Talk:Epinions

Regarding the acquisition history of Epinions: Epinions was acquired by DealTime.com in 2003. Later that same year, DealTime acquired the shopping.com domain name and adopted it as their business name.

Refs:

• Wedding Bells for DealTime, Epinions
• DealTime Morphs into Shopping.com

--KSchwartz 04:42, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure Epinions started before 2001, since I published some reviews there in 2000. I think they've been around since 1999, but I'm not sure of the exact year when they got started. Someone might want to check on that.

NOTE: Epinions started June 1999.

The material on this page is so negatively weighted, it at least borders on an attack on Epinions.

--Vorpalbla 5/17/05

I think the phrase "circle-jerkers" needs to removed in regards to it's more riske connotation.--Daveswagon 06:12, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've taken a shot at removing the non-NPOV angle to the article. It still needs improvement, but it's certainly a lot better than it was. --Keith

According to "mobiprof" in http://www.epinions.com/content_4411138180 the first members (all employees) were registered on 25 Jul 1999 and the first review was posted on 5 Jul 1999.

Circle-jerkers is evocative, but perhaps a small rewrite to use "rating circle" instead of "circle-jerker"?

Vorpalbla must be referring to the 5 May 2005 edits by 63.185.112.124. Those comments do seem an attack, but do contain a lot of valid criticism which epinions.com members are familiar with. Criticism of epinions.com dealings is a fact of life, so maybe that should be in here, Perhaps someone can rewrite it to NPOV and add back in under a "criticism" heading?

By the way, another thing that should probably be in here: epinions.com was bought by shopping.com. There now is a lawsuit with about 40 former employees including original founders against shopping.com, its board, and the epinions.com venture capitalist. They claim to have been cheated out of a fair share of epinions.com / shopping.com's IPO value.

- Tom

eBay bought off shopping.com. Epinions is also affiliated with Dealtime. And SOME epinions members still make $100/month.

Very few members still receive "Income Share", so that behavior isn't really a factor there anymore. "Circle-jerkers" is obviously biased and offensive. I think we need to check the motives & abilities of those in a big hurry to restore this broken version. -- December 30 2005

24.196.161.92 keeps deleting discussion of the criticism of epinions.com. This seems looks like a corporate attempt to squash criticism, when as noted above, that crititism is a fact of epinions.com life. His claim that the text is "out-of-date" (in his edit comment) is a an outright lie. This looks like corporate wiki-vandalism. Restored the previous version again, but changed "circle-jerkers" to "circle raters".

I don't work for Epinions and this isn't an effort to squash criticism, it's an effort to help the article conform to any sort of objective standard. The information is out of date. It's not even debatable! The few members who still receive "Income Share" did their "circle-rating" many years ago, today it has no tangible effect. If Wiki users are comfortable with articles which contain out of date material and are laughably subjective, the site will look like a haven for mediocre ex-Epinions writers. Hit a nerve?

---

> "I don't work for Epinions" Oh, you work for ebay.com then? Sorry mate, but it is funny that you don't deny that upfront when you do deny working fur epinions.com.

> "it's an effort to help the article conform to any sort of objective standard. The information is out of date" So, you are now claiming rating-circles don't exist anymore? No, you confirm it: "today it has no tangible effect" (but they do exist, hu? So how did you measure effect? *cugh*)

Circle-jerking is alive and well, but I dont have to tell you that. You use it all the time, but just dont want others to know your dirty little secret, huh?

I edited out that colorful word to protect those delicate senses you used as another pretense for your corporate twisting of the truth. Some people may dislike that edit, but it is just an edit. Your agressive deletion of an entire paragraph is vandalism. To paraphrase your own words: I think we need to check the motives & abilities of those in a big hurry to keep deleting that paragraph.

> "If Wiki users are comfortable with articles which contain out of date material and are laughably subjective, the site will look like a haven for mediocre ex-Epinions writers. Hit a nerve?" You mean "If Wiki users are comfortable with mediocre epinions writers who circle-jerk to get their high ratings and titles vandalising wiki articles, trying to hide their abusive ways, and lying in the discussion thread to get their way, wiki articles about companies will reduce to nothing but corporate propaganda."?

It is just a paragraph, but it seems pretty informative for just a few sentences. Here is a entire article about it by an epinions.com Category Lead: Welcome to Bambi's Epinions House of Trustitution, And, oh, a Category Lead does work for epinions.com; a Category Lead is an epinions.com contractor.

Realistically, circle-rating (the replacement word) will remain alive until epinions.com does something about it. Doh. You are right about on thing: this is not debatable. You are guilty of vandalising a wiki article.

---

My point is this: Discussion about any of these topics belongs on this page, not the main page. I frankly don't care if some writers have a beef to grind with Epinions, I just prefer to see straight information in a "pedia" which pretends to be objective. I don't work for Ebay, Epinions, or any of its partners or associates. You want Wikipedia to be another kind of Epinions, where opinion has as much weight as fact, fine. Thanks for educating me on the kind of information I'll find at Wikipedia. -"24.196.161.92"

Criticism

I removed the tag from the Criticism section because Epinions does indeed suppress negative reviews to anonymous viewers. You can demonstrate this by logging in/out and reading reviews.

Negative reviews are often buried on Epinions, which is unfortunate because information about the things that annoy and frustrate users of a product are often the most interesting. Dajhorn 18:29, 10 July 2006 (UTC)