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Comment by mattlutze | Hacker News Reader

As the trope goes, if the author asks a question in the title of their article, the answer is "no, not really."

I'd counter that online reviews still have pretty much the same value they ever have had, and that we're more aware of what the limits of that value is.

Lot's of real-person reviews exist on many platforms, and reading through a few often gives you a decent idea of what you're getting yourself into.

Paid-for reviews are certainly a scourge, and one business getting loyalists to down-vote a competitor is also a problem. But that's been a thing since the beginning of recommendation features, and we should celebrate a little bit that we're more hip and conscious today to these operations.

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The real question is: What is the alternative?

There are some useful review sites like Wirecutter that arguably cut through the clutter in a lot of cases. But the amount of "stuff" and experiences (e.g. restaurants) out there is pretty overwhelming for what's left of professional reviewers outside of some fairly narrow domains.

I do a lot of travel. Are Yelp and TripAdvisor reviews of restaurants great? Not really. Are they generally better--given some critical mass--than picking a restaurant at random or because it has a cool name? Almost certainly. (Of course, online menus and the like can be somewhat useful as well.)

We're building Bibimapp so you can get recommendations from your direct and extended network. Personal recommendations from people you trust.

https://bibimapp.com

Off-topic: is the name related to this delicious Korean dish? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibimbap

Sort of. Bibim means to beam (as in shine a light on) in Korean.

It has to be. This article has peaked my cynicism and I suspect your comment is just intended to seem like an organic response to legitimize that app plug. To keep it on topic, I suppose that's the result of the modern review-scape: I'm sceptical of any review or comment about a product.

Are you suggesting that we know each other? That is pretty funny in a topical sense. We don't know each other fyi but as a keen reader of /r/HailCorporate I can see where you are coming from. Inauthenticity has dirtied the water for everyone. In any case I think my small plug is fair game to post on a forum about startups especially as it answered the question pretty directly. This is the alternative I envision will become the norm once millenials are old news.

Nitpick: “piqued”, not “peaked” (though it’s a homonym)

Weird. I know this. Maybe I added it in to make my comment seem more legitimate and to trigger a response. ;) All swell that ends swell I guess.

Please note that advertising is discouraged in this forum

Well, it's actually not. We even have a "Show HN" function for it that's very popular and gets a lot of engagement. And as a community of craftspeople, we are pretty lenient with others sharing their work.

Also, I don't agree with demonizing people for making "I made <this>" posts while "I use <this>" endorsement posts go completely under the radar. You're just forcing the first group to behave like the second group while I find the first group much more valuable since we can see the connection and even interact with the creator.

I see this all the time on r/gaming. The front page is 100% "advertising" but completely cool with gamers. The second an indie developer shares something they built, it's suddenly uncool. Simple fix: turn "I made this" into "I found this" and gamers are totally cool with it again because it couldn't possibly be advertising. It's a bit silly. "I made this" posts are much more interesting and become mini-AMAs on r/gaming instead of the same old meme-advertising of the same five AAA games.

I think more precisely, my comment was about talking up something without adding extra insight or analysis to the discussion, and GP just posted their app without any extra insight. I intended to have been more precise, but got distracted. thank you for the elaboration, I would agree with you in general.

Different execution, but friends-and-family referrals is exactly what the original Yelp product was for.

Affiliate, referral and influencer marketing will game your model.

It's why we're restricting follows. Influencers can go shite.

Wirecutter and Consumer Reports for most purchases, Yelp and TripAdvisor for reccomendations while traveling. Works pretty well.

I've come to really distrust Wirecutter after doing additional review research and realizing that many of the products they recommend have real issues and are in fact not the best whatever you can purchase. Also, their affiliate system isn't the most reliable one so often when you click their Amazon affiliate product link, you're forwarded to a non-existing product page.

I guess experiences differ. Their recommendations have always seemed like pretty solid choices for me.

What's certainly is true (CR as well going back decades) is that if you have a fair bit of knowledge and very specific wants/don't wants in a product area, you may well not be happy with the recommendations from any of the generalist review sites. (I wouldn't use them for a higher-end camera for example.)

Even if their final recommendation isnt the best, its usually a good jumping off point to start looking up their recommendation, their upgrade, and the competition section. More often than not, if their main pick doesnt wow me, I can find something in the competition section that was dismissed for a silly reason, and Ill use that product to start my search.

> are in fact not the best whatever you can purchase.

Best is still subjective, no matter how objective a reviewer may try to be. If one finds their tastes don't line up with a particular review site, then they can find another.

I still use the wirecutter but feel my trust factor has diminished quite a bit recently

I don't think wirecutter really even tries to identify the best, because they factor price into the equation too much for that. I do find it to be a good source of data about some of the options and tradeoffs, but when I'm looking for truly the best in class, it's rarely their pick.

> are in fact not the best whatever you can purchase

I've never used Wirecutter and can't comment on them specifically, but I will note that what is "the best" is very subjective and context dependent. There is no absolute "best" anything.

I don't live in the US, but I've heard "pay to play" allegations against Wirecutter:

https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to...

Given that it's part of The New York Times, I'd be skeptical.

I believe the events from that article happened before the NYT acquisition. At that time the Wirecutter was still a startup.

Then why bring up five year old allegations that are almost certainly not relevant today (if they indeed were at the time)?

That's interesting though: what's the alternative?

Each vertical has different dimensions that matters to people, and some could be objectively measured, without reviewers.

In my case, I'm building a community for any type of classes around you (e.g. dancing, yoga, acting classes, French, etc.) at https://classalog.org and when I asked users 'how do you choose a class' almost no one tell me "I want to see reviews" as their first answers. Pictures, and knowing the experience of the instructor is more important. I'm not certain reviews with its downsides would do more good than bad, and I'm really hesitant to implement that feature at the moment.

Thats exactly the answer though, more authoritative reviews. It's the same reason Rotten Tomatoes differentiates between a score and a top critics score. You can have a consumer reports score, and an amazon verified buyer score. Professional reviewers and aggregate buyer reviews.

Theres actually lots of wirecutter type sites for different things, however there are just as many sites that seem to praise EVERY product they list, and sometimes there can be hundreds of sites all saying the same thing. https://electricbikereview.com/ is one where I have trouble telling which ones he likes more than others, because he is so positive about every features. Mattress and credit card / financial review sites have spun up like the plague.

This is also one of the few places where I think the government could step in, where it currently isnt, and the Attorney General should run their own version of https://www.slant.co , wirecutter, consumer reports, yelp, better business bureau, https://thesweetsetup.com/picks/ etc. Some combination of government reliability and safety ratings, mixed with verified purchase reviews. It's a perfect place for the government to help cut through the paradox of choice and misleading or loud advertising, and help consumers find good products from the rough.

As far as restaurants go, even just a nice aggregation app would be nice that could pull together and normalize scores from yelp, facebook, google, trip adviser, foursquare, zomato, opentable, zagat. It would be really nice to be able to see which restaurants end up popular on which sites, how scores compare across sites, An additional benefit of aggregation would be, if the app can find "like reviewers" that you should follow, people who vote similarly to you.

> It's the same reason Rotten Tomatoes differentiates between a score and a top critics score. You can have a consumer reports score, and an amazon verified buyer score.

With sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, I almost always completely ignore the "top critics" reviews and go with user reviews. In almost 100% of cases where the scores for TV shows significantly diverge, I find the user score to be spot on.

I think the user scores on these sites aren't horribly out of whack with reality because there's not much to be gained by gaming them. I'm sure only a small minority of consumers go on such sites to pick what to watch next.

Im not even bringing in the user reviews. Im not saying the top critics are better. All I am saying is that rotten tomatoes differentiates between casual movie bloggers, and long standing paid journalists whos day job it is to review movies.

Lion king has 388 critics reviewing the movie, and only 46 are considered "top."

It's nice to be able to contextualize scores. For me the presence of users reviews doesnt negate the benefit of critical reviews. I enjoy being able to see discrepancy between groups.

I think it matters a lot more to know the reviewer than to understand what portion of critics like/dislike a thing, and I find that aggregators are accurate only when signaling the same scores that the majority already expects before they check the aggregator.

Every reviewer has a consistent voice and set of tastes, and it matters if a reviewer you generally agree with falls into the positive 40/300 on one movie or the negative 260/300 on another.

Maybe your favorite media reviewer Bob Obert can't stand historical drama movies or mockumentary series, or the Meater blog you read is consistently biased toward giving BBQ joints high scores. When you see Obert give a The Office episode a 4/5 that is mediocre by Generic Yahoo Contributor standards, or Meater feature a seitan food truck in Portland while being critical of an artisan brisket restaurant, you're going to value those reviews much more over the majority of others.

If we are talking more about product reviews, a certain percentage of my opinion will be based on build quality and glitches, which PARTIALLY can only be determined by a large portion of users. It is helpful to compare expert reviews (like rtings) with a crowd sourced aggregate to look for manufacturing, design, or supply chain issues that might not pop up in a single review.

> This is also one of the few places where I think the government could step in

If we could prevent regulatory capture and flat-out bribery, sure. Not sure that’s possible though.

I don't know about electricbikereview.com, but the reason all of those sites love everything they list is because all they care about is getting that sweet affiliate cash when you buy something. In my experience, the VAST majority of "specialized review sites" are really nothing more than spam trying to drive sales in affiliate programs. This is a different but related problem.

I used that as an example of a somewhat middle ground. Its obvious hes being somewhat nice so the bike companies keep inviting him to try products, but he does give pros and cons, and the reviews appear generally unbiased. Like other people, I think I use the negatives more than the positives to make consumer decisions, and his site is so positive its saccharineness gives it the scent of pay to play, even if its not (in fact he charges every company he reviews a fee to be reviewed, so its equally pay to play. He mentions it at the beginning of every video and review.)

Rtings.com for tech. They buy all of their units; they don't take 'review units'

Yes, I love rtings because they give consistent measurements.

I can look at their review for a pair of headphones I own and a pair of headphones I'm considering buying and come out with a pretty good idea of how the headphones will sound and feel.

> The real question is: What is the alternative?

Well, before the internet existed, we had word of mouth. Pretty sure word of mouth is and always has been the right way of doing things. Even asking a random stranger in person is probably more signal to noise than reading the garbage posted online, and random chance aint terrible either.

Authoritative reportage also still works in some cases.

I don't agree. Before the internet, people went to the safe/reliable/consistent chain restaurants much more than they do today, and I think it's because the internet made it easy to discover new places while also providing some predictability of whether those places would be enjoyable.

It used to be when we were on a road trip and hungry, going to the Applechilibees/Olivelobster brand we recognized on the side of the road was a no-brainer, now I pull up yelp or glance at Eater a few minutes before arrival.

> now I pull up yelp or glance at Eater a few minutes before arrival.

Those have egregiously misled me too many times for me to look at them anymore.

I've literally never, ever had an app recommend me any restaurant (my phone doesn't do internet), and I eat at a lot of restaurants, at home, on the road and abroad. Other than the occasional MickeyD's none of them have been "chain restaurants." How have I survived without the ding dongs at Yelp telling me what to do? Hell, how have I survived without using GPS? I must have superpowers!

Qualitative reviews, not quantitative. This is only crappy as a scalable business.

> Are they generally better...than picking a restaurant at random?

Depends on what you’re looking for, but I’ve had much better success off yelp than on it. I highly recommend going to literally random places.

I certainly couldn’t find the restaurants I do eat at on yelp had I had to look again: they’re all in the middle of the pack ratings wise due to people conflating food rating, service rating, and setting rating. Whatever I like about these places yelp does not expose.

>I highly recommend going to literally random places.

Certainly not my experience. Most restaurants are mediocre or worse. User review sites are of course highly imperfect and sometimes there just aren't very good options off the beaten track.

But I must say I have generally better experiences with doing at least a modicum of research (whether online, local recommendation, looking at menus, etc.) that just walking in somewhere at random.

> Most restaurants are mediocre or worse.

Without knowing you and what you look for in food, and in eating out, your expectations of service, your enjoyment of the aesthetic, your appreciation of arbitrary culture, it’s very hard to give this statement any weight. There are more restaurants on my block in SF than my home town, and of much higher quality. If you find the MAJORITY of restaurants to be mediocre or worse, that reveals a value system incompatible with mine. I’m just looking for a new place to eat, not the next Michelin star restaurant. Abundance of choice is my problem that random choice solves neatly.

SF is of course much better than the norm. But I don't look for Michelin dining experiences. I'm very happy with a good ethnic restaurant of some sort.

But yes--I do find if I walk into the random restaurant on a street I expect to be unimpressed, even in SF. And the fact that it's somewhere I haven't tried before isn't really a big plus in my book unless it's also good.

I am at least somewhat picky however.

> I do find if I walk into the random restaurant on a street I expect to be unimpressed, even in SF.

My sincere condolences.

> The real question is: What is the alternative?

While I tend to ignore reviews on the likes of Yelp, TripAdviser, Amazon, etc., I do have an alternative: I turn to blogs and YouTube.

There is a lot that is problematic there, too, but at least with those fora, I can look at other reviews from the same person (which gives me an idea of the bent of that particular reviewer), and those reviews tend to be more long-form, where the reviewer usually goes into some amount of detail explaining why they gave the thing the review they did.

Betteridge's law vs Goodhart's law, which will prevail?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

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