[peroo]

As bad as the star system is, I'm not sure there's anything better. I think Amazon has the right idea with the "Was this review helpful to you?" buttons, though that may not work quite as well for Yelp if you consider the possibility of review-burying by owners.

[aestra]

>I think Amazon has the right idea with the "Was this review helpful to you?" buttons

Doubtful. "Was this review helpful to you?" is actually the "I disagree with this review" button in practice.

Amazon reviews are so crappy. There is tons of reviews that say JUST "I haven't used this product/read this book yet." plus any number of stars.

[DanBC]

> Amazon reviews are so crappy. There is tons of reviews that say JUST "I haven't used this product/read this book yet." plus any number of stars.

While it's extra work I love those reviews.

"I haven't read this book but $THING IS WRONG, thus one " mean I can ignore some of the low ratings.

While reviews and ratings are weird and probably need some tweaking at some point[1] they are not nearly as bad as the weirdly broken search. I've got to the point where I would pay money to have better Amazon (also ebay) search*.[2]

[1]along the lines suggested in this thread - I might dislike a movie but love the genre; I might love a movie but generally dislike that genre; etc. So some method of saying why you like something so much would perhaps be handy.

[2] I go to Amazon.co.uk and I search for [microwave oven]. I chose a department - kitchen & home. I then sort by price, low to high. I am flooded with totally irrelevant items. (Egg cup; aluminum foil; salt&pepper shakers; children's cutlery sets; etc). You're not supposed to use search to find microwave ovens, you're supposed to drill down the tree of department, items, specific items.

[minimaxir]

Unfortunately, the "helpful" rating on Amazon's reviews are heavily biased: http://minimaxir.com/img/amazon/amzn-basic-helpful.png

[nitrogen]

We could have stars for multiple axes, plus a "choose n-of-m" keyword selection, but I wonder if that would be too complicated for users.

Example:

    Service: 1-5
    Cleanliness: 1-5
    Concierge: 1-5
    Modernity: 1-5
    ....

    Choose three words to describe the hotel stay:
    _ modern
    _ rustic
    _ rude
    _ quaint
    _ clean
    ...

[ghaff]

There's a lot of evidence that minimizing dimensions--even to the point of getting rid of obviously relevant ones--generally works best. Though Zagat does have food, decor, service, and cost so it can work especially when you're focused on a single thing. It gets harder when you're rating different things that span different dimensions. Amazon, for example, obviously just has a star system and DVD reviews are this sorta annoying mix of reviews of the movie and reviews of the specific DVD product.