Matt Broze wrote: > > I like Sea Kayaker's basic review format and can't think of a whole lot > better way to do it to be fair to everyone involved than getting a variety > of opinions from a variety of experienced paddlers. My beef with the reviewers part of the writeup is not in the reviewers themselves but rather in their being anonymous and the snippet/soundbite format. Kevin felt I had insulted the expert paddlers testing the boats and asked if I have met any of the reviewers. Without appearing to be mocking, my answer would be "How would I know if I met one? They are not identified!" Kevin also said that they are often instructors and tour guides and some also write for Sea Kayaker. Wouldn't the reviews be better understood if we knew who they were, especially the paddlers who have written articles for Sea Kayaker. If say, one of the testers is Nigel Foster or Chris Cunningham, I would like to know that. Why the secrecy, or am I missing something? On to the snippet format. It lacks cohesiveness. It is certainly alright to have the snippets for discussing whether there is legroom and you have a 5 ft. 2 in. person commenting and a 6 ft 4 in. person adding her two cents. Those are add-ons of important comparative information to a reader. But a review is always better off if a review is filtered through one known source who is upfront about his likes and dislikes and experiences and does an honest job of looking at all key aspects of a review in a more narrative format. Sound bites, as we sadly know from the political arena, don't always get right the totality of what was said. > would be a mistake. The manufactures aim their designs at a target audience, > why should they be criticized because I'm not a member of that targeted > group and can't relate well to them. To your knowledge, Matt or Kevin, does Sea Kayaker make an attempt to line up reviewers who are of a paddling type that is that audience? For example if it is a wide beamed boat, does Sea Kayaker weed out those potential reviewers who really are only happy in a sleek tippy boat that rolls easily and would skew the review inadvertently adversely? I am just asking not accusing. > In the case of some plastic kayaks you can't know how it handles unless you > paddle the actual one you will buy. This is due to the large variability > that can exist even in the same model out of the same mold. Of course > because of this variability the actual kayak a reviewer reviewed may be > different than the one you buy (or the other reviewers tried in another part > of the country). I have seen huge differences in turning times on retesting > the same model (times I record when I test a kayak design). So much so in > one case that I called the designer and asked if he had changed the original > design from what I had tested years before to a much more rockered one. His > frustrated response: "No, ....they're ALL different.!" If this is so, and I trust Matt on this, then, boy, a big point should be made of this. Moreover, Sea Kayaker should refuse to review plastic boats because, by what Matt says, the reviews are basically useless if the variation can be so wide in the actual boat you buy. Or am I missing something here? > I too can read between the lines in the kayak reviews. Some criticisms are > niggling little complaints and some are, in my mind, fatal flaws. My biggest > criticism of the Sea Kayaker reviews is that the reader is usually left to > figure out which is which. Expert SK review reader's can do that for > themselves Why should a person be an expert reader to figure out the reviews? If so, shouldn't that be stated as a warning to the person who is a newcomer or not so well versed in reading between the lines? What about when the review is copied by the manufacturer and distributed as a source of information? The person reading the handout would be at a lost to detect the nuances. Lastly, Matt said "As for a kayak test Czar (even if it was me and had paddled over 500 different sea kayaks) I think at best that still only gives one kayaker's opinion." That is a nice egalitarian thought but, with all due respect, Matt, some kayakers' opinions count more than others because of their wide experience, knowledge of design, comparative hands-on contact with many models, and a realistic expectation of what kayaks can or should do. Which gets us back to how this all started. Matt had said that the reviews on the web page that was cited should be taken with a grain of salt. Fundamentally because we don't know who the reviewers are, their experience and, if they are owners of the model, their possibly wanting to justify to themselves their purchase. And then added that the reviews in Sea Kayaker are better or more trustworthy or something, I forget the exact term used. ralph diaz -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ralph Diaz . . . Folding Kayaker newsletter PO Box 0754, New York, NY 10024 Tel: 212-724-5069; E-mail: rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com "Where's your sea kayak?"----"It's in the bag." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Sun Aug 13 2000 - 05:54:10 PDT
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