I dont think it is a matter of sides. I too think this is a good thing overall. I can just see situations where it can be abused and because I am an agent my perspective is from a consumers point view AND that of an agent who will be subjected to these reviews.

Of course in the context of this article it is about reviews on agents, but Sidewiki does not discriminate and everybody with a website will be subjected to reviews and the potential for foul play but agents are a little bit more exposed that most..

Unfortunately the nature of our job means that we are often involved with conflict. In serving and protecting our clients rights we are the forefront of many disputes such as evicting tenants, and claiming against their bond as one major example. Because of this I believe the potential for these reveiws to be used for michevious purposes is probably much higher than many other industry’s and because you are not actually an agent you may not totally understand or have empathy in the matter

Whilst it all sounds good just to ignore the bad reviews it may be a little myopic. Many people just won’t. In the BP example a social campaign was run against their services stations and they were all reviewed poorly by thousands of people around the world.

What if the tenant union decided to run a similar campaign so that every tenant who rang them for advice was directed the tenant to insert a bad review on the agent removing it only if the issue is sorted out in their favour? What if Today Tonight suggest that every tenant that is listed on the tenancy databases retailiate by listing the agent on SideWiki? As agents we have to follow strict rules and guidelines when listing a tenant. We have to state the facts and can’t add in “This tenant is a rude pig and never pays their rent” but agents could be subjected to far worse.

Many agents have hundreds and thousands of property managements so its not unusual to be in conflict with up to one hundred tenants at any one stage.

As you pointed out, that was how I personally use online reviews to get value out of the system. I don’t try and suggest that everyone will agree with me or do it the same way. Maybe I will change as you suggest, maybe I wont. As has been pointed out these are not knew and I have been reading reviews for quite a long time now. Time will tell.

http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2009/4387/

Take a look at this article, although talking more specifically about twitter feedback it tackles the issue of negative feedback about how companys are embracing it – http://blog.xero.com/2009/10/why-twitter-matters/ .

I dont think we will ever reach a consensus on this. Remember those whore are really worried about it dont have to post on the internet if they choose.

Also, Your personal stance on reading bad feed back will most likely change over time as the whole of the web becomes subjected to the same critique.

Just what is rubbish exactly? The person that Sal’s comment mentioned reacted and so did you. Of course people react to reactionary comments. On the internet its called trolling and some people do it for sport.

In short, your comments are facts only as far as you are concerned but I think it’s you falling into the trap of extrapolating your personal belief to the masses.

Certainly you personally might assume that negative comments are to be expected but there is no way you could convince me that everybody thinks that way.

From your examples your relationship with the review system that the article is about is totally different than many agents here who will be the basis of the reviews not the consumer. In your examples of using a travel site your perspective is that of the individual consumer.

Here the relationship is that the agents are the ones that could get their reputation trashed because a tenant gets upset he never got his bond back according to the law so they struck out and enlisted their friends and wrote 5 bad reviews on your business. You are the consumer that reads those reviews and moves on to another agent because it wasn’t just one negative comment it represented most if not all of the reviews submitted on his business.

Personally on any sites I only ever read the bad reviews as I can generally glean more information out of them than a hundred 5 star reviews. I try to read them in context and evaluate just how relative the really are.

But before you get all worked up.. remember its the other Glenn who is not a fan of the review systems like this.

I am actually quite ok with it. There is a risk of abuse as the recent BP issue and my “scenario” above highlights but for most website owners, which agents are only a minute fraction, the system will probably work very well, its just unfortunate that some innocents will have it used against them.

I do think most of the majors like Google, ebay and the travel sites have it working pretty well and that is probably the best that we can hope for because it is going to happen whether we like it or not..

sorry couldn’t resist.

The truth is there is a natural assumption that small pieces of poor feedback are expected.

Go to this site:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/

I travel and use the above a lot. There is an assumption that every single hotel will have some negative comments, but unless there is a major pattern developing in the form of constant poor write ups there is no issue.

Sounds fair?

Tripadvisor, google etc have rules for those offering feedback. More often than not you have to be registered and they track IP address to stop multiple entry’s from the one person.

The comment does not even have to be true for it to change behaviour in people and from the reaction his point was proven.

Like someone mentions above, reviews have been part of the web since ’94 and are normally a positive.

Sites like Ebay (Glen, plenty of people make their living selling on Ebay) and tripadvisor pretty much run their businesses based on user reviews.

Get on with it lads.