I’ve been looking for a long time for something that would allow my clients to put reviews on their sites that would give credibility to the reviews–so that readers would know that they had not been changed by the site owner–but would also allow the site owner to choose whether or not to display a review.
Amazon provides a good model for the sort of reviews I’d like to have. A reviewer assigns a number of stars and writes a brief comment. The review is then “moderated” (as it is at Amazon) by company personnel and appears on the site. It should be handled technically so that search engines will see the content of the reviews and index them. The reviews should be stored on the site being reviewed, to avoid depending on an external site to deliver content that is accessed frequently. The site owner should be able to prevent a review from being posted, but should not be able to edit the reviews.
A site that users the service would be allowed to post the DCR logo, that links to an explanation of how DCR provides assurance of credible reviews.
The first steps toward development of this service, to be called Dave’s Credible Reviews, have been taken. The reviews will be stored on the site being reviewed, in an encrypted page, so that they can’t be changed by the site owners. New reviews that are entered will be stored on a separate page on the site, separately encrypted. When the site owner wants to look at reviews, they are presented in clear text, and the email address of the reviewer is provided so that the moderator can contact the author for more discussions or even to solve problems that are reported.
The first design work has been done. This is a business that could be launched soon. Would you please click on this link and answer a few questions about Dave’s Credible Reviews?
Survey on Dave’s Credible Reviews
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