July 7, 2008
Piling on Yelp
(By Eyleen Tavy)
Yikes! It wasn't enough that certain Yelpers lost their collective shit that local user-review site Yelp's bounced a bunch of users who were basically trading positive reviews, but now we have local waiter Michael Procopio (or is this a Sasha Baron Cohen piece, we just don't get? We ask because, look at his picture: Hello, Bruno!) announcing that "many opinions expressed on sites like Yelp are neither well-informed nor, as is more often the case, well-written."
Well. Alert the fucking media.
We'll admit it: If this were just some guy with a personal blog who wanted to criticize what he calls one of the "most irritating sites on the internet," we probably would have scrolled past his headline in our RSS. But since we first came across this post not on his site, but on his "weekly food column for Bay Area Bites", we want to take it as deadly seriously as we would take anything coming from the folks who bring us public television. And, really, who doesn't love reading a critique of "average person" (his words, not ours!) content on a site populated with "average person" content?
But the opinions we want are from the decidedly anything but average: SFist readers. Procopio certainly seems to be saying he's ditching Yelp due to its critical mass of illiteracy, while others are bailing to protest their inability to shill. Is your inclination to Yelp more, less, or the same? Does the fact that some reviews, ahem, don't completely adhere to MLA style have you in as much a tizzy as our blogging waiter? Yelp away in the comments.
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I have always thought "Yelp" was appropriately named: the dogs were yelping squeal, shriek, howl, yowl, yell, cry, shout; bark, bay, woof; informal holler
Yelp is almost entirely about reactionary anger and therefore the entire site is largely useless. Pissed off customers are ALWAYS more inclined to log in and complain. Satisfied customers are satisfied because their expectations are being met. If someone's expectations are exceeded by some incredible amount, then someone might log in to Yelp and say something. On the whole, though, I've never found Yelp remotely useful and I have never used it to make a decision about a place to eat or drink. I think the only thing I have used it for is to get an address or phone number when the yelp link is the first thing to turn up in a search.
Far from perfect, Yelp's sampling size of many individual ratings for (most) establishments (in the Bay Area) are a lot more indicative of my potential dining experience than a single (that's sample size 1) review written by anybody - literate or otherwise.
Just like Craigslist crushed the classified ad business at newspapers, I suppose this guy's ego is a little red with sensitivity right now. It'll be okay, boo. The Internets can't do everything ...
Welcome, Procopio!
We're so excited that you've stumbled upon the latest new thing - The Internet(tm), a place where 'users' can write however the want, and often do so quickly and without following the previously distributed guidelines of grammar. You may have noticed this on such regions as 'YouTube' or 'any user generated website!'
Thank you for your valued input.
Love,
The innerwebs
PS - Yelp! is best used to find shops/restaurants close to a location of your choosing. For anuerisms, we recommend 4-chan.
Maybe Yelp can do some sort of "rate the raters" or "rate the review" to help push the clearly reactionary and not so helpful reviews to the bottom of the listings. Nothing's perfect, but there's certainly room for improvement. I like Yelp - a lot.
They do have that "funny/useful/cool" rating thing going on, though I wish they'd expand it to "funny/useful/cool/author is an arrogant gasbag" to make it more useful.
Yelp is helpful sometimes. It's probably least helpful for finding good cheap restaurants and most helpful for finding good service businesses. It's pretty annoying how all the Lit majors with admin jobs use it to prattle on and on about their lives. Get to the fucking point already.
@ OrangeDrink
That comment of yours is so deeply true. And so very accurate.
Sadly, we can't pass a law mandating that a printed sticker bearing those exact words be prominently affixed to every computer.
But I think a handy website along these lines is totally doable.
*sorry, along these lines.
Maybe I've just been lucky, but I find yelp to be really helpful. But I do hate the reviews that have very little to do with the restaurant/food and are really just lengthy blog entries about the reviewers themselves. Annoying, but easy to scroll through I guess.
I wish they'd get rid of "cool" (wtf does that mean, anyway?), and instead institute an "unhelpful" button to help weed out the idiots. Then to add a feature that would allow you to sort through a restaurant's reviews based on the the review's number of "helpful"s on the site would be great (just in case any yelp admin are lurking here).
Agree that Yelp is a cool site -- and particularly when you take it in stride. As a user-powered site, it is only as good as the people who use it. Some of those users are smart. Others are douchebags. Let the browser beware.
It's been harder to maintain suspension of disbelief since that April Fool's email update, which was not detectably different from the usual glurge.
I like Epinions better. The review system is better and the financial incentives they give make people write better and more thorough reviews. It's a small financial incentive of about three cents to even a quarter a month, but it adds up when you write a lot.
Crappy reviews get no financial reward and get thrown in the bottom of the search results.
My question in all of this is, if we know the things smallerdemon mentioned, about the nasty voices speaking loudest
...and we know this applies to real life as well...
...and we know people are inclined to gossip...
...and we know the media is a predator...
...then it seems to me that yelp provides no different a venue than has ever existed, just that it's more easily accessible. But ease of access doesn't excuse peoples gospel use of this content that amounts to a days gone by practice of posting your grievance in the town square. Or gossiping at local coffee shop/bar/hair salon.
Everyone has always known how to easily spot the crazies, charlatans and shills, so what's changed?
I don't think anything has changed except that for some reason people think the situation is new.
Yelp serves it's purpose. Reviewers used to be rated, but for some reason I've yet to see that anybody has been given "Yelp Elite" status this year. I was in '05, '06, and '07.
Further, as someone who worked as a waiter for four years in college, I can only imagine what this Procopio person is like in person. To criticize the writing skills of a large group of people while working a menial, labor-intensive, service-industry job is ripe for parody.
Procopio, I'm sorry someone blasted your restaurant on Yelp, that must've made it hard for you to put on your uniform and go to work every night.
I read what he wrote in his blog and it's about on par with the average yelp review.
Yelp is *so* 2005
Oh, Christ. He lost me in the first paragraph about governing systems. The only way he could have made the article more pretentious and trite is if he'd started with the line "Since the beginning of recorded history..."
Full disclosure: Michael Procopio is a friend of mine, so obviously I feel inclined to defend the guy. But even if I hated him, I'd be just as inclined to point out that Eyleen Tavy misquotes him pretty badly. According to her, Procopio says that "any opinions expressed on sites like Yelp are neither well-informed nor, as is more often the case, well-written"; however, if you actually take the time to read the original, you'll see that it reads like this: "MANY opinions expressed on sites like Yelp are neither well-informed nor, as is more often the case, well-written." Kind of a big difference, dontcha think?
I'll try to give Tavy the benefit of the doubt and assume that she made that change unintentionally, but she really ought to step up and make a correction. Using the phrase "blogging waiter" as a snide insult is a little low; changing that waiter's words to make your point is way, way lower.
"...changing that waiter's words to make your point..." -- not the case here. simple typo. correction made. thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Excellent -- thanks, Brock. Appreciate the quick correction.
Didn't we have this same post last week about Yelp?
Way to highlight something everyone supposedly hates.
For every excessive arrogant rant there's an informative review about shitty service and undercooked food that service-industry people don't believe exists. "No! Heavens! I am the perfect server!! Tip me 50% bitch!"
Newsflash, food-service people. It's your JOB to bring me food and fill my glass. Yes, sometimes it'd be easier for me to just do it myself, since you're on your smoke break or flirting with your manager...But hey, it's what you signed up for when you dropped off that resume.
People believe Yelp wields great power. Does it really? Maybe I'm in denial because regardless of what other people think I like to make up my own mind on things.
Guess I'm not a good sheep.
Well, I knew I was going to irritate a lot of people with my last post-- I just didn't know how many!
As my friend Amy commented on KQED's site: "I don’t think your beef is really with Yelp, but with reviews in general." I think she's right.
It was the unecessary (or, at least, not-very-well -backed-up) digs, the inaccuracies, the poor grammar, and total pointlessness of (what seemed to me) the majority of reviews that was driving me up the wall.
Several people have told me that they see Yelp as a great resource for aggregate opinion. A place has 500 reviews? Most of them great? Okay, that tells us something. It was the writing itself that really got to me, so I thought I'd have a little fun with it.
I would like to point out that I did mention there were GOOD writers on Yelp, too. I even cited one.
Oh, and for the record (Jimbrowski), this had nothing to do with my restaurant. I simply selected a sampling of reviews of one particular place I liked with which I had a good amount of familiarity.
Now, if you will excuse me, I think I smell a blog post about the general public's disdain for waiters brewing.
I like Yelp BECAUSE it is awash in so many reviews on so many places.
Previously, finding reviews of restaurants meant happening to read the newspaper on the right day, which would include the reviews of career food critics on a few restaurants of their choosing.
Yelp, on the other hand, is always available, and people have written reviews for pretty much every hot dog stand in SF: not just the brand new and trendy. Hell the $5 noodle shop down the street has like 25 reviews.
Sure, some reviews are absolute drivel. I especially can't stand the people who give a restaurant a bad review because of a bad blind date. But this is the price you pay when you open up the gates. You also get new/different perspectives and insights into what a restaurant can be on any given night, not just the night when the one reviewer goes and gets special attention.
I think Michael Procopio is hilarious, droll, and has the right to shoot fish in a barrel if he wants to. I say this as someone who's Yelped and sometimes uses Yelp. You have to sort the chaff from the grain: I ignore the reviews of air-headed OMG'ers, and find that a certain percentage of Yelpers are pretty sharp. Sharper than, oh, a lot of other such venues. The quality is diluted by anonymous sniping, which denotes a lack of character and integrity, but such is the condition of the internet.
Signed,
A die-hard fan of Michael Procopio's: the guy can write.
If I ruled the world, everyone in this country would be required to wait tables and live on the earnings therefrom, for at least two years.
BlueCanary, as someone who waited tables for nine years, I have used those very words more times than I can count. (Except I say "When I am Empress…".) The time spent working in restaurants should also increase in direct proportion to the wealth of each individual.
Dave Barry's immortal words: "A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person."
Here is another great article from the "UK Register" on Yelp's hypocrisy and extortion business model . The "UK Register" has a readership of 5 million people ( non shills):
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/13/yelp_sales_pitch/page4.html
Also , check out the comments on this article from yelp.com/topic in Chicago. Looks like Yelpers are starting to realize they are part of the "Jeremy Stoppleman Goat Rodeo" :
http://www.yelp.com/topic/chicago-yelp-pay-to-play-pitch-makes-shops-scream-for-help-the-register
My favorite from Mike D ( who has written over 100 reviews) :
I actually worked at a business and took one of these sales calls and they were definitely interested in promoting us for $$$. I actually think I'm going to cancel my membership to this site in the next few days. I've become extremely disillusioned with the site and articles like this only add to the feeling that Yelp is full of shit.
Yelp is the "Lord of the Flies" of Web based companies. An example of what can happen without adult supervision.