Hi Stamford Talk, you've been sent the following by a Chowhound moderator:
We really do understand your frustration with our request not to post about Napa & Co. It's even more frustrating for all of us to have to ban discussion of good places. But we really do need you to stop posting about them.
The problem is, it's not possible for us to block just the insiders who violate the rules about posting on their place -- they use too many IDs (literally dozens of them in the case of Napa & Co, from names you'd recognize like Fairfield Foodie, John Leah, tdchow, TwoSuns, to many one time names) and post too many dishonest posts. (We're not counting the new nametag you registered last night to post about Napa, which we've deactivated.)
With a lot of work, we've been able to confirm that the posters mentioned above are all employed at Napa or related to an employee. We just don't have the resources to continually examine each and every reply that comes in on Napa, deciding if the poster is a legitimate poster, an innocent newbie who doesn't know any better, a disgruntled regular poster like yourself, or one of the sleazy bunch who got the place banned in the first place.
Luckily, we don't have many places on our banned list because word has gotten out and most restaurant owners, staff and family members realize the risk isn't worth the reward. We only put this measure in place when there's been a concerted campaign to post phony reviews which will bring people into a restaurant. And even then, it's not intended to punish the place -- we don't even normally send emails like this, since we don't want to damage the restaurant's business, we just want to keep our site honest. You seem really frustrated, though, so we're hoping opening up a little with the details will help you understand why we have to do what we've done.
It's no accident that Chowhound is a sleaze-free, hype-free site where like-minded chowhounds swap chow tips. We've had to moderate carefully to create that environment and we have to occasionally delete honest posts like yours to keep it that way. We hope you can accept that and maybe come to appreciate it.
We know that the Napa & Co ban has been particularly hard on the Tristate community, since it's a restaurant many of you would like to discuss. With the intense history of dishonest postings on this place, sadly, we've been left with no other choice.
We're hoping that now you're acquainted with the details on this situation you'll be better able to abide by our guidelines (including the prohibition on registering more than one posting alias.)
The Chowhound Team
Chowhound.com
For Those Who Live to Eat
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Letter to Stamford Talk from Chowhound
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2 comments:
Your letter was so much nicer than mine...hahaha. And WOW! It's a teensy bit hilarious that they "deactivated" the fake account your registered last night. Interesting that they brought up some familiar names to be associated with Napa.
Well...you should give yourself some credit. You found out what everyone else was dying to know.
I don't accept their reasoning. I do think that some editorial editing is always necessary (to avoid spamming for example). However, using deletion or subject-wide ban to combat astroturfing is not an acceptable tactic, but rather it's avoiding the issue. A better solution is to flag and out those people who post on those restaurants as employees or owners of those places.
The reason why deletion does not work here is because 1) it alters history without showing justification and 2) malicious usage of astroturfing can cause silencing of a discussion that could have been the purpose of the astroturfing in the first place. By flagging these individuals without deleting those accounts, you indicate their bias immediately without silencing the topic or altering the history. This kind of transparent management is what makes a good discussion group.
In short, I think that Chowhound is being immature in their silencing and I would expect that these holes in their reviews will eventually be their undoing. How can you trust a website that is not transparent regarding their content?
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