Why include reviews?

Bizwiki is dedicated to collecting and publishing business information rather than opinion, and the question of whether to include review functionality at all was debated early on in the project.

Our conclusion was that in some cases our visitors will want to know other peoples’ experiences with a business more than anything else, so we decided to add reviews as an alternative place for users to share opinions that would otherwise inevitably filter through into the business information.

After all, you can’t give users the right to edit the pages of a site and not expect them to want to express their views and opinions!

In addition, as long as opinions are kept separate from facts, there are some good reasons to allow reviews. For a site like this to build up reliable source of information about companies, it is necessary to engage with business owners each of whom is an expert on their own company. It is also possible to foster communication between customers and businesses as a means to helping businesses improve and better inform the clients.

Reviews also allow for a more editorialised type of content and additional information about companies that may fall outside the area of data. We see separating opinion from fact as vital, but are confident that users will benefit from access to both.

We hope that you find this a welcome addition.