This morning's Herald Sun from Melbourne included an article about a recent Urbanspoon review regarding a gay woman who was refused entry into Hoo Haa Bar. The Herald Sun coverage naturally spurred a slew of negative reviews and votes on Hoo Haa's Urbanspoon profile. When I got into the office this morning there was an email from Hoo Haa's Becky Dray: "I am writing to you to request that you evaluate and remove inappropriate reviews that have been posted on our page on the last 25 hours."
Nothing like mixing policy with food. But here we go: Urbanspoon is about finding great food. Everyone should be able to find exactly what they are looking for, and we don't weigh in on gay vs. straight, black vs. white, dogs vs. cats, or green vs. purple. But we do have guidelines about restaurant reviews, as in you should actually have been to a restaurant in order to review it. So we've yanked the feedback that just took Hoo Haa's alleged homophobia to task. Censorship? I don't think so - Urbanspoon's content is about personal food experiences, not public policy.
The story does get a little meatier, though. While looking closely at Hoo Haa's recent reviews, we uncovered a glowing review from a user named "Rose":
It reads like a thinly veiled press release from a sub-par PR agency. It turns out this self-identified foodie tracks back to... wait for it... Hoo Haa's Becky Dray. So we've removed that review from the Hoo Haa profile as well (nobody likes this type of behavior, us included). You can still read it on her Urbanspoon profile, where you'll see that this is, in fact, the second glowing Hoo Haa review from Rose- errrr, Becky, that we've had to take down. We invest in both algorithmic and human filters to detect and weed out nefarious shilling like this.
And at the risk of overusing the "some of my best friends are gay" caveat: check out this recent television advertisement. Feel free to love or hate it... not that there's anything wrong with that.
Source: http://www.urbanspoon.com/blog/85/Not-That-Theres-Anything-Wrong-With-That.html
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