[asterisk-biz] VoIPJet

[Trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On May 5, 2010, at 2:42 AM, Dan Journo wrote:

>> It would be far too easy to just nominate all competitors as "scammers" just to cause less business to be given to them.
> 
> I agree that it is very open to scammers, however if there are 30 different people making similar comments about the lack of service etc, then its pretty much believable.
> 

So me and 29 sock puppets make a complaint.  


> After all, what's stopping someone emailing this list and saying "don't do business with XYZ Ltd"?
> 

nothing, but just because its here does not make it trustworthy, which was my point.



> Unless the review board just offers a way to report issues, and then a group of people from this mailing list decide whether the issue requires posting on the website, using a kind of voting system. In this way, we should be able to prevent abuse. We would have to have a rule to ensure random one-time offenders don't get posted. Only companies that are constantly running off with money. And an expiry period on red marks to ensure companies that clean up their act get a second chance.
> 

Well most of my post was about why a ratings system is not going to be viable & reliable.  If you require people to take some action to rate someone that causes problems.  First there is the whole issue of poll rigging, next there is the issue of people are far more likely to complain than they are to praise.  This means that it ends up with a disproportionate amount of complaints.  

While a complaint seems like it is a bad thing a company that has 50% of its user base complaining is far worse than one that has 3%.  A larger company with 3% complaints may equal the number of complaints of a smaller company with 50%.  

The reality is that all of this rating stuff  costs money, and unless "policed" it will be subject to gaming.  Policing costs more money (or at least time).  It is prone to error, and if you wrongfully list someone as untrustworthy it opens up a potential for a lawsuit.  If this ends up having to be hidden to prevent a lawsuit (like some of the DNS RBLs) that further complicates things.  

Remember in the US if you win a lawsuit you do not get legal costs, this is how the Church of Scientology bankrupted the Cult Awareness Network.  20 frivolous lawsuits that CAN won all of but in doing so they spent $1,000,000 in legal fees.  CoS spent about $4,000.  At the end of the day CoS bought CAN out of bankruptcy and delisted themselves as a cult.  Anyone who decides they do not like the rating system can try a similar tactic, or it can happen naturally because there are a few people who do not like it and all unrelated to each other decide to file a suit.  Other countries may vary (the UK it does not work  this way, probably why they have far fewer frivolous lawsuits).

To sum up, I do not think a ratings system is a good idea under what has been proposed so far.
--
Trixter aka Bret McDanel
http://www.0xdecafbad.com