What is the design philosophy and goal for HTF 2.0?

As I look beyond the forum, I find other features of HTF 2.0 that are intriguing but baffling. I'd like to understand the intention and interplay of the features. I'll start the discussion with a practical example.

In 2008 I bought a Logitech Harmony One remote and wrote a review about it. From my initial comments came additional discussion and some (I hope) helpful Q&A for other prospective owners.

New to HTF 2.0 is the Gear & Movies section.  It has a spot for a review for the Harmony One so I've added my review.

So how does the new Gear section relate to the Forums? My review is completely separate from my discussion. The review isn't open to discussion, for Q&A, for troubleshooting. It seems wholly divorced from the forums.

Conversely, should my thread on the One not have a review, since there's a separate review section? Are discussions only for troubleshooting? If I'm searching and talking in the forums, I'm obviously not getting the proper reviews from the Gear section.

This is not a complaint: this is a plea for help! What is the design goal for these separate but thematically overlapping sections? It's like there are two nearly identical sub-sections that should completely overlap but are kept in separate walled gardens. I don't get it.

The idea for a formal review system is appealing. But it seems that "reviews" is a subset of "forum" and shouldn't be an effectively separate website. Rather, reviews should be directly integrated into the forums.

Am I missing something really obvious about the HTF 2.0 integration system? How does Huddler explain this concept? What's going on here?

Edited by DaveF - 7/2/2009 at 01:39 am GMT

I'm not a philosopher, so I'll leave that overview to others.  Excellent questions.  One of the goals is to bring all the content to one place.  Before things like your Harmony review tended to get lost in the forum.  That shouldn't happen with the product pages. The product pages are also going to be indexed for search engines so someone searching for a Harmony remote can easily end up here to read your review. 

Now, how does your review tie into the forum?  By using tags.  Every product has a unique tag that is visible under the product name on the product page: http://www.hometheaterforum.com/products/logitech-harmony-one-advanced-universal-remote  For the Harmony it is This tag can be put on any thread or wiki that talks about the Harmony One remote.  Anything with that tag will automatically show up on the product page so everything is tied together.  Not every thread dealing with the Harmony One should be tagged.  I did a search and tagged your thread and one other.  There was a for sale thread where the remote had already been sold--that is an example of a thread that shouldn't be tagged.  If you visit the link I put above you will now see your thread under the What People Are Saying section.  As to where to put your review I would say in addition to using the product page it probably makes sense to at least post a summary (if not the whole thing) into a forum thread to encourage discussion about it, and tagging the forum thread with the product tag to link them.  Here is a tutorial on how to use tagging on the site: http://new.hometheaterforum.com/wiki/tagging-tutorial

And to say thanks for playing around with product reviews and the product pages I'd like to send you some concert Blu-rays.  PM me your address and I will get them out to you.  If you don't have a BD player let me know as I have some DVD options too.

Thanks for the note on tags. I'd seen "tags" but not understood how they were added to threads to connect these elements. Nor had I seen the instruction manual :)

Thanks for the BR gift. I'll PM you later today with contact info.

 Sadly, I am very disappointed with the new site :(. Not at all user friendly.  Seems like it was done by a techie instead of a designer?