Lots of opinions - this is always a good thing
The thing with YT reviewers is that they are all different, just like us, and different reviewers will appeal to different people. So if we had been discussing Martyn Parker here then you would be guaranteed to have seen
@MrTeaTime on here, praising the guy and pleading for him to stay.
The issue that was raised was, and still is, the lack of interaction. People have straight up asked
@Victor1st questions and they haven't been answered. Which is a tad on the rude side. It would be lovely to see a reply from you Vic
And to me that is what this is about, like
@cheltenham cat said, this is a community so when someone spams the place - posts without any interaction solely to promote their product is spam IMO - then it does feel a bit grabby. Are they contributing something to our community by posting their videos? We could automate a bot that would take the best X number of YT reviewers and automatically dump their vids into a forum, save them all some time.
And when I say posting their product - Vic is his own product - by generating a large following on YT he is able to get lots of free gear and, if he is smart, he will also ask for money to promote his products to his subscribers. From looking at recent vids he gets everything sent in for free. Earnings -
https://socialblade.com/youtube/youtube-money-calculator - always a hard one to judge with YT review channels and I don't think the income is going to be massive from the vid views alone but I am sure Vic has other ways of monetising his subscriber list - if he doesn't then he is wasting an opportunity. What Vic generates through his online activities and how he channels that cash to make sure that he is not accountable to HMRC or the benefits office or whoever is his business alone.
Same as on here, POTV is a business and we charge for ads and some vendors pay to have accounts on here etc, that is what I meant by booting him due to sour grapes, that posting his reviews is in some way "stealing" our traffic etc. That doesn't sit right with me and we allow all sorts of non-entity YT reviewers to post their vids on here as well, so when we have a discussion about someone as knowledgable and who makes vids as good as Vic does then it opens another can of worms in terms of YT reviewers as a whole posting on here who do not get involved in anything else. And yes, his reviews do give people here that search for stuff something to find
@johnnyace - totally agree.
I have raised this several times with
@OccultScientist and the moderators (wicked punk band name if anyone needs one) over the past two or three years and mental confusion and lack of time are always the winner. Views on the moderator front have always been the same as we are seeing here. Some see the posting of vids as an affront to the community aspect of the reviews forum and others see them as helpful and useful. No iron fist from behind the curtain at POTV.
And this was why I posted the other day to see what people here thought and I am glad it has generated a discussion. Although a non-conclusive one at that, which is what was sort of expected.
We had a message from a new YT reviewer last night asking about access, from his message I expect he has very little vape knowledge. The more YT reviewers seen to be doing well from posting vids on here, the more it will attract other spammers too. People who will post a few vids, not interact and use the fact that they post reviews on POTV as a way of getting free gear. Now don't get me wrong, a blag is a blag as far as I am concerned and if you are hard up and think that the time and effort put in to tapping up vendors and manufacturers is going to work better for you than working then fair play to you. There certainly is a lot of vape shit out there that people are looking to promote and if you can get some free gear then well done. But, do we want our forum - and I am talking all of us here - to be filled with shit vids. It will put people off viewing the content on here full stop. Likewise, we come all hardcore on respected people in the wider community because we don't like their face or feel annoyed that they don't pay us any respect by answering questions and it would make us look petty. And we are not petty people. But we do deserve a bit of respect in terms of basic replies.
Oh the quandary! I feel my indecisive Dave video coming on again - johnnyace knows the feeling...
Solutions? We don't have any posting rules on the reviews section at all. I just looked and we have reviews being posted in the main section as well rather than in the individual categories so that needs a tidy up and a few soft words in ears to sort, will have a look shortly.
Maybe we just need to contact the "outside" reviewers with a set of rules, please answer questions, don't post and run. Try and interact in other parts of the forum, it will help get them more subscribers I am sure, the odd giveaway on here from them wouldn't hurt either.
Anyone got any other thoughts?