I bet you like the long reviews, Paul! You write the longest posts ever! Ha!
I'm with you about the long, in-depth reviews. But from a maintenance standpoint, it's impossible to keep up with it. Like my Notetaking roundup, that thing took so long to do, I can barely ever do something like that again with all my other responsibilities.
Yes, it's nice to have somebody go in-depth into every feature of a piece of software, but for me at least, it would be impossible. That's why I really liked Zaine's list, it's just a long list with short little blurbs about the software. After trying out a couple of his suggestions, I realized I really trusted his opinions on this, so I could blindly select anything from the list and I know it would be good. No need for some really long review.
And that's what these lists come down to...trust. If you trust my choice in software, then you will trust most of what's in that list. If not, sure, a long explanation will help, but it's still not quite as powerful as trust.
The other thing that you have to understand is that the majority of people are not like you. They don't like to read super long posts nor do they write super long posts. So, when they see an extremely long review about a piece of software they are considering, they may not even have th motivation to read the whole thing and just ignore it as soon as they see the length. You write some seriously long posts, brother, and as much as I like reading your posts, I know for a fact that most people would not pay attention to everything you write (I'm not normal either!).
So, you prefer to be really, really complete and extremely detailed when you write something. But that's not necessarily better than taking a step back, and just concentrating what you want to say in a very short, concise way. That is what Zaine is so good at in his list. In a couple of sentences, you get the idea. Now go download the software and play with it.
The way that you get turned off by a short, not detailed review is the most people would get turned off by an extremely long review.
And yes, you're exactly right when you say it would be ideal to have a short excerpt and a super long article for each piece of software on the list. But I don't have the time, no way. I wanted to be able to reach and help as many people as I could with the limited amount of time I have to spend on these software reviews, and doing it the short way is the best way in this case. The 1% of the additional population I would reach (like you) with a very long review wouldn't justify the extreme time spent writing the review.
Oh that sucks.
I definitely did not appreciate that comment. I understand what you are saying. But my list is sort of a "thank you" to DC members, and you just can't say that. Even though I don't write the details, I put a lot of thought and experience into what appears in that list. I can talk for pages about exactly what I like about each and every one of those programs, I just don't have the time to write it all out. This forum here is very special, and there's a lot of trust between the members. Don't devalue the importance of that trust.
