Displaying user's ages

I think it would be a helpful piece of information for us to know when reading user reviews posted in both the directory and forum so we can adequately judge the relevance of the review.

For example, I've made many a blind-buy based on reviews posted here and on multiple occasions have been disappointed for the same reason: I wound up with old man cologne. One could argue that part of the thrill of a blind buy is not knowing whether or not a fragrance will be enjoyed and while I won't contest this, I'll present a counter-argument.

If I was getting juice that was disappointing because it had poor longevity, failed to project, or just plain sucked, that'd be one thing. When a fragrance receives dozes of positive reviews from people, while the reviews may be completely warranted, if they originate from within a common age group (of say a bunch of 40-50 year olds) they have little pertinence to any outliers of that age group (say to a group of twenty somethings). If a fragrance had 90 positive reviews / 0 neutral / 0 negative but all positive reviews were submitted by older gentlemen, I would likely take a pass on that fragrance due to the well-founded suspicion that it seems to be favored by a more mature user. Conversely, I'm sure mature users have wound up with fragrances that were too juvenile smelling, lacking in sophistication and maturity. While those fragrances might've all had the good attributes of a well-designed scent, they failed to please the more mature user because they displayed characteristics favored by a younger crowd.

While some of you may feel disclosing your age is invasive or unnecessary, just remember you're protected by the anonymity of your alias. I can't tell you how many times I've read a compelling review that made me nearly buy a frag but questioned the reviewers age. This has nothing to do with discriminating but rather with accurately profiling the relevance of different fragrances to various user-bases.

Without a doubt - knowing a reviewers age when taking their review into consideration is tantamount to knowing their gender. If I buy a scent that mostly 45 year old males like, I might as well have purchased a scent for 14 year old girls.

Also, the age would be displayed under a user's avatar like so:

Age:
Join Date:
Location:
Posts:

I understand there are always exceptions. I should've been more careful not to make that sound like such a blanket statement but my point still remains, knowing a user's age is germane to determining how applicable their review is to you and your preference.

I expected for this to produce a polarized response. I'm not saying fragrances created for teens can't be enjoyed by older people or vice-versa. I think that's great if they are! There are no hard and fast rules for fragrances and they can, and should be, worn by whoever enjoys them. Perhaps my "tone" came across more as a rant than a suggestion and for that I apologize - I must've been feeling irked by my recent disappointments. If gender were totally irrelevant however, we wouldn't have it available as an option here so it does carry some weight just like I think age does.