patrick.net

Kind of like the reason there are no comprehensive doctor review sites - fear of lawsuits.

But if you are stating fact, or just giving your opinion, I don't see what you could actually be sued for. That case in the link is about a complex that claims a rival complex was writing fraudulent reviews. The solution to that is to require the reviewer to post the exact address and period of time they rented there.

But that would give away your anonymity to the landlord. Would people still write reviews in that case? I'm guessing some tenants are angry enough that they would.

I have looked for an written reviews on a couple of apartment review sites. They were marginally helpful. All of the real ones were generally somewhere between negative and scathing. The positive ones were generally REALLY positive, to the point that I had to assume that the property manager wrote them. I assume that all of the real reviews were negative because the only people that take the time to write a review of an apartment are angry ones. That's why I was on there lol.

I agree - positive reviews of anything are usually indistinguishable from advertising, and so not very useful unless you actually know and trust the person who wrote them.

Negative reviews are much more useful.

Maybe this would make a good Facebook app, where people put their real identity down. Or maybe I should require real names along with addresses to write a landlord review on Patrick.net? Would anyone do it?