Hacker News Reader

Comment by frederikvs | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a brilliant idea.

On the other hand, I wonder how quickly it'll become annoying. If you have more than a few of these products, getting badgered to update your review every year for each of them might get tedious. Perhaps gamification and/or some other sort of incentive could help, but I'm not sure.

Also, if I've had something for 5 years and it's still going strong, I doubt I'll be able to add much new info at year 6 - unless it broke down of course. So perhaps decreasing the frequency of reviews slowly over time would be useful. Perhaps something Fibonacci based, so you'd review after year 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13,...

View on HN

I try to go camping quite a bit. If you've ever been into any outdoor store. Everything is always changing. Yet I've got all my stuff and I haven't died yet because my pack is a few years old. The only thing killing me is envy.

I think an unexpected side benefit to this sort of system is a reminder that you've got stuff. Why have more. Or to make you value quality. Like buying good quality tools.

Great feedback, thanks! You are right, we must be careful not to make the review cumbersome. Letting the user setting the frequency makes sense since it will vary between product categories. In addition, if the user has nothing to add, a simple click on a button "Condition unchanged" should be enough. That's definitely something I will discuss with the UX designer.

The option for a monthly/yearly email with a summary of your reviews might work well to avoid too much spam.

This is soo needed.

Just a thought, but rather than a 'condition unchanged' link, randomly pick one of your review metrics and give the user a single click option to rate on that instead.

Another option might be to invite them to reply to the email with any follow-up thoughts on the product to add to their review.

Oh come on, you don't need the user to set anything. Just do a once a year checkup 'hey there, here's all the stuff you said you own, did anything break or deteriorate?'

I'll be happy to help you if it's two minutes once a year, and I think that's all the info you need.

You are right, that's even better! Will implement it like this.

That is also a good idea because people are motivated more to act when something goes wrong; and a close second is when they are excited to share a good discovery. The DefaultReviews [1] gist may offer some guidance:

"...rating by default is the equivalent of saying "everything is okay". That rating is made without you having to lift a finger. You only have to lift a finger to change it to "awesome" or to "sucks" or to add a elaboration for others to read."

Also, the final section of DefaultReviews [1] may also help solve your inevitable problem with faked reviews. Pull requests welcome.

[1] https://gist.github.com/iL3D/59df64947d42828d848ebfc1651a312...

Oh I love this! Have you ever built the app?

Great! I have done some user research for a similar problem, and what users look for in reviews is mainly a list of potential problems, so that they can decide if they can deal with them or if they are dealbreakers.

Or just send an email with an easy action 'Yep, still going strong' alongside the existing review update option.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com