To pull back the camera a bit:
Hey, HN type people: How can we build a network of people and sites like this to replace the inferior process of adding "reddit" to the Google searches to actually find useful information?
Hey, HN type people: How can we build a network of people and sites like this to replace the inferior process of adding "reddit" to the Google searches to actually find useful information?
That whole mattress review scandal with Sleepopolis and HonestMattressReviews shows exactly what happens when sites like this get big.
So they need to stay small and secret. Unfortunate.
I was looking at vacation destinations recently, and considering taking a toddler, and Google searches for things like "Destination A vs Destination B" or "Destination A with toddlers" led to so much SEO junk. Ads for shiny e-books with regurgitated information, text that was clearly robot-generated, etc. Then adding "reddit" to the end of the searches does get you to helpful discussion from everyday people. Sure, you might have to read between the lines ("oh, this person seems unwilling to pay more than Motel 6 rates", "oh, this person seems like they might be afraid of black people", etc). Sure, the info might be out of date, or otherwise in need of verification. But you can quickly accumulate some useful ideas that the shinier SEO-optimized junk sites just don't seem to provide.
Take this one-star review of a wet-dry vac:
"I bought this thing specifically to suck out the ash in my fireplace. It got use with some other projects like small wood chips and sawdust before I tackled the fireplace, and it did fine. Then I put it to task. It sucked up maybe 1/5 capacity of dust and just stopped."
If the top rated one-star review for this consumer-level vacuum is that the filter immediately clogs when you *SUCK UP ASH FROM A FIREPLACE* then I know hey, this one-star reviewer doesn't understand vacuums.
So yeah, as long as you find one guy on Reddit who's really happy with the vacuum and the one-star reviews are stupid, you've got a good product.
Wirecutter being a prime example, they tend to exclude products they can't get an affiliate link for. So their incentives are not always aligned with yours.
And that's assuming you can even amass useful information. For every useful bit of information you will have to filter out ten dolts who just want to hype whatever premium product they bought in order to self-justify the purchase (see for example Reddit's penchant for certain brands in certain product categories).
We focus on keeping track of and removing the special status of sources caught getting paid to write fake reviews. Some categories are more prone to astroturfing than others, and we account for that by restricting the sources. Actively curating the sources is part of our daily work.
I’m the meantime before such a site exists, the (imperfect) solution is to do research as well as you can, and only buy products from vendors who offer a good return policy. In the US, Costco comes to mind.
And be brutal about returning stuff that is not great.
Same for buying kitchens, mattresses, cars ...