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

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

#81

Post by shiroiuma »

nomilk wrote: post #36
6DM wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wonder if we could make a browser extension that stores and presents amazon reviews. Could be useful to fill gaps on other sites too, for example when an uploader turns off comments on youtube. It would be a pretty big middle finger to amazon if the primary site for amazon seller reviews was not actually amazon, but a third party site/app.

Yeah, we already have a few extensions similar to this for viewing price history, such as Keepa. I use this one all the time since prices jump around so much; when I look at a product page on Amazon, Keepa inserts a big window with a price graph and other pickable info.

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

#82

Post by shiroiuma »

joshspankit wrote: post #70
ReactiveJelly wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I've been wanting to have that "comment on anything" for a while. It's possible in technical theory. But sharing the comments would be hard. Federation might work. Spam moderation could be hard. And most websites refuse to go into iframes, so your options are limited to browser extensions, SOCKS proxies, and Opera Mini style apps that re-render the page. Which means you'll get less than a percent of a percent of…

This has been floated out a couple of times, but there’s one more factor you’ve missed: The companies really want comments/reviews done by a platform they control and they will fight against 3rd party methods.

If it's done as a browser extension, the way Keepa is (it's used to monitor price history on amazon.com), there's absolutely nothing the companies can do about it.

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

#83

Post by lakpan »

Scarblac wrote: post #43
lakpan wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean… they’re not 100% wrong.

It's a review. Customer didn't like something, why not mention it for others? It's supposed to be a service for people like you in the future. The problem is that the scale is now so compressed that 5* means "OK" and 4* means "not OK". 3* is assumed by the system to be a user abusing the review system.

Yes totally, I do mention things I don’t like in reviews, but “great stay, but no coffee maker (****)” seems excessive.

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

#85

Post by Whoppertime »

semireg wrote: post #34

I stayed in a hotel recently via Hotwire. After my stay I received an email asking for my review using two separate icons, presumably two different links: one thumbs up and one thumbs down. I clicked on the thumbs down and received a 404. I gave up.

That's one way to keep positive review scores

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

#86

Post by joshspankit »

shiroiuma wrote: post #82
joshspankit wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been floated out a couple of times, but there’s one more factor you’ve missed: The companies really want comments/reviews done by a platform they control and they will fight against 3rd party methods.

If it's done as a browser extension, the way Keepa is (it's used to monitor price history on amazon.com), there's absolutely nothing the companies can do about it.

Tactics that have been used against similar tools:

- Changing the generated HTML so that the extensions selectors no longer grab the right data (this becomes a cat and mouse game and there’s a non-zero chance that the extension authors tap out, especially if there’s not enough money to sustain the workload)

- Filing nuisance complaints (DMCA is a standard one here, but there are lots of others)

- Filing a copyright lawsuit in court

- Filing other court lawsuits (lost income, slander, etc)

In many cases the business knows they are fighting a losing battle but all they need is more resources, more time, or more patience.

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