[function_seven]

My favorite 1-star Yelp review was for a restaurant with outdoor seating. Paraphrasing, it went something like this:

> Burger was good, but it was 100 degrees out and windy! I can't enjoy a meal in that kind of weather.

I'm sure the manager stepped up their weather control after getting that scathing critique.

If I'm being charitable, I suppose that would be useful for an out-of-towner who was unaware that the area is hot and often windy. But to mark it 1 star as a result is useless.

[georgeecollins]

This is how I evaluate restaurants on Yelp. I go to the 1 and 2 star reviews. If they are things like the weather was bad, the prices are too high or the waiter was rude to me, I assume the place is pretty good. People without much taste love places with cheap food and extremely polite and fast service. I like good food.

Because reviews are sometimes fake, and often from people who don't know much or have a lot to compare to, the most useful thing is to filter for when people complain about what you don't care about.

[nicolas_t]

Another thing I do for restaurants on Tripadvisor is look at reviews by language (works better abroad than in the US). While it's a bit stereotyping, I find that if a place is well reviewed by reviewers who write in Italian, French or Japanese, it's generally more likely to be to my taste. I'll add other languages depending on context , so if I'm looking for a Mexican, filtering by Spanish reviews is definitely helpful.

And helpfully when filtering by language, Tripadvisor will show the spread of reviews for that language making it easy.

[city41]

This seems to be the only approach that works anymore. Are all the negative reviews petty or entitled? Then probably the thing in question is fine.

[shric]

Next trick: solicit a flood of one star reviews for your business that all have trivial complaints beyond your control.

[ehsankia]

I wonder if part of the blame here comes to the apps pushing people to write reviews. I have a hard time thinking that person would go out of their way to leave a negative review like that, but if Yelp pings and encourages them to describe what they thought of their meal, I could see someone just typing whatever came to their mind.

[panopticon]

This reminds me of the Amazon product Q&A section. Someone will respond to a question with "I'm not sure" likely because Amazon notifies purchasers when someone asks a question.

[ehsankia]

Oh absolutely, I've been getting more and more email from Amazon Q&A telling me that I recently bought a product so I should try to answer a question about it.

On the other hand, I did ask a question on Amazon just yesterday and have received 5 answers in under a day, so it their system does work to some extent.

[martinpw]

I think this is a valid point, especially if the review count is gameified so you are rewarded when leaving more reviews. I see plenty of Google maps reviews from people tagged as "Local Guides" that respond to questions about a location with something like "I don't know, call them".

As an aside, favorite negative review I have heard of is one for the Taj Mahal complaining that it is too far from the airport.