"Edited" Reviews?

  • I saw this article on Slashdot about reviews submitted by customers being edited at a few ecommerce sites.

    Reviews have had a mixed response at SQLServerCentral.com, from the community, vendors, and the three of us. We get complaints from all sides for various reasons and I've often wondered what can be done. For the most part, the three of us don't publish reviews because it's hard to be unbiased. We take advertising money from vendors, so we're walking a thin line in trying to produce something that they like, informs the community, and allows the site to keep running. We've tried to be open and up front that this is a business for us. With 2MB+ of bandwidth being used every day, you can imagine that funding this out of pocket doesn't go over too well with the spouses 🙂

    At one point we toyed with the idea of letting the "community" review products and posting their experiences, thoughts, etc. in the forums. Anyone can still do that, but we haven't built any dedicated system and the article above shows why. While we typically don't censor any posts, unless they contain profanity, I wouldn't want to get into the middle of having advertiers complaining to us while we depend on them for the site.

    I've personally had publishers ask me to "write a positive review" on Amazon and other places for books. And I'm sure that they've pushed authors and technical editors to help ensure there are positive reviews. I know hardware vendors have pushed employees to write reviews at various places to help "game" the system.

    Conversely, I've had people I know ask that I write a negative review when they've had a bad experience to try and lower the ratings for a different reason.

    To me, there isn't any good system other than a web of trust. And you have to have your own web that's built over time, and the trust is earned. I admit I look at reviews before I buy something, but I take the results with a grain of salt and ask friends for their recommendations. Our hope is that this community builds a similar web of trust over time. Not that everyone trusts something because it's written here, but rather you see and interact with, or just read, people in the forums and over time you learn something about them. A kinship, if not a friendship, and you learn to trust their posts, or those that they agree with.

    I don't think there's a good solution and maybe their never will be. The trust issue isn't something technology can solve.

    Steve Jones

  • Steve,

    Having done a few reviews, I guess I have to plug my two cents.  I really think voting should be turned off on all reviews.  Leave the reviews open for opinions but turn off the voting.  I would bet 99% of that is from competition.  Just read the opinions and you'll know where the voting came from. 

  • If I see a review that is all roses I look for the fertilizer. If it sounds too good to be true then it probably is.

    If a review is generally positive but also provides details of faults then I am more inclined to give credence to the review.

    As an example I personally am a great fan of Innovasys DocumentX. I would happily give the product a good write up but I would acknowledge that there are one or two niggles that really bug me. For example the product sometimes misdocuments field types.

    I have also been impressed with ApexSQL Doc. Again a great product but have some minor issues with it.

    If I list what the issues are then

    a. The person reading the review can make a judgement about whether the niggles can be lived with.

    b. The manufacturer can answer the niggles, either to say I have made a mistake or to say why the product behaves a certain way.

    The response that a manufacturer makes to a review is also telling. I don't want to do business with a company that has a "how dare you criticise our product we are going to sue" mentality.

    Perhaps an option is for SSC to review a product, put whatever disclaimers you want on the review but have a response mechanism for the manufacturer to answer any negative points.

    250,000 DBAs is one hell of a powerful review body!

  • In general I'm somewhat pessimistic regarding reviews as well.  But if you take them with considerable doses of salt, you can usually tell the real from the contrived and can get good information from them.

    The issue brought up in the slashdot article however is troubling to me because (if I read it correctly) the sites in question were actually removing content that was negative about their product from their public forums.  This can be a very sticky issue and companies that do this lose credibility in my book. 

    If, as Dale pointed out you had pretty good evidence that your site was being trolled by a competitor, then I'd say you had every right to remove those posts.  If however the posts were made by a customer with a legitimate beef or complaint, then ethically it should stay.  After all, if you want feedback you've got to be able to take the good with the bad.  Legitimate negative posts should remain, but the product owner always has the right to comment or redirect.  At least that's how I see it. 

    My hovercraft is full of eels.

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