[FEATURE REQUEST] Upvote / Downvote Reviews

I think Dolfan has suggested this in the past - something analogous to Amazon's "Was this review helpful" feature - but I think a up or down vote is too coarse bc a review with just one solid piece of info could get an up-vote while still missing a lot of info - perhaps a "level of usefulness":

0 - not helpful
1 - somewhat helpful
2 - fairly helpful
3 - very helpful

^^^ I'm on board with this.

I think I'd still want a -1 rating to call out bogus reviews that slip through the judging process.

Isn't this what we have review comments for? The added benefit of review comments is that each poster is specifically identified and accountable and the review's author has a chance to rebut the comment.

The review author, OTOH, has no ability to rebut a down vote, nor is the voter accountable for providing an explanation. So if, for example, a club trots out 20 shill accounts to down vote a negative review - which would of course all be VIPs since they write shill reviews - then they will effectively have the power to decide how reviews of their own clubs are rated.

If we're going to do that, we might as well just give the club managers the ability to buy a special access package and delete the comments they don't like, like they do over on SCL.

Possible but highly unlikely.

I guess I doubt any given club's willingness / dedication to (A) create multiple shill accounts or (B) get VIP for every single one, and (C) keep the VIP updated constantly.

And perhaps there should be a way to review where your up/down votes originate from.

===> "Possible but highly unlikely."

CMI, I suspect that you're not paying too much attention to club reviews outside of your own market. I travel a great deal and there are club markets where the shill activity is horrendous. Shoot, there are even some markets with multiple clubs using competing shills. Remember these are anonymous accounts and multiple aliases are welcome here, so there is nothing preventing this activity.

So not only is this type of behavior likely, but it is probable. Indeed, I expect that it would get even worse if there were additional motivations to do it.

@RickDugan just a quick question have you noticed any shills in the South Florida club’s because I mostly find the regular reviewers here to be reliable

I think that was the entire point of allowing VIPs to vote in reviews or not. Adding another level would not make much of a difference.

I see it being helpful in sorta helping automate in finding the best reviews - e.g. if someone wants to research clubs they are unfamiliar with it would be helpful to automatically go to the best reviews rather than having to drudge thru multiple mediocre reviews to find enough adequate info on the ckub(s)

^^^ Part of my original thinking.

@25: I don't get down to S. FL often enough to keep tabs on the reviews for that market, so I'll have to let others be the judge. I'm also going to steer clear of discussing the specific markets whee I see it because I don't have the time now to go down that drama laden rabbit hole.

But suffice it to say that IMHO desertscrub, for all the grief he gets, is right a lot more often than he's wrong when he calls out shill reviews. There is a veritable ton on here and they almost always read like bad ad copy. Now I actually don't begrudge some clubs for doing it the way that desert does because I would do the same thing myself if I owned a club - and I'd do a better job of it too. But let's not give them the power to shit on legit reviews too.

^ I actually agree w/ Desert Scrub a lot more than I don’t, I don’t see a lot of his call outs on the clubs in my general area

^^^ Also my thinking. But apparently we can't have nice things.

^ Unfortunately I think we need to manage our expectations on a site (and I quote): "Where you can have 100s of aliases all free of charge."

Na I wouldn’t want it CMI. This system they got has improved the quality of reviews already by light years if you ask me.

Sure. And the last thing we'd want is more improvements.

For the shitty reviews that slip through the judging process, it would be good to have a way for the browsing community to call it out. And for the folks who put in extra effort, it would be good for more eyeballs to be put on their reviews via upvotes.

But it likely won't happen. So... whatever.

I just think it might get abused and it would be overdoing it. But it’s not the worst idea. If they did it wouldn’t say anything.

My point of contention is that the response to nearly every single feature request / suggestion (even from founder) is "But the trolls...".

And I'm not saying that response is inappropriate or incorrect. I'm saying that maybe the shittiest people on the site shouldn't be the biggest limiting factor on what the site can do.

But, as I've said before, not my sandbox.

@Call.Me.Ishmael,

While I tend to agree with you that the site shouldn't let trolls rule the roost or stifle innovation, there's a difference between that and actually giving the trolls more efficient tools to troll more effectively without adding much for the regular user.

It *is* a dilemma.

That said, I tend to like this idea, perhaps restricted to verified users. But I do wonder how you see this as an improvement over the current comment system? And how you see it used by trolls?

^^^ He's not wrong.

@Fun, anything that can be analyzed statistically can be gamed by the trolls.

@Call, I totally brainfarted on that that last line; it should read: "And how would you keep it from being abused by trolls?"

George said "But I do wonder how you see this as an improvement over the current comment system?"

Ideally, you'd be able to sort or filter reviews based on up or down vote. You can't do that with comments.

Also, the reality is that many perusers won't read comments and they also won't take the time to leave a comment if they have feedback. A simple up or down vote allows more users to participate in the validation process even after the review is vetted initially.

There's a reason why a lot of sites do this now. It works.

And the second part?

George said "@Fun, anything that can be analyzed statistically can be gamed by the trolls.

@Call, I totally brainfarted on that that last line; it should read: 'And how would you keep it from being abused by trolls?'"

Both of the above statements go to my assertion that the shittiest people here shouldn't be the limiting factor for what the site can do.

Ultimately, the solution is that TUSCL needs to be less tolerant, and even welcoming, to trolls. That's solidly in founder's court.

I've seen fewer fake reviews, and no "gag" fake reviews, since founder stated that he'd delete any user profile posting fake review content. That's because he has followed through on the threat.

It's not impossible.

Again, I'm not sure I buy into club owners / managers hiring developers for the sole purpose of hacking TUSCL. I mean, if TUSCL reviews drove some large portion of their foot traffic/profit *and* they somehow knew that, then maybe. But I still find it far fetched.

@Call, fair enough on your responses. I am a little more pessimistic than you are about the troll effect, but I'd be glad to be proven wrong.

As for "hacking" TUSCL, it doesn't take hacking per se, all it takes is for employees of a club to create accounts and then write shill reviews or down-vote critical ones. Given the caliber of club employees in most places I've seen, it wouldn't take much to get them to do it. If they're not completely stupid about it, it could be more difficult to detect.

I suspected one club here of doing such in the past. Of course, they're no longer in business, so that might make your point for you. :)

It wouldn't surprise me if a club tried it. But a sustained campaign? I don't know. The management and staff I've met at strip clubs haven't given me a "guerilla marketing" vibe.

I could be proven wrong. But I don't think that would happen.

There's a least *one* local manager who is perfectly capable of doing this sort of thing. Smart, savvy, and to a large degree ruthless where his club is concerned. If he were to try such a thing, I suspect I'd find it hard to detect. I know for a fact that a graduated voting thing like your idea would work in his favor.

Perhaps. But, you know, there are programatic ways to prevent or detect these sorts of abuse. This is far from the first review site to deal with business owners trying to game the system.

But, the first step is the actual willingness to not tolerate trolls in the first place. After that, it's a matter of research and programming.

Any TUSCL feature can be exploited (and is) - doesn't mean the feature is worthless nor that a particular feature should not be implemented and do more good than harm.

^^^ Also true.

The new site is going to move away from groupthink

I'm curious to find out what that means. All in due time, I suppose.

I'm all for improvements and will keep an open mind.

The suspense is killing me.

I hope it will last.

hk is all shill reviews. ain’t no place that good.

===> "Again, I'm not sure I buy into club owners / managers hiring developers for the sole purpose of hacking TUSCL. I mean, if TUSCL reviews drove some large portion of their foot traffic/profit *and* they somehow knew that, then maybe. But I still find it far fetched."

Exhibit A: Dallas TX.

Review count of the club with more than any other (BabyDolls): 2,207
Count for the next most reviewed club (owned by the same people): 416
Highest review count for a club not owned by the same folks (Lodge): 401
Average review count for brand name clubs that are similar in most respects to BabyDolls (SR and Men's Club): Approx 220

Dude. Even if you didn't actually read the ridiculous endless stream of shill reviews for that one club, the numbers alone would make it obvious. That club is not 10 times the size of SR and Men's Club, nor does it have anywhere remotely close to 10 times the foot traffic. But you wouldn't know that if you relied solely upon the shill crap posted on this site for Dallas, both for two clubs and against any club in a 5 mile radius of the two shilled ones.