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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DonTadow" data-source="post: 5744398" data-attributes="member: 22622">As a reviewer, I 100% agree with the original poster. I started reviewing 7 years ago.  When I started, there were a pool of us reviewers who prided ourselves on keeping our average review number closer to 6 (on a scale of 1 to 10).  The closer you were the 6 the more fair you were and the more important your opinion was when you did give the 8 or 9.  When I first started reviewing, I went through an interview process, had to submit writing samples and even had a 2nd round of grilling.  That is not being done these days.  There's one reviewer who I'm ashamed to call a colleague, because I've never seen her give anything lower than a 9.  Add a bunch of novice writers who don't understand how to be critical to sites who would prefer you write closer to marketing text than critiquing the product. It's akin now to having everyone on the Little League Baseball Team be called a winner. Because review sites are moving towards marketing text as opposed to critiquing the product, reviewers are urged to not write a review if you think it is going to get a 5 or below.  Thus, anything that should be given a 1, 2 or 3 gets discarded by the reviewer.  I read a dozen or so products a month, I only write reviews for 3 or 4.  There are times where I give products a 5 when I feel it should receive a 3 or 4, simply because my hands are tied.I disagree that a scale system for reviewing is flawed.  I've learned from the best.  A good reviewer can distinguish his personal opinion from strong characteristics of a product.  There have been a number of products that I don't like personally, but were good products based on the objective they were trying to achieve.  I think its fairly lazy writing to just regurgitate facts about the product that are already listed in the marketing text by the publisher.  At this point you've told the reader nothing.</blockquote>

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