This was in response to a critical post on another modeling forum. That thread was pulled along with my reply. I was able to retrieve it, so here it is:
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I am a suscriber to Cycle World magazine and at the end of every road test, there are 3 other editors' opinions. These serve to provide a temper and perspective to the original reviewer. They can either pull a reviewer back down to earth, or reinforce his opinion - it works.
Another idea I have voiced whenever I have gotten the chance, is that nothing beats objectivity in a review. A bit way to get to objectivity is to actually QUANTIFY such items as the diameter of the rivets, widths of panel lines (or trenches in some kits!), surface roughness, flatness of a seam when it is warped, etc.
Scale drawings and quoted dimensions have been used in the past (Trumpeter Wildcat comes to mind), but not with a uniformity that would be welcomed. And when great quality scale drawings include sectioned views of the fuselage, cut the kit fuselage and photograph the section profile compared to the actual kit profile.
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I have seen some kits reviewed poorly such as the Hobbycraft P-36, which when compared to Paul Matt's scale drawing, turn out indeed to be accurate. It is still the best P-36 out there.
Other kits such as the obviously pantographed Trumpeter 1/48 P-40 somehow get a 'Recommended' rating from more than one site. With it's huge rivets that look to be 6 scale inches from the adjacent panel line that is just ridiculous - you guys know better that is NOT accurate, you can't even put that under the umbrella of 'scale effect'.
I will say one thing, Brett's review ingeniously gave a quality close up photo of the fuselage so that you could read 'in between the lines'.
Keith Walker