Yelp deleting negative reviews for Dentist who killed Cecil the Lion

To be clear, I think this guy is complete scum, and he should go immediately to jail. That being said, I think Yelp should removes reviews of a business from people who have clearly never used the business' services. The purpose of the site is to review the performance of the business -- not pass judgement on the owners' unrelated activities. In this case, reviews should about the dentistry provided. While this case is well-known, trending, and the actions of the owner quite clearly repugnant, if they don't generally cull such reviews then the ratings will become untrusted as people will wonder whether or not the business' ratings are the result of actual experiences or based on completely unrelated factors.

Yelp's statement[1]:

"Media-fueled reviews typically violate our content guidelines. One of these deals with relevance. For example, reviews aren’t the place for rants about a business’s employment practices, political ideologies, extraordinary circumstances, or other matters that don’t address the core of the consumer experience."

Agree with their decision. Just because he's a heartless poacher doesn't mean he is a horrible dentist. Plus, there are a dozen or so others who work at the practice. If he goes to jail, this type of social media vigilante justice only harms the innocent.

This reminds me somewhat of reddit's DIY investigation into the Boston marathon bombings. The justice system works well but is slow. Social media vigilante justice is fast but not fair.

[1]http://www.marketwatch.com/story/yelp-pulls-reviews-of-lion-...

I think this is correct for Yelp to do. It is brigade-voting / spam. Similarly, if a bunch of folks from Fox News saw something about Y Combinator controversially and started dumping things in the threads I'd expect it'd be deleted.

They are right. If you haven't actually visited the establishment and used its services, you shouldn't be able to review it. Same with products reviews on Amazon or app reviews on phone app stores.

Business is closed and the comments don't have anything to do with the business itself. While I don't condone him killing the lion, I have no issue with them deleting the comments.

At this point, I don't know what's more disgusting: the poaching or the slavering, bloodthirsty mob who wants to punish the dentist without due process.

well, he closed his practice, so does it really matter what the reviews say, positive or negative?

Why shouldn't they?

This is the shitty, mob mentality that needs to stop.