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Comment by tempestn | Hacker News Reader

"Something else" indeed. Recently a scam site popped up that copied the branding of our site, autotempest.com. (They registered autoStempest.com and copied our logos and such.) They claimed to be a dealership based in Texas, but were actually posting fake vehicles and having people wire them money (which they obviously kept).

One of the things these scammers did to appear legit was set up a Yelp page with a bunch of fake reviews. We informed Yelp, but they refused to remove the page, because they "believe that the public benefits from sharing their experiences with local businesses." Obviously that doesn't make any sense since the entire business is fictitious, not to mention trademark infringing, but that was their response. So I did the only thing I could—posted a 1-star review of the fake business, warning people about the scam. Yelp removed my review, with the explanation that I did not appear to be a customer of the business.

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What I do not understand is why nobody copied yelp with an ethical business model yet.

Google Maps? I mean, it's not perfect, the reviews aren't great, but usually anything rated 4.5+ is at least solid and they don't mess around with restaurant phone numbers.

I've always used Google maps just because of the integration with Maps. Yelp's constant nagging to install the app and create an account also damaged their user experience enough that I never felt the need to switch over. Google generally has less reviews, but I don't spend any time in small towns in the US and when I travel Yelp isn't that helpful anyway.

Google itself isn't exactly ethical anymore unfortunately

Then add Judge Roy Bean Public House to OpenStreetMap

In Denmark you will find almost all restaurant and food places in Openstreetmap.

I have created tools that help to keep POI'd up-to-date by mapping to public health inspection reports.

https://github.com/elgaard/OpenStreetmapTools/tree/master/re...

https://digitalfrihed.dk/restaurants/all.html

We could use some kind of open reviews. That is more tricky, which is also why the commercial platforms are not that good.

Wikivoyage.org is great for tourist, but too limited for locals (you cannot have every single pizza and burger place in travel guide).

The Osmand app with Wikivoyage is a great example of what can be done with free software and data. It is all offline. You can search for restaurants near you without revealing you location to anyone. When you click on the the webpage of a restaurant, it opens in your browser without redirecting from Yelp or sending the URL to Tripadvisor. And when you click on the phone number for the restaurant, your phone just calls directly.

> We could use some kind of open reviews

Victor Shcherb, the creator of OsmAnd, is working on OpenPlaceReviews: https://openplacereviews.org

Unfortunately it's a lot of blockchain babble so I am afraid it might be super overengineered, but whatever, so long as it works. Not sure when this is going to be released. There is a Telegram channel at https://t.me/openplacereviews

> I have created tools that help to keep POI'd up-to-date by mapping to public health inspection reports.

What a great idea, thank you for sharing. I'll take it upon myself to do some investigation into if those records are easily available here

Google Maps reviews seem more gameable from the outside and often are skewed high.

I can't figure out why everyone in the US is so obsessed with using that POS that is Yelp when Maps does a great job at staying clean.

Many of those doordash.com “delivery” links on Google Maps didn’t come from the restaurants either.

Probably because most users are blissfully ignorant of the less ethical bits of how Yelp conducts its business.

As long as there isn't a huge discrepancy between the expectation and the services/goods rendered, most people can't tell the difference over something that is largely subjective anyway.

This and many users are hooked on the social networking effect where other users are liking their reviews. Twitter is much the same - you get a constant stream of endorphins every time you see people liking and retweeting your crap. It's socially toxic but effective.

It's a network effect. Readers go to databases with the most data, and creators / reviewers go to the places with the best 'audience'.

Same reason why it's been a very long and hard road to replace craigslist for many things.

I think there is that, but also the yelp user experience is mostly pretty polished, there's a nice app, maps integrated, large amount of restaurant info, reservations, take out from the app, probably forgetting other things but that's a lot of work and polish to just get to the point where you can ask other people to put the effort into leaving reviews. There's no guarantee any one will

Is craigslist unethical?

No it's just borderline unusable on anything other than a desktop and full of scams.

An American version of tabelog would be amazing but idk if it would ever happen

It's something I've wanted to do for awhile. Do Things that idk yelp does like give older ratings less weight.

I also think the the ratings are mostly useless. 4 1/2 star restaurants in the same area are not comparable. The rounding to half puts restaurants that are miles apart to close together. Ratings below 3 are useless. Sushi in sf is frustrating with yelp. Michelin stared restaurants have the same ratings as local sushi places. The whole scale needs to be used. There also needs to be separate ratings for food and service. Places get hit hard for unreasonable service expectations when the food is great. I'm pretty sure the average yelp reviewer has crap taste in food. Especially in tourist areas.

> 4 1/2 star restaurants in the same area are not comparable

This. If I am not local, I can't know if 4.5* listing is a local diner that locals love, not necessarily for the quality of food, or a venerable Michelin-starred restaurant. Photos and descriptions do not always help.

I completely agree that this is a blind spot that current has no solution because it is ignored.

One can argue that a Michelin star restaurant is objectively better than the neighborhood McDonald's, but they could have identical ratings because the expectation of service is different. What is considered above and beyond at McD's is merely baseline at the other.

However it also works in reverse as well! Many sit-down Chinese restaurants in my area are rated poorly due to substandard service, but this is de rigeur at these establishments. The waitress is gruff, rushes you along, gives you the bill before you are ready, and in some cases, you have to make your own tea because they're too busy.

The food could be great but the ratings don't show it.

You mean only allow people to "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" a place, and then aggregate the results to form a sort of star rating?

I mean because you've either had a good experience or a bad one, and if you've had an average experience why post a review?

I think for ratings the whole scale 1-5 should be used and a user should be able to rate with a decimal point of precision. And show ratings to the second decimal place. I think that would remove reviews like "great 5 stars" or poor service 1 star.

Average reviews should be added. I don't think every restaurant is perfectly average. Some are better, do a dish particularly well, have some thing else that might just slightly set it apart. Others might be average but unusually cheap. All of that can be part of an average review and influence a rating and help people find meals they're in the mood for.

A service I loved in UK was Hardens, all restaurants reviewed for FSA (Food, Service, Ambience) by customers. It was very reliable. Much better than a single generic rating.

Agree with most people on Yelp having bad taste.

There have been a few. Urbanspoon, AroundMe etc. But none got the traction Yelp did.

Scale effects? To be popular, you need large database. It took Yelp years to get there. It will take another company years too, but now their risk is much larger since there's Yelp already which dominates the field. So company founder has to get somebody to invest not in just developing a new field for years, but in developing for years a field where there's an entrenched and popular (even if shady) competitor. Ultimately, I guess, if Yelp continues to be shady, it will pop up, but may take a lot of time until it's useful.

I assume Foursquare is not the same thing? I never used Yelp, but used Foursquare for apparently the same thing.

Yes, and as a side note, Foursquare has a free tier (ratelimited) Places API. Now that Google Places API is ludicrously expensive, I tinkered with Foursquare and it was a very enjoyable experience.

No idea why Apple hasn’t created their own review system within Apple Maps.

There are a lot of vertical specific ones. Trip. OpenTable. Thumbtack. Hard to monetize though.

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