How we compile our reviews

When someone first opens a board page, the site searches the web once for reviews, videos and forum threads about that exact model, and keeps the links (the tabs under “Reviews & Videos”). It then reads up to twelve of them, always including riders’ threads when there are some: a magazine test, a video’s transcript, a Reddit thread. Nothing is read ahead of time, and a board nobody opens costs nothing.

The whole of what each source returned is stored privately, so a line can always be traced back to the text it came from. Only short quotes (25 words at most) appear on the page, each with a link to where it was said.

First, a language model reads the beginning of each source and says whether it is about this board, another year of it, the same shape in another construction (the Carbon version), a sibling model, or the brand’s whole range. Only the first three are used, and the page says which year or construction a source rode: a review of the Rocket Wing never speaks for the Rocket Wing S.

Then each accepted source is read for what riders say about early planing, pumping, stability, durability, sizing and so on, each point with the exact words that support it. Code, not the model, checks every quote: it must appear in the source as written (allowing for spelling slips in auto-generated video captions). A quote that doesn’t is thrown away. Quotes in French or German stay in their language, with an English gloss.

Then the points from all sources are grouped, so a line reads “3 of 4 sources”. Only sources that gave a checked quote count: a board where fewer than two did, or with fewer than three checked quotes, shows nothing rather than a thin summary. A board of this year or next is the exception: few riders have written about it yet, so one source that rode it is enough, and the block says it is new and how many sources it has so far. It is read again as more riders post.

Some brands publish riders’ words themselves: owner reviews on the product page, riders’ posts on the brand’s blog or forum, its own videos. They are read like any other source, but the brand sells the board and chose what to publish. When more than half of a board’s quotes come from such pages, the block says so and points to a board reviewed from independent sources.

When at least three sources gave checked quotes, a language model writes the article from the grouped lines and their quotes: a headline, the facts at a glance, how the board rides, what changed from the previous version, and who it suits. It never sees the sources themselves, and every sentence has to name the lines it rests on. Code removes any sentence that names none, a plus resting on criticism, and any sentence that puts in quote marks words no checked quote holds: when the article quotes a rider, those are the rider’s words, and the quote links to the moment they were said.

Each sentence carries the numbers of its sources. Point at a sentence (or tap it) to see the quotes behind it, each linked to where it was said: the moment in the video, the Reddit comment, the passage of the test. The article is labelled as written by software; it carries no score and no star rating.

The site’s owner is told by email every time a board gets its article or lines, with the full text, and can take it down at once. On a few boards the owner writes the review from approved lines and signs it The Board Atlas.

A wrong board, a quote out of context, a line you think is unfair: say so through the suggestion form with the board’s name and the sentence or line in question.