I haven't really trusted your reviews for a long time because all the products were scored so similarly and the reviews were too short. I hope this new system helps sort the good from the bad in a more meaningful way.

My other issue is that some of your reviews seem even shorter than some of these ranting comments. Get a digital subscription to consumer reports, and read some of the 'how we test' articles if you need to see how to create in depth reviews. Maybe then you'll start to weed out the crap.

Here's hoping it works; something has to.

To be honest I'm bored of people slating bikeradar for some mistakes they have. Nobody is perfect and at least they provide a site that does provide good info for us. You don't have to use the reviews if you don't agree with them. I personally have found these reviews to be helpful. People should just accept the few mistakes and grow up and not slate the people behind bikeradar for providing us all with an overall good service.

Just like to point out that the review list gives me(and no doubt others) a list of whats out there, a good starting point for a particular item. Find it reassuring Bike Radar publishes the critical comments about itself.

Advice to whingers who continually whine about bikeradar reviews that they are reading for FREE on bikeradar: DO NOT READ THEM.

The main thing that bikeradar has is that it's free, it shows a lot of products and if you think you could do the guys jobs' there then... wouldn't you be doing their job?

It's like everything free... will be slated just as much, if not more than something you paid for.

Imagine if you took everything that you read as stone... we would all belive the tabloids for one and everyone would take car buying advice from Jeramy Clarkson. Pinch of salt.

Or just visit the forum for the same product and ask the people who've used said product to give you their opinion.

Every product I have bought that was recommended by MBUK and bike radar has been spot on the review. If you disagree which invariably some people will, go look somewhere else and stop annoying the people who contribute to this site in a constructive manner. Hopes products dont all get very good write ups, infact I have just bought some new brakes and looked at the reviews to help me decide and found hopes review to be suprisingly low compared to the perceived quality of hopes products. Most of hopes stuff is definately worth the high scores they receive especialy hubs and headsets. As for MBUKs team, that vanished ages ago, seriously do you pay attention at all or just vent on here? And as for the cannondale review someone mentioned, perhaps its the fact that one is a RZ 140 6 and the other a 1 and the review and opinion is due to price and spec, not that its a cannondale????

Keep up the good work guys and thanks for all the recommendations youve made no doubt saved me wasting alot of money on crap.

Having worked supply side within the bike industry, I can say that because of biased opinion a lot of decent product gets underrated and subsequently ignored by websites/magazines. In the case of a saddle bag that a distributor has bought a few hundred of it might not be too much of a problem. But you try selling a bike that's been unfairly panned. Worse yet, what if it's an expensive bike? Well, that happened to the company I was working for and they'd spent just over £30K on the stock of this particular model. As a result of the review; just one review... The stock sat there till the end of the model year and it was cleared out at roughly what it cost the company (though having warehoused it all year they probably lost money on it). The reviews are extremely far reaching it seems especially with everyone having access to the web nowadays. An addition to the story.. The company began advertising with said website/publishing house the following year and we never worried about the outcome of a review after that. We were in the club as it were, and we even got the chance to have our earlier lesser reviews pulled from the site to save any brand damage. Product reviews are (on the whole) carried out by journalists wanting to be bike riders. Very rarely is it the other way round. On that basis most of what is written is rubbish.

All other stuff aside, two questions

-What was the system before end 2009

-Were all the old reviews retrofitted to the new system?

Would be nice to know when comparing..

I'm pleasantly surprised by the adjustment to the rating system that has come about. For too long reviews seemed to give every bike a 4 star rating and every grouptest got a 5 star bike or so it seemed, now we're getting grouptests won by 4 star bikes which is how it should be, even the bike of the year 2010 is a 4 1/2 star bike

Any chance you could mention in your sunglasses reviews whether or not prescription lenses/inserts are available? I have read a few of your sunglasses reviews now and, while they've been quite helpful, none of them has mentioned this - it's quite important to a lot of people!

Could itchyhorse please let us know which website/magazine this was, which company he worked for, adn his own name, so that decent people have the chance to boycott these nutters?

On my website I'm very critical about reviews in magazines (basically, they are almost always worthless), but with the above manipulation they are worse than useless.

On my website I wrote:

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If I knew the names of that company and that magazine/website, I would never visit/read the latter nor buy anything from the former.

Instead of correcting a possibly unjustified bad review on their website and/or by commenting on it on that website/in that magazine, they advertise in it, and have bad reviews removed. They are not helping remove injust reviews, they are helping making all reviews from that website/magazine untrustworthy. These people are part of the problem that generates bad reviews. It's quite unsurprising that this guy then attacks the writers in the magazines for ridiculous reasons "journalists wanting to be bike riders" which is just complete and utter bullshit. They are inept, yes, but a 'bike rider' isn't going to do any better. It's about attitude, nothing more, nothing less. Example: I don't need to be a painter to appreciate a painting by Rembrandt, nor to be able to judge lots of other paintings by amateurs, as shite. So I don't need to be a professional bike rider to be able to judge bikes, or parts thereof.

Most of what is written in magazines and websites thereof is rubbish because these people have a non-critical attitude. Bribery by advertising such as the above shows, just makes it even worse. I.e., the reviews are useless, but with those bribes the collective of reviews from that magazine/website is worse than useless.

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Oh, and if bikeradar remove my comment again, which I first put on this website 2 days ago (10 Nov. 2011), without sending me a message/explanation as to why this was or what needs to be changed, then I will put on my website that bikeradar is complicit in this behaviour that itchyhorse identified. Was bikeradar perhaps the website in question?