What's the story with ratings websites? Ratings websites purporting to offer the unvarnished truth about every profession from painters to solicitors are growing increasingly common in Ireland.
Whether these online forums, which allow people to post recommendations and condemnations as they see fit, provide a genuine service to Irish consumers in search of a service is, however, still open to question.
While some such sites are undoubtedly useful, others can come across as little more than platforms for the disgruntled to repeatedly and anonymously post negative and occasionally shockingly libellous feedback without a scintilla of evidence about people who have sparked their ire.
Among the first of the ratings sites to hit the headlines in Ireland was ratemyteacher. It was set up in the US in 2001 and allows students to grade their teachers and post anonymous comments. It got the oxygen it needed to survive in Ireland in March 2005 when the teachers' unions publicly expressed outrage about it and called for it to be shut down. Despite - or because of - their protests, there have now been more than 760,000 ratings posted on the site.
One of the more controversial ratings sites claims to shine the spotlight on the Irish legal profession. The site says it wants to be a "useful resource for people who wish to engage the services of a member of the legal profession". One solicitor named on it is currently being savaged by some not very literate users who may or may not have been former clients.
He features in the site's "hall of shame" and is described by one poster as "the greatest liar in the whole proffesion [ sic]". The anonymous post goes on to say the solicitor is "a bully" who "wont get away with [ sic] for much longer". Another comment, also posted anonymously, says "this man is a crook and is by far the worst solicitor in the whole country, this man should be in prison".
The positive comments about the solicitor are drowned out by the scurrilous ones, and while the posts have the potential to be enormously damaging to the solicitor's reputation, they offer nothing by way of facts to users in search of reliable legal representation.
THE SAME SITE was at the centre of a High Court action earlier this month when a barrister took an action against it claiming it contained grossly defamatory statements about her. Dublin-based barrister Jayne Maguire claimed John Gill from Newmarket on Fergus in Co Clare - the man listed as the main contact on www.rateyoursolicitor.com - had posted grossly defamatory statements about her on the website.
Gill, who claimed he had over a number of years been "robbed and defrauded of tens of thousands" by members of the legal profession, told the court he never at any time published or permitted to be published or posted on the site anything whatsoever concerning Maguire and said he had no means of removing anything from www.rateyoursolicitor.com or any other website.
Adjourning the case until early October, Mr Justice Michael Hanna told the site's principal contact he should put himself to the pin of his collar to ensure that the "particularly offensive" remarks were removed - if necessary by the striking down of the entire website.
Not all ratings sites are likely to find themselves in the courts. Last week, hospital ratings took centre stage with the launch by health portal www.irishhealth.com of a website offering patients the opportunity to rate and post details online of their hospital experience. The ratemyhospital site has been commendably careful in blocking multiple voting and ensuring that all comments submitted are hand-moderated in an attempt to prevent libellous comments being published.
THE SITE, WHICH will publish regularly updated hospital ratings, includes a comments area where people can post their observations, experiences and detailed feedback.
"It's our hospital system, and the public - as both patient and taxpayer - is entitled to know how well it is performing," says John Gibbons of irishhealth.com. "The total experience of healthcare delivery is highly subjective. Who better to ask than the patients themselves and their relatives? Instead of occasional rambling on the Joe Duffy show it becomes more structured." Entering the healthcare system either as a patient or a relative of a patient is "such a fundamental experience", he adds, "yet until now there has been nowhere to go to talk about it".
Another site with a focus on medical matters promises to give people the chance to rate their GP and, while it has been registered, it has yet to go live. There are also several sites aimed at the building trade - ratemybuilder.ie has recently been launched while onlinetradesman.com is another offering recommendations and otherwise of tradespeople.
According to the chairman of the Consumer Association of Ireland, Michael Kilcoyne, such sites only have value if the facts are correct and the posters genuine. "I think that the idea is good but the way a lot of these sites are operating is a cause for concern."
Kilcoyne says that people contributing to rating sites should, at the very least, be forced to include a valid e-mail address with their posts. "When the posts are completely anonymous, people can write whatever they want. There is nothing to stop someone who might have a certain agenda trying to blacken an innocent person's name. And everyone is entitled to their good name."
