Epimedes:Sweetgrass:
I am not that familiar with the functions on Basenotes (other than I find their directory hard to use and sorely lacking) but one thing really irks me: reviews have to approved by an admin before they are published. Is this is a general thing or something they do to control new members for spam accounts? Does anybody on here know? Because that hampers news users' participation, and seeing as I already participate in two perfume communities, I can't be arsed to jump through hoops like that.
EDIT, never mind — apparently you have to pay for your reviews to go through instantly. I knew there was a reason why that site seemed a bit off to me.
I don't think about Basenotes as restrictive or that they discourage new users' participation. True, there have been a few instances of overreaching mods, but the real problem with how things are run is on the technical side, which I believe also irks Aromi so much (and I agree). For one thing, I would prefer if they had
more control over the obvious shills infesting the forum, for one company in particular which shall remain unnamed here so as not to generate another google hit.
I can totally see your frustration, Sweetgrass. But there are lots of good people there who are truly enthusiastic about perfume and it is a lively community. They just need someone who is really competent and has a clear vision to go over their technical base, that's all.
And I really hope this thread will not evolve into some sort of BN bashing. Let's stay on the constructive side!
I was talking about how counterintuitive in the extreme it is to put a core function of any perfume site behind a paywall, and that was my entire frustration. I haven't even set foot in the BN forums or explored other parts of the site, as I said, and was not commenting on how those are moderated, and much less on how the site's migrations have been handled. I am sure it is a nice and lively community but life is short.
EDIT: I hope this doesn't seem rude or anything, I certainly don't mean to offend anyone, but it seems like you (Epimedes) were responding to something completely different than my post, which you quoted. But you are right, discussing BN's (lack of) functionality here seems a bit misplaced, and I am not here to slam the site, either.