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Re:A few negative online reviews early on can hurt a restaurant by nkurz on Friday July 24, 2020 @09:06PM (#23946048)
> To address the question, bad reviews can affect popularity...

That's not the question that others are referring to. Everyone agrees that bad reviews affect the popularity.

The question others want answered is how one distinguishes a "decent restaurant with bad reviews" from a "bad restaurant with bad reviews". Yes, initial bad reviews are likely to affect the number of total reviews a restaurant receives. But it's also clear that a bad restaurant is likely to get bad initial reviews. The press release says that the ratings of the initial reviews determines (causes) the total number of reviews and hence the eventual popularity of the restaurant, but doesn't explain how the researchers eliminated the apparently obvious alternative causal explanation that bad restaurants are more likely to get initial bad reviews, leading to fewer total reviews.

One hopes that the paper (which I haven't read yet) answers this better than the press release: https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1080/23754931.2020.179...

Re:A few negative online reviews early on can hurt a restaurant by NaOH on Saturday July 25, 2020 @12:51AM (#23946924)
> The question others want answered is how one distinguishes a "decent restaurant with bad reviews" from a "bad restaurant with bad reviews". But it's also clear that a bad restaurant is likely to get bad initial reviews.

A helpful move for new establishments—especially independent ones which don't have the organizing strategies of large corporations—would be to delay allowing comments for 3–6 months. I've worked in food for a long time, still do, and it's so difficult to have all aspects of an establishment in a good place at the outset. Give restaurants the time to work out those kinks before accepting comments.

Re:A few negative online reviews early on can hurt a restaurant by yoz-y on Saturday July 25, 2020 @04:55AM (#23947734)
One other option would be to display something like “this restaurant did not receive enough ratings to show them” like some online stores do.
Re:A few negative online reviews early on can hurt a restaurant by Hello71 on Friday July 24, 2020 @10:03PM (#23946312)
> One hopes that the paper (which I haven't read yet) answers this better than the press release

The paper: As the number of reviews is statistically significant and positive in all of the regression models, the more reviews a restaurant receives, the higher rating it has.