Fraudulent Ratings and Reviews

When I set out developing RateTea, I wanted to create a rating site whose accuracy could be trusted. Many rating websites are simply moneymaking schemes, designed to make a fun, interactive site, but with little regard to the accuracy of the information. While it would be nice for me to earn money through RateTea, I am not willing to compromise the integrity of the site in order to do so. I want to focus first and foremost on editorial integrity--ensuring that the material on the website, including both user-generated ratings and reviews, and the researched information on tea, is of the highest quality possible.

This attitude is central to all aspects of my life. I want to conduct myself with honor and integrity in everything that I do, and I will always sacrifice financial gain to do so, because I don't need to live an expensive lifestyle, and I have always had more than I need to survive comfortably.

Fraudulent Ratings:

RateTea has had a surprising problem with fraudulent ratings and reviews. The website clearly identifies both in the terms of use, and during the signup process, that it is prohibited for people to rate and review teas of a company they have an affiliation with. When signing up, people must select a pop-up menu that identifies whether or not they are affiliated with a tea company. People might object that no one reads terms of use, and while I agree with this, the message is communicated clearly in the signup process, and more importantly, it is common sense that it is dishonest and unethical to rate and review your company's own teas, especially when you lie about the fact that you are doing so.

There are several companies, all of whose teas are listed on the site, where there have been problems with such reviews. The problem is surprisingly transparent: a new user joins the site, usually with a hotmail or gmail email address, and creates some very high (usually 30/30) ratings of the company's teas all at once, never reviews any other company's teas, and never returns to the site or participates in the site in any other way.

Tracking Down the Offenders:

I have a bit of skill as a hacker and am very good at researching. With little effort, I once tracked down the identity of one of these reviewers, and found that he was a media consultant that had been hired by the tea company that the reviews had been written about. I deleted the ratings and politely contacted the person explaining our policy. I received no apology and indeed, no response at all.

How is there any honor and integrity here? If this person had admitted that he had written the reviews and apologized, there would have been integrity in that action; it would have been honorable and I would have forgiven the person's past actions: we are all human and make mistakes. But there is no integrity in failing to do so. Such inaction is shameful and sad.

How do other rating and review websites handle these problems?

Websites with a team of reviewers, such as Teaviews or Tea Review Blog generally don't have this problem because they know each of their reviewers, and the sites are not open to the public. Rate Beer, the site that RateTea is in many ways modeled after, handles things very similar to how RateTea does--their terms of use strictly prohibit rating beers when you are affiliated with the company.

Companies Reviewing their own teas on Steepster:

Steepster seems to have avoided the issue entirely...although their terms of use are much longer and more complex than RateTea's, my brief skimming of them shows no prohibition against a company rating and reviewing their own teas favorably. Indeed, extensive exploration of their site has shown me that a large number of tea companies rate and review their own teas. For many smaller companies, the overwhelming majority (and in some cases, ALL) of their tasting notes and ratings come from a company rating their own teas.

Do the ratings on Steepster have any integrity at all, if companies are allowed to rate their own teas? I know I am biased in answering this question because I have an interest in RateTea, and I have chosen to set it up the way I have, but I had thought about this issue long before Steepster had ratings. In fact, I had thought about this issue at length before I even knew Steepster existed. And many of the users on Steepster are honest (after all, I've participated there too, as cazort) and those are honest reviews just like all 278 of mine on RateTea.

Perhaps Steepster has a different purpose from RateTea. Is its purpose first and foremost to be a fun, interactive website about tea? If so, then it seems to be doing a very good job of this (quite frankly, a better job than RateTea, as judging by their higher level of participation). But this is not what I was aiming for. On RateTea's about us page, there is a sentence that reads: "We strive to offer the most accurate information on tea available on the web.".

This is what I care about. And honestly? I think we're already there. We screen out the fraudulent ratings. And I've put a tremendous amount of time into carefully researching the information on styles, regions, and brands of tea...and citing the sources of information when it is potentially controversial or when it pertains to critical topics like health or wellness.

So what do you think?

I have two questions for my readers...the first is a more practical one, the second is more existential, about what I should be doing with my time and if RateTea is really worth the while.

(1) Should I do more than just deleting fraudulent reviews? When there is a chronic problem, should I remove / unlist the tea companies that have had problems with fraudulent ratings? (Especially given that no legitimate users have ever reviewed any of these company's teas) Should I contact the company before taking such action (I'd be inclined to do so)? If the problem persists, should I bring out into the open that the company has been promoting its own products?

(2) Is this whole project a lost cause, or is it worthwhile? Do people care about the accuracy and integrity of a site? Or do they just want a site that's fun and looks good? Sometimes I fear that I'm never going to be able to make RateTea good unless it first takes off enough to pay for the skills that I don't have. I'm a lousy graphic designer and I don't always know what people want in a site. I do the best I can and sometimes it just doesn't seem good enough. What I am good at though, is researching, and maintaining the integrity and quality of information on a site. I just don't know sometimes if that's what people really value.

Thoughts? Thanks in advance.