3 ms·

I actually wonder why crowd-sourced reviews have become so ubiquitous, to the point of almost being necessary (along with five-star ratings). Has anyone legitim

by ljm 8y ago

I actually wonder why crowd-sourced reviews have become so ubiquitous, to the point of almost being necessary (along with five-star ratings). Has anyone legitimately attempted to challenge the status quo here? I'm reminded of videogamedunkey on YouTube and his video about game critics[0], where he goes into some detail about the preferences and integrity of the critic being just as important (if not more) than the review and rating. Professional critics build a strong reputation around their taste and preference and they gain notoriety from doggedly sticking to those principles. So you'd likely trust the opinion of Roger Ebert or Mark Kermode if you share their taste in cinema, and even watch something you normally wouldn't if even they recommended it. You're very likely to subscribe to a publication whose critics align with your own tastes because they're effectively curating content for you in the form of recommendations. None of that applies when you have reviews from a succession of total strangers - you're not going to research dozens or hundreds of commentators to establish a logical consistency in their point of view and decide whether or not their tastes align with yours. More often than not the reviews are low quality and low value, spread across a five-point scale but essentially treated as a binary like/didn't like system. At that point, crowd-sourced reviews tell you nothing you didn't know already: some people enjoyed it for one reason and others didn't for a different reason. How do you know if those reasons are legit or authentic when they're not fake? How do you know if they weren't gamed or incentivised somehow to inflate expectations? Which ones can you trust? I suppose they boost sales but just like advertising, that doesn't mean they're automatically beneficial to the consumer. It's just another attempt at manipulation. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG2dXobAXLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG2dXobAXLI

sien 8y ago
Metacritic does this for games, music, tv and film. Aggregating what they regard as reliable reviewers is pretty reasonable. For general products it's much harder. There is less of a market. But perhaps it'll come. Aggregate Ars Technica, Tom's Hardware and some other hardware review sites maybe?
ohashi 8y ago
I think one of the biggest challenges is scale/breadth. For some things like Movies, we have lots of critics and there is demand for it. I work in web hosting reviews. Everyone technical has an opinion and non-technical too. The average HN reader and a non technical person starting their first blog are very different use cases and demands. I see way too often the 'why don't you just get a VPS and do it yourself it's cheaper' advice to basically anyone. Those are the kinds of people quite actively trying to 'help' newbies. And the reviews, well, it's not a product most people try a lot of different companies nor have any sense of how theirs might stack up. I've got to be one of the most experienced people in terms of number of companies used (I probably had accounts at ~50 companies this year), and I still wouldn't be comfortable writing reviews. It's too subjective and biased.

by ljm 8y ago

sien 8y ago

Metacritic does this for games, music, tv and film. Aggregating what they regard as reliable reviewers is pretty reasonable. For general products it's much harder. There is less of a market. But perhaps it'll come. Aggregate Ars Technica, Tom's Hardware and some other hardware review sites maybe?

ohashi 8y ago

I think one of the biggest challenges is scale/breadth. For some things like Movies, we have lots of critics and there is demand for it. I work in web hosting reviews. Everyone technical has an opinion and non-technical too. The average HN reader and a non technical person starting their first blog are very different use cases and demands. I see way too often the 'why don't you just get a VPS and do it yourself it's cheaper' advice to basically anyone. Those are the kinds of people quite actively trying to 'help' newbies. And the reviews, well, it's not a product most people try a lot of different companies nor have any sense of how theirs might stack up. I've got to be one of the most experienced people in terms of number of companies used (I probably had accounts at ~50 companies this year), and I still wouldn't be comfortable writing reviews. It's too subjective and biased.