Should old reviews count towards numerical rating?

I'm sure different people use the site differently, but it's hard not to think that many people make a quick snap judgment based on the numerical rating directly at the top of a properties review page.

I was looking at the reviews for a property and noticed most of the lowest ratings were for reviews that were over ten years old. (The five oldest, all over ten years old, would equal a 2.8, while the five newest would be an 8.8)

Is that the most useful/accurate way to judge a park?

I mean ten years is a long time, and in this business employees from ten years ago can be long gone, and SO many changes can happen over that amount of time, from the property itself, to improvements, different amenities, etc.

I really think it's a good suggestion to consider keeping reviews over ten years old, but not counting them towards the numerical/star based rating.

Thoughts?

 

I haven't solely used the numerical rating to choose a park in quite some time now. Everyone has a bit of a different idea of what's best for them and that's not necessarily what's good for me. There are a lot of poor reviews out there simply because of personal issues and stuff that really hasn't anything to do with the use of a park. There are a lot of great reviews for parks that don't deserve the recognition but get the points because of their location to an attraction. I read the reviews posted to find out what the park has to offer me. I write reviews hoping to cover as much as possible to let others know what the park has to offer. If It's worth taking the time to check out RVPR, it's worth the extra time to actually read the reviews IMO.

Darrell

 

Without actually visiting the park itself beforehand, which in most cases isn't feasible to do, I think we all have to base our decisions about a park on what "all" the reviews have stated past and present. Due to ownership and financial situations that arise and can/will/do effect the park overall, changes happen. Some for the good, some not so good. We have found that averaging out the reviews will usually give us a pretty good idea of what we are going to be seeing for real once we get there. As has been said in other posts on this subject, we are all different in how we review a given park. We all have different requirements and needs that go towards the rating we give a park. Our idea of clean, nicely landscaped, with level sites and good hookups, etc., is different than someone else's might be. The list is endless on this subject. RVPR's had been an extremely valuable tool for us ever since we started using it. A strikeout one time do to the park being taken over by new owners since the last review was done on it, and those new owners turned what was a "resort" into a haven for full-timers who had in some cases trashed the place. We stayed one night and moved the next day to another park we were familiar with from past stays. If the reviews and/or ratings process is changed to a different method, etc. we will still use the method we have been using in the past as it works for us, and I think it does for many others also. The old "if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it" analogy is still working for us, but again, we are open to, and will adapt to, change if it benefits the majority on this forum. That be my nickels worth on this one.....................

Happy 4th......!!! Those of you out there on the road with the crazies, be careful and have a safe and fun holiday weekend...................

BankShot................(aka Terry)

 

You are correct; when this site was first being developed, there was talk of using a weighted system for determining the overall park rating, and I think there was agreement that the newer scores should carry more weight because they reflect what the park is like now. However, I think that several formulas to calculate the average rating were tried, and there were some complications, so I am not sure if one was ever chosen and implemented.

 

I'm not suggesting anyone makes a decision on the numerical rating alone, but rather it impacts their first impression, it also has an affect when you're looking at the overview of parks in an area.

I also agree that you figure out what matters to you, if a park gets demerits based on cable tv, and no amenities for kids, but you have satellite and no kids, you may very well disregard those demerits.

I don't know if I'd suggest anything complicated, I suppose something like: Reviews one year old or less 100%, five years or less 90%, 10 years or less 80%, and over ten years 0%.

Either way I think little to no weight should be given to reviews that old.

 

By George, I think you've got it.

 

Yes, there were some ideas tossed around, but, as they say, the devil's in the details. What about a park that doesn't have many (or any) recent reviews but has a bunch of older ones? Do you drop the old ones possibly leaving the park with none?

Alternatively, you could use an algorithm which didn't remove older reviews but discounts them relative to newer ones. If there were no newer ones the old ones would still end up counting. But, what kind of discounting would you like to use? Something simple and linear or maybe an exponential decay function?

Of course, once you switch to doing this you'll have lots of people asking why the average is no longer the average of all the posted reviews!

 

That's why I wasnt suggesting anything overly complicated.

I just think you weight reviews over ten years to 0. They still exist and can be read, but don't count towards the numerical rating.

Are there parks without reviews in the last ten years? That would be the only downside, but that seems like an uncommon situation.

 

I wish I was this concise in real life!

Maybe another advantage of weighting is that it encourages parks to ask for, and the members here, to post more reviews.

If you somehow haven't had a review in ten years, maybe you encourage people to review you, knowing that reviews over ten years don't really matter. It benefits everyone.