Tag Archive 'ratings_bias'

The Best of Yelp San Francisco Coffee & Tea or: The Uselessness of Crowds

Posted by TheShot on 21 Jul 2008 | Filed under: Café Society, CoffeeRatings.com, Consumer Trends, Local Brew, Quality Issues

As we mentioned in our last post a couple days ago, being popular and being good can be two very things. There are few places where this is more apparent than on Web sites that thrive on aggregate public user ratings and reviews. We had intended this article to be about Yelp’s top SF coffee [...]

It’s 2008. Why are we still reviewing coffee houses as if they were gas stations?

Posted by TheShot on 28 Jan 2008 | Filed under: Café Society, CoffeeRatings.com, Foreign Brew, Quality Issues

Every time we think about how far we’ve come with the mass cultural awareness and appreciation of specialty coffee in this country, we’re slapped in the face with reminders of how far we still have to go. One perfect example of this is the sorry, antiquated state of the coffee house review — whether in [...]

Why a five-star restaurant serves one-star food, Or: Why I don’t use Yelp

Posted by TheShot on 13 Jun 2007 | Filed under: CoffeeRatings.com, Local Brew

Today a Salon magazine blog touched on the flaws of the many online review sites: Why a five-star restaurant serves one-star food – Machinist: Tech Blog, Tech News, Technology Articles – Salon. The writer opens with an anecdote about Yelp — a review site that, in my experience, has long epitomized these flaws (see my [...]