ONE man's meat, they say, is another man's poison.
That is what makes the rapid growth of online criticism such dangerous territory.
The old saw that everyone's a critic has become a truism with the rise to dominance of the TripAdvisor website. Few of us have not consulted it when considering booking a holiday, a business trip or even just a meal.
The figures speak for themselves: TripAdvisor carries more than 150 million reviews and opinions from travellers around the world, covering 3.7 million businesses in 139,000 destinations.
That is why unfavourable reviews can create widespread ripples that were previously unthinkable, and it is why proprietors increasingly feel they have to take to the ether to defend themselves. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the dispute involving the Crags Hotel in Callander, in an ideal world, complaints would be aired face-to-face and disputes resolved in the same manner, but criticism these days is often posted in the heat of the moment. The resulting fracas can often be entertaining, if seldom edifying.
Perhaps we should all take online reviews, like porridge, with a pinch of salt; though again, that may be too subjective for some.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
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