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I think one of the things Yelp has caused (or, perhaps, needs to cause) is a change in consumer behavior related to bad reviews. I've learned, over the years,

by mdip 10y ago

I think one of the things Yelp has caused (or, perhaps, needs to cause) is a change in consumer behavior related to bad reviews. I've learned, over the years, to disregard certain kinds of bad reviews[0] or not choose to avoid a company because it has a small number of poor reviews. The Internet reminds of me of driving. Most people will scream at another driver for cutting them off on a merge -- assuming the driver was being aggressive and entitled (he thinks is time is so much more important than mine!). That same driver will find himself on a road, not paying enough attention, only to discover his lane is ending at the last second and expects another driver to let them in and understand it was just a mistake. We scream because we don't see the other driver as a human being, just an angry caricature of a bad driver (and we're not actually confronting that driver directly). On the Internet, we'll rip a mom and pop or small restaurant business apart because of a server who had too many tables and one bad dining experience. That same person likely didn't talk to the manager or give them an opportunity to make the situation better because it's a lot less socially intimidating to hit Yelp and tear into them via a bad review. [0] My favorite is "bed bug" reports at hotels. Practically every single hotel I've stayed at in the last few years has had at least one review claiming bed bugs (some with pictures for evidence). It's a problem pretty much everywhere and in those reviews I look for a hint about how the hotel handled the situation. If it was taken care of in a reasonable manner (regardless of what the reviewer feels was reasonable), I won't hold it against the hotel.

mikeash 10y ago
What you describe in your second paragraph is a general phenomenon called the fundamental attribution error: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error It's definitely helpful to keep in mind.
- mdip 10y ago
  Interesting. I had a boss about a decade ago that, during a really tense situation at my last job involving a false report of an application of mine suffering from a serious security vulnerability[0], said to me: "Where there are gaps of understanding, people jump to the worst possible conclusion." It was demonstrated so well during the follow-up meeting (where my application was exonerated and the friendship remained) that I took it to heart and made it a sort-of life mission. When something goes wrong, people assume the absolute worst but, as the Fundamental Attribution Error "bias" points out, we judge others by a different set of rules than we judge ourselves. If we assume that others are generally operating without malice as we assume ourselves to be, a whole lot of conflict is avoided. [0] We had an app that was on a hardened box and had asked security to audit it. The person who audited it didn't read that message and logged into the box due to another reason. He was then shocked that this box was able to connect to all of our infrastructure (for audit purposes) and he was still able to log in (we gave him explicit permissions to do so). He changed the configuration (without any notification) causing the application to stop and reporting to fail, then tried to get it all shut down. We went into a meeting, angry, under the perception that security was trying to kill this app because they preferred their own (which didn't meet our needs) and he went in assuming we were trying to be devious because our hardened configuration made it impossible for their auditing tool to audit the app. We were both wrong.
lijason 10y ago
Agreed. Yelp still has useful content, you just have to read a few reviews (good and bad) to see what patterns stand out. My analogous example to your hotel:bed bugs is Chinese restaurants:service. I've been to enough Chinese restaurants in my life to know what to expect. Unless the reviews show a particularly unusual pattern, I'm ignoring that complaint.

by mdip 10y ago

mikeash 10y ago

What you describe in your second paragraph is a general phenomenon called the fundamental attribution error: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error It's definitely helpful to keep in mind.

mdip 10y ago
Interesting. I had a boss about a decade ago that, during a really tense situation at my last job involving a false report of an application of mine suffering from a serious security vulnerability[0], said to me: "Where there are gaps of understanding, people jump to the worst possible conclusion." It was demonstrated so well during the follow-up meeting (where my application was exonerated and the friendship remained) that I took it to heart and made it a sort-of life mission. When something goes wrong, people assume the absolute worst but, as the Fundamental Attribution Error "bias" points out, we judge others by a different set of rules than we judge ourselves. If we assume that others are generally operating without malice as we assume ourselves to be, a whole lot of conflict is avoided. [0] We had an app that was on a hardened box and had asked security to audit it. The person who audited it didn't read that message and logged into the box due to another reason. He was then shocked that this box was able to connect to all of our infrastructure (for audit purposes) and he was still able to log in (we gave him explicit permissions to do so). He changed the configuration (without any notification) causing the application to stop and reporting to fail, then tried to get it all shut down. We went into a meeting, angry, under the perception that security was trying to kill this app because they preferred their own (which didn't meet our needs) and he went in assuming we were trying to be devious because our hardened configuration made it impossible for their auditing tool to audit the app. We were both wrong.

lijason 10y ago

Agreed. Yelp still has useful content, you just have to read a few reviews (good and bad) to see what patterns stand out. My analogous example to your hotel:bed bugs is Chinese restaurants:service. I've been to enough Chinese restaurants in my life to know what to expect. Unless the reviews show a particularly unusual pattern, I'm ignoring that complaint.