4 ms·

One of the first things I do when I'm considering a piece of media is I read the negative reviews. Finding out the reasons why someone doesn't like something is

by bnralt 4y ago

One of the first things I do when I'm considering a piece of media is I read the negative reviews. Finding out the reasons why someone doesn't like something is a good way to see if you'd like it yourself. For instance, most of the time I'm going to enjoy a film that gets dinged for being "confusing" than I am for one that gets dinged for being "bland." Others might find the opposite to be true. It's not that I'm necessarily going to agree with the negative reviews. But I definitely find them much more useful. It's a sad state of affairs when we're told that there's only one correct opinion about a particular piece of media and dissenting views are "wrong." We lose the deep insight that comes from looking at who likes and dislikes a piece and why. And it's hard to truly like something when liking it is presented as the only correct choice from the start.

holoduke 4y ago
For me as as well. Same for dislike buttons. I d like to see them. Shame they dont have it anymore at youtube.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  Interestingly, I don't think I really found dislike counts to be very useful, though I do go for negative reviews on books first. Negative reviews tend to be a bit more articulate and specific about what they didn't like, and why they didn't like it. Pain points tend to stand out a lot more than positive things, especially if you go into an experience with the expectation that you'll enjoy it. That said, there's also plenty of occasions where I've found nothing useful in the negative reviews, but found some positive reviews compelling enough to try a book. Movies, TV shows and music I tend to ignore specific reviews altogether, and just go by the description and overall positive/negative average from ratings. There are so many more dimensions that short form reviews generally aren't useful at all.
  - Sakos 4y ago
    I wonder how useful it would be for a dislike button to require a brief statement explaining why. I'm not a fan of dislike/downvote buttons in general because there are so many different reasons why something could be perceived as negative, and what might be considered negative by one person might be a positive for somebody else. It just feels like noise to me.
- andrepd 4y ago
  Eh, tbh dislikes on YouTube were more of a popularity contest for the outrage du jour or a sign that some streamer told his followers to brigade something.
  - noizejoy 4y ago
    I’m still disappointed that YouTube/Google didn’t find it worthwhile to figure out brigading and render it useless. Wouldn’t that be an entirely solvable problem? Or am I expecting too much from machine learning?
    - viraptor 4y ago
      Given the gigabytes of data that just viewing the content generates for them, I'm sure they could correlate those actions. But given it took them many months to deal with extremely obvious comment spam... I have low expectations.
fzeindl 4y ago
This works for technology or products as well. The first thing I do when evaluating a framework is googling the phrase "technologyXY is terrible" and see what comes up.
Sakos 4y ago
I do this for everything. Negative or low score reviews for products on Amazon are the most useful for deciding whether something might not meet my needs.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  Though it’s very easy to fall into the opposite trap and get disillusioned with everything. Some people just have bad luck or like to complain a lot.
  - Sakos 4y ago
    It's important to evaluate the negative reviews for yourself. Often enough they'll complain about things that won't bother me or aren't relevant to the product itself or what I need it for. The frequency is also an important data point. If a single review out of 1000 says that it broke after a day, it has far less weight than if 10 or 50 reviews complain about quality.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    > Some people just have bad luck or like to complain a lot. But this is exactly what you look for. How many of the bad reviews are people who seem like they whine a lot, how many are just unlucky, how many have seemingly reasonable complaints, etc. How dumb are the bad reviews? If most are just stupid, it’s probably a good product, if you can find at least one review that really seems like it was by a real person with a real issue, it’s an indicator that some of the reviews are at least real.
    - Semaphor 4y ago
      Yeah, but my issue is I find products, almost all having quite a few bad reviews that all seem real and about serious issues, and then I end up only getting a cheap item because if it sucks at least I didn’t spend much. But maybe that’s just a "me" issue ;)
      - Sakos 4y ago
macpete42 4y ago
This makes a lot of sense since quite often many positive reviews are just fake and paid.

by bnralt 4y ago

holoduke 4y ago

For me as as well. Same for dislike buttons. I d like to see them. Shame they dont have it anymore at youtube.

zdragnar 4y ago
Interestingly, I don't think I really found dislike counts to be very useful, though I do go for negative reviews on books first. Negative reviews tend to be a bit more articulate and specific about what they didn't like, and why they didn't like it. Pain points tend to stand out a lot more than positive things, especially if you go into an experience with the expectation that you'll enjoy it. That said, there's also plenty of occasions where I've found nothing useful in the negative reviews, but found some positive reviews compelling enough to try a book. Movies, TV shows and music I tend to ignore specific reviews altogether, and just go by the description and overall positive/negative average from ratings. There are so many more dimensions that short form reviews generally aren't useful at all.
- Sakos 4y ago
  I wonder how useful it would be for a dislike button to require a brief statement explaining why. I'm not a fan of dislike/downvote buttons in general because there are so many different reasons why something could be perceived as negative, and what might be considered negative by one person might be a positive for somebody else. It just feels like noise to me.
andrepd 4y ago
Eh, tbh dislikes on YouTube were more of a popularity contest for the outrage du jour or a sign that some streamer told his followers to brigade something.
- noizejoy 4y ago
  I’m still disappointed that YouTube/Google didn’t find it worthwhile to figure out brigading and render it useless. Wouldn’t that be an entirely solvable problem? Or am I expecting too much from machine learning?
  - viraptor 4y ago
    Given the gigabytes of data that just viewing the content generates for them, I'm sure they could correlate those actions. But given it took them many months to deal with extremely obvious comment spam... I have low expectations.

fzeindl 4y ago

This works for technology or products as well. The first thing I do when evaluating a framework is googling the phrase "technologyXY is terrible" and see what comes up.

Sakos 4y ago

I do this for everything. Negative or low score reviews for products on Amazon are the most useful for deciding whether something might not meet my needs.

Semaphor 4y ago
Though it’s very easy to fall into the opposite trap and get disillusioned with everything. Some people just have bad luck or like to complain a lot.
- Sakos 4y ago
  It's important to evaluate the negative reviews for yourself. Often enough they'll complain about things that won't bother me or aren't relevant to the product itself or what I need it for. The frequency is also an important data point. If a single review out of 1000 says that it broke after a day, it has far less weight than if 10 or 50 reviews complain about quality.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  > Some people just have bad luck or like to complain a lot. But this is exactly what you look for. How many of the bad reviews are people who seem like they whine a lot, how many are just unlucky, how many have seemingly reasonable complaints, etc. How dumb are the bad reviews? If most are just stupid, it’s probably a good product, if you can find at least one review that really seems like it was by a real person with a real issue, it’s an indicator that some of the reviews are at least real.
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    Yeah, but my issue is I find products, almost all having quite a few bad reviews that all seem real and about serious issues, and then I end up only getting a cheap item because if it sucks at least I didn’t spend much. But maybe that’s just a "me" issue ;)
    - Sakos 4y ago

macpete42 4y ago

This makes a lot of sense since quite often many positive reviews are just fake and paid.