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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

#381

Post by hubraumhugo »

julius wrote: post #28
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…

Good idea. Thanks for making that site. I am an asshole. I copy&pasted a fake 5 star review from Amazon, using a fake account. Do you have a plan to stop brands from doing this to you?

Fake reviews are certainly a big challenge. I introduced a credibility system for every user, similar to Reddit's karma so people can see how trustworthy the user is in the Buy For Life community. As mentioned by others, people trust reviews on Reddit, I try to achieve the same.

I could also imagine picking reviewers by interviewing them initially - someone who owns and uses the product for a while.

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

#382

Post by hubraumhugo »

sizzle wrote: post #345
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…

Maybe include any class action lawsuits, recalls issued, Etc. Also don't let pissed off people derail product ratings because they are unhappy. I'm thinking of a Wirecutter product research methodology and wiki below to list breakdown of materials, where they were sourced, changes in materials by manufacturer in later product updates, etc. Let the users duke it out in the discussion section. Basically avoid being Yel…

Helpful inputs, thanks! The degrading quality problem is one of the top-priorities on my list. I could imagine a timeline where you can see when products were launched and how they were rated over time.

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

#384

Post by hubraumhugo »

hyh1048576 wrote: post #159
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…

Is it brand based, or product based? In the URL I see /brand/ and /product/. I have trouble finding reliable floor lamp like [this]( https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/c38e8535-2ee2-477d-9e9a-836... ). The base is almost always coming off after using for a few years so the whole thing is unstable.

It's both, you can search for products or brands.

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

#385

Post by sdfkkksdfsdff »

disprofuse wrote: post #324
j4nt4b wrote: post #292

One of the most interesting things you can ask in a store with high-end clothing is "Which of your items are most likely to last a hundred years?" There's a special joy that arises between you and the shopkeeper as the veil of bullshit disappears and they tell you up front that 95% of the clothes they sell are disposable name-brand garbage made overseas, but THIS item, typically made of denim, or wool, or leather, ha…

Another example is e.g. original England-made Dr Martens shoes (the China-made ones are held in poor regard, apparently). Apart from highly durable and long-lasting, for me an important factor is repairability. You can take such a shoe to a generic repair shop and replace parts if e.g. you walked on glass and it cut through the sole. Meanwhile my SO bought some fashionable expensive sneakers that broke in the sole af…

If it's all just plastic, you can melt the broken thing and make something new from it. It doesn't have to be such a bad thing.

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

#386

Post by steve_adams_86 »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #369
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, I love this! Sort of a crowd-sourced ifixit for anything broken. It would be hard as hell to get good content, but if you could I think it would be gold. It would be so hard to maintain repair guides with how frequently products update these days. Everything from vacuums to laptops to shoes go through frequent enough revisions that guides might be invalidated often. I went to repair my vacuum last month and dis…

It’s be great to tackle for smartphones. And an experienced repair shop tech could probably write it all!

Ifixit actually has a pretty stellar site for most common phones - at least, every phone I’ve owned so far.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide

I’m realizing now that they’ve actually got way more content than I thought. It isn’t review format, but they rate how difficult different components are to repair on most items which is a step towards what I want.

Weird that I thought they only did phones/tablets/computers.

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

#387

Post by fredguth »

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…

It reminds me a little of epinions.com ... a long forgotten startup that I liked very much.

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

#388

Post by jiscariot »

stiray wrote: post #140

It does not work on firefox with disabled ads, trackers etc. I got white screen without content. I dont know if the reason is that site isn't compatible with firefox or some other "measure" but those are the urls that were blocked, if it helps you fixing it. https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-154925745-1 (blocked by ublock origin) https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.... (blocked by…

Yea, I'm running Firefox 78.2 and none of the product images are displaying.

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

#389

Post by kexx »

hubraumhugo wrote: post #248
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is your platform going to weed out the people who spent big bucks on some upper middle class targeted products and then double down, reality be damned, on their sunk cost saying it's the best stuff ever? That seems to be the fate that has befallen the various other "quality products" forums, subreddits, etc.

I introduced a credibility system for every user, similar to Reddit's karma so people can see how trustworthy the user is in the Buy For Life community. I could also imagine picking reviewers by interviewing them initially - someone who owns and uses the product for a while.

That's not really enough. Any kind of credibility system can be hacked. You should ask two images, mandatory, and one of them should be 'my product', like a some kind of an actual clue, that the reviewer purchased it at least. If you add some basic checking, like a reverse image search on your own db and in the internet to vet out low effort tries, this would be the minimum to prevent hijacking the system.

I had somewhat similar idea for a site like this, but only for negative reviews. This kind of a site stops the incentive of forging fake review, like who wants to forge a bad one, but this still has to be protected from defamation attempts. That's why I was thinking of making the post somewhat complicated, but not impossible to make the system enough hard to protect it low efforts, which is at least 90% of the attempts, and the rest would be up for a moderation team. The credibility system could work only over protection

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

#390

Post by hackerfromthefu »

hackerfromthefu wrote: post #64
Frost1x wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you manage trustworthiness? This is an issue I've been thinking about for quite some time and haven't found a satisfactory solution to. I like this idea and a lot of similar information sharing sites but I find in today's environment, anything successful will be targeted by misinformation and gamed which makes it difficult to determine if the information was provided in an uninfluenfed manner from the product…

A strong community of invested users is achieving these goals of trustworthiness on a bargains aggregator site I use. Any bs is quickly shot down by the users, typically within minutes. It is a hard crowd for someone not posting a true bargain! Sockpuppets are detected nearly instantly as some blessed members check the post history of accounts and flag and suspicious or new accounts that are posting things that don't…

The site is ozbargain.com.au

The site also tends to provide insight as to quality, longevity, issues etc of products .. I had a quick browse of OPs site and I applaud the idea but I will personally be sticking to ozbargain as it fulfils the same need for product info, plus many more such as bargains, discoverability, and a great laugh from time to time like https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/569582

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