Allcott,"and doctor the ones that don't fit with their commercial interests"I take exception to that and I am confident that all of our reviewers will too. You basically just accused all of them as being dishonest in tailoring reviews (read "skewing") that "don't fit with their (AVSIM's) commercial interests. If that is how you really percieve us, please take your cynicism elsewhere. I for one am getting real tired of these types of accusations.Would one of the AVSIM reviewer volunteers please step in and explain our processes; I am getting tired of repeating myself.

>I for one appreciate Tim's post - >>Normally, reviews on reseller sites tend to be worthwhile...>more often than not on major sites like retailers "Circuit>City" and "Best Buy" you get a good hodgepodge of reviews and>can usually determine a good product from a bad one, if not a>knowledgable review from a bogus one. When resellers start>taking more editorial liberties than cleaning up foul>language, all the reviews start suffering because of that>tampering. >>It is good to know that SimMarket's reviews are, in essence,>rigged. >>While I don't often base my flightsim purchases on reseller>site reviews, I'll be certain to completely disregard any>reviews found on Simmarket, simply because they may only be>portraying one side of the story. What about the negative reviews at simmarket ? because they are there. My own product has a couple, I don't agree with them, but they are there.I think you have to consider if the person is really making an honest review, or do they just have some sort of an ax to grind and want to do nothing more then slam the product and the developer.There is a fair way to write a negative review and that is to specify the features, functions you did not like or found lacking, and also the bugs you may have noticed.But if your review is nothing more than an attempt to discourage people from buying the product by slammming on the product and the developer, then that is not a fair review.It does seem reasonable that these things should indeed be subject to review.Regards.Ernie.

I can tell you that in all the reviews I have done for AVSIM there has been no changing what I wrote... even the things I misspelled! (I could swear I didn't misspell anything ;) ). When I finish writing it does get submitted for review and editing which is mostly placing my word document into an html format and making sure all the screenshots link to their appropriate enlargements. I am sure if anything I had written had been off color, or blatantly wrong it would have been corrected in the editing process. I do try to wait for the newness to wear off before starting to write because I want to portray an accurate image of how the product stands up after my enthusiasm has settled down. I'll stand behind any of our other reviewers out there too... we don't get paid for this, this is our hobby and passion.

The odd part in all of this is that I have no trouble finding dozens and dozens of negative reviews of products on simmarket which, apparently, weren't deleted. In point of fact, I oft go there to see what people have to say about a product. There are plenty of "1-star" reviews there, don't doubt it for a minute.

About trustworthy reviews...AVSIM is pretty much the only site I *always* check for a review before considering purchase of a product. AVSIM doesn't really publish "bad" reviews, but if you know their style of doing reviews you can judge the quality of a product easily. They seem to follow a diplomatic approach when writing reviews - never ever really bad words, but if you read a bit more carefully, you can figure it out :)Occasionally, I may check other sites, but certainly NOT the sites of a publisher or reseller. Economically, it is understandable that they don't like to have bad reviews for one of the products they sell, but censorship is not the way to handle this (unless, maybe, the posted reviews are giving a completely false picture and one could assume that the reviewer tried to bash these products on purpose w/o having a real reason for doing so).However, the story of the original poster shows an extremely unsatisfactory way of maintaining customer relationships. If that guy was working for my company, he would at least receive a warning with the option to get fired the next time.If they don't want to get "uncomfortable" reviews, they simply should not allow user reviews in the first place. If a product is really good and worth buying, it will get a number of good reviews and maybe a small number of worse ones (*everything* IS a matter of personal taste, and there may be people who dislike even the best product with a valid reason), but on average, the rating will reflect the quality of the product.Alex (LOWW)

Tom,I consider AvSim reviews to be the best around. I came across the one for FS FlightKeeper having never heard of the product and was so impressed with the review I bought FSFK without hesitation. I now regularly recommend it to other FS enthusiasts and all because of the review here on AvSim.I fall into the category of the silent majority who read the reviews and then buy the product without entering into dialogue such as this.If you had a survey of reviewers the AvSim team would get my vote! :-beerchugCheers,

If your review was along the lines of these products are "complete rubbish" I'm not surprised it was withdrawn - possibly on the grounds that the review was complete rubbish too.

As a volunteer reviewer for Avsim, I can also attest to the fact that Avsim lets us (the reviewers) express our opinions of the software that we review with no pressure to make products look good for advertising reasons.

>If your review was along the lines of these products are>"complete rubbish" I'm not surprised it was withdrawn ->possibly on the grounds that the review was complete rubbish>too.We have a winner. My thoughts exactly.

I don't trust Simmarket, never shop there any more and I don't like Simflight. That's based on my personal experience as well as others'that I heard.Simple as that.

And again we have those narrow minded prejudicial talk. My god people stick to the facts and stop this nonsense talk. It's based on nothing.Rob "Holland&Holland" de Vries http://fool.exler.ru/sm/fly2.gif"To go up, pull the stick back. To go down, pull the stick back harder"

I am curious, did you try the freeware release of Captain Kieths stuff before you bought the other two volumes? I did and found that the product really wasn't for me..

>I for one appreciate Tim's post - >>Normally, reviews on reseller sites tend to be worthwhile...>more often than not on major sites like retailers "Circuit>City" and "Best Buy" you get a good hodgepodge of reviews and>can usually determine a good product from a bad one, if not a>knowledgable review from a bogus one. When resellers start>taking more editorial liberties than cleaning up foul>language, all the reviews start suffering because of that>tampering. >>It is good to know that SimMarket's reviews are, in essence,>rigged. >>While I don't often base my flightsim purchases on reseller>site reviews, I'll be certain to completely disregard any>reviews found on Simmarket, simply because they may only be>portraying one side of the story. >>Thanks Tim!>-GregI agree with that 100%. They have right to do that... and we have a right to know that they do that. and that their reveiews are one sided.Manny

I think Avsim reviews are very good. and sometimes diplomatic but thats normal.I also like the product reviews at Flightsim....even though I don't use their forums. I do read their reviews. Its generally well done as well.But I also like Amazon.com type user reviews (Amazon.com does not have flight sim stuff..but the format I mean). But that only works if site puts up with some nonsense from the users. Heavy editing/complete deletion (other than for vulgarity) make such user reviews pretty worthless. JMO.manny

You're missing out om some great stuff. But hey opinions differ.I can realy recommend the Francevfr photo scenery basepacks and the new Georender Yellowstone scenery. Great stuff.You can also get the CARENADO add-ons via them (the only place you cabn get them without a credit card) and the same is true for the realair stuff.Just remember that it is a shop. You yourself are responsible for what you select to buy there. Of course the salesclerk can help but he will want to sell you something (that's his job).