[indigochill]

This problem is exaggerated on dating sites due to their nature of "good" users exiting the system, but it applies to pretty much all reputation systems since there's always something to be gained from unfair damages, whether that's emotional release or perhaps competition. And people are usually more motivated to post bad reviews (for whatever reason) than good.

I think if we don't bother with a total score the way many rating systems do and instead show the count of good/bad reviews and show the reviews side by side, it should represent the depth of those reviews and a reader can then try to determine from the review contents whether the good or bad reviews are more likely to be true. It takes a lot more effort to write a compelling negative review than it does to simply rate someone/something poorly.