A Well-Supported Judgment: Analyzing a Crowd-Sourced Review

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 Analyze 
Use the basic features.

As we have noted, Yelp offers star ratings of businesses that are based on collective customer responses, as well as individual reviews. The star ratings present a general judgment of an establishment, and specific support for this judgment is provided through the reviews and through information on the establishment’s main Yelp page. (This information may include pros and cons of the business.)

ANALYZE & WRITE

Write one or two paragraphs analyzing the support provided in the Yelp review:

  1. Do you think the criteria for a four-versus five-star review (or for any other ranking) are clear? If not, how might the meanings of individual rankings be made more transparent, both for those who post reviews and for those who read them?
  2. Aside from the support described in the annotations, can you think of any other information that would help you decide whether to eat at Kuma’s Corner?
  3. Presumably, most people who post comments on Yelp are “everyday people” as opposed to professional reviewers. Does this affect how you would use Yelp to make decisions? How might you decide which comments to take seriously and which ones to give less weight to or disregard?

    Question