TBS

I believe Matt was a member here at one point right around the time @Golfspy_CG2 went up and did a fitting there. That was a few years ago

You ask and you shall receive the email went out tonight about SIM driver being tested

@RollingGreens - How have I missed this thread! I'm in the same situation. Baby coming in 8-9 weeks and I have a goal of breaking 80. Recently shot 86, 80, 83. I'm cautiously optimistic. Switched to left hand low for putting and my confidence is back with my putter. 
We can do this!

This would never happen with the big brands but I would love for the group to sit down with an OEM and go over the data they collected during their testing. The group could have a discussion about how they may have missed the mark or how they had to sacrifice in one area to improve another, etc. 
It would probably have to be a couple of generations back so they wouldn't trash their marketing campaign of current clubs. I recognize this is not very realistic too haha.

Well guys I came up a bit short today and shot 80, 39/41. Played in a 4th of July outing at my club. it was a 3 best ball out of 4. I went in with the mindset of playing for par, I had a goal of hitting every par 3 and I essentially did. I had 35 putts 5 x3 putts, 1x4 putt, and 6x1putts. I was hitting fairways and greens today fairly consistently, but didn't really get in much of a rhythm with any close pin shots. I came close to taking home 2 closest to the pin shots today but was bested on the last one. Landed a net skin on #17 which is a par 3, I birdied and took a net eagle. All in all it seems as though my game has turned for the best through summer
 

Another idea would be to get some the pros who are not signed to an equipment deal and do an interview with them centered around equipment. Along those same lines would be to highlight some of the "dated" clubs still being played on tour (Brooks nike driving iron, Dahmen's ping hybrid, etc.)

I want to see a full on debate between MGS team with the No Laying Up crew about the distance debate with golf equipment. 
 
NLU especially Soly has some good points that started to sway me that a roll back is needed. 

Another idea would be to get some the pros who are not signed to an equipment deal and do an interview with them centered around equipment. Along those same lines would be to highlight some of the "dated" clubs still being played on tour (Brooks nike driving iron, Dahmen's ping hybrid, etc.)

I'm with some of the posters above, I'm trying to get some badges added. What is the process? I have tested and am a donor. I've messaged a Mod but no response.

Another idea would be to get some the pros who are not signed to an equipment deal and do an interview with them centered around equipment. Along those same lines would be to highlight some of the "dated" clubs still being played on tour (Brooks nike driving iron, Dahmen's ping hybrid, etc.)

Another idea would be to get some the pros who are not signed to an equipment deal and do an interview with them centered around equipment. Along those same lines would be to highlight some of the "dated" clubs still being played on tour (Brooks nike driving iron, Dahmen's ping hybrid, etc.)

Another idea would be to get some the pros who are not signed to an equipment deal and do an interview with them centered around equipment. Along those same lines would be to highlight some of the "dated" clubs still being played on tour (Brooks nike driving iron, Dahmen's ping hybrid, etc.)

I want to see a full on debate between MGS team with the No Laying Up crew about the distance debate with golf equipment. 
 
NLU especially Soly has some good points that started to sway me that a roll back is needed. 

Background 
After I took a few months off of MGS due to some work and life things that needed my attention, I finally got some time to log back on and post a long overdue review. After posting, I found myself curious as to how I was selected and the likelihood of being selected again, especially since my product was so niche and did not receive many interactions. So I took the challenge upon myself to do a not so scientific study of how reviewers are selected and compare it to the post (https://forum.mygolfspy.com/faq/testing/how-are-equipment-testers-chosen-r11/) by the Mods on how testers are selected. While there are no bombshells, I think we Spys understand the value of data in telling our story. So, I did my best at pulling all data from the past 18 months of reviews
 
Methods 
First off, I am no data scientist. From DJ to Bryson, I’m somewhere in the middle. I mainly do very basic data analysis in my role through excel. I know, I know, SQL is much more efficient and I’ll get around to learning it. For this study, I focused on 18 months of product reviews. I chose this timeframe to get some data points outside of the pandemic. I started going through the review pages and noticed it was not as organized as I thought, so I chose to do only 18 months of reviews that were already on the “Past Opportunities” page in the dropdown menu. Like I said, I believe that there may have been a few more reviews that have not been archived to this page, but I don’t think it was significant.
I then did the manual labor of data entry and collection. I clicked on each individual “TESTERS ANNOUNCED” within the time frame, recorded the following data points 
-       date of review published
-       product
-       rough product MSRP 
-       MGS username
-       If the User has a Donor badge on their profile
-       Content count
-       Total reputation
-       Month and year MGS account was created
-       City and State
Once all of this information was input into the spreadsheet, I then added a note if they had multiple reviews and I also created an additional metric to measure the quality of the posts. All analysis comes from these data points.
 
Limitations
Overall, the main limitation is that this dataset was manually curated, so there could be a mistake, but any mistake would be minor. I have checked that there is not an additional 0 added somewhere but there could be +/- 5 units off when it comes to reputation due to fat fingers on a keyboard. Additionally, the MSRP was calculated off a quick Google search. I get that there could be sales, or the price was actually $25 higher at the time of testing. Finally, the content created, and total reputation numbers are not accurate to the time the member was selected. There is no way for me to go back and see this information, but I proceeded with collecting this because for the most part, I believe that most people’s posts grow linearly. So, the quality of posts metric should not be too far off. I will address that in bigger reviews (Cobraconnect), this ratio can get skewed. Enough with the small talk, let’s take a look at the data.
 
Data:
Let’s take a look at the data!
By the numbers-
-       48 total products
-       202 unique testers
-       ~$119,625 total costs of products tested
 
As I said in the introduction, I will be using the MGS selection criteria as a framework of analysis.
Picture – I did not go through and collect this data. This is also the easiest of all of them. Put something up there! I’ve seen pictures of the people (I assume), cartoons, their children, memes, etc. Just put something up. (Inclusive, but probably true)
Prove review chops - 71 (35%) of people had more than 1 review. If you get chosen, even for the smallest thing, a pushcart distance tracker, a dozen balls, etc. take it seriously and write a good review. This means good pictures, concise statements that clearly articulate your opinion on a product, timely submissions, and good follow ups. A good first review will go a long way to getting your second review and the data clearly backs this up. Additionally, one anecdotal note, it was very common for there to be a progression of items to review, starting with a smaller item and then growing to more expensive items. (True)
Start posting – Please remember that this category is not perfect because I was not able to pull the post and reputation numbers at the time the testers were selected. I am assuming that people post at a linear rate. I looked at three areas for this section. Number of posts, Total reputation, and third metric that I created, Quality of post score. I wanted to look at how many interactions per post the reviewer gets. This metric speaks to higher quality of posts for the forum.
 
Total number of posts
Total reputation
Quality of Post Score*
Range
5 - 14,307
3 - 26,497
0.09 - 5.8
Mean
1,412
2866
1.92
Median
513
824
1.85
Because of such a large range with bunching happening at the higher end of each category, I would suggest forum members look at the Median. The best chance for you to be chosen is to have over 500 posts with over 800 total reputation which comes out to 1.85 interactions per post. Like I said earlier, there were a number of members chosen with less than this number but most under 500 posts were in the 100-200 range. I think the biggest takeaway, is to post frequently and create posts that others want to engage in. I think an average user can get to 200+ posts in 2-3 months. 
There might be an issue that leads to inequity when it comes to being chosen. As I started reviewing some of the posts and interactions, if you are chosen for a more high-profile test, your posts and interactions will increase at a higher rate than other members. This easily leads to a boost in your profile making it easier to be selected. I don’t think there is a way around smoothing out this distinct increase, but it is something that I hope mods take notice of. (True)
 Become an MGS Donor
This category comes with major limitations. The only public piece of data that I was able to collect was if the member included the MGS Donor badge in their profile. From this information I found 59.9% of testers had a donor badge in their profile. I suspect that this number may be closer to 70-80% but these members have not reached out to get the donor badge added.
(Inconclusive but probably true)
Overall, MGS is clear about how testers are selected. For the most part their criteria is clear and the data shows that they follow the criteria for selection. 
Common misconceptions
I wanted to add a section that debunked some of the common misconceptions that I had when I first joined the forum. 
-       I have to be a member for a long time before I get anything (FALSE)
o   Over the past 18 months, members who were selected had profiles created from March 2010 – November 2020. 42 testers (21%) joined in 2020. If you’re new and are contributing to the forum, you have a decent chance of being selected.
-       Once I get one review, I won’t ever get another (FALSE)
o   71 (35%) members had more than 1 review in 18 months. I suspect if I go back even further, they had other reviews too. As I said in the above section, if you get chosen and do a good review, you actually put yourself at an advantage to be selected again.
o   No reviewer had more than 3 reviews in the past 18 months. It appears that this is the limit, it looks to be extremely rare for a member to have more than 1 review every 6 months. 
-       I have to be good at golf to be selected for a review (FALSE)
o   This idea is very much false, MGS wants members of all skill levels to be involved in testing. In order to prove this, I pulled the handicaps listed on members’ profiles. This is a limitation because it is member provided information that is most likely not updated regularly. Regardless, here is what I found.
Range – (33 - +5) Mean – 10.09 Median – 9.2 o   If anything, having an accurate handicap is beneficial to being selected because, it appears that MGS wants to have a broad range of testers for each product, specifically balls and clubs.
 
Conclusion
For the most part, MGS sticks to what they say when it comes to choosing testers but it appears that there is some non-measurables that they use when it comes to selecting first time testers. It does not appear that there is a formula or that it is completely random. There seems to be a human element which makes it hard to say exactly why specific members were chosen over others from the outside looking in. 
Shoutout to @Brian A, @jlukes, @B.Boston, @txgolfjunkie, @gavinski91, @Mtbryant01, @daviddvm for having been selected to review over $3,000 worth of equipment! These individuals were ones who had been selected for this year or last year's Cobraconnect challenge. So each of them had at least one product review in addition to cobra connect in the past 18 months. 
 
TL;DR - Overall, post quality content frequently, if you are given a chance to test an item, take it seriously, and keep posting. If you’re new and you stay involved, your time will come. 
 
Okay, I’m tired. Let me know you’re thoughts!

I want to see a full on debate between MGS team with the No Laying Up crew about the distance debate with golf equipment. 
 
NLU especially Soly has some good points that started to sway me that a roll back is needed. 

I go back and forth on whether I would like Arccos. I track basic stats, putts, GIRS, FIRS, penalties, so I see the value in data but I honestly hate having to fiddle with an app while playing. When I'm on the course, I'm trying to decompress and enjoy the game and being outside with friends.
Have you found that Arccos is distracting while playing?

Message a mod is the right process.   For donor you need to provide you transaction Id so it can be verified.   Don’t know which mod you contacted but there has been some turnover.   @GolfSpy MPR is probably the one you should reach out too.   

I go back and forth on whether I would like Arccos. I track basic stats, putts, GIRS, FIRS, penalties, so I see the value in data but I honestly hate having to fiddle with an app while playing. When I'm on the course, I'm trying to decompress and enjoy the game and being outside with friends.
Have you found that Arccos is distracting while playing?

Hi, new guy here.  Could you add Veteran, Broke 90, and Hole in 1 badges to my profile?
Thanks,
Ron

I'm a Veteran and have a Hole in One!

83 - 44/39 - Oxmoor Valley Ridge Course (white tees-6150yds)
7 FIR, 9 GIR, 31 putts, 13 chips, 3 dumb penalties (either a tee shot through the fairway or half committed second shot OB).
I took someone out who does not get to play often as a thank you for working for me. I suggested we play up because he was kind of nervous playing the course. I took it as a good opportunity to practice hitting safer fairway finder shots. It was great practice and I came away with a lot of confidence. 
I only hit driver on 4 holes. Those were holes that fit my stock shot shape and were wide open. The other holes were either an iron or a hybrid. Overall, I suggest other MGS members move around to various tee boxes. It's a whole different course.

Haha - well its not often I get to do it but he was also graduating from grad school so he deserved it. I work at a university in student housing so let's just say nothing surprises me anymore. If you can imagine an 18 year old doing it, I've probably seen it...
Still want to work with me??

83 - 44/39 - Oxmoor Valley Ridge Course (white tees-6150yds)
7 FIR, 9 GIR, 31 putts, 13 chips, 3 dumb penalties (either a tee shot through the fairway or half committed second shot OB).
I took someone out who does not get to play often as a thank you for working for me. I suggested we play up because he was kind of nervous playing the course. I took it as a good opportunity to practice hitting safer fairway finder shots. It was great practice and I came away with a lot of confidence. 
I only hit driver on 4 holes. Those were holes that fit my stock shot shape and were wide open. The other holes were either an iron or a hybrid. Overall, I suggest other MGS members move around to various tee boxes. It's a whole different course.

Late recap - 5/14/21 RTJ Oxmoor Valley, Ridge
86 (42/44); 5 FIR; 7 GIR; 35 putts; 10 chips; 1 Bird; 3 penalties
First round in a month where I couldn't find my driver swing. Felt like I just lost the feel but it made me go with a fairway finder hybrid off the tee a few times, which turned out really well. I'll be playing this shot more. Putter finally got hot on the back 9 and started make some putts. Short game is slowly getting there. Irons were pretty good. 1 hosel rocket which lead to a penalty but the other 2 penalties were just dumb mistakes. Not necessarily bad shots.
Biggest goal was achieved - have fun. A very enjoyable walk with the sun setting.

Background 
After I took a few months off of MGS due to some work and life things that needed my attention, I finally got some time to log back on and post a long overdue review. After posting, I found myself curious as to how I was selected and the likelihood of being selected again, especially since my product was so niche and did not receive many interactions. So I took the challenge upon myself to do a not so scientific study of how reviewers are selected and compare it to the post (https://forum.mygolfspy.com/faq/testing/how-are-equipment-testers-chosen-r11/) by the Mods on how testers are selected. While there are no bombshells, I think we Spys understand the value of data in telling our story. So, I did my best at pulling all data from the past 18 months of reviews
 
Methods 
First off, I am no data scientist. From DJ to Bryson, I’m somewhere in the middle. I mainly do very basic data analysis in my role through excel. I know, I know, SQL is much more efficient and I’ll get around to learning it. For this study, I focused on 18 months of product reviews. I chose this timeframe to get some data points outside of the pandemic. I started going through the review pages and noticed it was not as organized as I thought, so I chose to do only 18 months of reviews that were already on the “Past Opportunities” page in the dropdown menu. Like I said, I believe that there may have been a few more reviews that have not been archived to this page, but I don’t think it was significant.
I then did the manual labor of data entry and collection. I clicked on each individual “TESTERS ANNOUNCED” within the time frame, recorded the following data points 
-       date of review published
-       product
-       rough product MSRP 
-       MGS username
-       If the User has a Donor badge on their profile
-       Content count
-       Total reputation
-       Month and year MGS account was created
-       City and State
Once all of this information was input into the spreadsheet, I then added a note if they had multiple reviews and I also created an additional metric to measure the quality of the posts. All analysis comes from these data points.
 
Limitations
Overall, the main limitation is that this dataset was manually curated, so there could be a mistake, but any mistake would be minor. I have checked that there is not an additional 0 added somewhere but there could be +/- 5 units off when it comes to reputation due to fat fingers on a keyboard. Additionally, the MSRP was calculated off a quick Google search. I get that there could be sales, or the price was actually $25 higher at the time of testing. Finally, the content created, and total reputation numbers are not accurate to the time the member was selected. There is no way for me to go back and see this information, but I proceeded with collecting this because for the most part, I believe that most people’s posts grow linearly. So, the quality of posts metric should not be too far off. I will address that in bigger reviews (Cobraconnect), this ratio can get skewed. Enough with the small talk, let’s take a look at the data.
 
Data:
Let’s take a look at the data!
By the numbers-
-       48 total products
-       202 unique testers
-       ~$119,625 total costs of products tested
 
As I said in the introduction, I will be using the MGS selection criteria as a framework of analysis.
Picture – I did not go through and collect this data. This is also the easiest of all of them. Put something up there! I’ve seen pictures of the people (I assume), cartoons, their children, memes, etc. Just put something up. (Inclusive, but probably true)
Prove review chops - 71 (35%) of people had more than 1 review. If you get chosen, even for the smallest thing, a pushcart distance tracker, a dozen balls, etc. take it seriously and write a good review. This means good pictures, concise statements that clearly articulate your opinion on a product, timely submissions, and good follow ups. A good first review will go a long way to getting your second review and the data clearly backs this up. Additionally, one anecdotal note, it was very common for there to be a progression of items to review, starting with a smaller item and then growing to more expensive items. (True)
Start posting – Please remember that this category is not perfect because I was not able to pull the post and reputation numbers at the time the testers were selected. I am assuming that people post at a linear rate. I looked at three areas for this section. Number of posts, Total reputation, and third metric that I created, Quality of post score. I wanted to look at how many interactions per post the reviewer gets. This metric speaks to higher quality of posts for the forum.
 
Total number of posts
Total reputation
Quality of Post Score*
Range
5 - 14,307
3 - 26,497
0.09 - 5.8
Mean
1,412
2866
1.92
Median
513
824
1.85
Because of such a large range with bunching happening at the higher end of each category, I would suggest forum members look at the Median. The best chance for you to be chosen is to have over 500 posts with over 800 total reputation which comes out to 1.85 interactions per post. Like I said earlier, there were a number of members chosen with less than this number but most under 500 posts were in the 100-200 range. I think the biggest takeaway, is to post frequently and create posts that others want to engage in. I think an average user can get to 200+ posts in 2-3 months. 
There might be an issue that leads to inequity when it comes to being chosen. As I started reviewing some of the posts and interactions, if you are chosen for a more high-profile test, your posts and interactions will increase at a higher rate than other members. This easily leads to a boost in your profile making it easier to be selected. I don’t think there is a way around smoothing out this distinct increase, but it is something that I hope mods take notice of. (True)
 Become an MGS Donor
This category comes with major limitations. The only public piece of data that I was able to collect was if the member included the MGS Donor badge in their profile. From this information I found 59.9% of testers had a donor badge in their profile. I suspect that this number may be closer to 70-80% but these members have not reached out to get the donor badge added.
(Inconclusive but probably true)
Overall, MGS is clear about how testers are selected. For the most part their criteria is clear and the data shows that they follow the criteria for selection. 
Common misconceptions
I wanted to add a section that debunked some of the common misconceptions that I had when I first joined the forum. 
-       I have to be a member for a long time before I get anything (FALSE)
o   Over the past 18 months, members who were selected had profiles created from March 2010 – November 2020. 42 testers (21%) joined in 2020. If you’re new and are contributing to the forum, you have a decent chance of being selected.
-       Once I get one review, I won’t ever get another (FALSE)
o   71 (35%) members had more than 1 review in 18 months. I suspect if I go back even further, they had other reviews too. As I said in the above section, if you get chosen and do a good review, you actually put yourself at an advantage to be selected again.
o   No reviewer had more than 3 reviews in the past 18 months. It appears that this is the limit, it looks to be extremely rare for a member to have more than 1 review every 6 months. 
-       I have to be good at golf to be selected for a review (FALSE)
o   This idea is very much false, MGS wants members of all skill levels to be involved in testing. In order to prove this, I pulled the handicaps listed on members’ profiles. This is a limitation because it is member provided information that is most likely not updated regularly. Regardless, here is what I found.
Range – (33 - +5) Mean – 10.09 Median – 9.2 o   If anything, having an accurate handicap is beneficial to being selected because, it appears that MGS wants to have a broad range of testers for each product, specifically balls and clubs.
 
Conclusion
For the most part, MGS sticks to what they say when it comes to choosing testers but it appears that there is some non-measurables that they use when it comes to selecting first time testers. It does not appear that there is a formula or that it is completely random. There seems to be a human element which makes it hard to say exactly why specific members were chosen over others from the outside looking in. 
Shoutout to @Brian A, @jlukes, @B.Boston, @txgolfjunkie, @gavinski91, @Mtbryant01, @daviddvm for having been selected to review over $3,000 worth of equipment! These individuals were ones who had been selected for this year or last year's Cobraconnect challenge. So each of them had at least one product review in addition to cobra connect in the past 18 months. 
 
TL;DR - Overall, post quality content frequently, if you are given a chance to test an item, take it seriously, and keep posting. If you’re new and you stay involved, your time will come. 
 
Okay, I’m tired. Let me know you’re thoughts!