The Dragon Humbly Opines....
Sep 06 '04
The Bottom Line It would be nice if one could simply add a new product by writing and posting the review...
Last week the urge to write an Epinion suddenly felled this Dragon, like a bolt out of the blue. There could be any number of reasons for this particular attack of insanity; an overwhelming desire to share her experience with a new product, excitement over a new small appliance acquisition, delight and/or disgust with a recent cosmetic purchase, lack of anything truly interesting to do on the home front, or simply idle curiosity about how many Epinionators still remember her.
For whatever reason(s), she did, in fact compose an ode to the virtues and shortcomings of New Skin (New Skin For When Your Old Skin Breaks ), an alternative to traditional band-aids for protecting minor wounds. This was a topic of last resort because what she really wanted to tell her readers about was her brand new (free with some MyPoints gift cards from Macy’s), Countertop Convection Oven from Hamilton Beach, which no serious cook should be without.
Alas this incredible little boon to all Dragon kind is not in the Epinions database and an email to the appropriate Category Lead, requesting it be added, bounced.
Her next thought was to share the delights of Arm and Hammer’s new dentifrice, the successor to Enamelon (Enamelon, Brush Your Way to Stronger Teeth ). As this single, off-topic review, is one of the Dragon’s most popular, resulting in numerous emails from total strangers interested in better oral hygiene, she naturally believed it was time to get the word out about Enamel Care. After all, most of the emails about this review were pleas for information on where to buy the product. (Sorry, you can’t buy it anymore, they went belly-up. However, Arm and Hammer has taken up the crusade for stronger teeth with Enamel Care, virtually the identical product but advertised as a “tooth-whitener” which should guarantee them a share of the market sufficiently large to justify their continued making and selling of this fine adjunct to regular trips to a dental professional.)
By now it should be clear that this humble Dragon is working up to something important here – that being the difficulty of finding suitable topics for review.
In the nearly five years she has been a member, she has been continually amazed at the prolific output of some members, new reviews appearing almost daily on all manner of consumables. She frankly wonders how they find the time to do anything else… Her approach is to stumble across something that is either really good or really bad and then wish to immediately share this knowledge with her faithful fans. This tends to result in significantly fewer product reviews, especially as many of the products she is either hot or cold on are NOT IN THE FREAKIN’ DATABASE!
Her experience is generally one of frustrating searches through the database, seeking the exact match to the product or item she wishes to review and coming up empty. On the rare occasion that she does find a match a review of same results. Her suspicion is that some Epinionators take a list of items in the database with them when shopping, so as to buy only things that can later be written about…she sincerely hopes she is dead wrong, however, as the monetary compensation from Epinions does not begin to cover such extravagance.
So, here she sits, on two dynamite VH reviews, absolutely guaranteed to change the lives of all who read then, and nowhere on the site they will fit. After five years of doing this, you would think that the Epinionated Guys would have gotten this one worked out. Maybe they have had to spend too much time trying to block attempts by members to circumvent the censor programs that prevent us from using naughty words or perhaps it is the continual bickering and name-calling amongst members that distracts them from making this site as useful and efficient as it should be…. A mystery, to be sure, and one that would benefit from a solution, surely others have felt this same frustration, or is it only a Dragon thing?
This opinion is an entry in the EpiLustrous Write-on hosted by Mobiprof ), Go there and find out what “lustrum” means….
© 2004, Pamela Matlack Klein
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Epinions.com ID:
thedragonweyr
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: Pamela Matlack Klein
Location: Appomattox, VA
Reviews written: 131
Trusted by: 124 members
About Me:
The sky is falling!
~Chicken Little~
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