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Comment by jhdavids8 | Hacker News Reader

Unsubstantiated complaints? I simply wrote what I saw, besides a few opinions here and there. And I know a lot of people do indeed dislike Yelp, but like some other sites with huge user bases, there's little other options to turn to, so you're stuck with using Yelp. I actually use Yelp quite a bit myself.

Anyway, the evidence is clear for there to be good reason to hate on Yelp (see my article). But like you said, there's also good reason to hate on clueless reviewers. Why can't we do both until either issue is fixed?

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Unsubstantiated complaints?

You claim that Yelp is writing their own 5 star reviews:

Personally, I wouldn't be shocked if Yelp is putting in its own 5 star reviews for itself in order to offset the barrage of negative reviews. Common perception of Yelp is not good, far from their current 3-star rating. Just glancing over the first few 4 and 5-star reviews for Yelp, all but two came from an 'Elite' member. Of course they review Yelp highly, they get thrown crazy parties. And I wouldn't be shocked if you lose your Elite status for a negative Yelp review.

This is pure FUD. You don't know if you lose elite status for a negative review. Not everyone gets to go to crazy parties. If this were Wikipedia, every statement would be tagged [weasel words] or [citation needed]. You've just made a bunch of stuff up.

If this is just entertainment, fine, but if you think you're writing something useful that is worthy of HN, then you're a little off. Your article boils down to links to filtered reviews not being obvious enough (even though the link is the same as all the other links on the page), complaints about reCaptcha, which Yelp doesn't even control, and then a bunch of made-up facts/anecdotes that you have done no research to prove true or false.

Look, I don't even like Yelp. But this is simply sloppy journalism, and it reads like it was written by a fifth grader who got a bunch of one-star reviews on Yelp.

Jesus dude, do you work for Yelp? So damn angry over an article that mostly states the breakdown of Yelp's filtered reviews.

Notice I said "I wouldn't be shocked" twice, not "I know for a fact that". I not once said that was the way it was, I simply said I thought it to be a decent possibility.

And this isn't worthy of HN? It reads like it was written by a fifth grader? It's number one on HN right now. Did I do something to you at one time in the past? If so, I sincerely apologize for ever wronging you.

I don't work for Yelp. I'm just saying there's nothing interesting about your article, without wasting my time by going line-by-line.

Do you really think your article is an example of top-quality writing and analysis? (Also, why post your own work to social news sites if you can't take the criticism? I don't hate you, I hate this article.)

Ha, I can take the criticism just fine man. I can also defend my writing, which is all I'm doing.

And no, I definitely don't think my post was top-quality writing or analysis. It was my second blog post, so I'm far from those labels. However, I'd place it a notch above a fifth-grader.

I can substantiate as a Yelp elite, that you don't lose Elite for writing bad reviews.

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