I feel bad. I find it very helpful when web­sites allow people to write reviews of prod­ucts or ser­vices. I have been depending on reviews like this lately for pur­chases and infor­ma­tion, par­tic­u­larly since I have just moved. I have had to buy a few new house­hold items and learn about my new neigh­bor­hood. There is lots of infor­ma­tion out there, but there’s some­thing slightly more reas­suring about pos­i­tive tes­ti­mo­nials from people like me.

The reason I feel bad is that, while I depend on these reviews from time to time, I have been very bad about con­tributing them. So I’m working on that today. And I think, in gen­eral, we should all con­tribute. It’s a little like giving back — or per­haps paying back the debt owed — to the group for having helped make seem­ingly arbi­trary deci­sions a little easier. When you look online for ser­vices and prod­ucts it can be really dif­fi­cult to judge the merits of some­thing without these reviews. I hope my con­tri­bu­tions make someone else’s future deci­sion a little easier.