Boston Globe's coverage on the Chowhound redesign

Culture, Media, General Food Media and News
21

I know everyone will be shocked, but our former friends, the Mods over at Chowhound, just pulled down my simple link to the Globe article.

Good God.

22

Hi, SS:

Would someone please explain why these Alexa graphs are designed to show downward trends in an UPWARD direction?

Thanks,
Kaleo

23

But they left this one up:

Lots of references to Hungry Onion remain on this thread as well.

24

Good for them. Maybe the Chowhound mods have finally gain back some confidence, or they just gave up. I don’t know which. Regardless, they should know by now that the real threat for Chowhound is internal not external. Chowhound’s problem is not HungryOnion or eGullet. Chowhound’s problem is its own web design and its previous moderation attitude.

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25

You could ask Professor Backwards, but he died after his cries of “pleh, pleh!” went ignored. :slight_smile:

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26

Really? And what are the “standard evaluation criteria” for those posting on Yelp?

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27

In my opinion, both Yelp and Chow has their pros and cons. I think Chow is more interactive. You can post a question and get a few personal answer to address to your specific question. Yelp on the other hand is very quick if you know exactly what you are looking for. If I know the name of the restaurant in a city, I can get an average score from Yelp in 3 seconds. I do think Yelp has the problem that “too many of anyone” can post, so the expert opinions are buried under the novice opinions.

28

ummmm… hmmm… errrrr… Okay. Scratch Yelp! :innocent:

29

…the expert opinions are buried under the novice opinions.

actually, it is much more likely that at Yelp - “real” opinions are buried under tons and tons and tons of “fake” / shill opinions.

Yelp is a for profit business. if a business entity pays their “advertising” fee any “bad” reviews can be deleted, and mysteriously hundreds of “good” reviews are made to appear.

lawsuits apply.

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30

That actually isn’t true.

31

Interesting take. Probably some of that too.

32

Why, yes. Yes it is . . .

33

Any actual factual evidence of this? I’m skeptical.

34

Be as skeptical as you like – I’ve been fighting with Yelp over shill reviews and the fees they want me to pay for three years.

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Over shill reviews of your business? I’m confused. Any documentation? emails, evidence, etc?

36

I’m not sure why this is so confusing. Our business – and those of many other businesses (just do a simple internet search using your search engine of choice) – have suffered “shill reviews” which Yelp offers to remove for a price, and if you continue to pay them every month . . .

And if you don’t, they will actually go so far as to block real (positive) reviews from being posting, claiming that they (Yelp) aren’t sure they (the reviews) are real. HONEST! We had “discussions” over that, too. (You can’t make up $#|+ like that!)

As I’ve said, you are fully entitled to be as skeptical as you like. But let me ask you this, do you REALLY think Yelp is going to put something in writing admitting to “shill reviews”? Just curious . . .

I’m not in my office at the moment. IF (and it’s a big “if”) I have any emails they are from our business to Yelp and approx. three years old. I honestly don’t know if we still have them. All of Yelp’s “correspondence” in return has been telephonic. (No one ever said they were stupid.)

IIRC, there was actually a court case involving Yelp and its reviews, but the details escape me at the moment. I’ll see if I can find it.

P.S. Just for Yelp’s crack legal team: Everything stated herein is my own personal opinion, does n’t represent the opinion or official position of any business or businesses I might be connected to, and is covered under my First Amendment rights of Free Speech expression. (I have no idea if that will protect me from a libel/slander suit, but I’m not looking forward to getting slapped with one.)

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37

if you have a search engine handy, type is
fake yelp reviews

there’s many hits, there’s multitudes of lawsuits, and you can even read about Yelp! effort to identify / delete fake posts and the Yelp! lawsuits against companies hiring people to write fake reviews.

it makes the news wires, time to time.

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38

There are also plenty of companies - usually advertising as “Social Media Management” - that will pay big bucks for positive or negative reviews. If you’re an “Elite,” you can make over $500 a review, provided the post stays visible for a certain time period. If the company then loses that client, the reviewer is asked to remove their review.

(No, I have not done this. Yes, I have been approached multiple times to do so. Hard to turn down rather decent money, but it’s far too unethical for me - especially the negative reviews.)

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39

My comment is specifically in response to this statement, which is untrue, despite the many anecdotes you read on the interest.

And Yelp hasn’t lost a lawsuit around this yet. Allegations are not proof.

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40

Holy carp. Why I am doing here? :smile:
I thought I was making it big when I get free products to review from Amazon (I don’t do it anymore because it is very time consuming to review a product).

You have higher standard than I do. I just tell every ladies I met that they are the “most beautiful” woman I have met. :stuck_out_tongue:

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