Disclaimer: I don't work for Yelp but I have created other user-ratings-based sites before.
It's not entirely fair to criticize Yelp for under-emphasizing negative reviews.
One of the big hurdles to overcome on a user ratings site is that people are most motivated to write reviews when they are outraged. There is a massive selection bias, and if nothing is done to alleviate this, your site runs the risk of becoming a soap box for ranting.
You work harder to get positive reviews than negative ones. If you receive 2 bad reviews and 2 good ones, that does not mean 50% of people are dissatisfied.
This should be the motivation for preferencing good reviews over lots of one-off bad reviews.
BUT: Yelp made the cardinal sin of "objective" ratings sites: their profit comes from the entities they are rating. Ergo everything on their site is questionable.
It's not entirely fair to criticize Yelp for under-emphasizing negative reviews.
One of the big hurdles to overcome on a user ratings site is that people are most motivated to write reviews when they are outraged. There is a massive selection bias, and if nothing is done to alleviate this, your site runs the risk of becoming a soap box for ranting.
You work harder to get positive reviews than negative ones. If you receive 2 bad reviews and 2 good ones, that does not mean 50% of people are dissatisfied.
This should be the motivation for preferencing good reviews over lots of one-off bad reviews.
BUT: Yelp made the cardinal sin of "objective" ratings sites: their profit comes from the entities they are rating. Ergo everything on their site is questionable.