racing to the bottom . . .
. . . I completely understand why a person . . . let themselves be known as a reviewer. Why not? . . . If you are known, you get great service. If you are not, you get the standard . . . You guys are never going to agree on a reviewing system . . . The reader has more responsibility then the reviewer or the provider and I think that is something that has gotten lost here . . .There will be a blog article about that next week for those wanting to know how to properly read a review.
Apologies to those few kiss arses who bleated on about how miraculously intelligent this post was, but sorry, it wasn't. Wake up, terbnutters . . . if this whole hobby has three interest groups - clients, SP's, agencies - then the interest group most likely to lose out by a non-functioning review system is CLIENTS. Duh! The pool of information represented by terb is the only real quality control mechanism available.
Here's the part that appears to be escaping some of the dimmer bulbs around here . . . When the reviewer is known to be taking a kick-back from the one reviewed, then most commentary on reviewing systems say that review system is breaking down or being robbed of legitimacy. Case in point: pharmaceutical companies that give stock options or cash to doctors who write favourable reviews of the company product. Result? Widespread distrust of drug companies and much fraud and misrepresentation by those companies.
Of course, maybe KJ is smarter than I am giving her credit for here? Maybe she realizes that many terbites are pretty dim, and that if she sucks them into helping turn the review process into a known kick-back system, that is likely to relieve any real quality control measure on SP's and agencies. If this is so, then kudos to KJ for duping you tools! But come on, lads, think it through.
Let me try and get out a version of what I'm thinking. A dry run, ask for clarifications before you rail against it:
- Explicitly using your terb handle for session leverage is like a race to the bottom. Eventually no-one will trust the reviews, because everyone knows they are all tainted. Now, individual clients will get some extra special service at some stage, maybe, so yippee. But of course some of us appreciate the surprise-factor. But anyway . . . Eventually, members-in-the-know will have to rely on PM's to know the truth - their pool of reliable info shrinks to those they PM. Newer members will start finding mass discrepancies between the reviews and their experience, and ditch terb. So much for the impacts on clients. A proviso is that, of course, sometimes real identies get out. But when that happens accidentally, and is not linked to a system of kick-backs, then the larger pool of authentic reviews can swamp the odd exception. But also, the buck doesn't stop with clients. Eventually SP's will also find less and less 'socialized' clients (ie.: never read the do's and don't, etc), and advertisers will begin to lose access to potentially 'loyal' and repeat cleints. Lose-lose. Get it? Lose-lose. But clients lose first and they lose the most.
So . . . ignore KJ saying no agreement about a review system exists. Baloney. Sharing reliable information is valued. Shilling and bullshit is not. And don't forget that exchanging your terb handle for extra service just is blackmail. Maybe not all SP's are OK with that? But also, are you, as a client, OK with that? Paying and blackmailing are different. The former gets you into a game-like situation where you hope to do well, get a good experience, make a connection, etc, in the context of good times that you walk away from easily. The latter is cheap, in all of its senses, because your doubling up on the lack of authenticity and you know it. Is that really that satisfying?
