Well, that it's been 10 years I find it hard to believe; that I've been writing reviews on Dooyoo for that long. I think I must have been one of the very earliest members to join. I can't remember now how I came to find the website; I expect it was recommended to me by someone, probably a work colleague at the time. After 10 years at my former employer I was awarded a Rolex Oyster wrist watch for long service! No such rewards from Dooyoo; I did get a polo shirt, a baseball cap and some stickers for agreeing to become a Guide though!
I see that my very first review was about the VW Passat 1.8 Sports 20V that would have been at that time my company car. Recalling my reasons for writing the review, I was motivated by some particularly bad experiences which, as far as I was concerned, exposed the myth of the reliability of German engineering. I had a bit to get off my chest and so the review was reasonably detailed. The experience was very cathartic.
I don't think the monetary reward was ever the reason why I continued on Dooyoo after that initial contribution. I appear to have written just under 40 more reviews in the remaining 4 months of 2000; 10 a month: not excessive? Looking at them I confess that some were fairly lightweight and rightly deserved no more than a Useful rating. However, I'm surprised that even then I was covering a fairly divers set of subjects: Music, Holidays, Restaurants, Films, Computer Technology...
However, one of which I am proud and still makes even me chuckle is in the Speed Limits and Speed Cameras category ("I have the answer").
What about Dooyoo over the intervening 10 years? Well, many of us long-termers will be painfully aware of the highs and the lows. There were times when many of us wondered if anyone actually still worked at Dooyoo HQ, based on the complete lack of response. I fear far too many members simply gave up the ghost and moved over to Ciao or other websites (God forbid!) Those of us who soldiered on wondered how a business that was "managed" like that managed to remain solvent! Fortunately, Dooyoo eventually started to pull itself together and things actually started to improve.
There have been numerous website reorganisations over that time, some successful, other less so. I suppose the one thing that remains a thorn in the side of many of us is the seeming totally illogical organisation of product categories. This is mostly the legacy of Dooyoo's unwise outsourcing of the addition of new categories. Whoever the organisation was it was obviously staffed with total ignoramuses. Moreover, it seemed that the directive was simply to add as many new products to Dooyoo as possible with total disregard to whether or not there was any demand for any of those categories by members, in order to write reviews! Even now there must be hundreds, if not thousands, of products that have no reviews, and almost certainly never will, especially in the Computer category, where yesterday's product is out-of-date today.
If there's one thing Dooyoo could do to improve the user-experience it is to sort out its database but, as those of us who have ever tried to get products moved to their correct categories know, that hasn't happened in the last 10 years and probably won't happen in the next 10 either. However, hopefully I will still be here then.
A year or so ago Dooyoo asked me to become a Guide in the Computer category. As I had spent 37 years in the IT industry I suppose they imagined I might know a bit about the subject. It's now become an almost daily ritual to check out the new reviews in this category.
I never cease to be amazed at the number of plagiarists who just don't seem to be able to get it through their thick skulls that they are going to get caught, if not by me then by other diligent, observant members. That the most of these plagiarists seem to emanate from places like India and Indonesia has ceased to surprise me. Maybe there's a culture of dishonesty in those countries? I couldn't possibly comment. However, this is balanced by the occasional Crown-worthy contribution, which makes the effort worthwhile.
During all this time I've got on very well with the Dooyoo folks over in the Fatherland. A nicer bunch it would be hard to find, even if, as I suspect, there are far too few of them for the amount of work they have to do. I've suggested in the past that Dooyoo could expand its involvement of members to relieve some of the pressure. It's all very well recruiting Guides but I'm sure there is a lot more we could do if asked. Not sure what the law in Germany is about volunteers in business.
So, where to now Dooyoo? I, like most of us I'm sure, hope only that Dooyoo goes from strength to strength. That Dooyoo is head and shoulder above the "opposition" is beyond argument.
Not perfect but then, what is?
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