
If nearly all Airbnb reviews are positive, does that make them meaningless? - r_singh
https://www.academia.edu/30544981/If_Nearly_all_Airbnb_Reviews_are_Positive_Does_that_Make_them_Meaningless?email_work_card=title
======
weinzierl
In Germany (and Austria AFAIK) employers are legally obliged to write letters
of recommendation for their employees. These letters must be true, complete
and _favorably_. So we have a similar situation where employers want to
express their opinion but are required to be benevolent.

Does this make letters of recommendation from German companies meaningless?

Some will say yes, but regardless of that, what is certain is that the whole
situation developed a kind of flourish language that can express at lot about
the employee without ever being obviously negative. Some sentences can even be
translated into school grades.

There are numerous books about this language and even more websites and they
all more or less agree, so this language is pretty standardized since at least
maybe 30 years. A last interesting point about this language is that some
things are said by leaving out certain phrases or words, so you say something
by not saying something.

Finally I'll give you few examples [+]. May they serve as an example for a
future AirBnB language;-)

 _He has specialist knowledge and a healthy dose of self-confidence._

Meaning: _This person is an arrogant jerk._

 _He 's quickly become popular with clients._

Meaning: _This person can 't negotiate at all._

 _She had great empathy for the needs of the staff._

Meaning: _This person flirted more than they worked._

 _His sociability helped to improve the atmosphere a work._

Meaning: _This person is an alcoholic._

[+] Translated by me to the best of my knowledge. I'll spare you the German
originals to avoid clutter. If you want sources shoot me a message, E-mail is
in my profile.

~~~
arprocter
I was always told that in the UK it's illegal to give a negative
recommendation (in itself an oxymoron, and who gets to define 'negative'?).

The way around it is that employers can decline to make any statement at all,
which is then taken as a negative.

~~~
scott_w
The good news is this advice is completely incorrect. According to the
government website advice: “a reference must be fair and accurate” and can be
challenged.

Source: [https://www.gov.uk/work-reference](https://www.gov.uk/work-reference)

~~~
comprev
I was always told it's perfectly legal, but writing anything negative opens
the path for future legal headaches. It's less hassle to only confirm the
dates worked.

------
mox1
So if you follow the AirBnB host forums at all, anything less than a five
star(absolute best possible) review is considered bad.

Hosts flip out all the time on 4-star reviews. They loose can "superhost"
status and other such things after a couple non-5 star reviews. Giving a
1-star review is probably worse than causing $100+ in damage for some of a lot
of these hosts.

Hosts will rarely rate guests < 5 stars, simply for fear of retaliation.

The problem here is that guests are never told that 5 stars = normal stay.
This leads to problems. If AirBnB was more up front about expectations it
would make their review system a lot better.

~~~
asdfman123
I feel a better system is just thumbs up/thumbs down. Either it was
satisfactory, or it wasn't.

Basically the same as our current 5 star/1 star dichotomy but it makes things
more clear to people who are tempted to give 4 stars.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
Even though it seems like shrinking the available options will lead to less
fine-grained data, sometimes it seems like it actually works out better. I
really liked how Four Square only had thumbs up and thumbs down as the allowed
ratings. I feel like it did a very good job of capturing how aligned with
expectations the restaurant experience was. It also made it really painless to
give feedback.

~~~
3JPLW
Yup, I really miss UrbanSpoon for the same reason (now owned by zomato and
totally ruined). I found it's percent-thumbs-up metric to be so much more
valuable than Yelp's 5-star average. If you really want a finer-grained
system, have multiple thumbs-up, thumbs-downs.

------
DantesKite
Do you remember how people used to ship blocks of ice a century ago? It was a
massive industry.

Thousands of pounds shipped over thousands of miles of water. A miracle for
its time. The improvements in food storage that came afterward were nothing
short of a marvel. The ability to preserve food, to hold it in statis; it
bought people time to ship and eat food (a very precious commodity indeed).

Looking back now and it seems strange. So much effort for so little gain,
relative to what we're capable of doing now. Plug in a refrigerator and you're
done. Ice cold for a lifetime.

There's still a lot of effort going on, but much of it is hidden—a landscape
of electrical grids, mathematics, steel and gold mined from the Earth to
create the technology in our kitchens.

Most people probably didn't even know things could be much better; that's all
they ever knew. The leap to refrigeration was by no means an easy or obvious
one. And it seemed to happened slowly as the infrastructure was slowly built
up bit by bit over the course of a few decades.

Review systems remind me of the ice shipping industry: A marvel for its time,
but only for its time. The ability to filter information about locations and
products; to make informed choices by aggregating a large set of human
opinions is remarkable. You can make choices about things you've never
experienced, across a wide variety of domains: Amazon, Airbnb, the App Store,
Shopify, Google Play.

But it's slow. It's tedious and subject to error. It's easy to miss great
insights. It's the lowest common denominator for gaining information about a
product, subject to manipulation and noise.

Nowadays, whenever I go on a 5-star review website, I'm thankful for the
information when I can get it, but I always wonder when my refrigerator is
going to arrive.

~~~
lisper
Nowhere is this more evident than when you want to do comparison shopping on
an expensive product like a camera or a car. I am actually in the market for a
new car right now. I know pretty much what I want. But trying to figure out
which product is the best fit for what I want is a nightmare. I go on a
manufacturer's web site and it's all marketing. Trying to extract technical
details is a chore, and trying to figure out the actual differences between
different models and trim lines can range from a nightmare to downright
impossible.

~~~
dawnerd
With car shopping I’ve always hunted down fan forums. There you can usually
find out if there’s any issues and whatnot - and even sometimes when deals are
about to happen.

~~~
Agenttin
I just tack reddit on to the end of every search.

------
r_singh
Interesting conclusion made by the authors about why reviews on Airbnb tend to
be more positively biased than elsewhere.

> Reviews on Airbnb may all appear similar on the surface, but they
> nonetheless hold power as each one increases the amount of unique
> information available to other users, potentially reducing uncertainty for
> future hosts and guests. Our study confirms previous research focusing on
> star ratings: positive ratings and reviews are clearly the norm on Airbnb .
> No doubt, many positive reviews are the result of consumer experiences which
> frequently are genuinely pleasant. Nevetheless users should be mindful that
> there may be a number of other reasons for the strong positive orientation
> in so many Airbnb reviews: negative aspects of experience may be minimized,
> or left unmentioned, in reviews, due to factors such as: sociocultural norms
> of politeness, established trust among host and guest, review and rating
> reciprocity, lack of anonymity, as well as Airbnb ’s possible removal of
> reviews which violating their guidelines. Therefore, less-than-positive
> experiences may be concealed in lukewarm reviews where reviewers avoid overt
> negativity: for instance, in comments such as “Interesting stay in a nice
> neighborhood.” As a result, users should be aware that meaning resides not
> only in the information that is given, but also in the information that is
> excluded

~~~
mojuba
This is exactly how I read reviews on Airbnb and Booking.com. "Great location,
friendly staff" and nothing else almost definitely means a very shitty place
at a nice location.

Speaking of which, despite its horrible UI somehow I find Booking.com to be
more reliable than Airbnb in this regard. I think Airbnb's game of mutual
reviews (that are not published until both parties agree) eventually proves to
be disfunctional and useless. Booking.com gives the clients the freedom to say
anything without the fear of retaliation. Of course there will always be very
unhappy customers even if the place is amazing, but at least you know you can
rely on the averages and specifically the wording of the reviews.

~~~
Gys
Booking asks for the good parts and the bad parts seperately and then only
shows the good parts. You really have to look around for the negative parts. I
always do that and it is very helpful.

------
denzil_correa
After a stay at an AirBnB, I provided a review. A part of the review question
was "What would you suggest as room for improvement?. AirBnB told me they will
keep this answer confidential. In a few hours, I had multiple passive
aggressive messages from the host about the "confidential" feedback.

~~~
jVinc
I mean, likely AirBnB did relay the information confidentially... but doesn't
take a genius to figure out which guest suddenly provided the confidential
feedback which was sent on the day after your stay ending.

~~~
nightcracker
If you shared the content, you didn't keep it confidential. Maybe you are
confused with anonymous?

------
ab8
AirBnB takes down negative reviews. I had a poor experience and wrote about my
experience. When I asked for a refund, a small percentage was refunded by the
host. AirBnB immediately took down my review and then refused to communicate.

------
jcomis
I've written a few negative reviews that were totally honest. They never made
it to the profile. So yeah, pretty meaningless.

~~~
jcoffland
I had the same experience. I called AirBnB and they acted like it was a really
strange occurrence and they would look into it. My review never appeared on
the host's page. I have zero trust in AirBnB.

~~~
why-oh-why
You’re right in having no trust in them. Recently I complained about my price
increasing by a couple % once I signed up. Nobody could tell me what the
problem was. It took them several messages to finally spill up that they were
charging me more due to my country’s taxes.

Why is this not clear? Airbnb is so opaque. It would be really easy to list
this extra tax but they don’t, so I end up creating a new account.

------
1024core
I stayed at an AirBnB once. The house appeared decent, but when the lights
were turned off, the cockroaches and other insects came out. We packed up
everything and left at 2AM. AirBnB cancelled our reservation and got us some
other place; but because our reservation was cancelled, we were not allowed to
leave any feedback for it! No wonder it had only good reviews.

~~~
nefitty
Last I knew (less than a year ago), guests can leave reviews up to 24 hrs
before check-in if the guest cancels. This is in case the host does something
shady before check-in or the stay is a disaster before it ends.

~~~
1024core
But they (AirBnB) cancelled our reservation, so there was no way for us to
write a review.

------
formerchamp
Lots of misinformation in this thread. I host economical listings on airbnb
and have had over 300 stays in the last 2 years and get plenty of bad reviews.
Half of my guests are repeats who are just there for work and don't bother to
review. The other half will leave 2, 3, 4 stars largely because they're not
used to being around hispanics and blacks, which triggers airbnb to threaten
me with being delisted, which would screw over my returning guests who are
happy with the value. I price my listing at the bottom 25% median and clearly
state that the neighborhood is multiculturally and socioeconomically diverse.
It is a tremendous value for the area but there will always be guests with 5
star tastes and 1 star budget.

------
perl4ever
With anything, I don't care if 99% of reviews are positive, or even if they
are all shills. As long as I can sort with lowest ratings first, then the
reviews are useful. I know that there are always going to be nutcases, ex-
employees, etc., so I always just am looking for a pattern of bad experiences
that come from distinct people.

This is the way, the only way, to use online reviews. I would be pleasantly
surprised if an academic figured this out.

------
phreeza
Maybe they should change to a ranking-based system. You don't get asked to
rate on your first ever Airbnb booking. On all subsequent stays, you get asked
to compare your stay to some randomly selected previous place, better, worse
or about the same. Then Airbnb can do some math and induce a score (like ELO).

~~~
ProZsolt
The problem you can't really compare them, as you can't compare a bicycle, a
bus, and a car. Sometimes you need one sometimes you need another.

I used Airbnb a lot in the early days. My bookings were all over the place.
Sometimes I needed an entire house, sometimes the cheapest place in the area
that I can afford. A cheap place can be great as a Toyota Corolla is, but if
you compare that to a Bugatti it seems less great.

------
BigBubbleButt
It's worse than that - they actively edit/delete negative reviews.

[https://qz.com/1333242/airbnb-reviews/](https://qz.com/1333242/airbnb-
reviews/)

~~~
76543210
I wonder if they did this with our only negative review. Her comments were
rambling but the visible review was vague.

We charged 20$/night since it was our first Time doing it. We put in the
description, No TV. But the guest asked for a TV and Chromecast.

So we moved a spare living room TV upstairs. I went to the store and bought a
35$ Chromecast.

We got a negative review for the TV being Dusty.

It made us paranoid and we tried extremely hard from that point forward. Got
some sort of "best host award"

Then our city shut us down.

~~~
YawningAngel
You're a rounding error. Most of Airbnb's volume is professionals letting out
dedicated spaces on an ongoing basis

------
gnicholas
Yep, and don't forget that savvy hosts have ways to prevent you from leaving a
review (I don't know how, but I do know that when we had to leave a cockroach-
infested unit, we were unable to leave a review). That means that there may be
people who want to leave an informative (and bad) review, but are unable to do
so.

~~~
goostavos
What do you mean ways to prevent?

I did notice that the last review I left isn't actually displayed on the site.
It was far from negative, but I did leave 4 stars and note the extraordinary
thinness of the walls, as it made hanging out inside of the apartment a bit of
a exercise in stealth. Strangely, review was never listed.

~~~
wolco
The host has to agree to allow your review for it to appear.

~~~
johnsimer
I’m a host. How do I do this? I’ve never had the ability to hide reviews

~~~
wolco
Dispute a review. Offer to pay back partial funds to get review removed.

~~~
jobigoud
That's not at all the same as what was claimed in this thread that hosts can
prevent a review from appearing in the first place and that hosts have to
allow the review before it's published.

------
ornornor
I’ve had way too many abysmal experiences with Airbnb. To the point where I’ll
only stay at hotels or actual BnBs. It’s not that much more expensive. Airbnb
prices aren’t what they used to be especially with all the taxes, fees, tips,
and other BS hidden charges added and I’d rather pay 10–20% more for a no
hassle vacation than spend two days sorting out Airbnb’s shit.

------
greggman3
from my POV one problem with these review systems, unlike hotels, if I leave a
bad review the next place I try to rent will look at my review history, see I
left a bad review, and refuse to rent to me.

Hotels don't _seem_ to do that. Partly because they have 100s or 1000s of
guests so one bad review means nothing whereas on AirBnB many units are
individually owned so those owners have a much higher interest in things like
this.

I don't know a solution though as there are issues with dishonest reviewers as
well.

I do know AirBnB removed a bad review I left. The review is reposted on my
blog so it's not gone but it is effectively gone.

~~~
jobigoud
Well in this sense AirBnB has a much more powerful tool, the host also reviews
the guest. So when we consider hosting you we don't look at the possibly bad
reviews you left, we look at the reviews other hosts left on you.

~~~
greggman3
My reviews as a renter are high and in fact I've often left the place better
than I found it. But that doesn't mean I don't feel pressure to not leave a
bad review because of the reasons I stated.

Case in point, I rent a 1 bedroom apartment in Los Angeles for 4 weeks. I
arrive and it's clearly a couple struggling to make in in movie production.
They tell me they are expecting funding for a documentary but that it's come a
week late so they are going to go stay with friends for the next week since
they rented the place to me.

The place a single sofa in the living room and a king size bed with only
sheets. There are no lights in the bed room except a string of christmas
lights. The advertised wifi is them leaching off the neighbors which only
works in a corner of the apartment and only sometimes. They say I can hang out
in the lobby for free wifi but "the lobby" is just an outdoor hallway.

They leave and I debate my options since I need to be somewhere for 30 days. I
ended up staying. I check the fridge. It's disgusting and sticky inside. The
bathroom and shower are also gross, clearly uncleaned for many many months. So
I go buy cleaning supplies, clean the entire bathroom, the entire kitchen, and
pull out all the removable surfaces from the fridge and clean them in the now
clean shower. I then make do with this "crash pad" for 4 weeks.

Now the question is, do I leave them a bad review? I think many might see it
as my moral obligation to warn others. But I also know it's a struggling
couple. Probably 24-28yrs old. IIRC I gave them 4 stars but mentioned the wifi
in the review but the review was still "Jack and Jill are a very friendly
couple ...." because it just feels wrong to be mean to people you know AND it
also feels wrong not to warn others.

I don't know if there is a perfect solution. For example maybe I could have
talked to them about the issues and asked them to pledge to do better? Maybe
AirBnB could let me delay my review until the next person rents and I can ask
if the issues were fixed? For example removing the "has wifi" setting.

There have been others where I never met the owners in which case bad things
were more likely to get me to write a bad review but I still left the worry
that if I did I'd be labeled a "user who leaves bad reviews, don't rent to
them"

------
philshem
AirBnB and similar platforms have business models based on quantity of
transactions, not quality of experience. If you can obscure an honest
assessment of the quality, you can increase the quantity of transactions (at
least in the short- and mid-terms). Inflation of ratings and hiding bad
reviews are not accidental, that’s their business model.

------
Travell
I would not say the ratings are all positive. They are all between about 4.5
and 5 stars. So 4.5 is "worst", 4.75 is "medium" and 5 is "best".

The question is if there is a correlation of these and your preferences.

I have stayed in 13 AirBnBs last year and rated them in a spreadsheet. Putting
them in one of 3 bins: good, ok or bad. The average AirBnB ratings for my bins
are:

    
    
        good: 4.78
        ok  : 4.78
        bad : 4.92
    

So for now the correlation is negative. Not sure what to make of it.

------
mstaoru
Airbnb doesn't let you leave a review if your stay was cancelled - which it
will be if you experience real problems.

Taobao, the largest marketplace in the world that can sell $38 billion worth
of stuff per day, has the same problem. That's why it's such a mediocre
experience for certain niches, e.g. books. First, you cannot leave a review if
you return or even engage in after-sales dispute. Second, since this is a
marketplace, you usually do not review the item itself, you cannot leave a bad
mark if you don't like your new laptop, because the shop is just a seller. So
99.9999% reviews on Taobao are along the lines of "shipped fast, received in 2
days, not bad, a bit of plastic stench and the box was broken, 5 stars".

------
veselin
I observed a similar anti pattern on booking. There, the scores are up to 10,
so technically they should be more fine-grained.

It looks like this until they ask you to leave a review. Then the questions
are like how was the check-in, the check-out, the parking lot and the
cleanliness of the room. Now, if 3 out of 4 are good, then you just scored a
dirty place 7.5/10\. If you put cleanliness on so-so, then it is 8.7. Scores
get super inflated to the point that all places are 9/10.

But I am guessing there is a reason. These aggregators must look like they
contain only top-notch ads. And so all metrics are inflated.

------
rdiddly
Is it too early to jump to the conclusion that keeps nagging at me, which is
that all the various attempts at reputation management that try to mitigate
the basic inherent detachment/uncertainty of the remote, network-enabled
business model that we all increasingly depend on, were doomed to fail all
along? Mainly I guess I'm thinking of this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell's_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell's_law)

------
neilwilson
These days you need to go on the amount of reviews not the star rating.

Declining to give a review is your only weapon against poor service -
particularly if you live in a parochial area where everybody knows everybody
else. And I suspect social pressure will soon start to target that as well
(refusing to deal with people who won’t haven’t got a history of glowing
reviews).

The way the social dynamics works against the economic reason for reviews is
fascinating.

------
ggm
Is this also a thing on ebay and amazon and ali? I frequently review as "did
exactly what they said, delivery on time, no issues" and I do not intend
implying negative outcome, I am just choosing to be terse. "the flat was fine,
streetscape boring" doesn't mean it was a gang-house in zombie-land.

~~~
rwmj
Amazon have started to ask questions about specific aspects of the product.

It seems to be based on AI/ML, I think. I bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner which
was terrible at picking up hair from the carpet, and when I went to add an
Amazon review, it asked me an extra question which was something like "Good at
picking up hair?". That must have involved either human interaction, or AI, or
it's a question they ask about every vacuum cleaner and I'm showing a
cognitive bias.

------
sovok_x
I wonder if there were ever attempts to replace reviews with questionnaires
with some motivation to fill them like points or micro-discounts. It should
provide more standardized flow and force users to disclose more about their
experience.

I am curious why nobody does this, do I miss some obvious disadvantage?

~~~
ortusdux
After my last stay in an airbnb I was asked a series of questions about my
stay, facilities, amenities, the neighborhood, etc. They seemed to be tailored
in some way or pulled randomly from a larger pool.

~~~
AdamJacobMuller
I'm sure they tailor it based on the amenities listed. They won't ask you if
the pool was clean if the host doesn't advertise having a pool. They probably
also tailor it based on historical complaints. If a guest has complained about
a particular home being dirty, then future guests are asked more often about
cleanliness.

------
graeme
I’ve always found the reviews useful. Never had a bad experience. Reviews will
mention downsides even if five stars. And will be superlative if the place is
great.

They also between 4.5-4.9, with those at the upper end better. Review volume
is indicative too.

Have stayed in dozens of airbnbs, always had a great stay.

------
hogFeast
Goodhart's Law - reviews were useful ten years ago, they are utter trash now
because they are totally tainted.

This is going to reverse horribly on all the "platform" businesses because
they are totally conflicted. As ever, we will go back to the same stuff that
people always used: word of mouth, building a trusted brand, etc.

All the "successful" unicorns are only distinguished because of their utterly
trash brands. Every one of these companies grasped the short-term gain (whilst
saying that private capital meant they were long-term thinkers), they hired
staff who had no idea how to run a business and were interested only in
enriching themselves, and they are basically toxic now. AirBnb, to my mind,
are one of the worst. There is no coming back from this.

------
aSplash0fDerp
Raising a new generation on a sliding moral scale, with no repercussions, as
long as it is profitable clears the air(bnb) quite a bit.

So on the truth spectrum, are these "modified truths", "eluded to truths" or
"curated truths"?

There are several example of businesses/industries talking out of both sides
of their mouth and a remote orifice. Autotrader buying KBB was similar as well
as the recent dotORG domain transaction attempt. Its winner take all.

Its just business as usual, though you have to admit... They don't have a
public troll problem on their platform. Kudos to them!

------
xphilter
I wish reviews would change to “would you stay/use this again?” Just yes or
no. I’m sure I could get more usefulness out of an aggregation of that. Anyone
have an idea of why that would or wouldn’t work?

~~~
jobigoud
It's like this on the host side. At the end of the review process we are
asked, "would you recommend this guest?". As a host we can then filter out of
instant booking guests that had more than 3 red flags like this.

------
biql
The only reviews I bother to look at are negative ones. Reviews may not tell
the difference between average, good, and perfect but when something is
horribly wrong, it’s usually in the reviews.

------
seppin
Yes. I had a nightmare Airbnb over new years (had to leave because my health
was deteriorating) but couldn't leave a bad review because of course i'd get
one back in retaliation.

~~~
soared
The owner can't see your review until after they review you. But, that won't
stop future owners from seeing your bad review.

~~~
therealx
I think op is saying that they were given another airbnb to replace the bad
one, and in doing so, you lose the ability to review the first, bad location.

~~~
seppin
No we were not. The host knew we were mad at the state of her house, any
review made on our part would trigger her retaliation (as she would assume
correctly it wouldn't be positive).

------
Jyaif
My 2 cents about the positive Airbnb reviews: I stayed at an airbnb place that
had bed bugs ( I woke up with bite marks, notice the telltale stains on the
sheets, and actually saw some the bed bugs alive). I obviously mentioned it in
my overall very positive review since I subsequently spent 2 days
washing/freezing all of my families clothes, but Airbnb removed the review
saying that it wasn't relevant.

------
standardUser
The lesson I've learned is to read the words. I'm about to reluctantly give a
5 star review for a place that should get 4 stars. But I understand the system
and don't want to be a jerk. What I can do, and have done in the past, is
explain the minor flaws in the body of my review. I have been helped immensely
by other people doing exactly this, especially with issues some people view as
minor, like noise or water pressure.

------
quaquaqua1
If all rows in a database are null, does that make it meaningless?

No, it doesn't, if the intended value is for it to be null. However, if the
intended value is for it to be something else, then it makes the data
incorrect.

So, if guests are trying to say every host on Airbnb is amazing, and they are
in fact all amazing, then great.

But if not, then we need some other way for guests to indicate "host was not
acceptable"

------
frogpelt
I never read positive reviews.

If the negative reviews sound whiny, I ignore them. If they bring up valid
concerns I stay away from the product/business.

------
yugene
Funny, I got to the same conclusions as the authors did by using Airbnb all
the time and reading and writing reviews.

To see just one bad review is a huge sign not to rent the place, as everyone
are so super polite to each other, even despite negative experiences.

And hell yeah, I’ve written/read too those lukewarm reviews. They are the most
trustworthy, imo.

------
Iwan-Zotow
Yes, if your message contains only 1s, then its expected information content
(aka Shannon entropy) is zero.

------
lostgame
No, as reviews often mention specific details of the location - even if those
details are mostly positive.

------
toss1
So, now we need the scale to be:

1, 2, 3, 4.0, 4.2, 4.4, 4.6, 4.8, 5

Then, inflation will require it to be:

1, 2, 3, 4, 4.90, 4.92....

------
blululu
There is probably a similar issue in academic grade inflation. I'd be curious
if professors have any strategies for dealing with this (aside from resorting
to more traditional word of mouth approaches).

------
scruffyherder
Just like UBER. You can't leave any meaningful review without retribution.

Normal people with lives, jobs and families have too much to lose. It's too
easy for people to unleash mob justice.

------
tasssko
i am happy to give a 5 star rating if all my expectations were met. That
doesn’t mean my words will be flattering to the property or host. Actually i
give 5 stars because it delivers on its promise but if there is feedback on
the property i add it constructively. Uncomfortable beds, not safe for
children are all things other people might find useful. No if all properties
have 5 stars there is no value it forces us to read recent comments and be
wary of properties that don’t have recent comments.

------
mjd
Me: <clicks download link>

> academia.edu wants to access your Google Account / mjd@fpuhpx.com / This
> will allow academia.edu to: / See and download your contacts

Me: Nope.

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neonate
If anyone else is wondering where the paper is: scroll down and you should see
it. I was confused for a moment, which given their signup buttons is probably
the intention.

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ineedasername
As long as the reviews aren't fake, it doesn't make them useless. It signals
most hosts do a decent job, and confers a lot more weight to negative reviews.

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Too
"Download with Google", "Download with Facebook"...?! What's wrong with just
"Download? Any mirrors?

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ctingom
I wonder if this was why Netflix switched to a thumbs up or thumbs down
system.

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blackrock
I only read the negative reviews, because they seem more objective.

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loopz
It makes you a slave.

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draw_down
Any review I write on any of these platforms will blandly positive, anodyne,
uninteresting. I understand why that doesn’t work at scale but I’m not a
practitioner of radical honesty, and honesty is not incentivized. Unless
something is really egregious, 5 stars every time.

