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I’m not sure if this question has been addressed before but I’ve met others who feel strongly about it. It’s in regard to the guideline that members do not post fake reviews on the NH about places they have an undeclared relationship with. This is not genuine or useful information and I think everyone agrees it should be avoided. What I’m wondering about is the converse situation; where a disgruntled employee or ex-employee does a vitriolic hatchet job on a business for personal reasons. There are a few fairly obvious examples on the site at the moment disguised, with varying degrees of success, as genuine reviews. Surely this is against the spirit of the guideline. Aren’t reviews such as this deceiving to members as much as phony advertising? Is there any way to avoid this or to weed them out?
Hatchetjobs (add tags) Why? Details of tags
answered about 2 months ago by natinnam
Hard to avoid, and your right most can be spotted a mile off. I asked something similar to Alpha (Iam sure he'll be on soon with a explanation). Anyway if it's just a one off, from not a regular poster, the review doesnt effect the star rating. Regular posters have a high degree of sway with the ratings, mainly cos their trustworthy. I just utter rubbish them if it's obvious.
answered about 2 months ago by pinto
Interested in Natinnam's comments about "utter rubbishing". I recently made a reasoned comment about a local business that had given me some grief and within 24 hours copped three "utter rubbish" - the phenomenon of the invisible arbitrator. I feel that if someone has a genuine gripe they should have the balls to make their own comment. It behoves members of a group so closely knitted as TNH to show some respect for others opinions.
answered about 2 months ago by jimbo
Counter-comments on reviews aren't allowed here. If they were, the review section would be littered with arguments and insults. I would have loved to mock your ridiculous complaint about the DVD shop but my only recourse was the rubbish button. I only wish I could have hit it more than once.
answered about 2 months ago by granteralus
Candide, how about the disgruntled employee with legitimate gripes? Of course, each case will have to be made over whether it's legitimate or not, but you know those people are out there. Is there something inherently wrong with informing others of pitfalls to avoid? If someone has worked in Hanoi and been burned, I don't have a problem with them letting the community know about it. Especially after some of the horror stories coming out of English schools these days. I have my own story as well, but I've been hanging on to it, waiting to see how the community reacts to other such "reviews".
answered about 2 months ago by Candide
Dear granteralus, I agree with you and I think that people should be free to express such opinions and warn others about dodgy places. However, don’t you think users be bound to some level of disclosure about their relationship as business owners are? There are a couple of cases of manufactured outrage, wild statements and even blatant lies out there from people who present themselves as hard done by customers with caveat emptor yarns but who are actually embittered ex-employees or ex-employees partners/friends with axes to grind. In most of these cases do they hide their link to the business. I think people would then be better able to sort out the wheat from the chaff in terms of comments if users announced their associations. Because of the anonymous nature of the format though I can’t quite see how this can be any more than an honour system and perhaps people just have to be wary. At the same time if businesses are penalized in some way for this type of behaviour perhaps general users should have the same types of penalties. I’m probably talking out of turn here and I’m sure the guys who run the show have some better ideas about this. Pax, Candide
OK who "Utter Rubbished" me ? ;-)
answered about 2 months ago by alpha
Candide marked this as a good answer
I think the key phrase in the original question is, "fairly obvious". These attempts very, very rarely have the intended consequence. People spot them (as you have) and police the situation in a variety of ways. One, these posts often lead to numerous reviews from patrons looking to set the record straight. These reviewers may have been inclined to sit quietly in the background had the offending post not been made. Upon coming to the rescue, the business actually ends up with a boost in overall rating. This has happened several times (Daluva and Green Mango come to mind). Two, people demerit it to the point that it is both graphically obvious that there is real doubt from the community (checking the number of utter rubbish clicks) and to the point that the review's poster is lowered in influence to the point that their star rating has little to no effect on the rating of the business in question. Not all users on the site are weighted equally. Depending on the number and types of contributions made to the site, in conjunction with the community's response to those contributions, a user will have a greater or lesser impact with any given review. This can also be factored in in how a particular user's merit/demerit clicks affect any given user's overall strength on the site. That is to say, a user with massive contributions and positive community feedback will "hurt" any given post more when they click "utter rubbish" than if a new account were to do so. Long story short: not all reviews are equal (mathematically), nor are all "utter rubbish" clicks. Past behavior is taken into account. We've got some things in the works to give you a better graphical representation of the results of any given set of merit/demerit clicks. We hope it will ease some of the confusion. Finally, jimbo is occasionally right. Publicly commenting on reviews would lead to all sorts of problems. Even without considering the flame-fest that would immediately ignite, it would also lead to people diverting their energies from the existing data accumulation structures we have in place. That is to say, they'd just start venting all over the place and forgetting that they were here to contribute information in a useful manner. We won't remove a review suspected of ulterior motives unless we have clear evidence that a specific policy has been violated. We'd rather leave it up and let people be adult enough to use good judgment rather than accidentally removing legitimate reviews that merely suffered from poor writing ability or a lack of tact. In the end, I think it is a healthy development that people start to think of information as something they have to independently parse and evaluate the merit of instead of waiting for it to come down from on high. Happy to hear more of what you think about it, of course.
Dear alpha, That all sounds sensible and fair to me. Such phony comments niggle but I guess they are self-marginalising in a way and you can only get yourself fired and go to war only so many places. Thanks for your answer. There's one or two reviews I suppose I wouldn't have posted if I hadn't felt something Machiavellian was afoot. Pax, Candide
Sorry Candide, I mistook your intentions, which I now believe were to suggest the removal of reviewers posing as normal customers, when they are in fact disgruntled or ex-employees. Like Alpha said, I think the community polices itself fairly well in that aspect. When you stated "...where a disgruntled employee or ex-employee does a vitriolic hatchet job on a business for personal reasons," I took it personally, as I have a well-prepared vitriolic hatchet job screaming to be posted.
Sounds a hoot. Fire away. You've outed yourself well in advance anyway. It better be well libelous.
