Category Archives: Blogs

Researchers look at deceptive online reviews

4 Replies

Thanks to the folks at Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) for flagging a study of deceptive online reviews by researchers at Northwestern University and MIT (“New study investigates online reviews – makes surprising discoveries“).

Deceptive reviews were identified in two ways. There are reviewers who claimed to have previously purchased the product, but the online retailers’ database showed this was not actually the case. A second group of deceptive reviews are identified through several linguistic characteristics (you can check out the full paper for details).

What they found is that ‘approximately 5% of the product reviews are written by customers for whom there is no record they have purchased the item. These reviews are significantly more negative on average than the other 95% of the reviews for which there is a record that the customer previously purchased the item’.

It’s no surprise that positive reviews lead to higher sales, but according to the study, negative reviews have a much more profound negative effect.

In simple terms, if you’re considering buying something which has ten five star ratings and a single one star rating, that single negative review could make you move the cursor away from ‘buy now’. And if the review was dishonest, then you, and the online retailer, just lost out.

The reviews identified as deceptive were much more likely to be negative. There weren’t an equal number of positive but deceptive reviews.

Very few customers write reviews. They are written by less than 2% of the firm’s customers, while reviews without prior transactions are written by just 6% of all reviewers. This suggests that reviews without prior transactions are contributed by just the tail of the tail of all customers.

We also show that customers in this extreme tail are not representative of other customers. They purchase many more items, they are more likely to buy at a discount, they are more likely to return items, and are much more likely to purchase new or niche items. Unfortunately they are
also influential. Their low ratings reduce demand for the products that they review and this loss of demand is evident for the next 12 months.

This is interesting on its own, but also for raising the question of whether blog comments can also be analyzed for “deception,” such as comments written simply to be provocative or disruptive and not to reflect the actual views of the commenters.

If you run across any of those studies, let me know.

In the meantime, the full research paper referenced by dpreview.com can be found here.

Silverman’s health challenges greet us on return from DC

9 Replies

We were at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., in time to watch the sunrise yesterday morning. And we were at home in Kaaawa in time to pour a glass of wine and watch the reflections of the sunset from over the mountains. That’s a pretty amazing day.

May 10

So we’re catching up after being away from home for a week.

If you follow the saga of our eight cats, here’s the latest chapter. On the way from the airport, we stopped to pick up the two diabetic boys, Duke and Silverman, who board at VCA Kaneohe when we are out of town.

Their stay at VCA turned out to be anything but normal. Duke was scheduled to have his teeth cleaned, but instead turned out to need a number of extractions. We got a large bill for the dental surgery along with a baggie of bloody teeth, kind of like getting the engine parts back after getting your car repaired. But Duke came out of the experience doing well, eating enthusiastically (as always), etc.

Silverman wasn’t quite as lucky. Several days into his stay, Silverman started vomiting, and his appetite fell. He seemed constipated. He was given fluids and an enema and, after consulting with us by phone, our vet did a diagnostic X-ray. It showed Silverman was indeed constipated, but also showed that he had been shot with a pellet gun three times in the past, leaving one pellet in a shoulder and two somewhere in his rear end. More importantly, it also showed he ate a piece of what is probably a chicken bone which is now somewhere in the middle of his plumbing. With any luck, it will soften and pass through. In the meantime, all of this somehow sent Silverman’s blood glucose levels into a spin, alternately dangerously low, then back up very high. So now the problem is getting his system settled down so that we can recalculate his proper daily insulin dose. So Silverman didn’t come home with us last night, and instead spent another night under medical supervision. We’re waiting for a medical update today.

Bottom line–the cats got great care, but cost more than all the expenses associated with our trip to D.C.

So it goes in our extended cat world.

We returned to find that my sister, Bonnie Stevens, has started a new blog to share her passion for genealogy, Family Hunter (http://famlyhunter.blogspot.com).

This from a post on Thursday:

Several sources link my maiden surname to a lowland Scots farm called Mosshat from at least 1650 to 1800.

I first heard about Mosshat in the mid-1990’s when I received a copy of a letter written in 1949. The writer, a Canadian, was recounting for her younger relatives the stories her own grandmother had told of life in Scotland before several siblings moved to Canada nearly a century earlier. She said that the family were lairds, landowners, at Mosshat Farm, but had to sell out about 1800 when an epidemic swept through the sheep flocks, killing sheep “by the hundreds”. She named her grandmother’s grandparents, the earliest known generation; her grandmother’s parents; and added that there was an Aunt Betts who married a Watson, and an Uncle Tommy who “farmed at Cobbinshaw”.

The Cobbinshaw reference was pivotal. A cousin had already documented that our direct ancestor Thomas Lind was farming at Cobbinshaw by 1800, and that his sons and grandsons continued to farm there until 1884. Our shared great-grandfather was born there about 1839. We were reasonably certain that our Thomas was the “Uncle Tommy” referred to in the 1949 letter. But where was Mosshat?

By the time she finished this post, she had searched through old maps and then used Google Earth to visit the area.

If you’ve got any interest in tracking you genealogy, or in watching amateur historians put the pieces of the puzzle together, you will find her new blog rewarding.

Revamped state websites lack access to minutes

10 Replies

I was browsing through State of Hawaii web sites yesterday. Have you noticed the new look of the sites of different departments? It seems they are aiming for some sort of uniformity.

I thought that might be a good idea.

Then I looked closer, and it became obvious the new look does not involve making important information more readily available.

I’m concerned about agency minutes, the starting point for accountability. After minutes, the statutes and rules governing each agency should be available.

So let’s browse.

Take the Department of Agriculture. I was interested in meetings of the Board of Agriculture. And it looked like it would be easy to find information about the board’s meetings and actions, because there’s a link at the top for “meetings and reports.” It led to another page of links. At the top, a link to “Board of Agriculture Meetings.” So I clicked again.

This third level had yet another set of links to agendas and “actions” of the board.

Along with these links was this message:

Minutes of meetings are available upon written request.
Please include your name, address, phone number, name of board and date of meeting. Requests may be sent to: [Department of Agriculture address]

So after clicking through several levels, you discover that Board of Agriculture minutes are not publicly available online.

Is somebody actually paid to devise these uninformative sites?

Over on the right of the page, there’s another set of links. At the top, the Agriculture Development Corporation. Will there be any substantive information about it?

I clicked.

What you get is a nice looking page with a formal description of the corporation, its stated goals goals, and links you can click to a list of directors, its strategic plan, and its “game plan,” whatever that is.

Minutes? Nope. Meeting agendas? Forget it.

So I backtracked to the “board actions” link.

This next level presented links to a series of meeting dates. I clicked one at random, and what did I get? Minutes lite. Not minutes, but a copy of the meeting agenda with brief entries as to action taken on each agenda item.

For example:

Request for Consent to Assignment and Conversion of General Lease No. S-3764, Lot 16, Waimanalo Agricultural Subdivision, Koolaupoko, Waimanalo, Oahu, Hawaii

Action: Approved

Disposition: Documents have been drafted and are being reviewed by

the deputy attorney general.

Why do I think this is a problem?

Well, it is obviously an attempt to fob off the public with something far less informative than the law requires.

By law, minutes must include information far beyond an abbreviated statement of action approved.

Here’s what the Office of Informaton Practices has to say about the requirements for adequate minutes.

Minutes must provide “a true reflection of the matters discussed at the meeting and the views of the participants.” HRS § 92-9(a). The primary purpose for minutes is to record what the decision-makers (the board members) did and discussed during the meeting, so that the public can scrutinize their actions. While the law also requires the minutes to reflect the views of participants in the meeting who are not board members, it is sufficient for the minutes to describe, in very general terms, the positions expressed by these other participants.

A board is not required to keep a transcript of a meeting, although a transcript can serve as minutes if the board prefers. Paraphrasing the discussions and testimony taking place at the meeting is fine, so long as readers can tell what was discussed and what the various participants’ views were.

Minutes are required to include the following specific information:

(1) The date, time and place of the meeting;

(2) The members of the board recorded as either present or absent;

(3) The substance of all matters proposed, discussed, or decided; and a record, by
individual member, of any votes taken; and

(4) Any other information that any member of the board requests be included or reflected in the minutes. HRS § 92-9 (a).

Simply stating that the assignment of a lease was approved comes nowhere close to being a reasonable substitute for minutes.

So much for the Department of Ag.

Next I tried the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands.

I chose a link to the Hawaiian Homes Commission, and it looked like meeting agendas and minutes were going to be readily available. Meetings are listed by year. For each meeting, the listing gives the date, location, time, a link to the agenda, and a link to completed minutes.

The problem? The last meeting for which minutes are available was June 19, 2012.

Here we go again.

If I can find the time, I’ll try for a broader review.

In the meantime, choose your favorite agency and see if minutes of their boards and commissions are available online.

In the new world of paywalls, what’s your news budget?

12 Replies

As the paywalls keep going up, I’m certainly not the only one feeling the squeeze.

The problem isn’t that we’re being asked to pay. The problem is that some of the big dawgs are asking pretty hefty subscription fees.

In the past, I’ve paid for the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Civil Beat, and Pacific Business News. I also like to look at the Washington Post, LA Times, Portland Oregonian and Seattle Times, with an occasional stop elsewhere, but haven’t had a paid subscription.

So what kind of an annual cost am I looking at for continued digital access in the age of paywalls?

Washington Post (new paywall, price to be announced)

Wall Street Journal $260 (Ouch!)

New York Times $195 to $455 (depending on type of digital access)

Los Angeles Times $103.48

Honolulu Star-Advertiser $60

Seattle Times print replica $181.48

Pacific Business News $59

Civil Beat $239.99

Just those add up to at least $992.99, with the Washington Post still to be added.

There are specials, of course. For example, I haven’t paid full price for Civil Beat and, although I write for them, I don’t know that I would. I’ll have to cross that bridge when I get there.

One partial option is PressDisplay.com, which delivers digital access to some 2,000 global newspapers for $29.95 a month. That’s a pretty good deal and sure to satiate most news junkies. But the big newspapers aren’t on its list–New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal.

As a local blogger, of course, the other clear result of the new world is that these corporate media are going to suck the oxygen out of the room. People may become accustomed to paying for news, but after subscribing to get over the most important paywalls, I doubt there’s room in many budgets to support independent local voices.

Do you have a strategy for coping with the new world of paywalls as a consumer, or as a content producer? What’s your news budget? Share your thoughts.

Thanks.