I like to think it's "These small business owners got bad reviews. Here's their stupid way of dealing with it. Don't make the same mistake. What tips do you have for handling negative customer feedback or reviews?" -- which would be on topic. Unfortunately it ends up as being "wow, look at these idiots", so you are probanly right.
Trip Advisor is a tech startup. The situation couldn't have occurred without a service like them. The ways businesses try to deal with the ramifications of online reviewing is probably interesting to anyone thinking about innovating in that space.
So a nearly 15 year old company with a billion dollar revenue still qualifies as a startup?
>> The situation couldn't have occurred without a service like them
Freedom of speech infractions have occurred for way longer than online services have existed.
So if someone tweets something stupid/political it should be posted on hackernews as well, simply because tweeting wasn't possible prior to twitter? Or what if someone reacts badly to something on tumblr, is that relevant for hn'ers as well in case they are trying to innovate in the micro-blogging space?
Unless i'm understanding you wrong... Trip Advisor has democratised hotels and yeh people had freedom of speech but not widely accessible freedom of speech. Without Trip Advisor it would be much harder to find someone's opinion on a specific hotel.
Maybe consumers should be democratised too? Shall we assess the quality of a consumer? Do they piss up the hotel walls or do they tidy up before they leave?
Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.
What part of "If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." didn't you understand?
This part apparently: "Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
But forgive me, I am, unlike you, not the type of person who finds a story about a Hotel manager behaving badly particularly intellectually gratifying.
>But forgive me, I am, unlike you, not the type of person who finds a story about a Hotel manager behaving badly particularly intellectually gratifying.
Yeah, because it's just about a guy behaving badly, might as well been about a bar brawl. It's not a story that doesn't have connections to how some businesses perceive the internet, internet "mob" justice, antiquated laws, free speech and such, right?
You seem to struggle with the fact that your personal interests and the HN submission guidelines diverge. Even though the story of a Hotel manager levying unlawful charges against his guests seems to pique your intellectual curiosity immensely, it still doesn't mean that it adheres to the submission guidelines. More specifically this part of it: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic"
Also, your use of a double negative in the sentence "It's not a story that doesn't have connections to how some businesses perceive the internet, internet 'mob' justice, antiquated laws, free speech and such, right?" makes it far less sarcastic than you probably intended it to be.