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A comment on Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme?. Parent comment

Re:Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme? by jrockway on Friday February 26, 2010 @03:45PM (#1154066)
The business doesn't lose anything by not playing Yelp's game. You would still go to the cafe if it had a few bad reviews on Yelp, and so would I. (Then again, I read the content of reviews rather than the arbitrary star rating. If someone says "1 star, I ordered a salad and hated it because I hate vegetables" then I am not going to think negatively of the business that has this review attached. I am going to think, "damn people are dumb".)
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Re:Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme? by axod on Friday February 26, 2010 @04:06PM (#1154131)
I was looking for dedicated server hosting the other day, and that market is just ridiculously full of bad, stupid reviews.

"This dedicated server provider is terrible! They wouldn't even help me with a mysql problem" etc.

I'm sure half the hosting co reviews are done by competitors, and the other half are done by idiots who don't understand anything. And of course all the satisfied customers can't be bothered to write reviews.

It's always going to be best to get a personal recommendation than trusting reviews on the internet, for anything.

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Re:Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme? by tokenadult on Friday February 26, 2010 @07:47PM (#1154600)
It's always going to be best to get a personal recommendation than trusting reviews on the internet, for anything.

This is precisely why many people expect social networks to play a larger and larger role in commerce.

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Re:Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme? by axod on Saturday February 27, 2010 @04:34AM (#1155139)
The problem with that is, social network 'friends' are usually pretty meaningless. They're certainly not usually people I'd trust to recommend anything.
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Re:Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme? by kolosy on Friday February 26, 2010 @03:50PM (#1154081)
my issue isn't impact on the guys that don't play, it's impact on the consumer from the guys that do. a crappy restaurant that has 5 star reviews because the bad ones were paid off hurts me financially.
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Re:Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme? by jrockway on Friday February 26, 2010 @03:52PM (#1154086)
If you are letting random people on the Internet hurt you financially, you are doing something else wrong. Take everything you read with a grain of salt.
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Re:Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme? by tptacek on Friday February 26, 2010 @05:01PM (#1154264)
The thesis of your argument is thus that Yelp has no reason to exist. We differ on the reasons but agree on the conclusion. Let's call it a push.
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Re:Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme? by kolosy on Friday February 26, 2010 @03:55PM (#1154096)
hurt financially == going to a restaurant/store/{insert random b&m service provider here} that i shouldn't have gone to, and spend more time/money + get worse service/product out of as a result.

isn't the whole point of a review system to influence people's decisions?

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Re:Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme? by jrockway on Friday February 26, 2010 @04:00PM (#1154114)
In the end, you hurt yourself financially. What if there was no review system at all?
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Re:Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme? by kolosy on Friday February 26, 2010 @04:04PM (#1154125)
... then i would use other, less centralized and organized sources, as i did before yelp existed. what's your point?

i'm certainly not saying that yelp is stealing money from me, but trusted (yes, only to a certain extent) information is trusted information. if misleading, there are consequences to the consumer.

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Re:Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme? by jrockway on Friday February 26, 2010 @04:11PM (#1154146)
What I'm saying is that review sites are misleading even when reviews aren't being paid for. Paying people to write reviews makes the data no worse than it already was, because it was already pretty bad.
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Re:Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme? by kolosy on Friday February 26, 2010 @04:15PM (#1154161)
but that's not what's happening - they're not paying people to write reviews, they're (allegedly) collecting money for removing unfavorable reviews. i think that's more damaging.
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Re:Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme? by wonlove on Friday February 26, 2010 @05:26PM (#1154311)
that would be incredibly damaging. luckily we don't actually do that.
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Re:Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme? by BigO on Friday February 26, 2010 @04:12PM (#1154149)
what if you had reviews made by your friends and sources you trust accessible to you online that seems like a better model than see what everyone and their dog thinks about everything under the sun..
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