Web hosting reviews on forums - do you trust them?
 

Do you trust reviews on the forums?

Most of what passes for a positive "review" these days is little more than a two-sentence brain fart.
Most of what passes for a negative "review" is an outburst of ignorance or revenge.

Therefore I scrutinize reviews carefully.

What a lot of people fail to understand is that a review is only as reliable as the reviewer. When you're dealing with anonymous reviews, there's a good chance (and often good likelihood) that you're being misled -- either due to financial bias, or due to knowledge bias. The biggest problem with online reviews is that they're tainted by so much money, and "marketing affiliate" sites like The Warrior Forum actually have members that encourage writing fake reviews. You're not a person seeking help, but a "conversion" in their stat logs.

Reviews were a common sight in newspapers and magazines during the heyday of print, and were often conducted by identifiable reviewers that built up reputations over many years. Much of this has been reduced due to downsizing of print pubs in the past decade, and competition from the online brainfart/rant has taken its place. Amazon is a good example of untrustworthy reviews. You can still locate reputable reviews online -- for example: Tom's Hardware, our own The Digital FAQ -- that hold your interest at heart, and not their advertisers or affiliates. Consumer Reports is something I still read monthly. While CR isn't the best, it's a heck of a lot better than some-spammy-blog-with-links.info.

Pubs had detailed procedures on how to craft and perform objective reviews., which is the main thing missing on 99% of what you read online.
Again: brain farts and temper tantrums are what most often pass for a "review" these days.

I look to trust the people first. Then I might trust their reviews.

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I see your point, are there any others?

It'll be hard to top what's already been written in post#2 above. :)

Definitely,there may be some who spam but many will recommend out of their own experience and you can opt for the one which is major recommended.