- Sticky the ask-any-question thread The There Are No Stupid Questions Thread
Up to SB but i don’t see why not
- There is another thread for photos of lights, that should also be stickied
Same, up to SB but i don’t see why not
- I’m sorry to say this but I find the elaborate flashlight reviews here almost worthless, since the follow the manufacturer’s marketing material closely, and as soon as a review says “the manufacturer supplied this light”, you know it’s not going to veer too far from the path. What I especially want to see is teardowns, and there are far too few of those.
I don’t agree, we have many members with great reputations and i have not been steered wrong by lights i have bought based on reviews. There have been times where an opinion has not been the same as mine but thats the nature of opinions, and differing use cases which will not be solved by getting rid of opinions.
Is it an ideal situation you want completely free of possible bias, if this were mission critical or life or death i would not be going by reviews provided on a website, i would have to buy and teardown myself or buy something certified by government regulations.
Also if reviews are poor they would get called out by other members. Which is rare becasue its not a prevalent problem.
So i don’t want to see what BLF does end because without it we would not get many great reviews.
- What I’d like to see instead is a community funded subforum for teardown reviews, where the reviewers are modders elected by the members. Members would donate money to buy lights for the reviewers with no expectation that the reviews are favorable (think of BOLTR videos). Reviewer could get 2 of each light, one to keep / user report, and one for teardown. A teardown review should completely dismantle the light, photograph all internals, note interesting construction issues or identifiable components, etc. Being able to put the dismantled light back together is not expected: that’s what the 2nd one is for.
I mentioned the above to another member, who also liked the idea, so I’m posting it here.
If people want to do this in addition to the reviews we already get thats great. I see no problem with reviews of products that are paid for by members. But not to replace what we already have.
Formal can be nice but it also stifles innovation which is a BLF forte. But both is fine as well as both have their advantages so if members want to fund reviews done by someone with a great reputation i say go for it. But don’t attack the informal, spontaneous and well working system that has spontaneously developed and is working well.