It's not clear to me how your reviews are more trustworthy. Voting reviewers has existed for a while on Amazon, but I'm not sure that isn't gamed.
Apart from trust, the other problem with reviews is that their relevance depends on the type of reviewer. For example, being Indian, when I'm looking for Indian restaurants, I trust reviews of Indians more than those of Americans because my expectations are more similar to other Indians. If I'm looking for hotels to go on vacation with my kids, I want reviews from other parents, not 20-year old single dudes who hated some place because there were too many kids making noise.
So you nailed what I've already argued to many others, which is reviews are relative to you. I completely understand your point, but it's hard to achieve what you desire w/o being intrusive. To highlight relevance, we'd have to get users to fill out a questionnaire about their race, age, interests, etc. This is a possibility down the road I suppose.
That's why I created the 'trust' feature though. If you spot an Indian reviewer, add them to your 'trust' circle. Later on, we can get smart and provide 'trust' recommendations for you, but that's a future feature to tackle.
Also, you're correct, voting reviewers have existed for awhile, but they're hardly highlighted by those sites as important. We feel like by encouraging voting from day 1, we can start a culture where it's widely used. Maybe that's a bit naive, but emphasizing how important it is to site functionality should hopefully encourage use (just like how it's used in Reddit/HN).
Comments
Just launch already.
It's not clear to me how your reviews are more trustworthy. Voting reviewers has existed for a while on Amazon, but I'm not sure that isn't gamed.
Apart from trust, the other problem with reviews is that their relevance depends on the type of reviewer. For example, being Indian, when I'm looking for Indian restaurants, I trust reviews of Indians more than those of Americans because my expectations are more similar to other Indians. If I'm looking for hotels to go on vacation with my kids, I want reviews from other parents, not 20-year old single dudes who hated some place because there were too many kids making noise.
So you nailed what I've already argued to many others, which is reviews are relative to you. I completely understand your point, but it's hard to achieve what you desire w/o being intrusive. To highlight relevance, we'd have to get users to fill out a questionnaire about their race, age, interests, etc. This is a possibility down the road I suppose.
That's why I created the 'trust' feature though. If you spot an Indian reviewer, add them to your 'trust' circle. Later on, we can get smart and provide 'trust' recommendations for you, but that's a future feature to tackle.
Also, you're correct, voting reviewers have existed for awhile, but they're hardly highlighted by those sites as important. We feel like by encouraging voting from day 1, we can start a culture where it's widely used. Maybe that's a bit naive, but emphasizing how important it is to site functionality should hopefully encourage use (just like how it's used in Reddit/HN).
To highlight relevance, we'd have to get users to fill out a questionnaire about their race, age, interests, etc.
In case you haven't heard, someone already made a questionnaire and got 700 million people to fill it.