Talk:Rightmove

Controversy POV

as it currently stands, the Controversy section reads as not having a neutral point of view; further not helped by a lack of references. It comes across to me as being a personal attack by an individual.

If we can find reliable sources to back this view up (within the next week), then by all means, keep it. Otherwise, I believe it should be permanently removed. -- Ratarsed 08:08, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Response to the 'controversy' section from a Rightmove employee:

"...it has gained a reputation amongst people searching for property for several confusing or plainly annoying features."

- 'gained a reputation' implies a group of people who when you say 'Rightmove' the response is 'oh, yes that's the site that really annoys me'. We do extensive user testing and it's true to say there will always be things that users don't like and things we can improve (what site doesn't have it's issues?), but the vast majority have a very positive experience because of the volume of property content and ability to simplify a home search.

"Its slowness during peak times of the day is legendary, even often being completely unavailable, causing many problems to it's users."

- we have a pretty good availability record and with a three-site distributed hosting set up the site is always up at at least one hosting centre. Lunch time peaks and post-tea peaks are common to most consumer sites.

"Further annoyance is apparent by its rather difficult access by searchers to finding the exact road location of the property they are looking at, as agents are not required to input the road name on listings"

- vendors often do not want their property precisely identified for security or privacy reasons. Agents often choose not to reveal full addresses to encourage interested parties to contact them. The Rightmove system gives advertisers (and by extension vendors) the choice over how to display details, thus the lack of or level of detail isn't really Rightmove's fault. This comment would apply equally to most other property portals.

"Another problem users have is images of properties are often lacking in number, take too long to load or to flick forwards and backwards through, or are inaccurate and misleading."

- again, the level of detail provided to Rightmove is entirely at the marketing agent's discretion. Often there are no more images available to display. As to 'inaccurate and misleading', it's an agent's job to present a property in it's best possible light so they will always exercise editorial judgement in framing photographs and indeed selecting which images of a property to show. If the author is implying that the picture of that tatty shed next door isn't included, it's not a terribly realistic point of view. Pretty much all property portals would be subject to the same issue.

"Finding a certain agent's property in the area a user may be searching for is also difficult, as agents often have more than one branch in any given area, and so the user has to check through them all separately, as there is no option to check through all of the branches at the same time."

- users can click on the agent's logo or use the 'about this agent' link to visit a branch specific page, from which you can search exclusively through the properties of that branch.

"Further major issues both users and agents have are also apparent."

- but apparently not apparent enough to present here.

Brotherharry 09:19, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

The points you raise in detail are pretty much why I believe the section should be removed (which I already have done once, but it was reinstated). I thought it was best to reach a consensus first rather than risk an edit war... -- Ratarsed 11:19, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, I've removed it until it can be properly sourced and conform to WP:NPOV -- Ratarsed 11:47, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Controversy (not POV) and Competitors

I think a lot of people have a problem with this article because it seems so unbalanced. It's important to hear the positive and the negative in an encyclopedia.

Articles for Microsoft, Nike and Coca-Cola all have sections on Competitors and Criticisms, whereas it would appear Rightmove staff have done their best to delete those sections from this article under the "spam" pretense. What we end up with is a glowing whitewash that merely provides promotional figures on how they are apparently the market leader. There is no comment on the user experience or anything else relating to the merit of the site. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.232.19.118 (talk) 18:02, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Wrong, the text was removed because it failed to comply with fundamental Wikipedia policies. This is an encyclopedia; deal with it. 212.84.101.155 (talk) 00:38, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

External Links (not SPAM)

Hey there Piano non troppo, How come the previous version of the rightmove overseas external link was allowed but the edited (working) version not? I added the Holidaylettings link as it's part of the Rightmove group, hence I didn't consider it promotional spam, but link to a related business within the Rightmove group.(Brotherharry (talk) 11:45, 12 March 2009 (UTC))