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When has this ever worked in the real world? I mean, in theory parts of it are nice, but conflating it with the spam problem is probably not accurate; merchants

When has this ever worked in the real world? I mean, in theory parts of it are nice, but conflating it with the spam problem is probably not accurate; merchants will just pay for positive reviews for themselves and negative ones for competitors. I ask honestly: are there examples where this has worked? I feel like the much better system is to increase the available information about transaction and/or review volumes associated with a particular account -- that makes it much easier to filter out bullshit, and mimics the way fakes are detected on the rest of the internet.

runeks 13y ago
> When has this ever worked in the real world? I mean, in theory parts of it are nice, but conflating it with the spam problem is probably not accurate; merchants will just pay for positive reviews for themselves and negative ones for competitors. I ask honestly: are there examples where this has worked? eBay works this way [1], and I believe this is how Silk Road operated as well, although I'm not sure. Merchants who pay for positive reviews for themselves and negative reviews for others have greater expenses than merchants who refrain from this, and, consequently, are less competitive. Imagine a market place with hundreds or thousands of vendors (which is the size an established market place will grow to, if not much larger). Let's say the average total sale volume per merchant is $10k (I think that's a low figure). To nudge all your competitors' total review score 10% in the wrong direction you'd have to buy 1,000 * $10,000 * 10% = $1M USD worth of items from them, and leave all of them a 1 star feedback. Does this sound like an economically viable business approach? Paying for positive reviews for yourself is cheaper than that, but you're still less competitive than the merchants who actually satisfy clients, and don't have to spend funds to increase their own rating score. I'm not saying you can't combine this approach with something else, that might very well be the best solution. But I do think the best solution will require paying for reviews, in some way or another. > I feel like the much better system is to increase the available information about transaction and/or review volumes associated with a particular account -- that makes it much easier to filter out bullshit, and mimics the way fakes are detected on the rest of the internet. I think I would need more details on this approach to understand what you're suggesting. How would you achieve this in a distributed system? And how do you get around the problem of vendors being able to increase their review score for free? [1] http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html#how http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html#how
- allworknoplay 13y ago
  Sorry I didn't see this before. a) ebay does NOT work like this. you leave reviews of merchants when you've done business with them, not for pay. b) silk road does not work like this. c) you're now imposing a tax on the market which costs everyone more, disproportionately benefits the wealthiest, and generates confusion. great job. d) how is this not clear? if you add a gold star to someone's review when they have actually purchased from a merchant through your system, that gold star can be evaluated in any number of ways and help weight reviews properly. like, numerically weighting authenticated reviews more heavily. or whatever. there's obviously a downside, which is that unlike yelp, nobody is using their real personality, and there's some benefit to changing ones' personality if one is worried about the legal consequences of ones' actions. but on silk road this doesn't appear to be a significant barrier -- there are enough persistent personalities that it's pretty easy to discern the credible from the questionable. e) you didn't positively answer the original question: has this ever worked? it seems nice based on one single argument (tax on lying) but not based on all the ancillary problems...
contulluipeste 13y ago
"When has this ever worked in the real world?" Much of everything related to decentralized systems are just new and can not therefore be backed by previous working examples. "merchants will just pay for positive reviews for themselves and negative ones for competitors" Of course they will! Boys will fight, that's part of their nature, but we can set rules nevertheless. If rating will cost money and merchants will be willing to pay for it, let them! In the end, the artificial rating will have to be paid with real money coming from real customers. This real deal will have to be larger than the artificial one (in order to sustain it) and thus it will be costly to be fought against, like in an uphill battle. ___ As an improvement to this system (in order to make it harder to be gamed), I add the automatic distribution of the review paid costs to a pool of recent reviewers.

runeks 13y ago

> When has this ever worked in the real world? I mean, in theory parts of it are nice, but conflating it with the spam problem is probably not accurate; merchants will just pay for positive reviews for themselves and negative ones for competitors. I ask honestly: are there examples where this has worked? eBay works this way [1], and I believe this is how Silk Road operated as well, although I'm not sure. Merchants who pay for positive reviews for themselves and negative reviews for others have greater expenses than merchants who refrain from this, and, consequently, are less competitive. Imagine a market place with hundreds or thousands of vendors (which is the size an established market place will grow to, if not much larger). Let's say the average total sale volume per merchant is $10k (I think that's a low figure). To nudge all your competitors' total review score 10% in the wrong direction you'd have to buy 1,000 * $10,000 * 10% = $1M USD worth of items from them, and leave all of them a 1 star feedback. Does this sound like an economically viable business approach? Paying for positive reviews for yourself is cheaper than that, but you're still less competitive than the merchants who actually satisfy clients, and don't have to spend funds to increase their own rating score. I'm not saying you can't combine this approach with something else, that might very well be the best solution. But I do think the best solution will require paying for reviews, in some way or another. > I feel like the much better system is to increase the available information about transaction and/or review volumes associated with a particular account -- that makes it much easier to filter out bullshit, and mimics the way fakes are detected on the rest of the internet. I think I would need more details on this approach to understand what you're suggesting. How would you achieve this in a distributed system? And how do you get around the problem of vendors being able to increase their review score for free? [1] http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html#how http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html#how

allworknoplay 13y ago
Sorry I didn't see this before. a) ebay does NOT work like this. you leave reviews of merchants when you've done business with them, not for pay. b) silk road does not work like this. c) you're now imposing a tax on the market which costs everyone more, disproportionately benefits the wealthiest, and generates confusion. great job. d) how is this not clear? if you add a gold star to someone's review when they have actually purchased from a merchant through your system, that gold star can be evaluated in any number of ways and help weight reviews properly. like, numerically weighting authenticated reviews more heavily. or whatever. there's obviously a downside, which is that unlike yelp, nobody is using their real personality, and there's some benefit to changing ones' personality if one is worried about the legal consequences of ones' actions. but on silk road this doesn't appear to be a significant barrier -- there are enough persistent personalities that it's pretty easy to discern the credible from the questionable. e) you didn't positively answer the original question: has this ever worked? it seems nice based on one single argument (tax on lying) but not based on all the ancillary problems...

contulluipeste 13y ago

"When has this ever worked in the real world?" Much of everything related to decentralized systems are just new and can not therefore be backed by previous working examples. "merchants will just pay for positive reviews for themselves and negative ones for competitors" Of course they will! Boys will fight, that's part of their nature, but we can set rules nevertheless. If rating will cost money and merchants will be willing to pay for it, let them! In the end, the artificial rating will have to be paid with real money coming from real customers. This real deal will have to be larger than the artificial one (in order to sustain it) and thus it will be costly to be fought against, like in an uphill battle. ___ As an improvement to this system (in order to make it harder to be gamed), I add the automatic distribution of the review paid costs to a pool of recent reviewers.