Online Reviewers Beware: Do you see what I see?

Writing a comment, review, about a product, service or any thing is today common. But the outcome of such a common practice is scarey. The online sites with anonymous reviewers (esp., writing negative reviews) is the most challenging one.

• Online Reviewers Beware: You Can Get Sued -- Time Everyone's a critic these days, but defamation laws still exist in the Internet age -- "The Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling is an important defense of people’s right to go online and express their views. But it is also a reminder that anyone who crosses the line may have to pay up — big time." ++ 9 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Trust Online Reviews
• Be careful what you write: that online review could get you sued, By James Armstrong and Mark McAllister Global News

TORONTO – You might want to re-evaluate your plan to write a negative review about a local business – if they don’t like it, you could get sued.

There is a bevy of websites asking for you to review every company from the local convenience store to WalMart.

But be careful what you write in the supposed anonymity of the internet, as it could land you in legal trouble.

• A Point of View: How to get your own back on your critics, BBC -- Most authors dread unfavourable reviews from the critics - but there is an effective way to deal with detractors, explains Adam Gopnik. 

• Online ratings dangers: Critical review of doc results in lawsuit, Associated Press -- A Minnesota doctor took offense when a patient’s son posted critical remarks about him on some rate-your-doctor websites, including a comment by a nurse who purportedly called the physician “a real tool.” 
• Critical Review, Tips for WritingThis is a featured page -- cleary.edu Writing a Critical Review - Article or Movie
• Critical Reviews - OWL - Online Writing Lab - LibGuides at Louisville Seminary
• My New Amazon Petition, by JOE KONRATH

You may have read that bestselling author Anne Rice has joined an online petition, started by Todd Barselow, requesting that Amazon:

"revise their policies regarding anonymity when it comes to writing product/book reviews and for participation in the forums. Reviewers and forum participants should not be anonymous. By removing their anonymity and forcing them to display their real, verified identities, I believe that much of the harassment and bullying will cease."

As of today's date, this petition has been signed by more than 6000 people, seeking to put an end to Mean Anonymous People on the Internet (MAPI.)

PS.Image courtesy: http://liberalarts.udmercy.edu/

On  a different shelf  (what's not that big about reviews):

• Frustrated Scholar Creates New Way to Fund and Publish Academic Work
• High Stakes Criticism: The Case for Academic Gossip

The absent of comment is shameful. There’s a popular misconception that gossip is harmful. It often is, but gossip is a complex thing: whatever harm it inflicts is a direct function of its main virtue. Gossip is a socializer, a community-builder, a way of establishing ethical, social and intellectual baselines. Its perniciousness-
–which is real, and which I don’t mean to minimize—is a result of what gets excluded from that community-building: a fence will always have an outside. There are reasons to treat gossip with care: too often it reinforces extant power dynamics (the good old boys’ network is the gossipiest institution in history). And it often gets derailed by trivialities, mistaking the personal for the professional. We aren’t and shouldn’t be in the business of gossiping about how academics dress, or who’s sleeping with whom. (At least, not anymore than we already are.)