Advanced Software Reconnaissance Team

[mouser]

i was thinking that i need to try to find some people willing to help me track down soft in prep for reviews.  Some people to form an Advanced Software Reconnaissance Team.

the idea is simple, the way we do awards/reviews here is we recommend the BEST software in a given category - so its important that i not miss some program and later find out its better than the one we awarded as best.

so i'm thinking i could use some help finding programs once a decision is made about the category.

ie if we were doing backup programs, then it would be important to find all the backup software we can that could at least be a possible contender for best software.  we don't need to find everything, just those that could be in contention for best - the main goal being avoiding missing a possible winner.

i'm not sure if this would spoil the surprise of the saturday review.. is it fun having it be a surprise?

one possibility would be to only have a few people in this ASRT team and only those would know about the week's upcoming review ahead of time.

other ideas are welcome..

[nudone]

well, i'm always game if you need me. i'll hang back if there are plenty of other people wanting to take up the offer.

[mouser]

the more i think about this the more it seems like a good idea..

i think the way to begin is for me to post a schedule of the categories planned for the next 5-10 reviews/awards.

and perhaps also the winners i have in mind.  that will give us time for people to nominate winners and look for alternatives that might be missed.

it doesnt even nescearily have to be a strict schedule, i can just post categories and people can nominate candidate winners and we can go in whatever order we want.

depending on how things worked out, the "Advanced Software Reconnaissance Team" could either be a loose collection of whoever in the forum decideds they want to post some info about a category on a given week, or it could turn into a semi-official team of people who might lend their views and dissenting opinions along with awards - sort of like when a game magazine has 5 dif reviewers comment on a game and rate it.

i still want to keep the idea of presenting awards for best-in-class, rather than simply saying, here is a good program, but it could be useful to have some "dissenting opinions" at the end of a particularly subjective choice...

before i post a list of upcoming awards, there is one thing i need to figure out, and that is to what extent should i care about such a list spoiling the surprise of new reviews.  is that ridiculous to even think about.  a voice in my head is telling me it is silly to even consider such a thing, but from talking to people sometimes they seem to look foward to the week's review where they get to discover what's been chosen.  having advanced debates about the winner for the week would lost that surprise.  on the other hand if we keep our discussions to a particular board on the forum, then only those who go in there would find out, and we could always limit it to those with permission, and anyway a small percentage of viewers to the site would go in there anyway.. so i'm probably being ridiculous..

[mouser]

i've made a new board in the Members Only section entitled Advanced Software Reconnaissance Team
where we can talk about upcoming awards in an "official" capacity.
having these discussions in a separate section will allow me to restrict access to it if we decide to do that at some point.

[Baseman]

Yes I would like to join...that's one of my hobbies....

[mouser]

baseman, we really need some new good reviewers.. if you feel like writing a review drop me an email and we can talk about a category that might interest you and others.

[Baseman]

Mouser...I have sent you an e-mail...