I feel like there should be a feedback option on some reviews - I was scoping out our next campground and saw they gave the campground a 1 star because there was mosquito's and an hour away from the city. How is that the campgrounds fault? How is that review beneficial to anyone?
Yeah, reviews like that are useless, but consider how some (like me) use the site. when looking for a camoground, i scan through the last 4-5 reviews to see the scores. if all green (mostly all positive), i dont bother reading the reviews. if there is only one negative review out of many positives, i generally ignore that one. if there are "mixed" reviews, i then start reading the narritives to see what the problems might be, and if there is a common theme. If the review you are mentioning is a "one-off", then my guess is it shouldn't affect them too much, but its still annoying.
Both of those issues may justify the rating. Mosquitoes are common, but if the park either is located near a significant source of mosquitoes say a swamp or worse created conditions that lead to an infestation like having standing water in old tires the rating is appropriate. As for location, if the park either advertises or implies it is close to a city or attraction it should, in fact, be close. A park that calls itself “Capital City RV Park” should be in or near Capital City.
This may not be the appropriate thread but for some time I have been wondering why those that post pictures of the park or campground they stay at just show a close up picture of their dog laying by a bench or several pictures of a bunch of bushes, trees, or in some cases a puddle or small lake, with a duck as the closeup... IMHO these types of pictures show nothing of the place they are at and certainly are of no help to anyone possibly thinking of staying their. Thankfully most parks that have a picture gallery on their website show pictures of various sites and other things the park offers. One picture that gave me a laugh. or maybe it was just a small "snarl", was of a guy's legs and bare feet laying in a lounge chair facing a open field with nothing else to see... That's my little gripe for what it's worth. As the old saying goes, different strokes for different folks l'll end it here and keep on keeping on... BankShot........(aka Terry)
Back to the reviews, I disagree with no reading those one off poor reviews in the midst of many good reviews. Some of them are really good for a laugh when they complain about the weather, poor cell service, and other things the park has no control over.
IMO all reviews have to be taken with a grain of salt. They're just opinions, they aren't necessarily accurate ones. While I may read the bad reviews, I mostly dismiss them when other reviews for the same park are good reviews. I especially dismiss them if the bad review/low score is by a member where that's their only review. I call them "fly-by" reviewers. The person joins just to bash a park where they had a bad experience, never to return again. They're the kind of person who plasters any review site they can locate with a bad review, just to get their word out. If the reviewer is a well-established contributor, say at least a couple dozen reviews, I may take their unfavorable review into account since they have a track record. Low count review members, not so much. So long as the review doesn't violate posting rules, we allow them; no matter how sparse in content they are.
I know I stayed at a park and the bugs were incredible and painful enough that I would have said something about them. It is all about the time you go in the year so when I read that there were a lot of them I went a couple months earlier and we had no bugs.
