IN THE BALY OF THE JUDGMENT OF AN IDIOT: THE REVIEW AS A PUNISHMENT
IN THE BALY OF THE JUDGMENT OF AN IDIOT: THE REVIEW AS A PUNISHMENT
Photo Source: Antonino Rampulla, Dario De Marco
Waiting for the appointment with my webmaster for the regular maintenance of the camping site, I take a quick look at his positioning with respect to some search "queries", to evaluate the retouching of some "meta tags" (not that much changes but, according to the essay, every fly liver is substance ...)
From all research, using keywords and combinations obviously relevant, there is a constant: like parsley, TripAdvisor is omnipresent. At the end of this 2018, there is nothing to be surprised about. TripAdvisor is one of the most visited sites in the world . It can be considered a sort of Michelin Guide online, constantly updated, having a disproportionately larger number of inspectors, but not paid. TripAdvisor uses mechanisms from social networks to turn most of its passive "users" into active "taxpayers": as well as in the sci-fi dystopia of Matrix anyone is potentially an agent of the "system", in TripAdvisor is instead a reviewer ... Karl Marx, in a nutshell, argued that the capitalists paid only a percentage of the work actually done, otherwise they would not have made any profit, defining this mechanism "appropriation of surplus value". Today Marx would go crazy, because the "capitalist" TripAdvisor bills a billion and a half dollars a year, providing a "free" service but earning from the hundreds of millions of monthly views (through more or less explicit advertising, booking services, partnerships , "monetary" contributions from the activities in order to have more visibility) and from the reviews that we ourselves, with our voluntary work of reviewers, produce. I do not make it a moral question. These are facts. And for some cynical verses, TripAdvisor's founder, Stephen Kaufer, is to be considered a genius , also for having a revolutionary insight, in the company of people like Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, who had proposed a paid service, not only would never have had such an economic success, but would have failed even before starting.
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To better understand how TripAdvisor intersects the name of my activity on the net, proceed with the direct search in incognito (otherwise the cookies could spoil the results) on Google of the terms "camping sophia": after the natural and obvious first position of the site of Agricamping Sophia, here is the relative page of TripAdvisor. Basically it means that who finds us, immediately look for reviews on TripAdvisor . What then is what I do when I have to go for example in some restaurant where I've never been before... In short, I discovered hot water. Then I click on the link to TripAdvisor and immediately opens a calendar to select check in and check out of my booking, through TripAdvisor, at the Sophia Agricamping. The problem is that the procedure ends with a slightly biased warning, namely that "TripAdvisor's online travel partners" do not provide prices for this accommodation "! Of course ... I have never paid a single euro to the "travel partners" of TripAdvisor because I have never had the need to rely on external booking systems. However TripAdvisor reassures me because it can "look for other options in Pachino"...
I do not know the reason, but I feel a bit 'as if they had taken me of the ass around... I do not know... Maybe I would have more willingly accepted a notice like "this structure, despite our many solicitations, has never paid a single euro to broker bookings from us or our travel partners, so we suggest alternatively the structures that pay in cash or percentages on reservations".
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The downside is that due to the reputation achieved thanks to your generous reviews , the Agricamping Sophia enjoys an unthinkable attention in similar conditions twenty years ago, when the advertising was entrusted only to word of mouth or to the expensive presence in specialized magazines. The digital revolution has been a godsend for the emerging companies in these first decades of the third millennium, as it has indirectly provided the tools to radically shorten the time of entry in the "market": the possibility to acquire a website, to exploit social networks, to register in specialized portals, to be potentially constantly traceable and reachable via mobile systems.
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Hegel believed that history was in constant "dialectical" movement. In topical historical moments the overcoming of a given system of values would occur, the "negation" of these values due to their gradual exasperation. Thus the French Revolution, for example, would have been the definitive fulfillment of the dialectical negation of monarchical absolutism, so the Sixties revolution would have represented the overcoming of bourgeois values. An episode of Black Mirror from the Italian title "Free Fall", hypothesizes a future society in which all people will be mutually under judgment: everyone will be able to attribute a rating, expressed by a numerical value from one to five, to any person with whom come into contact. The average judgment would have determined access to social possibilities related to the rank acquired. Are we close to the future described by "Free Fall"? Today we can leave public reviews on the work of others on specialized websites , often with presumption, incompetence and malice. When I take the role of the "reviewer", I give myself a rule (perhaps spoiled by the fact of being on the other side of the barricade...): if the judgment is not at least sufficient, better not write anything, because to express a negative opinion on work of real, real people, who plan, sweat, hope (and maybe that day, for some reason, they could not give the best of themselves), can only undermine the possibility of adequately paying an employee or dressing a child to send at school.
Google's review system is the worst . TripAdvisor forces you to argue, so if you write cretin, your review, although it helps to determine the average score, loses credibility. Facebook has recently (and wisely) abolished the attribution of scoring opting for the only possibility to recommend the activity. In any case, on Facebook, the possibilities of identification and interaction are greater, so if you write cretin you can receive replies from anyone, not only (as on TripAdvisor) by the representative of the activity. On Google instead you can write all the cretin you want and leave a judgment even if you have never set foot in that restaurant or in that accommodation: there is no report that has effect. On Google (I affirm it in relation to my direct experience) you have no defense against malice and stupidity.
In contemporary society everyone can and feels almost obliged to give his own judgment and opinion on everything. Umberto Eco's unpopular affirmation may also appear classist but highlights one fact: the network places, for example, the opinion of a doctor on medical issues and the opinion of anyone without medical skills.
Who has been our guest knows well that we take measures to prevent certain risks, such as bumps and narrowing of the lane to prevent some exuberant put at risk the safety of others. It happened that summer 2018 a young couple had in the middle of the night moved one of the pots arranged along the internal road of the camping, in order to force them to slow down, in order to be able to accelerate in the vicinity of the tents area. One of my collaborators realizes and rebukes them. Instead of apologizing for the answer was the attempt (of course only on Google ...) to leave us a bad judgment.
To my aunt and uncle, Vini Sultana , a reviewer on TripAdvisor, left a negative opinion that he found himself in a winery where wine tastings are carried out, rather than in a "classic farmhouse / farmhouse": it is a bit like entering a gourmet restaurant and judging it negatively because it was believed to be a pizzeria...
At the beginning of this summer, the manager of a Marzamemi catering business, in which we often went, probably had a scrape (justified or unjustified of little importance) with the five people at a table. After a few days he found himself not one, but five bad reviews, one after the other, on TripAdvisor. Such a thing is done only for the purpose of damaging.
In Hegelian terms, if the right of opinion, painstakingly acquired after a long and tortuous historical process, is allowed to do so freely with free damage to others (voluntary or involuntary), they are beginning to lay the foundations for its future denial?
Text Source: Antonino Rampulla
ARCHIVE NEWS
CART RUTS CUT FROM QUARRIES CART RUTS CUT FROM QUARRIES
Back to CART RUTS AND A FEW TOO MANY PROJECTIONS I will skip any preamble, referring to what has already been written regarding the presence of cart ruts in south-eastern Sicily. The easy academic tendency has been, in most cases concerning cart ruts, to consider them in terms of the latomie, or quarries, with which very often (for example in the cases of the Targia or Pizzuta districts) they share the same territory. According to this theory, the carraie would have been indirectly created due to the wear of the rock at each passage of carts or sleds loaded with extracted stone blocks. I will not repeat the arguments presented so far in order to demonstrate that this is a theory that has little solid foundations on an in-depth analysis of the cart ruts. However, I will add a piece by demonstrating the implausibility of a connection between them in both chronological and functional...
CART RUTS AND A FEW TOO MANY PROJECTIONS CART RUTS AND A FEW TOO MANY PROJECTIONS
Read also THE POLISHING OF THE CART RUTS I will skip any preamble, referring to to what has already been written regarding the presence of cart ruts in south-eastern Sicily.Considering the possibility that the cart ruts were gradually dug by the passage of carts pulled by pack animals, for example pairs of oxen, observing certain sections of the cart ruts present in the Granatari Vecchi district, in Rosolini, and in the Pizzuta district, close to the Vendicari Reserve, two questions arise: 1. Why force the animals to pass over rough surfaces and protrusions high, compared to the base of the furrows, even 60-70 centimeters? 2. Why, in the presence of such obstacles, not opt for a detour? For Mottershead, Pearson and Schaefer such protrusions appeared later, since at the time of the passage of the wagons, a layer of earth covered the rocky bank, thus not making the obstacle...
THE POLISHING OF THE CART RUTS THE POLISHING OF THE CART RUTS
Read also THE PROBLEMATIC EDGES OF THE CART RUTS I will skip any preamble, referring to to what has already been written regarding the presence of cart ruts in south-eastern Sicily. To proceed with this comparison I have chosen a probable capital and the corner of a recess present in a block of the northern walls of Eloro that would seem to resemble a pinax, that is, a niche that would have housed a fresco of the heroa, but which a more careful observation refers to a system functional to the grip of the block through a pincer winch. Both elements, like the curt ruts, have remained at the mercy of the elements for millennia, and are therefore subject to comparable wear and tear due to the passage of time. The finishing of the capital should be of a high standard, since it is an architectural element that also has an aesthetic function. The recess, on the other hand, should have...
THE PROBLEMATIC EDGES OF THE CART RUTS THE PROBLEMATIC EDGES OF THE CART RUTS
I will skip any preamble, referring to to what has already been written regarding the presence of cart ruts in south-eastern Sicily.As can be seen in other sites around the world, in some cart ruts I visited, in particular in the Cugni district in Pachino, in the Granati Vecchi district in Rosolini and in the Targia district in Syracuse, a clear border can be seen, a sort of frame, next to the grooves, more marked externally, barely noticeable internally. The borders I measured have a width of 14-20 centimeters and a height of 8-10 centimeters. Not all cart ruts have such frames present or particularly evident, regardless of the degree of wear or degradation. They are found above all in cart ruts with less deep grooves. As already described in detail, given the presence of furrows with a depth of even 65-70 centimeters, the wheels of a possible vehicle would have had to have a...
THE PROBLEM OF CART RUTS IN SOUTH-EASTERN SICILY (PART FOUR) THE PROBLEM OF CART RUTS IN SOUTH-EASTERN SICILY (PART FOUR)
Click here to return to third part Clapham Junction As in the Maltese site Misrah Ghar Il-Kbir, also in the Targia and Granatari Vecchi districts the cart ruts intersect and cross each other in a similar way to the track switches in a railway station. The nickname Clapham Junction that was given by David H. Trump to the Maltese site, derives precisely from the similarity with the famous English railway station. For Sagona these are agricultural furrows and water channels, for Mottershead, Pearson and Schaefer these are abandoned paths due to obstacles and wear. Obviously we do not know what the morphology of the Syracuse and Rosolini territory was at times when the cart ruts were traced, but considering the current context, there certainly would have been no agricultural reason to build them, given the presence of fertile land, springs and fresh water courses just a few kilometers...
THE PROBLEM OF CART RUTS IN SOUTH-EASTERN SICILY (PART THREE) THE PROBLEM OF CART RUTS IN SOUTH-EASTERN SICILY (PART THREE)
Click here to return to SECOND PART Considerations on the theses of Mottershead, Pearson and Schaefer I find this study extremely interesting, even if I am perplexed by this emphasis on the loss of hardness of the wet rock given that Malta is among the European territories at greatest risk of desertification (as is unfortunately also the south-eastern area of Sicily). We don't know exactly what the climate was like in Malta when the cart ruts were made, as we don't even know for sure how old they were made. However, it might be understandable to take the humidity factor as a starting point. n strong consideration, in relation to a territory constantly subject to rainfall, but why would the ancient Maltese have had to intensely travel with loaded carts right after a downpour, with all the inconveniences that for example the mud would have entailed? The Maltese territory is...
THE PROBLEM OF CART RUTS IN SOUTH-EASTERN SICILY (PART TWO) THE PROBLEM OF CART RUTS IN SOUTH-EASTERN SICILY (PART TWO)
Click here to return to FIRST PART The Greek chariot In relation to the faithful reconstructions of the tools used at the time, recently made in Selinunte and in Valle dei Templi, and in comparison with Study of a Roman Cart by Paola Miniero, the axles of Greek carts of the time had to be no higher than half a meter from the ground and the gauge (i.e. the distance between one wheel and the other) had to measure between 140 and 150 centimeters. They had to plausibly be pulled by at least a pair of pack animals (as represented in the numerous numismatic and artistic testimonies that have come down to us) and have wooden but iron-shod wheels. Another reference for estimating the gauge is the width of two oxen side by side: the width of an ox is about 70-80 centimeters, so the minimum gauge between one wheel and the other, to maintain a certain stability, had to be at least 140...
THE PROBLEM OF CART RUTS IN SOUTH-EASTERN SICILY (PART ONE) THE PROBLEM OF CART RUTS IN SOUTH-EASTERN SICILY (PART ONE)
Who I am Rereading the final draft of what I have written, I think it is appropriate to spend a few lines to introduce myself. I am Antonino Rampulla, owner of the agri-campsite whose website hosts this blog, a graduate in philosophy, with a growing passion for archaeology, born from curiosity for the archaeological sites of which, in particular, south-eastern Sicily is rich. Certain of my substantial ignorance on the subject, I try to make up for it by studying in my free time. However, not infrequently, I happen to come across historical certainties, academically shared, that clash a bit with what logic seemed to suggest to me from the observation of some details of the archaeological sites visited. So, simply, I ask myself questions and, with the most scientific approach possible, I try to look for answers. The result is the pretext to search for information, study and publish in...