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Do we need the Epinions Police?Jul 28 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Epinions is a great place to find out reviews and discuss real consumer experiences. Too bad some people forget this.
I have been writing and reading Epinions for over a year, and have encountered an interesting thing about this community recently. I first joined Epinions because I wanted to read about real hands on consumer experiences with products (and also find out how to fix problems). This site provides real content that you won't find in professional reviews, product marketing information, or commerce sites like amazon.com. I have also tried to warn people about bad products, like the Archos MiniCDRW, which I now have had way too much experience with (7 MiniCDRW's at last count!!). To me, the first and foremost purpose of this website is to provide vaulable first hand information on products or topics that are of interest. However, lately, I have met people who feel that the rules of the website are more important than its usefulness. For example, I just wrote a review on the Fellowes Pocket PDA Keyboard. There is currently no product category for it, even though it has been out for a few months. I decided the closest category to put it in would be the Portable Stoaway Keyboard: http://www.epinions.com/content_33555779204/tk_~CB016.1.1 I also explicitly stated that this review would be moved to a Fellowes keyboard category once the category is created. This way, I figure, if someone is doing research on Palm keyboards, they may come across mine and find out about the Fellowes Keyboard. From a reader perspective, I did a lot of research on CD-RW's last year, and I found a lot of "out of category" reviews on CD-RW's, but none the less they were very helpful because they were clumped with the existing CD-RW's, and it helped me get a sense of the products out there on the market. Had those writers waited until Epinions created the appropriate categories, or put it in a general category, I would not have been able to benefit from their experiences. Anyway, someone put a NH on my review of the Fellowes Keyboard, stating: I'm sorry, but we all have a lot of things we'd love to write about that aren't in the database. We either don't write about them or put them in a general category like one of the Palm editorials (in this case). It's too bad that this person has a mentality of rules overriding the common sense and purpose of this website. It's like a traffic officer pulling over a car, and slowly writing out a traffic ticket for speeding, while the passenger in the car is about to give birth. Sometimes strictly following the rules for its own sake makes no sense. I feel that it is too bad helpful contributors are zinged for not following every techinical rule on Epinions. If we waited for Epinions to create new product categories before we could write about them, or lump new product reviews into a "general" category, this site would lag the current market by a few months. I don't know about you, but the internet is useful because it provides up-to-date information, and the lag on this website would not be acceptable. Even if we have to bend some rules to come up with new content to reflect the ever changing marketplace, I say so be it. The last thing I want Epinions to become is a stale website with outdated reviews because the categories can't keep up.  |
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