ThurnisHaleyWould it be possible to add a video to the review system?
For example to reviews of movies. Like add the trailer so people can get an even better feel of the movie if they haven't seen it.
Or for gear you could add your own video review (almost like how skis.com does it) or a video of the gear in action.
I don't know how easy/hard it would be to do but i think it could be a really cool feature and it could even get more people who didn't use the review system before to really take a look at it when they are thinking about purchasing something.
This is a great idea. I think NS should put lots of focus on the new gear review section, and I feel as though it could even become the industry-wide platform for gear reviews if it takes off. Up till now, I use a combination of videos on youtube done by this boner of a presenter at ski house.com or random semi gaper websites that arent by freeskiers for freeskiers.
With regards to the current review system, it is really good but I think the browsing needs to be optimised a bit, as it is hard to find specific models without knowing what you are looking for. This will definitely improve when the review program kicks off and if you do the large yearly drop of reviews, as there will be considerable more items on the system.
Hope this thing takes off, it could completely eliminate the need for "what skis should I get? threads, and if there were some additional technical stats that were included with each item ( or were optional, but recommended and would give you extra K if you filled in) so that people could gauge off of human reviews and specifications for objects, as sometimes people have no idea what they are talking about and will say a park ski is great in super deep stuff, but it is just the only ski they have ever used so there will be no comparison.
Finally, if you add a certain amount of written documentation that briefly explains some basic aspects of boots and skis and bindings that would be a useful starting point for research into gear. I think this is a pretty crucial part to add, so maybe improve the splash page for the reviews sections so that it is a mini-home page, containing some reviews but also information on how to use the system as if people find it too complicated/difficult they will just leave and find a review elsewhere pretty quick. Rybaks idea for including videos would definitely be useful for this and would make reviews 100% more meaningful, especially if people uploaded clips of the item in action or simply 2 minute reviews in the form of a video. You would have to set up an incentive for that (some pretty heavy K) but I feel as though it would definitely be worth it.
Whew, I hope an admin reads this.
On a completely unrelated note, there should be a stickied thread for suggestions and bug reports to the site in general, I think there may have been something before but I couldn't find it when I had a look just now.
