First of all, the odd picture in the New York Times article was shot from a room in the hospitality school overlooking the law school across the street- a wonderfully subtle photo ruined by an obtuse or oblivious editor, probably. 

As for Yelp specifically - YEL(low) P(ages) makes money off free user generated content, it seems obvious that some of these users would follow through and take advantage of jilted 3rd parties. The power users are literally generating millions of dollars for someone else on their own dime, anyway.

Yelp mis-represents itself as trading a writer's venue for the right to profit off those writers, which makes sense. The problem is, though, they leverage this user content through racketeering so that you have no control over your reviews, positive or negative. 

You like and support a place? Too bad. They didn't pay the protection money, so your positive review is threatened to be buried and you, the reviewer, become an unwitting part of the PR hostage process.    

You hated a place, or maybe used Yelp reviews to save thousands of dollars off a crooked real estate broker or something? Again, too bad. Yelp will hide, or delete your reviews at their discretion.

They will allow clicky, ascocial 'elite' members to crowd out good reviews for the price of a couple shots at an elite event, and they have no equitable greivence mechanism when people writing in good faith don't want to be represented in this manner.

Its bad enough they make a lot of money off of your dinning budget - its even worse they hide behind "algorithms" which ultimately boil down to (Business subscription > # of reviews + average rating + review quality). You look at a smaller city like New Brunswick & what pops up, and its fairly clear. 

Its sad, but Cornell and Syracuse researchers are ultimately hurting the small businesses they patronize as much as they are helping the general review process they are researching. Cornell's hotel doesn't have Hilton's budget. 

Writers have a right, and a responsibility, to know how their profit-generating user content will be used, and assurances that they will be treated equitably, and fairly. 

Fuck Yelp elite.

the odd picture in the New York Times article was shot from a room in the hospitality school overlooking the law school across the street

The business school is across the street.

Right, school of management. Other than pointing out a minor mistyping of mine and demonstrating the kind of snark that kills online the review process, did you have a point? 

Correcting your error in one simply worded sentence is "snark"?  I suggest you develop a thicker skin or stay off the internet.

One line corrections without substance in the absence of an opinion or factual statement isn't snark? 

No facts?  Fact: The building across the street is the business school, not the law school.  

Trolling is the intentional posting of inflammatory statements with the intent to provoke a response.  There was no intent on my part to make you throw a tantrum.  Nine out of 10 people would have acknowledged their mistake and dropped it or not bothered to reply.  It's only "trolling" to you because you're reacting irrationally.  If I wanted to troll you now I would point out you confused "your and "you're" on this post: 

http://gothamist.com/2011/08/2...

A master 'baiter without the vocabulary to register his displeasure in a relevant manner given the topic at hand is a hell of a thing to be. 

Nobody will remember your commentary for your spelling. 

Opps. Trollery. I get that confused for snark sometimes. 

Oh, and NASHBAR - I almost bought a new bike from you. Then I realized you weren't even reading the reviews which stated "this product is nonfunctional for lack of 4 washers which cost a couple of cents to incorporate into your Nashbar product". 

I was an intern for the largest family within one of the larger of the "big four" record label groups, and 90% of my non-photocopying time was spent writing phony reviews on various web sites. Which is really weird—like this kind of conduct makes sense if a small businesses wants to hire an independent company to raise buzz online or something, but for a HUGE entertainment company to make its interns spend all day writing friendly blurbs about shitty bands on music blogs nobody's ever going to read?

And how do you know that any comment you read online is sincere? What if I'm a small record label intern who was just told to talk shit about major labels wherever I can?

There are sample tracks on Amazon and some people upload entire songs onto youtube.  Doesn't get rid of the problem but helps.

yelp extorts businesses all the time. They call asking businesses to pay them 350 dollars a month for "advertising" on their site. If you say no, you stop getting reviews on their site, and in most cases, they deliberately put the negative reviews at the top, even going so far as to hire these "reviewers" to write nasty reviews.  I actually sent a tip about this to you guys the other day wondering if you had ever looked into it. It's real and it is a problem. seriously, DO NOT support yelp. Just go ahead, google, "extortion, yelp" and see what you can find.

you stop getting reviews on their site

I call BS.

Given the amount of actual court suits filed against Yelp for this practice, why do you call BS?

De-eliting/eliting members based on what they review, and what they say in the review is fairly effective. Also the ROTD process doesn't hurt their influence over writers either. They don't generally ROTD bussiness which don't pay, so people write with that in mind.   Negative reviews tend to be taken down for 'libel' alot more if you grease the wheels of the advertising department, too. 

I don't care if you call BS. it's true. Read the comment below for further information on yelp's practices.