26 ms·

As the trope goes, if the author asks a question in the title of their article, the answer is "no, not really." I'd counter that online reviews still have pret

• ghaff 7y ago
  The real question is: What is the alternative? There are some useful review sites like Wirecutter that arguably cut through the clutter in a lot of cases. But the amount of "stuff" and experiences (e.g. restaurants) out there is pretty overwhelming for what's left of professional reviewers outside of some fairly narrow domains. I do a lot of travel. Are Yelp and TripAdvisor reviews of restaurants great? Not really. Are they generally better--given some critical mass--than picking a restaurant at random or because it has a cool name? Almost certainly. (Of course, online menus and the like can be somewhat useful as well.)
  • rorykoehler 7y ago
    We're building Bibimapp so you can get recommendations from your direct and extended network. Personal recommendations from people you trust. https://bibimapp.com https://bibimapp.com
    • frutiger 7y ago
      Off-topic: is the name related to this delicious Korean dish? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibimbap https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibimbap
      • rorykoehler 7y ago
        Sort of. Bibim means to beam (as in shine a light on) in Korean.
      • interestica 7y ago
        It has to be. This article has peaked my cynicism and I suspect your comment is just intended to seem like an organic response to legitimize that app plug. To keep it on topic, I suppose that's the result of the modern review-scape: I'm sceptical of any review or comment about a product.
        • rorykoehler 7y ago
          Are you suggesting that we know each other? That is pretty funny in a topical sense. We don't know each other fyi but as a keen reader of /r/HailCorporate I can see where you are coming from. Inauthenticity has dirtied the water for everyone. In any case I think my small plug is fair game to post on a forum about startups especially as it answered the question pretty directly. This is the alternative I envision will become the norm once millenials are old news.
        • defined 7y ago
          Nitpick: “piqued”, not “peaked” (though it’s a homonym)
          • interestica 7y ago
            Weird. I know this. Maybe I added it in to make my comment seem more legitimate and to trigger a response. ;) All swell that ends swell I guess.
    • richardhod 7y ago
      Please note that advertising is discouraged in this forum
      • hombre_fatal 7y ago
        Well, it's actually not. We even have a "Show HN" function for it that's very popular and gets a lot of engagement. And as a community of craftspeople, we are pretty lenient with others sharing their work. Also, I don't agree with demonizing people for making "I made <this>" posts while "I use <this>" endorsement posts go completely under the radar. You're just forcing the first group to behave like the second group while I find the first group much more valuable since we can see the connection and even interact with the creator. I see this all the time on r/gaming. The front page is 100% "advertising" but completely cool with gamers. The second an indie developer shares something they built, it's suddenly uncool. Simple fix: turn "I made this" into "I found this" and gamers are totally cool with it again because it couldn't possibly be advertising. It's a bit silly. "I made this" posts are much more interesting and become mini-AMAs on r/gaming instead of the same old meme-advertising of the same five AAA games.
        • richardhod 7y ago
          I think more precisely, my comment was about talking up something without adding extra insight or analysis to the discussion, and GP just posted their app without any extra insight. I intended to have been more precise, but got distracted. thank you for the elaboration, I would agree with you in general.
    • bpicolo 7y ago
      Different execution, but friends-and-family referrals is exactly what the original Yelp product was for.
    • fucking_tragedy 7y ago
      Affiliate, referral and influencer marketing will game your model.
      • rorykoehler 7y ago
        It's why we're restricting follows. Influencers can go shite.
  • v77 7y ago
    Wirecutter and Consumer Reports for most purchases, Yelp and TripAdvisor for reccomendations while traveling. Works pretty well.
    • arkitaip 7y ago
      I've come to really distrust Wirecutter after doing additional review research and realizing that many of the products they recommend have real issues and are in fact not the best whatever you can purchase. Also, their affiliate system isn't the most reliable one so often when you click their Amazon affiliate product link, you're forwarded to a non-existing product page.
      • basch 7y ago
        Even if their final recommendation isnt the best, its usually a good jumping off point to start looking up their recommendation, their upgrade, and the competition section. More often than not, if their main pick doesnt wow me, I can find something in the competition section that was dismissed for a silly reason, and Ill use that product to start my search.
      • ghaff 7y ago
        I guess experiences differ. Their recommendations have always seemed like pretty solid choices for me. What's certainly is true (CR as well going back decades) is that if you have a fair bit of knowledge and very specific wants/don't wants in a product area, you may well not be happy with the recommendations from any of the generalist review sites. (I wouldn't use them for a higher-end camera for example.)
      • chooseaname 7y ago
        > are in fact not the best whatever you can purchase. Best is still subjective, no matter how objective a reviewer may try to be. If one finds their tastes don't line up with a particular review site, then they can find another.
        • olivermarks 7y ago
  • binklee 7y ago
    That's interesting though: what's the alternative? Each vertical has different dimensions that matters to people, and some could be objectively measured, without reviewers. In my case, I'm building a community for any type of classes around you (e.g. dancing, yoga, acting classes, French, etc.) at https://classalog.org https://classalog.org and when I asked users 'how do you choose a class' almost no one tell me "I want to see reviews" as their first answers. Pictures, and knowing the experience of the instructor is more important. I'm not certain reviews with its downsides would do more good than bad, and I'm really hesitant to implement that feature at the moment.
  • basch 7y ago
    Thats exactly the answer though, more authoritative reviews. It's the same reason Rotten Tomatoes differentiates between a score and a top critics score. You can have a consumer reports score, and an amazon verified buyer score. Professional reviewers and aggregate buyer reviews. Theres actually lots of wirecutter type sites for different things, however there are just as many sites that seem to praise EVERY product they list, and sometimes there can be hundreds of sites all saying the same thing. https://electricbikereview.com/ https://electricbikereview.com/ is one where I have trouble telling which ones he likes more than others, because he is so positive about every features. Mattress and credit card / financial review sites have spun up like the plague. This is also one of the few places where I think the government could step in, where it currently isnt, and the Attorney General should run their own version of https://www.slant.co https://www.slant.co , wirecutter, consumer reports, yelp, better business bureau, https://thesweetsetup.com/picks/ https://thesweetsetup.com/picks/ etc. Some combination of government reliability and safety ratings, mixed with verified purchase reviews. It's a perfect place for the government to help cut through the paradox of choice and misleading or loud advertising, and help consumers find good products from the rough. As far as restaurants go, even just a nice aggregation app would be nice that could pull together and normalize scores from yelp, facebook, google, trip adviser, foursquare, zomato, opentable, zagat. It would be really nice to be able to see which restaurants end up popular on which sites, how scores compare across sites, An additional benefit of aggregation would be, if the app can find "like reviewers" that you should follow, people who vote similarly to you.
    • 99052882514569 7y ago
      > It's the same reason Rotten Tomatoes differentiates between a score and a top critics score. You can have a consumer reports score, and an amazon verified buyer score. With sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, I almost always completely ignore the "top critics" reviews and go with user reviews. In almost 100% of cases where the scores for TV shows significantly diverge, I find the user score to be spot on. I think the user scores on these sites aren't horribly out of whack with reality because there's not much to be gained by gaming them. I'm sure only a small minority of consumers go on such sites to pick what to watch next.
  • dannyw 7y ago
    Rtings.com for tech. They buy all of their units; they don't take 'review units'
    • wilsonnb3 7y ago
      Yes, I love rtings because they give consistent measurements. I can look at their review for a pair of headphones I own and a pair of headphones I'm considering buying and come out with a pretty good idea of how the headphones will sound and feel.
  • scottlocklin 7y ago
    > The real question is: What is the alternative? Well, before the internet existed, we had word of mouth. Pretty sure word of mouth is and always has been the right way of doing things. Even asking a random stranger in person is probably more signal to noise than reading the garbage posted online, and random chance aint terrible either. Authoritative reportage also still works in some cases.
    • ilikehurdles 7y ago
      I don't agree. Before the internet, people went to the safe/reliable/consistent chain restaurants much more than they do today, and I think it's because the internet made it easy to discover new places while also providing some predictability of whether those places would be enjoyable. It used to be when we were on a road trip and hungry, going to the Applechilibees/Olivelobster brand we recognized on the side of the road was a no-brainer, now I pull up yelp or glance at Eater a few minutes before arrival.
      • JohnFen 7y ago
        > now I pull up yelp or glance at Eater a few minutes before arrival. Those have egregiously misled me too many times for me to look at them anymore.
      • scottlocklin 7y ago
        I've literally never, ever had an app recommend me any restaurant (my phone doesn't do internet), and I eat at a lot of restaurants, at home, on the road and abroad. Other than the occasional MickeyD's none of them have been "chain restaurants." How have I survived without the ding dongs at Yelp telling me what to do? Hell, how have I survived without using GPS? I must have superpowers!
  • SomeOldThrow 7y ago
    Qualitative reviews, not quantitative. This is only crappy as a scalable business. > Are they generally better...than picking a restaurant at random? Depends on what you’re looking for, but I’ve had much better success off yelp than on it. I highly recommend going to literally random places. I certainly couldn’t find the restaurants I do eat at on yelp had I had to look again: they’re all in the middle of the pack ratings wise due to people conflating food rating, service rating, and setting rating. Whatever I like about these places yelp does not expose.
    • ghaff 7y ago
      >I highly recommend going to literally random places. Certainly not my experience. Most restaurants are mediocre or worse. User review sites are of course highly imperfect and sometimes there just aren't very good options off the beaten track. But I must say I have generally better experiences with doing at least a modicum of research (whether online, local recommendation, looking at menus, etc.) that just walking in somewhere at random.
      • SomeOldThrow 7y ago
        > Most restaurants are mediocre or worse. Without knowing you and what you look for in food, and in eating out, your expectations of service, your enjoyment of the aesthetic, your appreciation of arbitrary culture, it’s very hard to give this statement any weight. There are more restaurants on my block in SF than my home town, and of much higher quality. If you find the MAJORITY of restaurants to be mediocre or worse, that reveals a value system incompatible with mine. I’m just looking for a new place to eat, not the next Michelin star restaurant. Abundance of choice is my problem that random choice solves neatly.
        • ghaff 7y ago
          SF is of course much better than the norm. But I don't look for Michelin dining experiences. I'm very happy with a good ethnic restaurant of some sort. But yes--I do find if I walk into the random restaurant on a street I expect to be unimpressed, even in SF. And the fact that it's somewhere I haven't tried before isn't really a big plus in my book unless it's also good. I am at least somewhat picky however.
  • JohnFen 7y ago
    > The real question is: What is the alternative? While I tend to ignore reviews on the likes of Yelp, TripAdviser, Amazon, etc., I do have an alternative: I turn to blogs and YouTube. There is a lot that is problematic there, too, but at least with those fora, I can look at other reviews from the same person (which gives me an idea of the bent of that particular reviewer), and those reviews tend to be more long-form, where the reviewer usually goes into some amount of detail explaining why they gave the thing the review they did.
• em500 7y ago
  Betteridge's law vs Goodhart's law, which will prevail? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law