Content Guidelines

Last Updated: September 27, 2024

General Guidelines

People come to Wisdom to connect with great local businesses. We know that people won’t always agree, but we expect everyone on the platform to treat one another and the community with honesty and respect. These general guidelines help set the tone for discourse on the site. Please also read the additional guidelines below for specific types of content you might contribute to the platform.

  • Relevance: Ensure your contributions are appropriate to the forum. For example, reviews should not be used for rants about political ideologies, a business’s employment practices, extraordinary circumstances, or matters unrelated to the consumer experience.
  • Inappropriate content: Colorful language and imagery are fine, but threats, harassment, lewdness, hate speech, or other displays of bigotry are not welcome.
  • Conflicts of interest: Your contributions to Wisdom should be unbiased and objective. You shouldn’t write reviews of your own business or employer, your friends’ or relatives’ businesses, your peers or competitors in your industry, or businesses in your networking group. Businesses should also refrain from asking customers to write reviews.
  • Privacy: Respect people’s privacy. Don’t post close-up photos or videos of other patrons without their permission, and avoid posting full names unless referring to someone commonly known by their full name.
  • Promotional content: Avoid posting promotional material unless it's related to a Wisdom advertising product and through a Business Account. The platform should remain useful for consumers and not be overrun with commercial noise from users.
  • Post your own content: Don’t copy content from other sites, users, or businesses. Share your own original copy, photos, and videos. Additionally, you shouldn’t use chatbots or other AI tools to create or revise reviews.

Review Guidelines

The best reviews are personal, passionate, and reflect your consumer experience. They offer a rich narrative, a wealth of detail, and a helpful tip or two for other consumers. Here are additional tips for conscientious reviewers:

  • Personal experience: Share your firsthand experience, not what you heard from someone else or saw in the news. Tell your own story without broad generalizations or unsupported claims.
  • Accuracy: Ensure your review is factually correct. You are free to express your opinions but avoid exaggerations or misrepresentation of facts. Wisdom does not take sides in factual disputes, so we expect you to stand behind your review.
  • Demanding payment: Reviews should inform and help the broader Wisdom community, not be used to threaten or demand payment from businesses.
  • Review updates: Updates should reflect a new experience or interaction with the business. Don’t repeatedly post about the same old issue. If you have new insights to add to an old experience, you can edit your review within 30 days of posting it.

Photo and Video Guidelines

Photos and videos should be relevant to the business and reflect the typical consumer experience (e.g., what the business looks like or what it offers). If you’re a business, show us what makes your business unique. Here are some key guidelines:

  • Keep it relevant to everyone: We may remove a photo or video that showcases a personal experience that isn’t relevant to others (e.g., a receipt or email exchange with a business), though it may appear alongside your review.
  • Keep it clean: Avoid imagery of violence, drug use, nudity, or suggestive acts, even if those images are an accurate representation of a business’s services or products.
  • Keep it friendly: Don’t use photos or videos to attack or disparage others. A picture is worth 1,000 words, so choose wisely and make your point in a review, direct message, or review response.

Community Guidelines

Don’t be shy—use your account profile to let others know who you are and what makes you tick. Reviews are more valuable when they come from people that others can know and trust.

  • User Profiles: Transparency and trust are important at Wisdom. Anonymous users who are disruptive to the community will be dealt with more sternly. We encourage you to share a little about yourself, but avoid using your profile to attack competitors, reviewers, or Wisdom itself. Steer clear of keywords, special offers, or promotions in your profile.
  • Consumer Messaging: Wisdom provides a messaging feature to keep you connected with fellow users. Please do not use this feature to harass others or send inappropriate content. Remember, consumer accounts are for personal, non-commercial use only.
  • Business Messaging: Businesses should message reviewers using their free Business Account. Direct messaging is often the best way to resolve disputes with unhappy customers, but you can also address issues publicly via a review response. Business representatives should upload a clear photo of themselves to personalize their messaging. Don’t use messages or public comments to launch personal attacks or offer incentives to change reviews.

Ask the Community

The ability to ask and answer community questions about businesses is valuable. Stick to questions that are relevant to others, avoid presumptive or loaded questions, and keep the tone civil and constructive. Clear, well-contextualized questions will result in better answers and more meaningful conversations. For broader topics like “what’s the best pizza place in town,” try joining the discussions in Talk.