[ActiveCaptain]

I think I'll stick with info that's been vetted by professionals and/or created by companies' whose continued existence is predecated (sp) on accuracy.

An excellent debate point! Thank you. So you're saying that you'd rather have the point of view of a single editor about a boating location than a group of people who have been to the location? I sort of think that most people would rather have the opinions of a group. They can't all be biased and it's usually pretty easy to figure out if someone is just padding a review to beef up their own facility. But most people would rather get a general consensus - at least that's what they tell us.

Here's the thing though. If a "professionally vetted" guidebook's existence is based on their profitability, then aren't they mostly motivated to protect their source of income? If a guidebook accepts high-priced advertising from a marina, do you really think that marina is fairly evaluated in the guidebook? That's why it all comes down to the question that Chuck won't answer - who is the customer of Waterway Guide? He'd rather deflect the debate to a series of personal issues but when it comes right down to it, he never answered the major question. I doubt he ever will.

The easy thing would have been for Chuck to say that both the boater and advertiser are his customer. That would be a sensitive thing to say - untrue of course - but it would have given an answer that he could swallow. You see, until Waterway Guide has good and bad evaluations of different places along the waterways they cover, they show their hand with every edition.

Now part of your response has a hidden message to me about the re-review I just entered for iNavX. The truth is that I have real, honest-to-goodness issues with using that product. I even wrote again to Rich to explain the major one and gave him an example so he could feel the frustration that many people are feeling when they use the product. Perhaps it has to do with to cruising on the east coast vs the west. I don't know. Go back and look at the star ratings ReferJon posted a week ago. There are a large number of 1-star reviews for iNavX, aren't there? Are all of those 44 1-star reviews from people who are biased against Rich for some reason?

I know you think I'm biased against iNavX. It really isn't true. I'm critical of hard-to-use products. I raise specific issues and problems that I encounter and I even offer to help fix or test them.