tl;dr: probably harping on semantics, but maybe "hits and misses" over "rants and raves" would encourage people to talk more about products.

I wonder if just changing the wording of some recurring posts (like rants/raves) would encourage different types of comments. I don't visit the rants/raves threads often, because I've mostly come to expect that everyone raves about "I love products x, y, and z!", "this lip color is what I've been waiting all my life for", and "X brand-owner is so nice and helpful and gave me personal recommendations!" (basically, everything from a product-positive to generally indie-positive to brand-owner-positive) while popular rants are "USPS!!" or "hated this one product so much I had to scrub it off immediately, so sad!" Just the wording of "rants and raves" seems to encourage people to bring up stuff they loved or hated enough to rant or rave about, rather than just letting people know how they liked their products.

Maybe some sort of "Indie Hits and Misses" thread would encourage people to just give feedback on what products worked for them and which ones didn't? I wouldn't categorize the fact that Cozy Sweater and Lolita and all sorts of other favorites were nothing special on me as a rant, but they were definite misses. Prior to ordering samples, all I had heard was how amazing they were, and it wasn't until months later, when a single person mentioned somewhere that cozy sweater didn't work on them, that all sorts of other people came out of the woodwork talking about how cozy sweater didn't work for them either. I wish I had seen all those reviews prior to trying it out! I love when people review everything they got in a haul, because it seems to be the only time you hear "eh, it was alright, but I'll probably swap it" (which is very useful to know!) rather than "I love it, full size now!!" or "took ten weeks to get here/ contains animal hair/ smelled like vomit and had to scrub it off."

Basically, I know that I might not bother to post "I got seven samples from X company, this one I really liked, these two I kind of liked, the other four were sort of whatever" in a rants and raves thread, but might put it in a "hits and misses" thread (or something like that). This isn't because I don't feel comfortable posting blah-reviews, but more because my initial thought when I pass by a 'rants and raves' thread is that I don't have any rants or raves to share. I would be much more likely to read about peoples' hits and misses too, as opposed to just the things they loved or hated enough to rant/rave about, because hopefully it would cover more products.

Wow. sorry this got long. adding a tldr at the top.