Quoted from robin:I thought about this for a bit, but I want to be careful. The whole concept of the "Biz" pages is that they're meant to be a "business card" for those who choose to participate. The Pin Biz directory is sort of a "yellow pages" for pinball.
In the future, I want owners to be able to use their Biz pages to show off their company and products and have their own little marketing space on Pinside. This should allow pinheads to find the company/individual they're looking for. So it's more of a marketing tool than anything else. I certainly don't want it to be a dumping ground for anyone to post their grievances with a company, legit or not.
That said, I am also aware of Pinside's responsibility in helping pinheads avoid "bad" businesses. But I think the forum is a better place for that; It's where you can elaborate about a bad experience with a company. The company in question can react, others can chime in. Hopefully resulting in good discussion. It's much more constructive that way and there will also be more (room for) context.
Needless to say, any business that we collectively feel should not have a presence on Pinside will not be allowed to be listed (or will be unlisted). In that sense, our ultimate goal is for the Pin Biz directory be a good first reference for the trustworthiness of a company: "are they listed in the Pin Biz? But we're not there yetThere is now! I have just launched the new "pin biz" section on the site!
A suggestion.. don't have reviews right in the main part of the page.. but allow people to link/tag to a manufacturer to a forum topic like you can link a game to threads.. and allow people to search/discover based on those tags. Give the vendors a dashboard view where they can see pinside activity related to their business/threads without having to wade through the usual thread or search pages.
Maybe the biz page that people see can have some sort of metrics about the product in terms of those tags.. '200 threads talking about Taylor's rails...' etc.
