NYT On Online Reputations 118
prostoalex writes "New York Times analyzes the importance of online postings for the company images and product success/failure rates. Intuit's TurboTax DRM "feature" is mentioned as one of the bad ideas, that was quickly and vociferously opposed by the Internet folk. The movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding got quite a nice cash flow even though the advertising budget was low, but opinions on the Internet regarded the movie highly. Rating systems of Epinions and Slashdot are also discussed briefly."
Googlewashing, PageRank and Online reputation... (Score:5, Insightful)
Try getting your hands on an article on Microsoft and Schnazzle using Google and you can see Online Reputation at work!
And on the lighter side: Karma - Excellent; Reputation - Whore!
Then OBVIOUSLY gag orders are needed (Score:5, Insightful)
There have already been reports about gag orders over product criticism. I wonder when the alarm bells began ringing in the advertising industry, and how their response will develop. (Astroturfing Slashdot?)
It's ok as a sounding board, but not 100% reliable (Score:3, Insightful)
I happily continue to buy movies, music, and Blizzard games to this day because in the end, when you get through all the griping, they're quality products. What's the alternative? But if you looked at the amount of complaints online you'd think these industries had been run into the ground by upset consumers.
I'd buy from the nice companies, but they've been run into the ground by pirates.
What do we really do. (Score:2, Insightful)
like SCO for example
And when you do look back over the new and the articles that make on here there is about 60 rant about how bad whatever x is, 30 take the piss out of whatever x is and the last 10 is good natured honest to goodness praise.
Are we really becoming know as the cynical ass of the internet body or should we use the collective voice that we have as a wake up call for all those that read and never ever contribute (you know who you are you cowards).
I certainly acknowledge the fact that in most cases our whinges are fully justified and the rant does us and any one who reads it the power of good but there are times when a whingey little post is just so posted out of a stereotypical knee jerk reaction to a head line (some times without reading) that it makes us, as professionals, look quiet childish.
Dont worry, be happy
i am prepared for your flames so birng it on
S
Reveals a problem with reputation systems... (Score:5, Insightful)
This was obvious to me this weekend, when I went to a food flavor contest, and the items that won popular vote were the most bland and boring in every category.
The problem with reputation systems--including Slashdot--is that your reputation can be based on the opinions of individuals who are not necessarily the best for assigning reputations. They may be unknowledgable, unduly biased, etc.
In the case of classes, this gets to be a problem because students don't always like material that's necessary for them to learn. This has become painfully obvious to me as a university statistics instructor. I lecture in a department where statistics is required, but not the primary focus of the undergraduate major. My ratings tend to be good, but stats class ratings tend to be much lower than that of other classes on average, simply because the students don't want to be taking statistics. There are plenty of times when, in order to learn, the students must do something they might not want to do or not see reasons for at the time.
And so it goes for things like food flavors, movies, music, Slashdot topics, and so forth. Even within fields you see this: the majority is not always best. Popular opinion is not always the best index of quality, just what's popular. Many of us see this on Slashdot, I'm sure--a certain opinion being reinforced because it's majority, not because it's informed or insightful.
This isn't a new phenomenon of course--it's something people have wrestled with since the dawn of man, I'm sure--but it seems to have become more salient to me recently. It has become especially relevant with popular anti-critical-establishment inclinations in many domains of culture, such as music and movies, and also in online social sorting mechanisms such as Slashdot.
interesting, mr. gulliver... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. most sites don't use a comparable method to rate karma. the slashdot staff describes how the karma system was homegrown in the article, and i'm sure that's true of each site's analogous feature.
2. even if these systems used some kind of standard rating system for users, i strongly suspect that user behavior and reliability might vary from site to site. f'rex: i'm not really an IT guy, which shows in the comments i make. however, i'm a serious movie fiend. accordingly, users here should not necessarily take my thoughts on technology matters, but i can speak w/ much greater authority on IMDB.
3. let's assume, for the sake of argument, that all the various sites whose user opinions are well regarded (slashdot, et al) agree to develop a method such as you propose. there would still be 2 separate and mutually exclusive methods: either a highly decentralized method (likely to be the favored tool here) or a highly centralized method. naturally, the latter would be susceptible to exploits, etc., and the interested site operators would therefore split into (at least) 2 camps, thereby rendering the universal solution impossible, IMHO.
ed
Re:A modest proposal... (Score:2, Insightful)
A vague value scheme (one of 5 or 6 words to descibe your karma) gives an overall impression, but does tell you whether meta-moderating or getting a post modded up as under-rated will boost your karma more. It does not let you find out that maybe only replying, but never meta-moderating, is not as efficient only meta-moderating, or whatever.
If the algorithm for assigning karma is "closed-source", it would make sense that the values returned from it should yield as little possible information for deconstructing it.
Of course, if it was open-source, I'm sure the community could find ways of optimizing it such that abuses could be nearly eliminated.
Re:They sure let Intuit off the hook easy... (Score:2, Insightful)
ecommerce, please do not abuse these services... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because I think that would lead to a downfall of the quality of those services, and they would cut themselves in the fingers.
btw, on a side note, I find this quote rather funny:
"I think that, now, the power of the Internet is captured in the ability of everyday Americans to give their opinion on any product or event that they want," Mr. Gulbransen said.
As if no other inhabitant of other countries in the world uses the internet to express their opinions about certain products.
Of course I realise that this is an American Newspaper, read mostly by Americans, but still, its content is on the global internet
Re:Googlewashing, PageRank and Online reputation.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, it takes some amount of brain activity to synthesize the reviews into a belief of how well the product will serve me
Anyway, point being, it's easy to find a wide variety of reviews on any single product
Re:Reputations of people, specifically teachers (Score:3, Insightful)
With a teacher, it's no different--the more info you can have about teacher the better decision you can make based on whever your goals are. Whether you want an easy A and don't care if you learn anything or don't mind a lower grade but having a much better understanding of the material--it should be your choice. And obviously that's more extreme--there's a lot of gray that is just a matter of philosophy. Some teachers believe a lot of memorization is a good thing while others go for more of a higher-level, big-picture approach. Either can work but learning styles are just as varied as teaching styles (actually much more varied but that's another story) so picking the one that best fits you is better for everybody.
Also, I think the main use of TeacherReview wouldn't be as much choosing what University to got to (because that's bast on a lot of other things like $$$) but once you're there, what teachers do you want to have.
Re:Regarding Epinions (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe one out of a hundred things I search for reviews on has a useful epinions page. If only google would have a way to include '-epinions' in every search by default, I wouldn't waste so much time loading what seems like a good page from the search results but turns out to be yet another useless epinions listing with no reviews attached.
For a review site to be useful they need to have access to the things they're reviewing before they go on sale so the review is available when the product comes out, or at least shortly afterward. Epinions only seems to have reviews available for things that have become common. If something has become common enough to have a epinions listing I've probably already seen one and don't need a review. Reviews about new, unseen products are the useful ones. That makes the entire Epinions concept flawed.