[MD1032]

This is an awesome idea!

 

[sgraphics]

Awesome idea! A year ago I thought about something like this and how helpful it could be. No more threads like.. "I want 100$ closed phone, for rock music", you could then just filter out these phones on the website.

And better keep it open for those who have alot of phones so they now teh stuff. Guests could only filter the phones etc.

 

[commando]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sgraphics And better keep it open for those who have alot of phones so they now teh stuff. Guests could only filter the phones etc.

What do you mean by this? Right now the plan is people will register before they can submit a review, then it's approved based on their experience and if the review "looks right" (judgement call). Anyone will be able to search the system, and I imagine there will be more than one way to find headphones - wizard, power search, quick search, etc.

 

[sgraphics]

Quote:

Originally Posted by commando Right now the plan is people will register before they can submit a review, then it's approved based on their experience and if the review "looks right" (judgement call).

This is what I meant. Experience. I'm tired of reviews out there that people make on CNet or whereever. They spend a large amount of money on V700DJ's and say they are great with everything. Thats why I come here, people here have so much more experience. I would like to trust that site the same way I trust this forum.

BTW in imdb.com you can rate movies, but I think in their charts the scores for movies are a bit different because then they only count scores submitted by the more experienced graders. I think this is somewhat relevant to the discussion

 

[commando]

Review quality will be an issue. Perhaps i'll do something to start with so only invited people can submit reviews. There are a lot of people here on head-fi who would make very good reviewers, as they've been exposed to lots of different equipment.

After a trial period perhaps i'd open it up to more people, and only accept reviews that I think are reasonable - that could be a tough judgement call sometimes though. I'll also have to have a frame of reference - say a specific set of headphones, or compare with live music.

Any thoughts are welcome.

I acually compared all my gear last night, and I have the v700 DJs too. I listened to it for about ten seconds (of my 3 hour session) then threw them on the floor and didn't listen to them again, they're that bad.

 

[commando]

Here's a little update: I have some basics in place:
- you can add manufacturers, headphones, and reviews.
- you can view manufacturer and headphone details
- you can search for headphones that meet your basic criteria

Things to do in the near future:
- add more flexible search methods - I want there to be a few ways of getting the data out if possible - expert and beginner styles I guess
- when you search it should show review summary information

I'm also going to change it so that anyone who wants to submit a review has to register, and say what headphones they own, have owned, amps, etc. If they've listened to enough headphones that their reviews would be useful and objective they'll get permission to add reviews. Writing the membership system and working out logins and such might take me a little while in php... but shouldn't be hard.

Suggestions are still more than welcome - that's the main reason I bumped the thread

 

[saxphile]

A review rating system (like Amazon) might solve the quality probelm. However that probably means all visitors need to create an account, which can put some people off.

Also, it should be made mandantory that all reviewers state their preference in music clearly. This would be particularly important for cans with strong characters.

I think such a database, if done properly, will lift the quality of discussions in Head-Fi by a wide margin.

 

[commando]

Cheers saxphile. A reviewer rating system is too elaobrate I think - I use the KISS principle wherever possible (keep it simple, stupid). I think my system of having to prove yourself qualified to write a review should be good enough. Right now every review is checked by an admin before it's put into the database, but I might do away with that becuase it'd be a ****load of work for the admin (ie me).

I'm still a while away from a public test release - a month or so perhaps - and then it'll be offered to people who sound interested for initial testing. Based on their feedback i'll tweak it and make it look pretty and release it a while after that.

 

[Pirvy]

Hey commando, looks like its coming great

, this should stop n00bs (me

) to stop asking the usual amount of "which head phones are best".

One little problem i have always had here at head-fi is the saying "welcome to head-fi, sorry about your wallet" - its so true it hurts. This is because many people here have much more interest/ money to invest in the hobby and as you progress and buy better and better equipment, cheap but decent equipment does not look good in their eyes

in a nutshell - experienced head-fiers tend to over-spec or look at things from a different perspective.

Ex I have a set of HD-600 which is the max i was willing to invest in the hobby. For me it is an amazing heaphone and pretty much all i could ask for: loud, comfortable, detailed etc, BUT for someone who has a pair of electrostatic headphones or equally amazing gear, the HD 600 would sound average at best, an i dont blame them since all reviews are always relative to the gear the reviewer is used to.

basically i think the best bet would be to allow ALL reviews, however i would use a wieghting or even better two seperate scales. Eg: in movies.yahoo.com you get a critics rating and a user's rating to give two different perspectives.

the critics rating in this case would be equivalent to the rating given by the head-fiers, and the user's rating would be open to anyone to add to.

my 2 c

 

[commando]

Thanks for the suggestion Pirvy. I want this to be a simple system, two tiers of reviews is beyond what I want to have to do - at least to start with. "Audiophiles" (I hesitate before I call myself that btw) might rate cheaper headphones poorly, but there "compare headphones" functions should make it clear which of the headphones in the desired price range would be best.

You have raised an interesting issue, i'll give it some more thought. We don't want to dismiss cheaper headphones, so maybe a relative rating system would be best when comparing cans... or maybe just a comment on the page saying "hey remember these guys spend serious money on their headphones, don't look at the absolute rating, compare the rating to other cans in your price range".

I'm a big fan of keeping things simple - partly because that way I can remember What i've done, and maintenance is easier

 

[TWIFOSP]

Sounds like a great idea!

Might I make a suggestion. User review sites can get noisy really fast. Be sure to include a feature that allows users reading reviews to 1. Rate the review based on whether it was helpful or not. and 2. Whether they agree with it. This should eliminate the fanboy noise that can occur with this type of site.

Let me know if you need any help with programming an equation in SQL to rank reviews. I've done this type of thing before for statistical applications. I'd probably use something very similar to the imdb's ranking system. Though toned down quite a bit to reflect a smaller user base.

 

[commando]

Thanks for the suggestions TWIFOSP. The idea of the registration system is that we won't get the guff in the database to start with, so hopefully we won't need those functions. If it becomes a problem i'll make reviews have to be approved before they're added to the db. Users will generally only see sumarised numerical results, they'll only see user comments if they click on the link to view them.

I'll probably PM you about help with ranking in SQL some time next week, thanks

 

[philodox]

Looks like a great idea. I like the fact that the ratings will be based on multiple reviews. The search features should be very usefull.

 

[billinkansas]

I like the whole idea. Someone or some fancy program will need to monitor and graph the individual ratings.

I think it is important to have many reviews so to average out the loud-mouth dumb-ass knee-jerk stuff. If you want to see this in action, just check out Epinions listing for the Senn HD-555. Two reviews by the same guy, one bad, one ok. Not enough info to tell anyone anything, and not fair to Sennheiser.

How about this -
We put out a call to Head-fi'ers to use the Epinions site for this - it is already in place and would be easy to do. We could flood the site with thoughful reviews (mostly, I would hope).

Just my thoughts.

BK

 

[commando]

It's still coming along nicely. I've user management in place now, the main things I need to work on are getting headphone recommendations out, side-by-side comparisions, and look/feel.

Quote:

Originally Posted by philodox Looks like a great idea. I like the fact that the ratings will be based on multiple reviews. The search features should be very usefull.

Cheers

Quote:

Originally Posted by billinkansas How about this - We put out a call to Head-fi'ers to use the Epinions site for this - it is already in place and would be easy to do. We could flood the site with thoughful reviews (mostly, I would hope).

Epinions is never going to let you do detailed searchable headphone reviews. The site i'm writing will let you say "show me a list of closed headphones with a double headband with a street price less than US$200 that has great bass and isn't bright". Or "show me canal phones <$50 and compare the reviews side by side". Plus users can enter comments. And plus epinions will let anyone submit a review - this site will only let people who've tried a good range of headphones submit a review.