New RV Park Reviews website is now online

docj wrote:

kcmoedoe wrote:

docj wrote:

kcmoedoe wrote:
A search by average ratings would be a dis-service to everyone since they apparently are not weighted by time. A park that is improving or going down hill will be improperly scored. And we all know that there are very few parks that don't change one way or the other over time. Especially impacted will be new owners who take on a run down park and build it up and parks where a change in ownership or management is running the place into the ground (think all the parks Morgan resorts bought).

I'm not sure why you assume you know all the answers about how the system is run. Weighting the average score so new reviews have more impact than others is definitely something that has been discussed and may be implemented in the future. I can't say for sure that it will happen or how it will be implemented if and when it is, but it was a fairly obvious issue which, most probably, will be addressed soon.

I may not know all the answers, but I sure got that one right, since you say it "MAY" be addressed in the future. It sure is arrogant to imply someone is wrong while admitting they were right. It that just you or is it the attitude the new ownership of the site is going to be taking on as their corporate identity?

The use of the word "may" is appropriate in common English usage when the speaker (me) doesn't have the authority to say that something will definitely happen. In this case there is a high probability that a change will be made but I'm not the decision-maker so I can't promise it with certitude.

It doesn't take much thought to realize that an average of all reviews from all years is rather deceptive for parks that are either improving or declining, although it may be quite acceptable for many others. What's much harder to figure out is how to "discount" older reviews. Should ones older than a certain age just not be counted? Should they be discounted using some mathematical formula? What about parks that don't have more than a couple of recent reviews? or maybe none at all? Should there be no average displayed for them at all?

When you give the issue some thought you realize that it is far more complicated than it appears and a solution that is appropriate for all parks and which can be automated is harder to arrive at than one might expect. It is easy to criticize something that is dislike than it is to come up with an effective solution.

I agree with you 100%, it is very difficult to come up with a formula that will accurately account for all the variables that any review site has. Things like some parks only get a review or two a year making a time weighted system virtually useless, some reviews are obviously either a fluff job by friends or management and other reviews are nothing but sour grapes by either disgruntled customers or competitors, skewing the scores. (as an aside is a gruntled customer a happy one?) In my opinion, maybe a mobile search that relies on any formulated average score might be a bad idea. There is way too much information that is gleamed by reading reviews that cannot ever be distilled into a single score for a park. A single score search will very likely do a dis-service to both the park and the potential customer. Maybe the site is trying to do something it really can't accomplish if they are trying to distill a park's score down to a single meaningful number.