Review Guidelines

Reviews are the heart of Seedrate. These guidelines explain what makes a review useful and how we moderate. They are part of our Terms of Service.

Write about your own experience

Review varieties you have actually grown, from seed you actually bought or saved. Say where and when you grew it, what the season was like, and what happened: germination, vigor, disease, yield, flavor, how it matched the packet. A negative review of a variety that failed for you is as welcome as a rave; the point is that another gardener can learn from it. Your hardiness zone and region help others judge whether your experience applies to them.

Do not post

Reviews you were paid, given free seed, or otherwise compensated to write, unless you say so plainly in the review.

Reviews of your own products, your employer's products, or a competitor's products, if you work for or own a seed company, unless you disclose the relationship in the review. Seed companies are welcome on Seedrate as companies, not as anonymous reviewers.

Reviews written for someone else, copied from another site, or generated to inflate or sink a rating.

Personal attacks, harassment, hate, sexual or adult content, profanity or obscenity of any kind, or anyone's private information. See "Keep it civil" below.

Complaints about shipping, customer service or pricing. Those belong in a review of the company, not the variety.

Advertising, links to your own store, or off-topic content.

Keep it civil

Seedrate is a gardening site, and gardeners of every age and temperament use it. Say what went wrong as plainly as you like, but without profanity, obscenity, slurs, name-calling or personal insults, whether aimed at a person, a seed company or the plant. "These seeds failed and did not germinate" and "I really disliked how this tastes" are exactly the kind of review we want. "F*** these seeds and this company" is not, and neither is the same sentence with the asterisks removed. This rule applies equally to enthusiastic reviews.

If a review breaks this rule but is otherwise useful, we remove it and email you so that you can post an edited version.

Ratings

Rate the variety, not the vendor, the weather or the price. If a packet was mislabeled or the seed was dead on arrival, say so in the text and use the company review for the vendor issue.

How we moderate

We apply these guidelines the same way to every review regardless of its star rating or whether it is positive or negative. We never remove or hide a review because it is critical of a variety or a company. When a review is hidden or removed, it is because it broke a rule above, not because of its opinion. We may edit formatting, remove personal information, or add a note where a review is about the wrong variety. Reviews can be reported from the review itself; we look at reports in the order received and act on the guideline, not on who reported.

If your review was removed and you think that was a mistake, email support@seedrate.com with a link to the variety and we will look again.

Displayed ratings

The average rating shown for a variety includes every published review that meets these guidelines. We do not exclude reviews from the average because of their rating.