Suggestion Add "Compensated review" checkbox to "Review" category

[rmssetc]

Suggestion:

For new posts where the user chooses the tag "Review" (or that text is present in the title -- if that real-time filtering is possible), add a checkbox to indicate whether a review was compensated, with an optional text box for the user to provide details.

Rationale:
The content on SB will gain greater value & trust if readers have more information to evaluate the motivation in a product review.

(Note that Orcatorch, in particular, has a very high vendor presence here and that most of the recent reviews were probably in response to Orcatorch providing free equipment. That doesn't necessarily mean that a review is biased, but it is a factor for readers to consider.)

 

[SlugLife]

I would guess that such a check-box would be very difficult to add, without rewriting the software in a major way.

As an alternative:

• There could be additional "Review (Sponsored)" tag.
• There could be a rule, "if you post a review, you must acknowledge whether you received a free, discounted, or sponsored product."

It's obviously difficult to enforce such a rule, because you never REALLY know if someone received a sponsored product or not. But you could always ask in the thread if they received the product sponsored in any way.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

I think though that orcatorch has been quite transparent in their marketing efforts. As far as I can tell, they've only posted in their equipment subforum.

They have been aggressive in marketing their product. Nothing wrong with that.

I think it's pretty obvious that a post for a review of a product is a compensated review. When is the last time someone wrote a detailed product review that they purchased themselves?

 

[rmssetc]

Just to clarify... my suggestion wasn't a criticism of any reviewer or vendor.

Sure, it's obvious that Orcatorch is compensating reviewers. What is not obvious- at least not to me before I did a review for them - is that they have an ethical approach...there is no suggestion from them about the review content and the compensation proceeds the review.

If I had known that I would have had more respect for the company and taken other reviews more seriously. That's the positive side, for vendors and ScubaBoard, of being transparent about compensated reviews.