To WPR or not is the question

Posted on October 28, 2006 at 06:44 am under Tea's Musings

Lately, I’ve been thinking about giving a couple of those WPR (web page review) sites a try. And of course that means I’ve been haunting their archives of recent reviews yet again. I’m beginning to think this is something I simply can’t help but go through at least once every few months, only to come out of it completely dry because I always end up not submitting anything.

I finally caved in at Captious Pedants the other day, but I have doubts as to whether it’ll be picked up for a review or not. I was a bit bummed that new submissions at Honest Truth Reviews and Review You are both closed, because those two are the only ones I’m more interested in.

At this point, I feel like submitting everywhere just so I can finally stop this ridiculous cycle of me lurking at review sites every so often. So what’s my problem with WPR sites? I’d say a little bit of that sour taste, some eye-rolling, and just general disappointment in a lot of the reviews I’ve read. Let’s see…

Get to the Point

I get that reviewers want to sound interesting in their reviews, but I wish they’d stop trying so hard to be witty. Some end up inserting so many smart-ass comments that if you take those out, you end up with almost nothing helpful.

That goes hand in hand with reviews that are coated with just general nastiness. They warn you that they don’t sugar coat (which is great), but it’s as if they’re so eager to prove it that all they do is bash your site up the wazoo and bring their dog’s urine into the picture every chance they get.

Leave the Cookie Cutter Out

You’d think WPRs would be aware that different types of sites serve different purposes, hence the need to adjust their reviews accordingly. It’s ridiculous to use tests like these to call on a graphics site or a photo blog for having too many pictures.

I also tend to think that how a person organizes their “about me” page is up to their own individual preferences, especially in terms of what they want to reveal about themselves (or not). Yes, I realize there are those who would strongly argue about the importance of what goes into the “about me” page but I digress.

Ignorance and Irrelevance

I’ve seen some reviewers say something like, “Did you know you can add color to your scrollbars? It’ll make your site look nicer!” Can you blame me for being extremely dubious about their ability to give sound advice after reading something like that?

Then there are others who just focus on some of the oddest things like, “You coded this link with an absolute path, but you coded that link with a relative path. Is there a reason for this?” Uh...and that’s important, how?

Helpful or Not?

The main reason I want to submit my sites to these WPRs is because it’d be helpful to have another pair of eyes scrutinizing my site, and a new perspective is always a great thing to have. And yet I wonder if it’s a waste of time or if it’s worth the long wait it takes to get a review.

Have you ever had your site submitted to a WPR site before? If so, what did you think of it and how helpful did you find it to be?