What are your views on forum reviews do you think they are useful or useless? I for one find them useless as the people for want of a better word doing them are kids and have know real knowledge of what they are doing, most seem to base their views on a certain layout etc and if your forum does not fall into that layout it is wrong, who are they to say it is wrong? Not only that when you review something you should have knowledge and experience (taking years here) of running a successful site yourself) Do others agree or not?
im a forum reviewer on another forum aimed at forum admins, i have my own method of reviewing which isnt against any particular layout or style, although some are harder to pull off and i dont think it looks good on a new forum, like having a larger number of categories and forums can make a new forum look dead but a larger forum like this one can pull it off easily. the other things i do judge the forums on are things like activity (related to how long the forum has been going for and the number of members), style (is usually fine unless the text is unreadable or it burns the eyes)... a lot of people dont change things cause i suggested so in a review, even though they requested one though, but thats fine, at the end its their forum. i think yeah, forum reviewers should have experience and should also have ran a successful forum too.
Honestly it goes either two ways: 1) Your forums is active, popular, and is on the right track (and you know it). Basically getting your forum reviewed so you can feel good about it. 2) Your website has no content, too many forums, and too many users on staff. You believe your forums is the best thing ever, and you get a sense of reality when the average joe tells you different. In other words I think it's a complete waste of time.
Reviews are good for new admins. People who have a few forums under their belt or have managed successful forums are more likely to know the ins and outs of running a forum than a reveiwer who has a small forum that is failing and does not know the true meaning of running and managing a forum.
I find them useful as they give the owner a general idea where there going right or in some cases wrong.
I find them useful, especially that it provides an user's view of your Forum. But a review is good if its not biased on the reviewers own idea about stuffs. For example, if the reviewer loves fancy themes, and when a Forum with simple but professional theme is reviewed by him, he will most likely say "You should get a new theme. Something with more colors/design in it". Ofcourse not all reviewers do so. But some of them act in that way.
They are useful because it gives you another perspective on your forum, they may not be as knowledgable as you but it is still another person telling you how they see it.
It is always ideal to get the perspective of several people rather than one, but one perspective is not inherently worthless, or worth less than multiple perspectives. If that were the case, scientific studies published in peer reviewed journals would be meaningless and offer no insights unless there were multiple authors. As hinted, the worth of the review is not based on the "bias" or perspective of that one person, but how he presents his thoughts, that he provides plenty of thoughts, that he tries to give substantive advice. Regarding that latter point, you can not only advise about "flaws" the forum has, but offer suggestions for what there could be, even if that forum not having it does not mean that it is any worse off. For example, I might think it neat to create a "stuck" topic in the introduction forum with information about the guys who run the forum, and with a questionnaire to help new members who are shy about introducing. Your forum would not be worse off without such a topic, but it may still be worth consideration.
I give detailed reviews on my admin forum. I think they are good. People want feedback, I want feedback plus it can give them an article to redistribute on their site if they wish and most forums will give them a backlink for it, maybe. I just need to find more reviewers as I am doing it all myself, haha.
I love reading other peoples reviews because it gives a look at things to avoid since the review has no bits its like a normal user giving a detailed opinion on your site.
Forum reviews are very helpful. It helps you see the forums in the eyes of someone else, and see something that may be wrong with it that you may not have realized, but potential members might have.
I would say they are useful, whether you take the points put across on board or not is your own choice.
I know many forum reviewers and every single one of them is brilliantly skilled at what they do, I don't really know were your going for your reviews because they obviously aren't very good. They are the ones taking time out to review the forum you asked them to do, even if you feel the review doens't help you or give you new ideas you should still show appreciation for the effort that has been put into it.
Hmm...I have reread your topic, and how is that you can say just cause someone is a kid they base everything on the layout? this is stereotyping. It is great to reviews from kids to see if your forum appeals to the next generation.
