

Why Yelp Works - edw519
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/why-yelp-works/

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anonym
"It didn’t try to pay for reviews, as some sites have."

It certainly did, as someone points out in the comments at the Times.
Craigslist was littered with ads for Yelp reviewers a few years ago when I was
last looking for a job.

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kschrader
Everytime I look something up on Yelp, if it has more than, say, 5 reviews,
the rating always seems to be between 3.5 and 4.5.

That's not useful, other than to find the address of a place that I already
know about. A vote of 4 seems to be the safe vote on Yelp.

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soundsop
I wonder if a Reddit-style upvote/downvote system might be a better voting
system for Yelp. You are forced to choose whether you are recommending a place
or not. No wishy-washy in-between score like 3 is available.

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menloparkbum
One thing not mentioned: if you write funny reviews, Yelp is a much better
dating site than actual dating sites.

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pchristensen
Interesting that as of the time I'm writing this, there are 25 votes but no
comments. Neat quote from the article about fostering community:

'Responding to criticism from business owners that some user reviews are
unfair, Yelp also recently introduced a way for the business owner to send a
message back to a reviewer. If the reviewer doesn’t choose to write back, the
business owner can’t send a second message.

But Mr. Stoppelman said that the site deliberately tilts its rules to support
the reviewers. “We put the community first, the consumer second and businesses
third,” he said.'

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pchristensen
To the two people who downvoted me, thanks a bunch for the constructive
feedback.

