The Disutility of Yelp

Ok. Yelp reviews are so senseless.

Point the first: What is the review based on? Is it on the food? The cleanliness of the bathroom? The price/value? Whether they deliver? The reason this matters is that when someone gives a place (2/5) stars because "for $8 the burrito (which was good) should have been bigger" or (5/5) because "They D-E-L-I-V-E-R (I stoke!)" this throws the ratings off. The only way this isn't a problem is if both: a) there are many reviews and b) the weirdness of peoples' reviews is normally distributed. These are not both always the case.

There is already a place where it shows the number of $'s. So, the reviews would be more helpful if they were just on quality (I can then divide quality by price to determine value). But people all have their own criteria, which means that you get a mish-mash of reviewing criteria, which destroys the value of the rankings.

Point the second: Everybody thinks they're a foodie now, but they're not. I just read a review where this guy went on and on gushing about how some restaurant was the greatest thing ever because it had Italian food AND seafood. Seafood is Italian food numnuts. Italy is a huge peninsula, surrounded by fisherman. What did you think they ate? I guess he thought that Stouffer's lasagne was authentic. This guy probably also loves the Olive Garden and Pasta Pomodoro. How does this review help me? There are SO many like this.

Point the third: Expectations. Let me illustrate it like this. Most In&Out's have 4 stars on Yelp. Many fancy restaurants that have excellent food also have 4 stars. This happens because ratings are based on what people expect when they go there, which is, of course, inconsistent. Now, I love In&Out as much as the next man, but this just proves that strict quality of food is not represented by the ratings. I know that's not the only point of Yelp, but it's the main point, isn't it? If it isn't primarily about finding good food, what is it for? If I can't differentiate between In&Out and Morton's from the ratings, how meaningful are they really?

The people on Yelp are like the people in the Pizza Hut commercial, who are served Pizza Hut food in a fancy restaurant, give it rave reviews, and then act (except for one dude who's my hero) embarrassed to learn it's from Pizza Hut. The guy who's my hero simply says, somewhat defensively, "It's good!" He is able to do this (not be superficial and tell the truth about how he feels) because he is not a pretentious douche.

Point the fourth: The Pinay mafia. Not to pick on the lovely Flip girls, but it appears that there are huge amounts of reviews on Yelp from big groups of girls who are essentially competing to be cool in the eyes of their friends via Yelp. They compete to be leet, gush about 99% of restaurants at which they "had fun" regardless of the food, and then trash a restaurant randomly because they are 21 and don't have enough cycles behind them yet to have learned how to compensate for their PMS.

The Solution:
I suggested my method to Alex, which is to look at tons of the reviews and the pictures of the reviewers and try to construct some sort of essence of the restaurant. Here's an example... hmm... city-girls like this place b/c it has takeout and their boyfriend is "practically a regular" (which is non-sensical, b/c if he were the regular, she should be cutting & pasting his review). The pinay mafia also loves the teriyaki chicken (because Filipinos like sweet things). All the people who gave it 5 stars are white. 50% of reviewers said the sushi is super fresh and 50% said it was NOT fresh (because regular people are not equipped with a fish freshness detector in their bodies - instead they got the standard factory package (poorly trained eye and nose and little to no knowledge of fish or food preparation))(I am willing to bet that if you take the sushi people think is not fresh, put it in the fridge until it's 8 degrees colder, mist it, and serve it to (most of) them again, they will think it's super fresh, even though it's now 1 hour less fresh). Finally, several Chinese guys complained that it was overpriced and the portions were small (despite the fact it has 2 $'s). Nobody named Yuki or Ayako has reviewed the restaurant.
CONCLUSION: INCONCLUSIVE. There is no conclusion. You have no clue whether this is a good sushi restaurant or not until Yuki and Ayako go there or a real food critic tells you whether the sushi was fresh.

Alex's solution:
Find individual reviewers you agree with and just follow their reviews. This method has the virtue of being a whole lot quicker than mine. It probably works better. However, it is less comically amusing.

This is part of a longer rant that is forming in my mind about how the internet and the 2.0-captain-ajax-interblag and whatnot isn't as cool or revolutionary as people think it is.

To hammer my point all the way home:
I think a site that showed a pic of the exterior of the restaurant (and address), interior, parking lot, and menu with prices would be more useful.

Now... the UPC code... that was revolutionary.