When you join the online sewing community you are bombarded with posts of people promoting patterns and fabric (referred to as spamming). These spam posts serve the purpose of marketing for the pattern/fabric designer. This opens a whole world of issues, including objectivity. I write this post from a position of being one of those 'spammers'. Working for pattern and fabric designers and helping them promote what they are trying to sell. When you do this, staying objective is incredibly difficult. You have been given a product free of charge and you are then obligated to promote this item as though you love it - even if you don't. The problem here is two-fold: first, you might end up having to promote a pattern or fabric you don't love (thus lying to your fellow sewists), and second, when you are reading posts about patterns/fabric you are reading their bias reviews. I have been in a position more than a few times where I was obligated to promote something I didn't love. In this case you try to word things a specific way so you aren't out right lying. But this is HARD - especially when you want to say "run!" After a not so desirable experience with one pattern designer I took a long hard look at the way things are done, and decided to take a giant leap back from testing tons of patterns and sewing loads of strike offs.
For the record, I have tested a ton of patterns I truly love, but also ones I felt were rushed and could have used a little more work to be refined to the point where I was happy to promote them. This also goes for fabric - where I didn't love the fabric but felt obligated to say I did.
I also run a pattern review group on Facebook meant for real reviews and not spam posts, hoping this would help people to not end up wasting money on patterns because testers raved about them, but I feel like I was still sucked into the 'not making anyone hate me' trap of only posting the good reviews. I have since decided that my reviews should always be honest, and I will only test for designers that have a consistent product I am almost sure to love. The moral of the story here is that it's hard to remain objective, and it's also hard to know what is true about a pattern/fabric when you are taking the word of people that are obligated to say they love it. I don't have any real solutions here, but making people aware might help them to make sure they are staying aware that this is an issue.