Initially I was just going to ask how detrimental leeches are, but then found the subject to be more complex, breaking off into a few sections. Feel free to add information to each or any question.
How detrimental are Leeches? Initially I didn't think much of leeches before, other than with the same type of annoyance I have towards capable yet lazy people who are on the dole, claiming benefits from society. But a while back after reviewing a location several times, I noticed a negative effect that might be due to leeching. Previously I could get easy appointments at said location, but after reviewing several times, I found that I would always have to wait for an appointment, and I would see punters leaving when I arrived, and punters waiting as I left. In addition, the location increased their pricing. There were only a small number of contributing members who showed interest on the reviews, which makes me think that there were 10 or 50 times as many leeches punting from the review. But this is just speculation based on some indicators, but no direct evidence.
So how detrimental do you think leeches are? Do they exist in large enough numbers to decrease availability and drive up prices? Do they have any other negative effects?
Types of Leeches?Certainly we know that leeches exist. There is evidence of leeches who have been on this forum for years, punting regularly, yet contributing very few reviews, if any at all. For
example, punting for approximately two years, spending an average of £600-1000 per month with only 1 review.
And then there are
Coward leeches who never lose money or have a bad punt because they only follow positive reviews from good reviewers. These ones also
chime in on positive reviews, yet never take a risk and lead the way themselves.
Then there's the "could have saved you bad punt but didn't" leeches. These leeches show up on negative reviews to chime in that an SP is terrible, but they didn't review the SP and thus left others to the same pitfall.
Any other types of leeches?
Solutions for Leeching?With the filtering capabilities, I would love to see some
leech traps. For example, fake reviews being only view-able by leeches. Or even a few review swaps where negative reviews were deviously swapped with positive reviews, which would sit like landmines waiting to wreck a leech's day. Or even just swapping a positive review with a unreviewed girl.
Other options would be to allow full public access to negative reviews, which puts bad SPs out of business, and discourages others from providing bad service.
But then limiting access to positive reviews starting at page 5 and later. That way contributors get first pass to see good SPs, and leeches have to wait. This could be done using an
unknown access for the altruistic method, where new members could start with full access, but then it will move back a page for every month without a review, but not telling the new member this. This way, only people who genuinely want to contribute will do so, and leeches won't even know what they are missing. This will also avoid lazy or fake reviews to maintain access. (I don't know if any of this is even, technically possible, but just throwing out ideas.)
Of course guiding leeches to become reviewers is the most ideal, which could turn a negative leech into a positive contributor.