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Comment by browser411 | Hacker News Reader

The title of this blog post is sensationalistic. As described by the author himself, Yelp's actions seem completely justified. A burst of 15 positive reviews from new users in a short period would make a user like me suspicious.

And assuming that the 15 reviews garnered an average score of 4.5 stars, it would have placed the business in the top 3-5 ranked business in all of Bedford, MA (its hometown). If Yelp allowed such rankings, it'd be a slippery slope into spamville.

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I agree that the title is sensationalistic. That being said, I think it's a poor product decision on the part of Yelp. Showing and then removing reviews is a lot more suspicious than not showing them at all for a period of time (until a user has made a second review, or some other criterion), or showing them but not counting their rating toward the overall business rating (until the criterion are met).

Not showing the review would put users off. Users need instant feedback. "I wrote something -- it got posted in a second" If they had to wait a day or two, they would not use the site. The second idea of showing reviews but not counting the rating is better, but then after a while it seem these reviews should be garbage collected, which is apparently what happened.

On the vendor's side, telling your users to post good reviews for discounts or for promotions is a bit like spamming I think. There is no good way to 100% detect spam like this, so there is always going to be controversy.

Also, hopefully Yelp has enough lawyers if it operates in a country with loose libel/slander laws.

I would assume that when a new user is excited enough to join, they would in fact rate and review many of their favorite places. I agree that its a difficult subject but removing reviews does not seem like a good approach.

I would like to see them show all the reviews and separate the ones that are not approved/flushed out. Have the reviews/rankings grayed out and require the user to hit certain publicly known goals to get their reviews to be approved status. I think this approach would also help with spam as those companies that are placing and encouraging shill reviews are easily spotted.

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