Reading thru some reviews I have a suggestion.

Reading thru some reviews I have a suggestion.

Add in the Summary section:

DATE ORDERED in this format: 2010-08 (Exact day is not important)

DATE REVIEWED (So many times on the net you will run across a review and it's not dated. You order the product and the product you get is totally different than the review)

*Date reviewed /date ordered...Might roll this into (1) if dates are close... the point is to tie review to product produced within a certain time frame. Using cars as a example the 1st year a car rolls off the line is likely to be problematic, the LAST year they produce that model will have all the bugs worked out.

I remember the PORSCHE 914 when it first came out, they said it handled poorly/ a deathtrap... The problem? The stickers inside the door jam which state tire pressure settings were wrong. (Talk about a easy fix!- add air and it's a totally different animal!)

MARKINGS on PACKAGING / Unit that might give clues to factory that produced the item, / year/month it was produced.

The purpose of the addtional info is so the review matches shipping product. Vendors will change suppliers, substituting different parts over the course of a run. A 2009 model may be a totally different animal than a 2010 model.

Another suggestion: Maybe add review date to thread title so threads may be sorted by review date? Again for the reason a 2009 model may be totally different than a 2010, 2011, 2012 model,,,,

2010-08_-_DX Powerlight HX-G011 1W 1xAA (DX sku 2089)

or

DX Powerlight HX-G011 1W 1xAA (DX sku 2089)_-_2010-08

(Second naming convention might be better to keep reviews of the same product together)

DX Powerlight HX-G011 1W 1xAA (DX sku 2089)_-_2010-08

DX Powerlight HX-G011 1W 1xAA (DX sku 2089)_-_2011-09

PS: Another thing to add to the Summary section that people might apperciate but would be hard to do would be date ordered /date recevied... That said maybe it might be better to just give generic delivery time frame for that vendor.

The date is at the top of each article which can be handy, but explicitly saying so wouldn't hurt. Where I can remember ordered and shipped dates, I'll try to include them. Most of my reviews have been written within a month of receipt of the light, but not all.

From DX I expect two weeks from order date to arrival - if it is in stock somewhere nearby. It is usually 3-6 days in the post from Hong Kong. I've spent way more at DX than all the others combined.

KD seem to have turned over a new leaf, stuff is arriving far more promptly these days - usually in my last few orders, faster than DX

Dinodirect I've only had one order from but it arrived in a week from date of order - this is unusually fast for anything from Hong Kong.

Lightake have been faster than DX usually is butI've only ordered 3 items thus far from Lightake.

In my experience of HK Post, tracked stuff is often slower than untracked.

I have never had an order that was shipped go missing in the post.

Time stamp is at top of post, I was talking about adding the date into the BODY of the text of the article:

Reasons to do so:

A: Search engines may or may not "see" a time stamp of post, Having the date posted within the BODY of the text of the article for sure insures search engines will see the date.

B: Helps those doing a copy and paste of the review into a txt file /doc, pdf. (When I order a product I like to archive info on the product, Pro's, Con's workarounds for known problems.)

I think this could be rolled into 1, maybe have a footnote if there is a BIG time difference...

The point being the review matches the product you would be receiving when ordering a product.

(As we all know during product runs- Product changes, some for better (bugs worked out) some for worse (Cheaper parts used)

Other thoughts (These might already be in the reviews, if so disregard)

Pic of light that shows scale (size)

Internal pics (Always a plus)

Disassembly info

Beamshots.... On DX site their beamshot pics need to have a background that has a pattern, (again to show scale).

As this would be inpractical for us (as reviewers wouldn't have access to same background).... Maybe common items could be placed in beamshot pics? (Example 2 litter plastic softdrink bottles?) at a fixed distance apart.

Resize the image slightly and everything should fit.

Another idea:

In the current review format template "How" the unit rated in each section is buried down in the review itself.

This makes it hard to compare units side to side.

Problem: Current format you have to scroll down, down, down, down thru the review to find out the rating for example of battery life. With the proposed format everything could fit on 1 page without scrolling and still look "clean", classy.

Notice how this format gives Overall Summary- Time frame unit was on the market, (EG: It's from 2010-08, instead of 2005) tells you how the unit rated in EACH category... the only thing missing is price.

(*PRICE could be easily added, delete Summary: ★☆☆ field- as Summary and overall rating appear to be the same, Replace with PRICE.)

Current format: ... So tell me.... how is the battery life? Did it rate high, or LOW?

Personally, I'd prefer the star ratings other than the overall one to be in the Summary: section as otherwise it gets a bit messy IMO. Possibly with Date Reviewed also in that table.

The reason for the stars being together is that it gives people looking for certain features a quick overview. At a glance someone can tell if it's worth their time to read further. You have some people that build quality is their main concern, others battery run time.

A person that lives in Northern climates in which there are more hours of darkness would desire more battery run time. A person who lives at the equator would be more interested in water resistance.

PS: Here's another classification that alot of people are interested in:

Is the unit water resistant to rain , or waterproof enough to survive a drop in the lake?

(Yes I know some of this stuff can't be tested- that said impressions of how watertight a unit is can be detremined by how it's constructed.)

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I usually test water resistance under build quality and insert runtime charts. It can't all go to the top.

And how long does it take to read a review anyway?

I know it can't ALL go at the top.

How long does it take to read a review?

As the old saying goes there is never enough time, there's only so many hours in a day.

Currently I have about *312 tabs pulled up in Firefox right now. Having the first part of the review showing how the unit rated allows a quick comparison.

If the rating say "Battery Life" matches with my needs-

I will do a full read of the article, if not the tab is closed.

Reason I close the tab? Have a old house, 5-6 cars, big truck I have to keep running.

*312 tabs? (windows), yes and it's no fun to have to read thru a whole write-up, then remember which units were rated what in each category-then remember where you read it at, then try to find it again. The example I proposed is a clean easy to read format.

PS: On the date aspect- Listing the date up front is important as most items have very short production runs.

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How much RAM is that eating? I'd expect my box to fall over in under an hour with that many tabs open.

I can't imagine having that many tabs open. One time it did happen when a virus attacked and all these popups opened everywhere and my computer froze to hell.

312 tabs? Surprised Holy **** Batman! :D

fishinfool,

Why do you have -3 spam? lol

2,491,512mb

Everyonce and a while it gets unstable... When it crashes it asks if I want to send in a error report... For giggles I sometimes sent the report in with a notation that I'm surpised it's crashing on me.... Only had 347 tabs pulled up you know....

In addtion to the tabs pulled up, might start a game of a Half-Life 2 mod... this takes used ram to 3gb+

Supercomputer? nah built it out of spare parts.

Firefox with NoScript keeps the pop-ups from "popping".. (Adblock is another add-on that operates sort of the same..Haven't used that one much except for a day or so when a update to NoScript was causing execessive cpu usage.)

I try to keep it below 300, over 300 it starts getting a little laggy/unstable. One add-on to Firefox I highly recommend is Session Manager as it A: SAVES crashed sessions, and B: enables you to save sessions, create groups of sessions.

What I really need to do is to go thru ALL the tabs and assign them to different catagories... Time is my problem, like I said not enough hours in the day to get stuff done.

Hope you guys will consider the ideas I've purposed, The only time you want people to "have to" read thru a review, scroll up and down, up and down to get to the section they are interested in is when you have advertising /ads... the longer the person is on the site the more chance they click the ad... if they get in and get out quick they are less likely to click on a adversting link.

BTW I understand the non-clutter aspect, on the flip side of this people read reviews to find out if the product will suit their needs. To me a flashlight is a tool.... Like any tool if it does not perform well in a key area its a waste of time to have to hunt thru a review for basic details. Say I'm looking for a light with longgggg battery live.... The summary does not provide this info, the addtional info I am purposing that be amended to the current review template would.

Look at the current and purposed temple pics posted previously... Is it really that cluttered? Would YOU if you were looking for a product and had very limited time to do so want ratings listed upfront? , or would you prefer to have to scroll up and down, up and down looking for the ratings?

(Better example, say you're paying someone, or a group of people to research something.)

Ratings and a break-down of the ratings should fit on the opening page, NO scrolling would be needed with a little tweeking of the current template.

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Really? I have -3 spam? It doesn't show on my end though.

Mine shows a spam level of "0".

Very interesting............:~

Hmm...it was there when I posted my message. It's gone now! Hacks.

2,491,512mb

Use tab mix pro instead for multi-row tabs and tab control. FF already has built-in session management.

For the insane number of tabs you have up, you really need a tree based tab manager. The last one I used stopped being updated to ver 3, though.

The fire fox 4 beta should help with speed if need be.

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As for the reviews, I would prefer it if the technical data were more organized. For example, runtimes/draw graph/output estimates (maybe even including subjective scores like build quality, etc, and even price) for all the lights presented in each review as a slice of a spreadsheet w/ a link to the complete sheet w/ the data for all the lights reviewed. The one Don does is very good, but maybe with a few more columns. Basically, the review would have a row of the tech data from his table, with a link to actual larger table. That way, readers can actuallly compare lights quickly and throughly.

The problem, as ever with me, is presentation. I have the data lying around mostly, or can scrape it back off websites where I put it but presenting it in an organised (or at least usable) manner is where I am at just now.

This will certainly require multiple "dimensions" but that is what HTML is for. But nobody ever accused me of having design skills. That's why I put up the output spreadsheet so that people could comment.

The problem with adding rows is screen width. It is probably safe to assume 1024 pixels width these days though a table that wide almost immediately knocks out all mobile devices. If I need to scroll horizontally, I'm off somewhere else to find the information immediately. I am very conscious of this when I'm not sitting in front of a 2500 horizontal pixel screen.

What is feasible (I'm designing at the keyboard again - usually a bad idea) is a set of carefully chosen columns, probably no more than 8 with "headline" values and links to the rest of the information.

Hi there WeAreNotAlone,

Thanks again for your great observations. You're very right that some of these products can change completely over the course of time, so it would be good to know when the light was ordered. I have added that row into the summary table on the review template.

The "Date Reviewed" is also useful, but I think the time/date stamp at the top of the post is good enough. That can be changed, by the way, in the settings at the bottom of the post near the submit button.

As for putting the sub-category ratings at the top, well, I guess I'm neutral. If anybody wants to do so, that would be fine with me. I don't think I'll put it in the template yet unless most people really want it.

Putting the date in the review title for sorting is an interesting idea. I might go through and add the date to the titles like you suggested.

Thanks again for the suggestions, keep them coming please!

Thanks for the tips, need something to get the amount of tabs down.

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The reviews by Don are very good, I just feel that a break-down of the ratings would be helpful. If truth be known I was envisioning say a slightly smaller image of the product being reviewed with the addtional info I purposed, that you could click and a larger image of the product would display along with the pertinent info displayed in a spreadsheet format, and or pie-chart as you are talking about.

Date Reviewed while useful, is secondary to the time frame the unit was manufactured in. As you know different production runs of a product (any product) can and usually vary. My main concern was having a date in the body of text (in the same spot in all the reviews so you don't have to hunt for it) of the post itself so you would know if you were reading about a "new 2010-09" model, or a product from 2005. I can't count the times on the net when obtaining data for a product that no time frame was mentioned. The reason why I feel the date should go towards the top of the page is that it conveys a time frame that the product is being offered.

As a example, open up this (otherwise excellent) review by Don...

(*I'm not picking on Don, link was pulled up in a tab already)

http://www.jayki.com/?mid=flashlight_review_board&page=2&document_srl=6073

Notice the opening line: Bought from DX for the princely sum of $9.99

Notice the date? See how far you have to read down thru the review to find it.

Q: When was this light purchased?... 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009?

Q: When I order one based upon the review can I expect to receive the same build quality?

(This review appears to be from 2009-12 from the posts on the bottom of the page.)

RE: Sub-category ratings above the image.

I think with a slighty smaller image (that when clicked opens up to a larger format) the extra info could be displayed. I am a very visual person and enjoy clear crisp pics, but to me (and I assume most people here) how a product rates in key areas is more important than seeing that huge pic right off the bat.

They want to know the price, how it peforms in key areas - aesthetics while important are not important if the price is too high- or the device won't work for the intended use. You would not want for example to spend $20 per light for a giveaway promo. On the other hand if the light is used in a life or death situation cost would NOT be the defining factor.

PS: Wouldn't a smaller pic help those on a low-bandwidth, or accessing the site via a handheld device as Don pointed out above?

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