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> I wouldn't consider the owner's friend's review to be "fake." I would. If Obama wrote a book and his childhood friend reviewed it on Amazon, I would discount

by smtddr 13y ago

> I wouldn't consider the owner's friend's review to be "fake." I would. If Obama wrote a book and his childhood friend reviewed it on Amazon, I would discount that review. Or at least consider it highly suspect.

baddox 13y ago
Can you articulate exactly why you wouldn't value that review? I would only consider a review "fake" and discount it if I thought the reviewer hadn't actually experienced the item being reviewed, or was externally incentivized (e.g. paid) to compose the review. Merely discounting a review for being "biased" doesn't seem wise to me. Presumably, the childhood friend of Obama actually did enjoy the book, and the friend of the restaurant owner probably does enjoy the restaurant, even if those preferences are influenced by their relationship with the item owner/producer.
- smtddr 13y ago
  > Merely discounting a review for being "biased" doesn't seem wise to me. To me, fake and biased are not too far apart considering the context that I expect reviews on books, restaurants, etc. to come from random people who don't have any particular reason to like or dislike the product outside of the quality of the product itself. I believe friends & family are too close to the product to give a review without external-factors influencing. It's true that the friend could have truly enjoyed the product, but I still think the chances that their review was influenced by their friendship is high enough to make the review suspect.
  - baddox 13y ago
    > I expect reviews on books, restaurants, etc. to come from random people who don't have any particular reason to like or dislike the product outside of the quality of the product itself. The problem with that expectation is that voluntary reviews already self-select for people willing to write reviews, which will almost certainly introduce strong biases.
    - smtddr 13y ago
      Hmm, I consider the people who are passionate enough about their experience to write a review to be the exact people I want to hear from. Of course, I'm aware of the tendency of people to complain more often than complement. If everything goes well with a product, it's like "ah, nice." But when it fails, it causes feelings of being ripped-off and to resolve those feelings means complain-on-the-interwebz. But, I guess that's the best we've got, right? Otherwise how do we go about getting reviews for anything? I definitely think forcing people to do reviews that they didn't want to write would produce mostly garbage.

by smtddr 13y ago

baddox 13y ago

Can you articulate exactly why you wouldn't value that review? I would only consider a review "fake" and discount it if I thought the reviewer hadn't actually experienced the item being reviewed, or was externally incentivized (e.g. paid) to compose the review. Merely discounting a review for being "biased" doesn't seem wise to me. Presumably, the childhood friend of Obama actually did enjoy the book, and the friend of the restaurant owner probably does enjoy the restaurant, even if those preferences are influenced by their relationship with the item owner/producer.

smtddr 13y ago
> Merely discounting a review for being "biased" doesn't seem wise to me. To me, fake and biased are not too far apart considering the context that I expect reviews on books, restaurants, etc. to come from random people who don't have any particular reason to like or dislike the product outside of the quality of the product itself. I believe friends & family are too close to the product to give a review without external-factors influencing. It's true that the friend could have truly enjoyed the product, but I still think the chances that their review was influenced by their friendship is high enough to make the review suspect.
- baddox 13y ago
  > I expect reviews on books, restaurants, etc. to come from random people who don't have any particular reason to like or dislike the product outside of the quality of the product itself. The problem with that expectation is that voluntary reviews already self-select for people willing to write reviews, which will almost certainly introduce strong biases.
  - smtddr 13y ago
    Hmm, I consider the people who are passionate enough about their experience to write a review to be the exact people I want to hear from. Of course, I'm aware of the tendency of people to complain more often than complement. If everything goes well with a product, it's like "ah, nice." But when it fails, it causes feelings of being ripped-off and to resolve those feelings means complain-on-the-interwebz. But, I guess that's the best we've got, right? Otherwise how do we go about getting reviews for anything? I definitely think forcing people to do reviews that they didn't want to write would produce mostly garbage.