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The evolving fight against sham reviews

1 points| digisth | 10 years ago |economist.com

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[+] shostack|10 years ago|reply
I wish sites with reviews would do a better job of letting me skim for issues.

Often the first thing I do when looking at a product/service with reviews such as on Amazon or Yelp is to look at the distribution (which Yelp used to feature prominently but now buries under a tiny "Details" button next to the review count).

Then I drill in to specific 1-3 star reviews to look for recurring trends of problems people are having and also read through the questions for "gotchas."

I wish there was a service that pointed out summaries of the negative reviews to look for trends (as opposed to one-offs which might be fake reviews).

Positive reviews are helpful, but for some reason I look at the negatives first.