[this is will the last thing i post about this]
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Christopher Hicks) wrote: > On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, _brian_d_foy wrote: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Christopher Hicks) wrote: > > > On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Chris Prince-Colbath wrote: > > > > Allow customers to post anonymous ratings/reviews of the trainers on > > > > the list and be done with it. > > > Open public feedback has worked quite well for Ebay, Amazon, imdb and many > > > others. > > actually, it hasn't. > Actually it has. it provided value to you, as the consumer, but took a lot of work on the part of the provider. such effort is usually beyond the motivation of volunteers. you benefited from things that were created at great expense to get you to participate in another part of the business. look at all the of guidelines and policies that each of those organizations have in place. someone enforces those, and they get paid to do it because the company gets something out of the expense. there's no similar upside here, but a lot of work. those companies certainly aren't Wall Street darlings either. not too many people think doing a lot of work and losing money defines success anymore. let's remember that i've been running Perl Mongers for quite a while, and i've had the benefit of lots of advice from the people who ran TPI. lots of people have volunteered to do lots of things, and almost all of them never happened mostly because the project was too ambitious in scope and brought the volunteer little value. i always see a lot of people carping about how easy things are, but very few people actually doing these easy things, and even few people keep doing them. > > all have had numerous problems with publishers and the like submitting > > false reviews and pretending to be people they aren't to load a > > particular project with good or bad reviews as appropriate. > There are problems. It's life. So!? If anecdotal problems meant that > projects weren't successful, there's never been anything successful. > Bah, humbug! Grave robbers got in the pyramids. TCP made it too easy for > people to steal connections. Amazon sued B&N for patent infringmenet. those sorts of exploits took work of a great number of people, most with a vested or financial interest in the outcome. money is a strong motivator. something has to make the project worthwhile to the person who undertakes it. > I have found that the feedback systems I mentioned have been quite > successful. I've watched many movies that I otherwise wouldn't have > because of imdb. those are different sorts of systems though. IMDB and Amazon both have access to loads of consumer and purchase information, and can statistically make recommendations based on a very large N. however, they both rate identical commodities that you can purchase anywhere you like. you've gotten away from rating the vendor, which is what a vendor directory would do. People aren't going to fly half-way around the world to take a Perl course because it rated better than the local one. in this case the consumer has very limited options because the transaction requires physical presence. -- brian d foy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - Perl services for hire CGI Meta FAQ - http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html Troubleshooting CGI scripts - http://www.perl.org/troubleshooting_CGI.html
