This outlines the guidelines and suggested structure of a Gear Review article. These guidelines are required of all articles posted in this section.
The Gear Reviews article section is for reviewing useful, quality products. Products can range from weapons, packs, or even playing cards with local wildlife printed on them. Like other articles, they should be well-written and informative. However, because they are opinion articles, they do not need conventional sources as other articles do. Instead, authors should be posting information that allows readers to find the product they are reviewing. Authors may also choose to incorporate others' opinions into the article.
The content of Gear Reviewed articles should contain the following:
- Complete information about the product. This includes:
- Information that allows a reader to find the product
- Picture of the product, or if applicable, a video demonstrating its use
- A full description of what the product is, how it's used, and if applicable, alternate uses
- Comparisons to similar products. For example, how does the brand X machete stack up against the leading brand Y machete? Brand Z is more expensive, but is it better?
- A wide variety of aspects about the item being reviewed. Durability, cost, effectiveness, ease of use, and other factors specific to the item should all be considered.
Other content is up to individual authors. Gear Reviews should be as thorough as possible, covering a wide variety of aspects of the item being reviewed. Gear Review articles are meant to give as much information about the item as possible. Try to make reviews as objective as possible; if testing the product, conduct multiple trials to ensure accurate measures. Elaborate on given opinions; "It was bad" is not acceptable. A more acceptable statement would be, "I liked the quality of the blade, but the grip fit my hand wrong which made the knife overall awkward to use." Pro's and con's lists work well for this type of analysis. When rating a piece of equipment, keep one's individual preferences separate from facts. What's useless for one person may be incredibly useful for someone else, so keep that in mind when giving one's final rating.
