gear reviews - leverage backpackinglight.com?

[AmyL]

Scott,

Thanks so much for setting up this site.

I am primarily a lightweight backpacker and make extensive use of the gear reviews on backpackinglight.com.
I also do dirt and fire road bikepacking, and so really appreciate this site with respect to route ideas, trip reports, and bike gear info, etc.

BackpackingLight.com already has an extensive collection of formal reviews, reports from the outdoor shows on soon to be released products, and reader reviews.  It would be hard to ever build enough general gear review content here to replicate the usefulness of the content over there for the gear that is shared.  Some of the articles there are only available to subscribers (the "state of the market" reports for example) but most content, including the reader reviews are not restricted.

I think it might best serve the bikepacker user community to leverage the quantity (and usually pretty high quality) of reader reviews at BackpackingLight.com for shared categories, rather than trying to build a parallel set of reader reviews over here.  The more info that's concentrated in one place the better, and it might take a couple years for this site to get enough readers and enough reader reviews to get critical mass for the review section to be really useful. 

Maybe you could look at a way to redirect people to that site for reviews in shared categories, and keep the gear review section of this site focused on non-shared categories?  I think the following categories from BPL are highly or completely shared:
Cookware
First Aid and Survival Gear
Foods
Hydration - Water Treatment
Navigation Gear
Photography
Shelters
Sleeping Bags and Pads
Stoves

Thanks again for all your effort, and I look forward to watching this site grow and prosper.

Amy

[ScottM]

Good thoughts, Amy.

I agree with you on the overlap.  My initial thought on the gear reviews (which will be better organized into categories in the near future, when there are more available) was that these reviews would only be from bikepackers, making the content significantly different than anything offered elsewhere.

However, I see your point with the categories you list.  I'm not sure if there's going to be enough of a difference for those things, from a bikepacker's perspective, to justify the duplicate content.

Some categories exclusive to bikes:

Seat bags
Handlebar bags
Frame bags
Racks
Trailers
Backpacks (very different usage bike vs. foot)
GPS (possibly different enough for use on bike vs. in the hand)
Lighting (for night riding/racing)

I'll give it some more thought.  Anyone else care to chime in?

[sherpaxc]

backpackinglight.com was a great resource for me for camping equipment.  So much of it though had to be taken with a grain of salt because it didn't always transfer over.  Clothing is an important aspect in these things.  Some things tansfer and some don't.  I would say continue with the review section here and if someone finds more information they could link it.

[AmyL]

Scott,

I agree with your list of categories that are meaningfully different from backpacking.  I'd add a few more unique-to-bike categories to your list:
- tools / repair
- clothing
- water storage containers / hydration
- panniers and/or stuff sacks and/or rack-top bags?
- maybe expand GPS to "Navigation Gear and Accessories" (like BPL does) to include compasses, altimeters, cycle computers, maps, mapping software, etc.  And you're right that this category is probably different enough from hiking to keep it separate.

Also, I think you should establish a direction about whether you want this site to be used for discussion/review of bikes and bike parts -- SRAM vs Shimano chains, models of suspension forks, review of bike models, etc.  Seems like every forum on a marginally related topic ends up with posts and threads like this "I want to start bike touring, what bike should I buy".  Do you want to deal with this category of information?  If not, maybe you can try to proactively redirect that type of discussion to whatever site/forum you think is best.  I don't have an opinion about what would work best for this site, my only opinion is that you should try to steer it in the direction you think would work out best - either encourage bike-part discussion by giving it structure, or discourage it by redirecting people to other forums/sites.

Again, thanks SO MUCH for investing the time to build this site.  I hope my comments help you continue to build and evolve the site.  Amy

[ScottM]

Thanks for the further thoughts re: reviews.  I would certainly be open to creating links to backpackinglight.com categories.  It's quite the resource.

While this site is still getting on its feet I'll try to focus more on unique-to-bike categories, then we can decide to go from there.

You bring up a good point with bike/component discussions.  It's only a matter of time before someone asks "what's the best for bike for bikepacking?" 

I initially had a "bike" subforum, and perhaps it should be brought back.  There's obviously a lot of overlap with other sites, but there is some argument to made that bike/component choices are different for touring.  I guess I think it's a worthy topic for discussing here.  For now, in the Q/A forum, but perhaps later in a forum of its own.

Thanks again.