Rate clubs, review sways, and fraud writers
Mar 13 '01
The Bottom Line Epinions seem sot be plaged by groups of ratings clubs, sway raters, and fraud writers.
For the most part, I like the Epinions service but there are just three things that really tick me off about epinions and really drive me mad. Those three things are rate clubs (little clubs of friends who highly rate each others opinions and then low rate obviously well written material), review sways (i really dont like it when you have a user who does not make up thier own mind, they just skip forward to the ratings section, look at what everyone else rated, and then choose based on the ratings), and then the fraud writers who have never actually used products but just write material based on website descriptions and other people's epinions.
For some strange reason, a number of really really good writers will write reviews that are good material with informative content and then will be highly recommended until a jump of 6 or 7 helpfuls which just happen to rate close together knocks the review down the list. The same is true of the other side of the coin. SOme writers have good material and ideas but just cant commit thier ideas to writing. yet somehow 6 or 7 users ratings pad the ratings to make it very helpful. I find this phenomenom is rather common and is really a sore point for me.
In addition to the ratings clubs and such, there are the sway people who never really read an epinion, they just rate whatever everyone else it rating. This again irritates me because of the review clubs alot of bad ratings happen that shouldnt and a whole lot of good ratings happen that shouldnt.
Even more than the above categories of users, Epinions has a large number of users who have 200+ epinions but have never really had experience with the products. Now don't get me wrong, there are definately a bunch of writers out there that have a large number of written opinions and have actually used the products but there are also a large number who just surf the web to find stats and write a review to make money.
One of my other pet peeves which isnt as big a thing but is still a pain is that many people seem to believe that by usuing spam or well-worded email asking you to read and rate thier artcile highly that you will do so. I do NOT enjoy this. New users should be wary of those who have started writing just for the money.
Now, I am probably going to get blasted for writing this in the comments but I really dont care. I think that Epinions is a great service which provides a place to get honest reviews of real life users on real life products and the above groups of people jsut throw off the balance that makes Epinions so great.
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Epinions.com ID:
clocks
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Member: Wayne Frazee
Location: Panama City Beach, FL
Reviews written: 100
Trusted by: 50 members
About Me:
I am an IT Manager for a game development company in Panama City Beach, FL.
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