Mr. Larive is spot on in his opinion, and I think he offers good solutions to the dilemmas of business response and participation.
Yelp is representative of a fundamental problem with so many review sites, and our society at large -- namely that it attempts to coalesce many dimensions of data (a person) into a single score.
And, just like FICO, and the SAT/LSAT/etc, Yelp and its predecessors (BBB) attempt to do the same for businesses.
Worse still, they rely on the "Wisdom of Crowds" when it comes to qualitative measure and taste. An average 2.5 stars tells me nothing, especially because I'm an elitist prick and think the average Yelp commenter is an idiot.
I fear that people substitute a Yelp rating for their own critical-thinking, and that is wrong. It is just as wrong that schools judge students largely based on a single test score. It is wrong that lending happens based on a opaque algorithm.
I fear that Yelp is just another symptom that our society is sick. Our brains have atrophied to the point where we only look for one number that determines the succes or failure of our education, our lives and our livelihood.
Yelp is representative of a fundamental problem with so many review sites, and our society at large -- namely that it attempts to coalesce many dimensions of data (a person) into a single score.
And, just like FICO, and the SAT/LSAT/etc, Yelp and its predecessors (BBB) attempt to do the same for businesses.
Worse still, they rely on the "Wisdom of Crowds" when it comes to qualitative measure and taste. An average 2.5 stars tells me nothing, especially because I'm an elitist prick and think the average Yelp commenter is an idiot.
I fear that people substitute a Yelp rating for their own critical-thinking, and that is wrong. It is just as wrong that schools judge students largely based on a single test score. It is wrong that lending happens based on a opaque algorithm.
I fear that Yelp is just another symptom that our society is sick. Our brains have atrophied to the point where we only look for one number that determines the succes or failure of our education, our lives and our livelihood.
Or is that a touch melodramatic?