I do wonder how many people are going to make the same pun, because they don't have showdead set to on and can't see all the already flag-killed previous attempts.
EDIT: Aww come on folks--Didn't realize there was so much resistance to humor. I guess this site is only for current events, and nobody gets a charge out of puns.
The Guardian asked Steve Tuttle, Taser's vice-president for strategic communications, if he felt that staff should disclose their employment when reviewing reviews of the documentary. He told the newspaper, "Are you fucking joking? It's a free country and they can do what they want."
I can only imagine what the VP for impulsive communications might have said.
Posted the exact same quote just a second after you... I'd expect to read that in The Onion rather than as a real response from a company executive. Wild.
I re-read that paragraph a few times thinking it was surely some sort of paraphrase.
I didn't have any interest in this documentary (I wasn't even aware it existed), but now I have to see what prompted such an emotional and poorly thought-out response from TASER.
When your customers are all cops, there's no reason to care whether you, your company, or your culture are viewed favorably by the common proles. The guy knows who his customers are, I'll give him that. They probably love him for this, because their attitude is exactly the same: Are you fucking joking? I'm a cop, I can do whatever I want.
The general public are not Taser's customers, so I don't think they really care what we think about his response. I know some police that would love that response, actually...
1. I'm not at all surprised, I've known this kind of thing has been going on and I'm sure it's largely underreported. Heck, the previous place I worked constantly asked employees to give five star reviews to the app we wrote. Multiple places I worked have asked us to write good glassdoor reviews.
2. It entirely undermines the integrity of rating systems, as only a couple extreme reviews can do major damage to a rating. This is the marketplace's problem as much as it is the community's, and some marketplaces (e.g. Amazon) have taken up suing fake/paid reviews.
So I'm not surprised, but I think it's abhorrent and does huge damage to the marketplace as a whole (I'll watch fewer movies if I can't trust ratings).
1. Asking for Glassdoor reviews is kind of OK, since Glassdoor is meant for employees to write about their employment. Amazon reviews, OTOH, are not meant to be about reviews by the salespeople of the company in question.
2. Suing is hugely expensive, but having some sort of tracking (even better if linked to real identity, such as credit cards, etc. - without displaying one) of the reviewer's own reputation might help. I.e. if we knew one Uriel Halioua has a track record of trashing critics of his company, one could dismiss his reviews. Of course, making custom score calculations on Amazon scale would be hugely computationally expensive...
> Asking for Glassdoor reviews is kind of OK, since Glassdoor is meant for employees to write about their employment.
Agreed, it's no different than a restaurant asking you to give them a good rating on Tripadvisor or whatever. You can even argue it's good for future employees/customers, since someone with a nice experience might not even think about reviewing it, and you end up getting mostly the bad reviews. It's ok as long as there is no coercion.
> Asking for Glassdoor reviews is kind of OK, since Glassdoor is meant for employees to write about their employment.
But asking for "good Glassdoor reviews"?
That's a shitty practice that's in the same class as "Politely suggest that all employees vote for $CANDIDATE in $UPCOMING_ELECTION" or somewhat similar to the District President doing: "At the end of an all-hands meeting, mention that employee contributions to the company lobbyist have dramatically fallen off recently, present and drop on to the presenter's table a stack of ~1000 contribution forms, pull one off of the top, and fill it out, announcing that you're making your contribution right here and now and that -while you're not instructing anyone to do so- everyone is more than welcome to do the same.".
> It entirely undermines the integrity of rating systems
Huh? I didn't know online rating systems had any integrity to begin with. Who actually believes these things anymore? Between the "paid reviewer" cottage industry, competitors (and the reviewed company) trying to stuff the ballot box, and filtering shenanigans from the ratings sites themselves, there doesn't seem to be any reason to believe that an online ratings have anything to do with actual customer feedback.
For every company (and their competitors) whose products get rated online, you should assume their marketing department is all over all of the high-profile ratings sites (Yelp, Amazon, etc.)
I'd say both of you are correct. Sure, it undermines the integrity of the system, but you should take all reviews with a grain of salt. There are countless Amazon reviews saying "I ordered this, and haven't it yet, but I'm excited, 5 stars!"
I feel like some kinds of misleading reviews could be limited by automated systems. Package tracking indicates that the product is still in transit and you haven't actually received it yet? You can't post a review.
Also, it's frustrating to see reviews where, say, the customer complains about the late delivery or the packaging of an item provided by a third party seller -- completely irrelevant to the quality of the item itself.
You can tell a) the films good b) it's now biased positively (5/5) as the negative ones have been deleted and everyone is voting 5 to stick up for it. It's probably really a 4.5/5 I'd guess.
I find that -as long as one keeps in mind that (just like everything on the Internet) any given review might be written by either a shill or a madman- Newegg's reviews give me a good idea of what to expect from a given product.
The most astonishing aspect of it is even not that salespeople thought trashing critics is a good sales tactics, but that they did it under their real names apparently not expecting anyone to discover they have a conflict of interest. I mean, shouldn't people already start thinking about "your name and employment on Linkedin + your name under review = major embarrassment waiting to happen"? And looks like the management encourages them.
Why would they be concerned? Their customers are cops. Cops have decided they want Tasers, and cops do whatever they want whether you like it or not. The response to the flap is just good business; posting the reviews in the first place was simply a waste of time because no amount of public outrage is going to change what cops do. That's been about as thoroughly demonstrated over the past 24 months as any theory of basic science has in the last 500 years.
Given how easy it is to post fake reviews on Amazon, I don't put much faith in reviews unless they have the "Verified Purchase" tag. The big flaw in the system is that unverified reviews affect the overall rating as much as verified reviews. It would be nice if Amazon had an option to display an overall rating based only on reviews from verified purchasers.
Oh, don't get me started on Amazon reviews. Even the "Verified Purchase" tag is gamed by sellers. There's an entire cottage industry of providing products in exchange for good reviews. For example, look at the reviews on the "#1 Best Seller in Pepper Shakers"[0]. Most of the reviews (even the ones with the "Verified Purchase" tag will say "Product provided for review courtesy of sponsor" towards the end).
I'm researching and scarping reviews to write a thorough article on gaming the #1 spot in Amazon's many categories, and it's looking like it's much more valuable than the famous "Buy Installs" industry for #1 spots in the App Store. I don't believe there is much incentive on Amazon's part to crack down on fake reviews, since they are selling products either way.
But how many reviews are from Taser, and how much are they affecting ratings? There are always bullshit reviews (and whole blogs making fun of them). Is this just a few execs being petulant little shits, or is this part of a significant, organized effort by Taser?
Over the years, I saw the language in the Taser article on Wikipedia go from "less-lethal" to "less-than-lethal" (shortly) to "non-lethal" (current) when describing the weapon. In retrospect I wonder if the Taser company was involved in that change too.
40 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 111 ms ] threadOf all the Reddit trends, pun threads are the worst.
EDIT: Aww come on folks--Didn't realize there was so much resistance to humor. I guess this site is only for current events, and nobody gets a charge out of puns.
You must be new. Welcome to Hacker News (suck it).
I can only imagine what the VP for impulsive communications might have said.
I didn't have any interest in this documentary (I wasn't even aware it existed), but now I have to see what prompted such an emotional and poorly thought-out response from TASER.
1. I'm not at all surprised, I've known this kind of thing has been going on and I'm sure it's largely underreported. Heck, the previous place I worked constantly asked employees to give five star reviews to the app we wrote. Multiple places I worked have asked us to write good glassdoor reviews.
2. It entirely undermines the integrity of rating systems, as only a couple extreme reviews can do major damage to a rating. This is the marketplace's problem as much as it is the community's, and some marketplaces (e.g. Amazon) have taken up suing fake/paid reviews.
So I'm not surprised, but I think it's abhorrent and does huge damage to the marketplace as a whole (I'll watch fewer movies if I can't trust ratings).
2. Suing is hugely expensive, but having some sort of tracking (even better if linked to real identity, such as credit cards, etc. - without displaying one) of the reviewer's own reputation might help. I.e. if we knew one Uriel Halioua has a track record of trashing critics of his company, one could dismiss his reviews. Of course, making custom score calculations on Amazon scale would be hugely computationally expensive...
Agreed, it's no different than a restaurant asking you to give them a good rating on Tripadvisor or whatever. You can even argue it's good for future employees/customers, since someone with a nice experience might not even think about reviewing it, and you end up getting mostly the bad reviews. It's ok as long as there is no coercion.
But asking for "good Glassdoor reviews"?
That's a shitty practice that's in the same class as "Politely suggest that all employees vote for $CANDIDATE in $UPCOMING_ELECTION" or somewhat similar to the District President doing: "At the end of an all-hands meeting, mention that employee contributions to the company lobbyist have dramatically fallen off recently, present and drop on to the presenter's table a stack of ~1000 contribution forms, pull one off of the top, and fill it out, announcing that you're making your contribution right here and now and that -while you're not instructing anyone to do so- everyone is more than welcome to do the same.".
Huh? I didn't know online rating systems had any integrity to begin with. Who actually believes these things anymore? Between the "paid reviewer" cottage industry, competitors (and the reviewed company) trying to stuff the ballot box, and filtering shenanigans from the ratings sites themselves, there doesn't seem to be any reason to believe that an online ratings have anything to do with actual customer feedback.
For every company (and their competitors) whose products get rated online, you should assume their marketing department is all over all of the high-profile ratings sites (Yelp, Amazon, etc.)
Also, it's frustrating to see reviews where, say, the customer complains about the late delivery or the packaging of an item provided by a third party seller -- completely irrelevant to the quality of the item itself.
I find them useful. You can often filter for people trying to rig them. For example have a look at the reviews for the film in question http://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B017V4J3NC/ref=acr_sea...
You can tell a) the films good b) it's now biased positively (5/5) as the negative ones have been deleted and everyone is voting 5 to stick up for it. It's probably really a 4.5/5 I'd guess.
I find that -as long as one keeps in mind that (just like everything on the Internet) any given review might be written by either a shill or a madman- Newegg's reviews give me a good idea of what to expect from a given product.
So, do you think it's likely that Amazon will sue these reviewers? Think carefully about the lobbying chain before answering.
I'm researching and scarping reviews to write a thorough article on gaming the #1 spot in Amazon's many categories, and it's looking like it's much more valuable than the famous "Buy Installs" industry for #1 spots in the App Store. I don't believe there is much incentive on Amazon's part to crack down on fake reviews, since they are selling products either way.
[0] http://www.amazon.com/Salt-Pepper-Mill-Set-Adjustable/dp/B00...
http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Them-Safely-Rick-Smith/dp/B017...
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/killing-them-safely/id1053...