News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in... by nradov on Thursday March 09, 2017 @01:52PM (#13831877)
Instead of asking customers to give numeric star ratings, perhaps a better option would be a short list of Yes / No / Unsure questions. Were there clean sheets on the bed? Were there any cockroaches? Did the appliances work? Etc. Such questions are more objective and less prone to inflation.
Re:Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in... by noer on Thursday March 09, 2017 @05:54PM (#13834611)
This is probably a much better way to do it. One of the food delivery company does it this way (I think it's grubhub/seamless). Three questions before you're given an option to review: 1. Was the food on time? 2. Was the order correct? 3. Was the food good? Only then is the person given the option to review.

The problem with star based rating systems is that they're INCREDIBLY subjective. I oftentimes read yelp reviews that are 3 star reviews where the person raves about the restaurant and then complains about a minor issue. I have a similar issue with app store ratings where I've had a rash of people rate one of my apps 1 star with the review text reading "I just downloaded this, I'll raise my review to 5 stars if love this app".

Re:Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in... by infinite8s on Thursday March 09, 2017 @06:31PM (#13834879)
Also a lot of times on Amazon the low reviews are reflective of an issue with that particular sale instead of the item itself (ie damaged while shipping, etc).
Re:Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in... by ajmurmann on Friday March 10, 2017 @01:09AM (#13836736)
Another annoyance is amazon not allowing rating separate editions of something. For example a bad kindle version resulted in bad ratings for Dune a few years ago. Sometimes certain versions of movies are bad while the movie in general is great.
Re:Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in... by ansgri on Thursday March 09, 2017 @04:00PM (#13833574)
Booking.com does it, btw. And I strongly prefer it.
Re:Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in... by mosselman on Thursday March 09, 2017 @11:21PM (#13836356)
Surprised there is only one mention of Booking.com here. It is an indispensable tool for booking my vacations. The reviews are very useful and a lot more accurate than things like yelp. I have glanced at other websites, but nothing gives me the reassurance of the legitimacy of the reviews that booking.com does.
Re:Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in... by prawn on Thursday March 09, 2017 @07:10PM (#13835114)
Agree - it really helps you identify which parts of the experience are problematic. If the location is 8.7 where everything else is 9.5+, you know you'll be walking a distance to get anywhere useful. If the location is 9.5 while cleanliness is 7.8, you can consider the trade-off to be in the thick of things.
Re:Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in... by notahacker on Friday March 10, 2017 @06:45AM (#13837884)
So do low end hostel sites, funnily enough. Arguably they need it more to distinguish between the places that are popular because they're clean, good value and quiet and the places that are popular because they have a very good (and loud) bar and a vendor who's very good at persuading people to go on his tours
Re:Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in... by golergka on Thursday March 09, 2017 @03:51PM (#13833462)
They also require more time, and most people don't bother to leave reviews anyway.
Re:Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in... by warrenm on Thursday March 09, 2017 @04:02PM (#13833601)
But if you're going to review, a few extra seconds shouldn't matter

It's how the "official" reviews from Marriott/Hilton/etc all work

Re:Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in... by Taek on Thursday March 09, 2017 @05:10PM (#13834276)
1. Require each person to answer one specific question per listing. Yes/no/almost

2. Ask each person a different objective question, intentionally filling in the gaps.

3. After a few people, you have an objective, relatively thorough view of the house, but you've not burdened any of your users with more than one question per stay.

Re:Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in... by calbear81 on Thursday March 09, 2017 @04:53PM (#13834100)
The new review flow on Airbnb asks for more details about specific aspects of a listing.