Hey all,
I'm proposing a new rule. I plan on going ahead with this one way or another, but your comments and input may sway how it's done.
Context: We (RSE moderators) have an issue. We want this forum to be a place where you can give an unsolicited review of a guide, and we have a section called Day Tours where such threads belong. And Rick is big into encouraging use of local guides as a great way to learn more about the place you're visiting. However, we are not TA or Yelp or other places on the web that have a pre-made page about an entity whether it's a hotel, restaurant, or guide's service where such reviews belong.
Problem: There are some local guides (some recommended by RS, some not) that treat our forum like a reviews website, clearly asking their customers to come here to post a review. When you get several reviews of a guide within e.g. 6 months, even if the customers are legit, it still looks like spam in the context of this largely Q&A forum format, and it is essentially coordinated spam from an actor that we don’t have direct access to in order to address the issue. Alert forum members start calling out all posts about that guide as spam. And if we don’t remove the review because it appears to moderators as legit, the community still replies in a way that invokes doubt in the OP. That’s not a great look. Worse, when orchestration has been determined and posts are removed, legitimate customers naturally get very upset (it's not their fault!). Despite that, we stand by the decision to remove these posts as – if we kept them – our forum loses its primary credibility as a place to get genuine travel advice without ulterior motives. As you can see, it's a difficult situation, and it is extremely time consuming for moderators to investigate and deal with these issues.
Proposed rule change: We will allow a single unsolicited review or recommendation of a guide (still subject to spam checks) as a new topic (aka thread or web page) every 6 months. Why 6? Because threads lock after 6 months, and we have a 6-month filter in this website's search engine. Any additional reviews for that guide in that timeframe will be required to be a reply in that existing thread. All others will be subject to removal (with polite direction to the existing thread).
The aim is that this will contain all recommendations for a guide to a single thread, and legit customers will be more likely to keep the thread going as a discussion (instead of replying in the format of an unsolicited review which can appear spammy). It will also eliminate much of the time spent by moderators reviewing for spam.
How will reviewers know to do this? Community Guidelines, instructions on the Day Tours section, and other reasonable places. We'll do our best to inform of this expectation, but it won't be perfect. Some will not see this rule and post in a separate thread anyway. Moderators will handle it (if reported per usual... no, we don't expect reporters to hunt down if there's an active thread for that guide). Far easier for us to handle that - and better for those involved including the guide being reviewed - than the status quo. Guides could tell their customers to post here all they want, and it won't appear (nearly as) spammy as it'll be contained to a single thread as it should be (and as it is with other reviews websites).
Concerns? Good rule? Suggestions? Please keep responses on subject by not wandering into concerns of illegitimate posts (actual spam, fake reviews, AI posts, tag-team accounts, etc).
Thanks for your thoughts on this proposed rule. I'll check back next week.