Equipment reviews, are they credible?

The best indicator of credibility is the quality of the review itself.

I think a reader bears the responsibility of considering and working through for him or herself the questions that you've raised. It's no different than reading someone's advice in a thread; you know how to distinguish good, thoughtful advice from the bad.

If you think that people need to be "protected" from bad reviews, then I think this is hopeless. Set up a voting system or whatever, but (1) it's no more credible than the review itself, just adds another layer of opinion on top of opinion, and (2) readers will still filter the data through rose colored glasses anyway.

I'm not suggesting that "reviews" be discontinued. I think they can be of real value. Which is why I began with the confession that I was thinking out loud. It might be a good idea to have them in a seperate catagory instead of where they are now.
Establishing credibility is one of the main issues. The other is establishing a format or something like that to avoid the "Ah reeeally liiiiiked dat new CD ting. It sounds puuurty!"
It seems like too many of the single paragraph reviews don't understand what others may be seeking in their review.
There are people (like Sean or Viridian or Zaikesman, unsound, and obviously clueless) whose comments I enjoy reading. They are generally insightful, or at least funny, which is often more important. The point is once I know someone to a degree their threads or responses have value, people like bishopwill have none.
Maybe the whole thing is getting used to the new item, but it sems like there must be a way to improve the reviews.
For example, I saw a review of my amp a couple of days ago. I am very happy with my amp but the reviewer compared it to an amp I know to be vastly superior and said it was just as good. Again I like my amp, but this isn't a point of opinions, the other amp is far and away better. That is just irresponsible. Maybe this one review is the root for my thread but I've seen other poor quality reviews of equipment I own. The reviews do no one any good.
ARRRRGH, clueless, help me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think personally the reviews are there to encourage Audio sales which is what Audiogon is about.
There is a lot of chat on these forums about abstracts,music,art,hedgehogs,tweaks,DIY whatever and although there is no hostility from the powers that be about that,I think they realise that they would like to see the forums relate more to people spending money on audio equipment.
Hence the flood of reviews which of course are valid on whatever level you place reviews on,some will need more info as to how they were carried out.
For me there has been too many..too quickly...I think reviews are incredibly powerful from whatever source....

>"The site needs to be constructed so that a review writer can draft their article over more than one session if need be."

For now all you need to do is write it in the wordprocessor of your choice and copy and paste.

I remain,