Thread: Seedbox reviews improvement

I really like our seedbox review section, because it contains a lot of providers and it's a good starting point when you are searching for a new seedbox provider.
What is bothering me since quite some time is that in more than half of the reviews people are complaining about bad uploadspeeds, but on the other hand getting great downloadspeeds. If you take the time to look at their 'proofs' or ask them some questions about it, it's basically always the case they are doing something wrong. I'm not saying that they are lying or that it's never the fault of their provider, but in most cases it's their own behaviour that's causing the problems.
I mean stuff like: getting only 'low' speeds when you have 50+ active torrents on a SATA drive or expecting to get 60MB/s upload without using autodl and the right swarm etc ...
Most people then automatically blame the support for not solving such problems and those kind of reviews can really destroy the image of a company.

Getting more objective and therefore better reviews can, in my opinion, only achieved by either making the rules a lot stricter or by having a handful of trusted and experienced reviewers.



stricter reviewing rules:
With that I mean that people have to provide information on what trackers they used the seedbox/VPS/server, if they have used autodl tools, bittorrent client and also what kind of torrents (popular TV shows or movies ...). They obviously also need to prove that.
The downside of this is that the amounts of reviews will probably shrink because it's more effort.

having special reviewers:
Having only a handful of trusted and experienced people who are allowed to post reviews would increase the quality enormously. (reviews would be more objective and more trustworthy)
The downside of this is that they also have to be anonumous to ensure that they also get the product from the average user.
Nobody is willing to pay for a seedbox just to test/review it and I think this can be resolved that someone who considers buying a certain seedbox applies for seedbox reviewer.

Do you even think that our seedbox reviews need improvement?
What do you think about my suggestions?

(I hope this post makes some sort of sense)

This would be a great idea if there was a seperate "recommended seedboxes" section where only "trusted" members could make a review using a set form and using standard benchmarks accross the board so comparisons/barcharts could be made to give users a clearer choice.

I know when I first had to choose a seedbox it was an impossible task trying to find out which one actually was better.

great idea guys i used to be 1 of them ppl 2who loads 100 torrents on just to get max speed it never worked i used to think the more u add the faster the speed unfortunately it works the other way lol really good idea

If done right I think it is a great idea and very beneficial to the community.

Ever make or read a customer review on NewEgg? One of the required fields is to identify your 'tech knowledge' as in

1. Low
2. Somewhat Low
3. Average
4. Somewhat High
5. High

Anyone can arbitrarily choose their tech rating but often times a person who would rate their knowledge as a 4 is probably really only just a 2. Maybe a system like this could be added to the seebox reviews as well. Know what I'm saying?

I agree that the spam in the reviews is a bit tiring to see. Truthfully I don't care if you want to bitch about how poor your speeds are if you are not going to be detailed about it or how great these guys are and that you should definitely try them out.

When searching for a box I only pay attention to those who actually put in some effort and give ratings to several aspects (up/down speed, customer service, overall experince etc.) and I never pay attention to the spam posts be it good or bad it doesn't tell me anything relevant.

As for the experienced/trustworthy reviewers I disagree with this. I don't feel that we should limit people to what they can and can not do. We don't limit them on posting a tutorial, or posting a bit torrent news article, so why tell them they can't make a review of a company they are dealing with. So long as they are going by the template and making a proper review then they should be allowed to make one.

Everyone should follow the template and to those who insist on spamming, well then the mods can deal with them when needed. Actually unless a question is being ask then no post should be allowed in the reviews unless it's answering that question or you are putting in your review for that particular company (which of course you would have to follow the template given for seed box reviews).

I agree with most of what's been said here, but i think there is an easy way to pull reviews toward a better quality, it would be to include the upload stats in the reviews criteria.

The only thing that's really relevant in a review for me is how much data has been uploaded in a month !

So by asking everyone to post that information, you will, educate ( pardon the term but i often see spam reviews or useless reviews forgive the word :) reviewers and improve their ability to make reviews.

My two cents :)

Cheers

Originally Posted by Enigma78

Everyone should follow the template and to those who insist on spamming, well then the mods can deal with them when needed. Actually unless a question is being ask then no post should be allowed in the reviews unless it's answering that question or you are putting in your review for that particular company (which of course you would have to follow the template given for seed box reviews).

You got me wrong. I meant obviously following the template, but increasing the quality of the reviews.
I just think it's unfair and also difficult for the everybody if you don't know how this review was created.
When I only use a bad tracker and choose old torrents there is no way that I can max out a 1Gbits connection and I think it's unfair that people don't mention the test conditions. In a good review you always have to mention the exact test conditions or everybody has to follow the same conditions. (good tracker, autodl, deluge ... )

Adding the amount of uploaded data is just adding another category without changing anything. People will say they have only uploaded 500GB, even though they have just used the wrong torrents.
If someone doesn't use autodl on every tracker or RSS on the ones that don't have an IRC announce channel there is not way that they can upload over 20TB /month.

I think it's important to have fixed review conditions or at least let people show under what kind of conditions their review was made.
MY suggestions with specific reviewers was probably not the best one.