General Question

JSpeer's avatar

A website that allows people to anonymously critique you as a person? Join?

Asked by JSpeer (362points) November 27th, 2013
23 responses
“Great Question” (1points)

Hi!

I have this potentially disasterour idea for a social networking style website that allows users to receive both positive and negative criticism on their personality. Everything is anonymous and private unless you say otherwise.

I’m sure there are a million questions you might have about how this might operate, but the question I have is this…would you join?

The purpose of the site is to receive CONSTRUCTIVE criticism from people who have come in contact with you or spent time with you personally. It’s goal is to help people either better themselves based on helpful tips on their social skills, or to take pride in all of the positive criticism they receive. This would not be a place to “tell off” people, and there would be ways of controlling that which I will not get into here.

Example: “Sometimes you promise to do something and then fail to follow through with it, and it is frustrating. It’s not all the time, but every now and then.”

OR

“You’re always such a great person to be around! I look forward to the times I see you and always feel uplifted when I leave! Thanks for that!”

Everything is private and anonymous (both crits you send and receive) unless you choose to make them public to receive further feedback from other users.

As I said, there are a lot of details on how the website will operate, but I’d like to know your thoughts about the concept (imagine an ideal situation in which people are using it for it’s intended purpose).

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Answers

Seaofclouds's avatar

I wouldn’t join. If people that have spent time with me want to give me a critique (being it positive or negative), I’d rather it be done in person. There is so much that is lost in just words on the computer screen. I’d rather be able to read the personal body language and facial expressions during the critique and be able to ask questions right then and there, rather than a back and forth conversation online.

LilCosmo's avatar

I would not join ever in a million years. I have enough people scrutinizing me in real life, I don’t need cyber-scrutiny.

glacial's avatar

This sounds like one of the first apps that appeared on facebook. It’s been done.

ibstubro's avatar

I thought, “No, not in a million years!”

When I scrolled down to type it, @LilCosmo was already here! :)

JSpeer's avatar

Great points guys! Thanks! I figured most people wouldn’t be up for giving the internet a free pass at scrutinizing them. What about if the website only allowed positive and uplifting comments? Just as a way to cheer people up/make them feed good about themselves?

Maybe it’s still anonymous but you can request that the sender reveal themselves and they can choose to make themselves known or not

dxs's avatar

You may strike the attention of some insecure teenagers but it will probably make things worse for them.

dxs (15160points)“Great Answer” (3points)
JSpeer's avatar

Yes! Great point @dxs

A definite concern is the “mental welfare” of teens (and everyone else also)

I guess I’m trying to find a more purposeful use for social networking that serves people rather than stunts their brain growth lol

ibstubro's avatar

Sorry, @JSpeer, I’m still not going to join. What would my mirror do??

chyna's avatar

No I wouldn’t. Why would I want anonymous people critiquing me? How could they even know me well enough to do so? I can only see this coming off as a hurtful website.

Coloma's avatar

Haha…really? Wouldn’t this be an exercise in allowing others to define you?
Bullshit, unless you’re so fucking neurotic you actually CARE about what others think of you, let alone let it rule your life and decisions.

Pffft! Next?
I bet you could rack up some suicides for sure. lol

Seelix's avatar

Even in an ideal situation where people are using it for its intended purpose, I can see this going sooooooo wrong.

CWOTUS's avatar

With total anonymity, how is anyone going to know what comments are even real and which ones may be simple smoke-blowing?

Create an account for yourself on Tagged, for example, and see how many contacts you get from “beautiful young women” ... which are not at all real. That is, the comments aren’t real and neither are most of the profiles of the “beautiful young women” that you’ll be hearing from. If you’re on Tagged, that’s what goes with the territory and what you can expect. Do you want your site to be that? What would be the point?

Haleth's avatar

When people can say whatever they want anonymously over the internet, social skills and empathy go out the window.

Have you ever gone on reddit? Spend a little while clicking through there.

Now imagine that, but on a platform that invites you to say negative and personal things about people. Yikes.

DWW25921's avatar

What could possibly go wrong…

Buttonstc's avatar

To answer your question, no, I would not join. I see it as pointless. I’m not interest in scrutiny from anonymous people. The friends in my life whose opinions and judgement I value are perfectly capable of telling me things to my face. Anyone who would need to resort to the type of website that you describe, would have nothing to say that I’d be interested in.

And your optimism about yourself as the owner of the website being able to control the postings of anonymous people on the Interne is completely unrealistic, to put it mildly indeed. Have you spent any time reading YouTube comments lately?

The only solution there for preventing hateful jerks from giving you horribly unfounded criticism is to disable the “comment” feature.

So, if you as the owner of the type of website you describe want to eliminate negative criticism, you must resort to the same. And then you’re left without much of a website.

Mimishu1995's avatar

No. Because what you are describing looks like an advanced version of Facebook (or any social website like that) and to tell the truth, I’m sick of social websites. I resent the ideas of updating what’s in my mind everyday onto the net then wait for people to comment. I would prefer to share my feelings offline, with a trusted companion.

flutherother's avatar

Getting objective feedback on how others see you might seem like a good idea but I don’t see this working in practise. You will be able to guess who gave the feedback and the person writing it will know this which will influence what they say. I don’t think it is a good idea but then I don’t think Facebook is a good idea.

Vincentt's avatar

> What about if the website only allowed positive and uplifting comments? Just as a way to cheer people up/make them feed good about themselves?

This could in fact be fun if you make it Tinder-like, i.e. you get presented with a picture and name of a friend chosen randomly, and you have to think of at least one positive characteristic of this person. After you did this for at least three friends, you can view comments people left on you, and you can start receiving notifications when people leave new comments.

If you’re not going to do this, I might :)

flip86's avatar

Twitter beat you to it.

BosM's avatar

The business application to this is what’s known as a 360° performance review, where staff critique a peer or boss, constructively of course. I’ve participated in this process and it has specific rules, for example the person being reviewed can’t respond to the feedback, rather they must listen and not become defensive.

I’m not sure what App’s are out there in the market to help facilitate this 360° process because I’ve done it more face to face, however, with globalization of the workforce technology in the form of an App using video conferencing/Lync/Skype could help facilitate this with remote staff.

Do some research in that direction if you feel passionate enough about your idea.

johnpowell's avatar

The cost of moderators > Ad revenue

Berserker's avatar

I’d do it, for the shits and giggles, but no matter how constructive and monitored it was, even if perfectly, I wouldn’t be able to really trust the criticism unless those people truly knew me in real life. :/

laceymary's avatar

The idea itself if pretty interesting but you need to have tons of admins and moderators because people might start having fight over he said she said stuff. Plus it’s an amazing troll feeder, a lot of people would come there just to violently make fun of other people.

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