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Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

buyforlifeproducts.com

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Re: Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

#251

Post by hubraumhugo »

acd wrote: post #125
hubraumhugo wrote: post #2

A few months ago, I began developing the Buy For Life platform. It started as a simple list where people could add brands that manufacture durable products. It now evolved into a full platform with aggregated product reviews from all over the web, discussions, and various metrics to calculate a score for each brand and product. I want to help people finding the most durable and sustainable products in the world. It s…

Great idea! List of more durable items: Stainless steel frying pan instead of nonstick frying pans where the non stick coating wears off. Cast iron even better. Plain bicycle without electric parts easier to recycle metal. Durable quality Screens drivers. Non electric espresso maker. Bailetto. Corded headphones no batteries that wear out. Changable parts. No wireless protocol that go obsolete. LifePo4 lithium iron ba…

These interesting comparisons could even be included in the Buy For Life score for each product or brand.

Re: Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

#252

Post by hubraumhugo »

arduinomancer wrote: post #191
driverdan wrote: post #112

I like the concept but since it's open to the public it will suffer from ignorance. For example, take the Salomon Quest boots that are listed. I own a pair of them. While they're good boots for the price they do not deserve an A- score. They are not BIFL. The soles are glued making them not resoleable. The sole on one of mine has started coming unglued too. The same can be said for the Victorinox Fibrox knife that ha…

I feel like the website needs a way to enter how long the person has owned the product and if it was light/heavy use. The ratings could then be weighted by that.

Years of ownership and frequency of usage are fields in the product submission form. It's not yet included in the rating itself, but that's definitely the plan.

Re: Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

#253

Post by hubraumhugo »

ryanSrich wrote: post #238

Curious how you would handle brands that build multiple lines. Some durable, others not. For example, I love my stitched sole made in America Danner boots. However, the glued sole boots made in China style will break apart after a few hundred hikes, and unfortunately they aren'r repairable.

I think it comes down to the degrading quality problem for brands and products.

One thing I have in mind was suggested by another user:

To combat brands changing over time as they often do, graphing the rating over time may let you see when/where the brand went from quality to cashing in on the recognition. I could see such a feature eventually evolving into more, like allowing people to highlight major points on the timeline (like an acquisition or change in manufacturing location) or letting you filter reviews to a certain period.

But that's quite a big feature, something for the future :)

Re: Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

#254

Post by tomcat27 »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #59
tomcat27 wrote: post #45

How did you handle difference in personal scale. An A- from two people are not always on same scale. If a person looking at these reviews has an internal scale different from the existing reviews, they may not be making an optimal choice. Sometimes the issue is minimized by simply very large number of reviews..

A million years ago, during the "Netflix Challenge", I built a purely statistical model that briefly scored high enough to go onto their leader board. The (temporary) success of that model was large due to handling this question reasonably. I theorized that reviewers would have their own scale, both in median (maybe they only give 4s and 5s), as well as range (a lot of people only give 1s and 5, losing all the resolu…

Did I correctly understand: You are converting everyone's internal scale to a common scale. The conversion is parameterizing by additive delta such that overall distribution remains normal with std 1.

Cool.

Re: Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

#255

Post by bdamm »

skratlo wrote: post #216
donmcronald wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because you aren't aggregating professional reviews of these products outdoorgearlab.com looks like a professional review site to me in the context of being an affiliate marketing / review site. IMHO almost all reviews online are affiliate marketing these days, so what I'd really be interested in is a site that hosts reviews and doesn't allow _any_ affiliate marketing or external links. IE: No incentive to game the…

outdoorgearlab.com ? you must be kidding me, in their reviews, they leave out ~50% of competition, and their sorting of best product in category is apparently a bidding game, shifted just right to make the results believable. I do spent lots of time on researching outdoor products for my own needs, and outdoorgearlab.com is a joke

So, basically just like car & driver?

Re: Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

#256

Post by hubraumhugo »

mtnGoat wrote: post #233

Great idea, but it needs more data, currently it almost comes off as biased. For instance this product: https://www.buyforlifeproducts.com/products/18 why were only a handful of glowing 5 star reviews pulled in? Sure, most of the reviews on Amazon are positive, but a fair mix would be nice.

It undoubtedly needs more data! That's why I posted it here with the hope of getting a lot of product submission.

Re: Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

#257

Post by brnt »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #198
quacked wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your input about adding affiliate links, because I think that they would end up working contrary to the goal of this project. Sellers constantly reuse listings to sell updated versions of their products, with variable results. This is a huge issue with Amazon listings. OP lets you add an affiliate link to order Graeter's ice cream. There's 20 years of 5-star aggregate reviews and a link to go buy it,…

> If one is designing for a lasting product review, the information needs to be snapshotted at a certain point in time- ie "In 2020, this part number from this company was constructed well." Modern listings may reflect the 2020+ product, rather than the 2020 construction that got the good reviews. In theory, that’s what the dates next to Amazon/App Store reviews are for. The problem with making them immutable though…

A popular ratings site around here shows the average rating of the past 6 months and an all time average. Very useful for detecting declining quality.

Re: Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

#258

Post by dumbfounder »

morsch wrote: post #197
dumbfounder wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the comparison to Rotten Tomatoes makes sense because you aren't aggregating professional reviews of these products. To me it is just another product review site tackling a niche. But the idea of tracking cost per month is very intriguing (a measure of TCO, which you may want to tackle as well, because for some products that may include electricity usage, upkeep, etc). I think it is something that can t…

> you aren't aggregating professional reviews of these products They are: https://www.buyforlifeproducts.com/products/9 Wirecutter, Good Housekeeping, GearLab

My bad, I had clicked on several products (5 or so) that didn't have pro reviews. I went back and was able to find some with pro reviews. Seems like they need to beef this end up considerably if this is going to be a differentiator.

Re: Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

#259

Post by hubraumhugo »

zargon wrote: post #139

The trouble with finding BIFL products is that by the time it is old enough to know that it is BIFL, the product has been severely cost reduced and if you bought a new one it would no longer be BIFL. Sigh.

That's one of the issues I try to solve with this platform. I want to find durable products that are still on the market with a similar quality for years.

Have you ever looked at the BIFL subreddit?

One user explained the problem with the BIFL community very well in his post:

"I joined this sub for the purpose of buying stuff like lifetime warranty backpacks (osprey), great tools, camp gear, kitchen wear ect. Yet this sub has basically became an Instagram for the old shit people find in they're grandparents house which offers no benefit to me now. I'm not going to buy, nor could I even find a kitchen aid mixer you grandma still uses from the 70s. Most stuff back then was made to last, we know that. I want stuff thats still made today with quality."

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