Linux.com

On Linux.com, a review is an article in which a writer tests a piece of hardware or software, then tells you how well it works and whether he or she had problems getting it to function properly. It is not a news piece about a piece of software or hardware or the people who make it.

A review should answer two questions: "Is this product useful for our readers?" and "Does this product live up to its providers claims?

A review must be fair (and possibly even balanced), but in the end it is an opinion piece, based on the reviewer's personal, hands-on experience with a product (or service).

A legitimate reviewer has no problem calling a bad product bad. If a piece of software doesn't do what it's supposed to do, a reviewer's warning can save his or her readers a lot of time and stress -- and in the case of hardware or proprietary software, an honest, negative review may them money, too.

But a reviewer should be careful not to be overly hard on beta (or alpha) releases, although it's fine to point out rough edges they may have -- perhaps with a caveat along the lines of, "we're sure this glitch will be missing from the 1.0 version," especially if the product's Web site mentions that glitch and promises that it will be fixed before the production version is released.

One last note about software reviews that applies specifically to Linux.com: as a rule, we tend to be gentler with free and open source software developers than we are with commercial software vendors. We tend to encourage them to improve, and to offer encouragement and helpful suggestions, instead of simply telling readers to avoid that software the way we might tell them to avoid commercial software that doesn't live up to its marketing claims -- or that can easily be replaced by free software with similar functionality, a situation we see more often every year.

you can learn by study :d
[Modified by: bektas on February 27, 2008 08:51 PM]

Are all reviews made in English ? I appreciate if I can find more resources in German.

Thanks a lot for this information.