On Monday I wrote about a radio ad that offered bad advice for people that live in Phoenix. The ad was most likely created as part of a national advertising campaign, which was sold to affiliates across the US. Apparently no one bothered to check whether the ad was truly appropriate to the entire national listening audience.
In a similar, but professionally more damning trend, Real Estate Professionals are doing the exact same thing over on Trulia Voices. In my opinion, the popularity contest that is Trulia Voices has agents working desperately to increase their stats so they will appear to be the Voice that should be heard. The trend I am seeing is that some professionals are so overzealous in their desire to answer every question they possibly can, that they answer many questions they definitely should not.
And I’m not the only one seeing this trend. Jay Thompson has pointed it out often enough, as has Jonathan Dalton. Last week, I asked the Trulia Voices community if the community at large saw this trend, and whether Trulia should make any type of change that might limit people from answering questions. 100% of respondents did not want to see any limits put in place to their ability to answer questions. Police ourselves everyone said.
Bah. 
That philosophy isn’t working. Instead, many questions are answered with conflicting information, wrong information, sometimes illegal information, and/or nothing but a lame “Consult your local REALTOR” or “Call me” response. And this type of behavior will continue, so long as there is nothing that will reasonably deter it from continuing.
In response, I’ve decided I can no longer associate myself with Trulia Voices. I look at it as an example of guilt by association. If I blindly continue to ignore the problem, in effect I am part of the problem, not the solution.
My concern over the problem isn’t that I’m losing the popularity battle. I’ve already explained how easy it is to win that battle. My real concern is how bad I look in the eyes of the consumer. But even more so, how bad every Voice looks. I can’t imagine how a person that truly wants to know about the quality of the schools in 85255 feels when they hear for the 7th time, “talk to a local REALTOR”. It’s pathetic. It makes me look pathetic, and I don’t like looking pathetic.
I’ve looked over the toolset available to me for being part of the solution, and all I can find is the thumbs down button. The problem with this approach is I don’t see where that affects my rating. I’ve been thumbed down a few times (usually when I offer conflicting advice, or point out another’s erroneous advice), and my rating doesn’t seem to be adversely affected. There isn’t a big neon sign flashing over my avatar that says, “This guy get’s thumbed down a bunch, don’t listen to him.” It seems to me I could have 100% thumbs down answers, but if I had 2000 answers right now, I’d be the #1 rated Voice in Trulia, since the Trulia rating system gives so much merit to the number of answers. Moreover, the thumbs down approach means I’m playing bad cop, and I don’t want to play bad cop. I thought I was coming to Trulia Voices to help people. I could also start some nice flame war style discussions in Trulia Voices, but does that really help anyone? How does it help me? I think it would just make me look like an ass. And I don’t want to look like an ass.
So I’ve decided the best solution for me is to opt out. I’m not going to answer questions from Trulia users at Trulia Voices any longer. If I find a question I like, that I want to discuss, I’ll discuss it here. I suppose you could say, I’m on strike from Trulia Voices. If the folks at Trulia can find a way to more meaningfully rate the Voices, and (more importantly) dissuade people from working outside of their area of expertise, then I will be happy to opt back in.
Oh, I should thank Heather Barr for helping me come to the decision to opt out last Friday over lunch.
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Steve – Excellent post. Trulia could have had a great thing in Voices. The asinine “points system” has polluted it to the point of being worthless.
I’ve tried as well, including voicing my concerns directly to Trulia. All I got was a “we’re working on it” response (months ago).
It Trulia wanted to fix it, the solution is simple. End the worthless rating system based soley on volume of answers. Yes, there would be far fewer responses, but likely the responses that were there would be quality answers from agents who want to help, not inflate their “status”.
Quantity of response means nothing. Quality is everything.
I too am tired of trying to help in a sea of ineptitude and point grabbing. The same thing has pretty much recked ActiveRain too.
I’ll officially join your Voices picket line.
You know I’m in … about time you came along for the ride!
This is indeed unexpected. I didn’t think others would “go on strike”, but on second thought, I’m not surprised.
If anyone else still owes their past union dues, we’re offering a forgiveness deal for anyone that comments here.
Hi Steve,
Thanks for the great comments and thoughts.
We hear you. I agree that things are not perfect today.
To give you some background. When we launched Trulia Voices in May this year we didn’t want to build in many “rules” around what the moderation tools (thumbs up etc) did at the very beginning, only that they track your participation. As the user contributions have grown that has to change.
Our engineers are working on a system that has the following components:
- enables open participation (which is a very important part of Trulia Voices).
- encourages positive and valuable contributions (not spam) by clever interpretation of user flags and other factors
- scales with large volumes of participation
- considers the natural incentives of the different participants in the community
As you can imagine this is not easy to do and requires some pretty advanced algorithms to get it right. The good thing is now we have lots and lots of data and users to help us build the system that can do this.
I can’t give a date, as we are working on many things right now and it is pretty complex, but we’re on it.
What we’re building is pretty clever (we hope) and it will take into account the thumbs ups and downs, those “out of state” answers, poor answers and a number of other factors. Our goal is to eliminate all gaming using advanced algorithms and encourage the best Voices to heard loud and clear.
We believe there is a strong consumer need in helping people understand the complex issues around real estate and helping them connect with the RIGHT agent for them.
To that end, anyone answering lots questions poorly today will be adversely affected and those that answer questions excellently will be rewarded. Retroactively.
Hence, I ask you to stick with us. It is clearly in Trulia’s interest to let the cream rise to the top and that is the principle by which we are building the system.
I hope that helps.
More soon
Pete
Pete, first I hope you don’t have any kids that are upset you spent Halloween at work or in front of a computer. If I ruined your Halloween, or even made it less enjoyable, I’m truly sorry.
Second, I agree with what Jay wrote on his blog, that I think Trulia has great potential. I have no desire to see Trulia fail, but at least for now, I feel the need to distance myself from Trulia to protect my own professional interests.
I look forward to the changes you are working on. I know it can’t be easy, so I also understand it may take some time. In the meantime, I’ll be watching, silently.
Steve,
I posted this on Jay and Jonthan site this morning.
Good Morning Jay, Jonthan and Steve,
I think there should have been a vote, before a strike was called.
Growing up in a union family I am not accustom to crossing picket lines. You have made this a very difficult decision.
To top it off it is Nov 1st, do you know how many expired listings I should be waking up right now.
I made this Video Oct 28th, regarding Trulia`s ranking system.
http://www.mydeo.com/videorequest.asp?XID=2978&CID=138751
I do totally agree that there are several agents that just answer questions to improve their ranking. I have asked questions myself, and wondered if the agents responding ever read the question.
I myself have answered many questions outside of Arizona, because I felt that I was being helpful, or these people just needed to hear my opinion. Lately, some people just need a good slap.
One thing is true about Trulia. When answering a question about Arizona. I better be right, because I am competing with the likes of Dalton, Belt, and Thompson.
It is my Opinion that your protest would be better waged on the pages of Trulia, calling out every B.S. answer for what it is in Arizona, in the only unique way the three of you can
The world would be a better place if we all policed ourselves…….hummm.
I only answer Trulia’s questions if they are in Michigan and then only if they are something I know for sure. It amazed me how many people in other states try to answer the questions. Same thing at activerain.
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