tripadvisor or similar crowdsourced review sites

i have such mixed feelings about tripadvisor - i eat out a lot, and i love the way it gives power back to the consumer - if somewhere's a shithouse, you know in advance.

on the other hand, the power is in the hands of the average internet consumer, who might give you one star rather than five if you get one slice of bread too many. reading the reviews sorted by worst to best only seems to confirm this. restaurants live or die by this shit these days.

discounting the one and five star reviews give a more realistic picture. i've only rated one restaurant five stars, and it deserved it.

I never use stuff like this, I just judge restaurants based on how nice they look, or what type of food i want and give them a chance. ive only been to one or two crap restauraunts in the last few years.

im also extremely forgiving as far as restaurants go, i dont complain, i dont really care that much.

  On 11/6/2014 at 10:41 AM, messiaen said:

I never use stuff like this, I just judge restaurants based on how nice they look, or what type of food i want and give them a chance. ive only been to one or two crap restauraunts in the last few years.

 

im also extremely forgiving as far as restaurants go, i dont complain, i dont really care that much.

Completely agree, never use them myself. Have to say though that a mate uses it sometimes and the times he did it actually worked out pretty good, found some really good stuff in the top ranked restaurants/bars in town or something.

I sometimes use trip advisor, mainly as a guide to see what museums etc. There are in the area. The reviews/ratings of the places are not of much interest really. If I need more info on a specific place just visit their official site. I've never used it for restaurants though, I prefer just finding one at random whilst exploring the city.

I like how all films end up at 6.something on IMDB, if it's som dumb Hollywood "serious" film it ends up at 7.8, but if it's a seriously good, but difficult arthouse film or a shitty no budget torture porn flick, they score about the same. People are dumb. Lowest common denominator=best.

Tripadvisor is the lonely planet of the early 21st century. Good for a quick look, but better to see and feel with your own.

i use foursquare. when you sign up, you tell it what you like (eg. clubs, beer, whiskey, sushi, burgers, italian food, museums, cinema etc) then if you're driving around and you pass a place that has any of the above it tells you. after that, you can see what people said about that place and depending on what you think, you can either "like", "dislike" or comment on whatever was said.

you can also follow people that have the same taste as yourself and discover new places based on what they comment or like and you can "check in" which let's your friends know where you are and automatically gives them directions (if they have foursquare as well).

p.s. if you live in los angeles, i cannot even begin to tell you how helpful this app is. i found this restaurant that's basically at someone's house. they're open like once every 2 months and make gordon ramsey type gourmet meals

I use tripadvisor to check for hotels and occasionally to see what sorts of restaurants are around. Generally the reviews tend to be ok as a guide, except for reading about Japanese/Korean restaurants.

Hint: writing reviews on TripAdvisor can get you some perks, I wrote a review of a hotel that was really nice, and now I get special rates when I stay there.

Used it a few times here and there while on tour and it worked well enough. Mostly I just like their owl, though I was under the impression they provided a rather different kind of service initially...

"Trip advisor" indeeeed.

Finding a decent builder/tiler/joiner/plumber/electrician is a ball ache when you don't know anyone, for that reason I use http://www.ratedpeople.comand http://www.mybuilder.com - invaluable if you've bought a shithole of a house.