YHK - yet another hacker news clone

It's cute (and a lot of work), but I've grown wary of online reviews, even seemingly in-depth ones, because if you run a review site, there's an immense pressure to post a review right after a product comes out. And at that point, you just have no idea about long-term durability or comfort, which is really the only thing that matters for items like shoes. At best, you can theorize.

I've been burned by many products that get rave reviews and then fail due to basic manufacturing problems after several months or a year. This is also common for "hobby" reviews, a lot of Amazon reviews are basically just unboxing experiences. And the worst thing is, you often can't go back and post a review when you actually know how the item performs because the product doesn't exist anymore. Sorry, there's no jacket called Canyon Rider, that was a 2024 model, but check out the new Vertex Comfort 7. There's no lawnmower model Maxx 3000, we're only selling 7040 XP. And so on.

Because this is how the online ecosystem works, manufacturers optimize for the unboxing experience over long-term durability and get away with it. I don't know how to fix it... I imagine you'd need some sort of a system where people simply can't post reviews until n months have elapsed, and the reviews attach to the manufacturer, not the product itself. But who would want to use that?