F*** You, Yelper: Yelp Reviews as Beat-Style Poetry

I realize this article is pretty old (well sort of... last year) and I am in no way condoning the use of Yelp (or any website for that matter,) but what Yelp is doing is allowing the common person to have some sort of popular public forum (much like most Blogs that aren't read as much) to voice their opinions...often in "layman's terms" and grammatically incorrect. I think it is safe to say that it is up to the reader to extrapolate his or her own theories with regards to the business. I would say that websites like Yelp are merely a tool. Perhaps they may be the accepted norm, but nobody is under any sort of obligation to use said tools.

With regards to how Yelp treats business owners. I would tend to agree that some of them do get mistreated (I actually know a few business owners personally,) but what you have to appreciate about Yelp is that it certainly has made businesses more accountable and has greatly improved products and services for the most part... especially since our economy has collapsed!

Hi everyone. My friends and I have started a grassroots review website in Houston, Texas called http://www.chopstixhouston.com 

The site has a review feature similar to Yelp, but without the "spam" and politics that Yelp provides. We also offer a rewards system where well-written reviews are given gift cards and other prizes. Please come check us out and submit some reviews.

I am a restaurant owner in Houston for eight years.After great reviews and community and press support, I opened another more upscale restaurant in a Sugar Land five months ago.I believe that there is always glitches need to be ironed out in every new business when you first open and you constantly improve yourself. As a restaurant owner I always welcome candid feedback. I am doing everything possible to continue the quality and customer satisfaction that I have built in eight years;however the guests who call themselves Elite'11,whoever gives them this status or title have nothing better to do but trash the surrounding businesses including mine with their rude and destructive reviews  recommending people not to go there,etc.Some even go to extreme and complain about the free tab water quality.These people do not realize that they are actually hurting the overall economy as well as the bread and butter of a hard working employee who is earning a decent paycheck. I wonder if these kind of "ELITES" will celebrate the closures of these businesses who are injecting to the overall economy.I am also curious if these reviewer work for Yelp or their meals are paid by Yelp who may use it as a tactic to force businesses to advertise with them so these ELITES may start being more fair by increasing the STAR RATINGS.

Loved this

Yelp is a scam they called me up and promised good reviews! which they wrote and so I declined to go any further with there ad antics and when i wouldnt continue to pay for fake reviews they wrote fake bad reviews to slander my business

YELP in HELL!We pray to ALLAH that YELP EXTORTION is exposed in Federal Court! Manipulation of reviews is extortion! We pray that our LORD shows no mercy for all the emotional damage and EXTORTION they have inflicted upon small business owners and the children they support. YELP is a brood of snakes and scorpions and deserve to BURN ALIVE for their  extortion, lies and slander. PRAY PSALMS 119 FOR THEIR DESTRUCTION!Say five times: "Archangel Gabriel destroy YELP! Now!"YELP WILL BE BANKRUPT SOON! ALL PRAISE TO ALLAH! The Merciful and Compassionate LORD OF MAN and EARTH!

Re: t-shirt pic.  Haha!  I've been to Delfina in SF, enjoyed every piggy bite.

As a Yelper, I feel compelled to stand up for a site I useand enjoy. Of course there are millions of dumb reviews on Yelp—as there are onAmazon, TripAdvisor, and any other site that generates large numbers of userreviews. I don’t think that makes any of those sites useless.

Having grown up with a full-time critic at a weekly paper(theater not food),  I understand theattitude that most people don’t have the experience and expertise of aprofessional. And yes, you have to pick through the reviews with a grain ofsalt, ignoring reviewers who have nothing relevant to say and/or an axe togrind. But a broad consensus on a particular restaurant, dish, or issue can becompelling—if 15 people say the tuna is fantastic, I might try it. If half the reviewsmention that service is slow, I won’t go there on a tight timetable. Also, differentpeople notice different things. Are you taking your deaf grandma to dinner andinterested in the noise level at a particular restaurant? Want to know if thereare any good vegetarian options on the menu, or how responsive the staff is to specialrequests? There’s probably someone on Yelp who has answered those questions foryou.

I certainly don’t always agree with every review—or even theoverall star rating—but I usually gain some insight from reading through thereviews and looking for tips and patterns. I’ve also found some individualYelpers whose opinions I respect, and I “follow” them and see what they have tosay. Sometimes, I find these people’s experiences more helpful thanprofessional reviewers—simply because they notice and care about the samethings that I do.

As to reviewing HRW menus, I think it’s totally valid aslong as you mention you went for HRW (as most Yelpers do). If a restaurantchooses to participate in HRW, it has to know that first-time diners will comeand judge them on that experience, and if they don’t pull it off, those peoplemay not come back and may tell their friends. Yelping about an HRW experienceis just an extension of that. Personally, I take the HRW  reviews with a grain of salt and use themprimarily to decide where to go for HRW—i.e., which restaurants are speeding youthrough your meal and serving half-sized portions vs. offering somethingsimilar to their usual food and service. But any time a restaurant opens itsdoors to paying customers, it has to know its reputation is on the line, andthat includes potential online user reviews.

I started writing yelp reviews about 6 months ago and I really enjoy it. Then again, I treat yelp like my own personal food blog.

Scott: I wouldn't go so far as to say that the ratings are almost completely useless. Once you get 100+ reviews, patterns start to develop and you can weed out the outliers. I agree, though, that places without a lot of reviews don't really help unless you are familiar with the reviews of a specific yelper.

Katherine: I wouldn't write a yelp review based on a HRW experience unless I had been to the restaurant other times as well. The first time I went to Haven was during HRW and I didn't enjoy the experience. I went again for a beer dinner and I loved it. Since you stopped writing yelp reviews a number of years ago, has your opinion of it changed?

Guy who wrote the Stella Sola review:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

The full Haven review and the excerpt seems pretty fair to me, if the reviewer is being honest. The Fu Fu Cafe reviewer ought to learn that jip is an ethnic slur against Roma and Traveller people!

Yelp is good at locating restaurants that are close to where you are, but their ratings are almost completely useless.