job as well as most other items out there (like most goretex shells), or because it has certain features that stand out (like the skidoo 800 e-tec engine).
Here's an example of a subcategory I'd like to see. I'd be nice to have a avalanche transceiver section. I generally assume they all work fairly well. In the review, I'd like the worst ones (harder to manipulate/figure out/less intuitive/slower times) to be pointed out. I would expect the majority of them to be equally good (more or less) and then the final choice might come down to availability, price, extra features according to each person's personal preference. But what I really want to see in a review is not the product description (manufacturers' websites have all that), but rather the actual hands on experience.
Generally, I'd like if reviewer would just filter out the junk and get to the goods. Also, it's useless to review a product that you are biaised towards, unless you were already using it for the good reasons before you got the free one down the road.
Enough wasted time on the internets, I'll get back at skiing pow!
Joel,
Revelstoke, BC.
admin 02 here. Second troll in the BSC line-up. This is a great conversation here and we really appreciate you all sharing your thoughts. The tips and tricks idea is a good one and it sounds like we might get together on delivering something soon.
The comments on the reviews are helpful too. As we've grown over the years, our tester team has grown too. Different reviewers approach reviews differently, as you may notice, but the idea to "focus on the goods" is an idea that makes a lot of sense--and it's something we will share with our testers. As far as testing items over time goes...yes, another good comment. We can be more on top of following up and adding to reviews over time.This site is largely a labour of love so we are occasionally guilty of forgetting about a piece of year-old gear when we have so much other stuff in the pipe. Point taken though. Thank you.
As far as the overall positivity goes--we generally like the stuff we test. Manufacturers are pumping out good gear. We usually shy away from gear we know sucks (as do you, I am sure). Frankly, the most significant issue (for me anyway) is that the item doesn't perform as stated. Or what the manufacturers say the items is to be used for is off.
Joel, I hear what you are saying about the transceiver comparo. As the review section grows, there will be more and more opportunity for us to take a step back, take a sampling of a few items within a subcategory, and compare them. Bon idée!
O. One more thing...we encourage you to call us on stuff in the forum section where the reviews appear. As admin (#1) mentions above, that's a good opportunity for people to share comments as well.
Aaaaaaanyway. There are some valuable takeaways for us from this thread that the head BSC trolls will discuss. Perhaps on a tour this weekend!? We celebrate this kind of feedback because it means that people care enough about the site to take the time to write a note about their thoughts. Wicked. Thanks and stay tuned.
Andrew
Well,
Aslong as you guys are taking suggestions...
How about a "Vancouver Island" section in the forums. Show us some love guys!!!
-the_junk
Hey "The_Junk" we would like to have a dedicated Vancouver Island section on the site as there is obviously plenty of killer terrain over there as we have seen by various users posts.
So are you volunteering to be our subject expert for the island?
Let me know if you are interested and I can let you know what we would need (not much really), the pay is crap (nothing) but the fame is never ending!
e-mail me at info(at)backcountryskiingcanada.com
(at) = @
