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"I am giving this place 1 star because the server looks like my ex-boyfriend who cheated on me".

Hardest I've laughed in about a week. +1

I guess the problem is that objective information is hard to standardize in a reviewing system. Plus, I've actually been wondering whether humans would view objective statistics with more faith than human reviews - no matter how ridiculous they are.

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I only really care about restaurant reviews, and on Yelp, the only way I've found it to work is to find a single reviewer who is methodical (and basically inhuman) to follow, then rely on that person's reviews.

(http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=kSfj8tii1tw8bH1OYmb-... is the finest reviewer ever in the Mountain View/mid-Peninsula level. 75% of all value I get out of Yelp comes from that person; the remaining 25% is knowing about hours, address, and phone number better than crappy restaurant websites.)

Almost sounds like you want something like zagat.

Zagat or Michelin with 1000x more reviewers, which is the promise of a site like Yelp or Foursquare. If a business has been around for a few years, I already probably know about it. What I want is great reviews of new businesses, or rapid re-reviews if something changes, which Zagat and Michelin are poor for.

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