No one I know of trusts Yelp reviews. But Yale sure does.
Yale, you know as a paragon of higher ed.
Yelp, if you don’t know, is a child of high tech digital fancy. It’s a website that aggregates public opinion on things like restaurants and services in order to provide a rating that consumers can rely on.
Despite all its algorithmic gloss, Yelp’s small sample sizes render it basically as no more than whimsical gossip — far from reliable information. It’s even been gamed by restaurants and providers in the past with fake or insider reviews to get better scores. A few establishments have even sued critical reviewers for libel, an obvious transgression against free speech.
To me, Yelp is simply a sometimes entertaining way to pick up hearsay information, not decent intel.
It should not be the final arbiter for whether anything is good or bad.
That is, unless you happen to be the dean of Yale’s Pierson College, like June Chu who as of this week has been placed on leave with her future uncertain.
