[Jaynie]

A review system can have a very large number of categories. vbulletin has a limit in the number of forums. If reviews are in forum threads, then categories are forums. This limits the number of review categories that you can have.

So the reviews will be in forum threads and those threads are in categories?

This depends on how the reviews are setup. If you have official reviewers, then you will have an editor rating and site user ratings.

If you want the first post to be a user review, then you would need to either only have user reviews, or have a combination of author and user reviews. I think the first option would make the most sense.

What do you think?

Right, with your explanation about editors it's clearer now. Is it possible for more than 1 editor to rate in the editor ratings? As in, are the editors in a usergroup that have permissions set to rate?
And yes I think having both options (editor rating and public rating OR public votes only) is great, the choice would depend, like you said, on how detailed the reviews are and what we're reviewing (media, products, classifieds).

I have requested quotes from a few developers some time ago, but received no or no viable response. With the above projects going forward, I think its fair to hold off hiring developers for now. If one of the above projects will provide the needed functionality and will properly support customers, then our goal is reached.

Definitely. Thanks for the clarification.