She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering • Hacker News Board

Re: She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

#21

Post by jmye » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 4:36 AM UTC

fsckboy wrote: post #9

Ratings should always be on a curve for the rater, and on a 10 point scale, with no official meaning attached to the number of stars. If you rate everything 10 stars, you just gave everything 5 stars. If you want your 10 stars to mean 10 stars, you need to rate a bell curve of other stuff too. (you might say "but if I only select the best places, and the ratings are always confirmed, that would be downvoting them." N…

My issue is that we’ve been trained to see things on a broken scale - 10 is good, 9 is good, 8 is probably ok, 7 is questionable and everything else is really bad.

I get it’s chicken/egg, but I feel like you can’t adjust ratings without retraining people on what ratings mean. I guess that means I think we should probably do away with the numbers and think about a more qualitative approach? Not a strong belief.

Re: She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

#22

Post by lakpan » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 4:36 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #20

Honestly, I can't believe it is 2024 and people still believe/trust user-generated reviews of any sort. Isn't it widely known that these are always gamed, manipulated, algorithmically distorted and just totally unsuitable for making any kind of judgment about a product? I'm shocked that people and companies still pay attention to these streams of garbage.

I don’t trust the positive ones but their content is useful. Sometimes I want to know the entrance price or if anyone complained about something.

Most people don’t know reviews are largely gamed, so that’s why people believe them.

Re: She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

#23

Post by eitland » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 4:40 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #20

Honestly, I can't believe it is 2024 and people still believe/trust user-generated reviews of any sort. Isn't it widely known that these are always gamed, manipulated, algorithmically distorted and just totally unsuitable for making any kind of judgment about a product? I'm shocked that people and companies still pay attention to these streams of garbage.

I solve it for now by looking for 4 star reviews and reading them :-)

I think this often gives at least an indication of what to expect.

Re: She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

#24

Post by lakpan » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 4:40 AM UTC

irishloop wrote: post #14

I once gave an Airbnb 4 stars because I was annoyed they had no way to make coffee, even though it was basically a hotel being run as an Airbnb. Like, not even a cheap Keurig in the lobby They DMed me and told me that was bullshit and if I wanted coffee, I should've filtered by that amenity Which is amazing because coffee is so expected you can't even search by it

I mean… they’re not 100% wrong.

Re: She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

#25

Post by Eisenstein » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 4:40 AM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #8

justworkout wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's something I've definitely worried about and seen some people mention in reviews around India. I mostly try to identify the voice of the comment writer. If they're from America but talking in odd English with a 10/10 review, I doubt it's real. Same if it's 1/10 from America and written with strange grammar.

Sadly, generative AI will probably render this clever heuristic ineffective (at least at savvier establishments).

Society is very good at adapting to such things. It will be an arms race for sure, but I don't think there is going to be a crisis of people being suckered by AI generated reviews. If it gets bad enough people will just stop giving them any weight at all, or even treat a lot of good reviews that are well written as suspicious. Then we will find some other way to find out quality of goods and services which will then be gamed at a greater and greater level until that too becomes unusable.

Re: She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

#26

Post by lakpan » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 4:43 AM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #17

I don't review anything. It's not worth even 10 seconds of my time. It's all fake anyway.

That’s just wrong. Plenty of useful information in reviews, even when most of them are gamed. Bad reviews are always useful so you should leave them, especially if they exist to counter the good fake ones.

Re: She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

#27

Post by mpol » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 4:45 AM UTC

irishloop wrote: post #14

I once gave an Airbnb 4 stars because I was annoyed they had no way to make coffee, even though it was basically a hotel being run as an Airbnb. Like, not even a cheap Keurig in the lobby They DMed me and told me that was bullshit and if I wanted coffee, I should've filtered by that amenity Which is amazing because coffee is so expected you can't even search by it

These are the reviews that I like. It's negative with a complaint, but if this is the worst that it has, it is quite okay.

It is like a complaint of a laptop. If you sit on the keyboard, it bends a little bit. If that is the biggest complaint, it's fine.

Re: She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

#28

Post by ryukoposting » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 4:46 AM UTC

alejo wrote: post #11

justworkout wrote: post #3

I'm currently planning a trip to India. I've been to several countries around the world and never worried about reviews too much, but India really seems to align with this story. I'll see hotels with countless 5 star reviews (hundreds or even thousands!) that are overwhelmingly positive and get ready to book. But with one hotel my BS meter got triggered, since it was in a rather dingy seeming part of town but still h…

One strategy I use is to focus on negative reviews. Read as many and see what things they are complaining about. Something you can see patterns of petty complains, and other times you can detect bigger issues that may make you look elsewhere instead

FWIW this works with American hotels, too. Some bad reviews are normal. Lots of bad reviews all saying the same thing? That's bad news.

Re: She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

#29

Post by candiddevmike » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 4:48 AM UTC

fsckboy wrote: post #9

Ratings should always be on a curve for the rater, and on a 10 point scale, with no official meaning attached to the number of stars. If you rate everything 10 stars, you just gave everything 5 stars. If you want your 10 stars to mean 10 stars, you need to rate a bell curve of other stuff too. (you might say "but if I only select the best places, and the ratings are always confirmed, that would be downvoting them." N…

Counterpoint: steam reviews with their binary choice result in a better aggregate experience and remove the need for bell curves.

Binary choice leaves less room for interpretation and fuzzy ness, you either like something or you don't.

Re: She Gave a Hotel a Mediocre Review. Then Came the Badgering

#30

Post by happosai » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 4:49 AM UTC

6DM wrote: post #19

iammer wrote: post #7

Amazon seems to encourage this. I ordered a pair of cheap wireless headphones that were highly rated. I get them and they are crap. But, included in the package is a flyer offering an Amazon gift card for more than I paid for the headphones if I gave a 5-star review. My integrity is worth way more to me that that. So I leave a one-star review with a picture of the flyer, hopefully someone else will see that and reali…

Your comment made me go lookup my old reviews. It's crazy, most of them were deleted. I would have expected to receive some kind of notification. I thought I could sift through the rubble to discern fake from real but now I know Amazon reviews are absolutely worthless.

Welcome to the world of enshittification of platforms.