FLOW

using these spaces. There are woodworkers, machinists, chemists, weavers, artists, and many more. Interspersed among their individual workspaces are lounge areas where people can talk, sit down, and relax. There’s also a library filled with technical manuals, as well as eating and meeting areas. People are eager to help one another, and eager to share.

Local businesses are also taking advantage of these spaces. Dozens of the personal workspaces in MakerLabs are rented to them, with people running their own companies in the workshop. Demand is compounded by the rise of companies like Etsy and Kickstarter, which have become popular by supporting small, local makers, giving rise to many new small businesses.

This isn’t something just for professionals though, far from it. As it turns out, MakerLabs has a rule: if you want to use any of the machines in the shop, you have to take one of their relevant courses. It doesn’t matter if you’re an expert who’s been using CNC machines for decades, or a complete newbie who doesn’t know what CNC means (it stands for computer numerical control); everyone is treated the same. Not only does this mean that there’s little chance of feeling out of place, but if you have any questions there’s bound to be an expert nearby. MakerLabs now has around 200 members, and they want to make the place feel open to everyone.

This applies to Tools for Women (TFW), a program to remove barriers for women in the shop. Derek Gaw and other users realized that more often than not, when women would come in to check out the shop there would be exclusively men working at any given time. If you’re a woman and you don’t see women in a workspace, you don’t see yourself there either. TFW takes in four women per month as a group, allowing them to take classes together, and to act as mentors for the next groups.

The concept of sharing tools and resources among a group of people is hardly new. Schools have had similar set-ups for generations, and you can even find examples in some apartment complexes and in co-op housing projects. However, makerspaces like MakerLabs are not limited to schools or restricted to on-site residents; they are community spaces where anyone can join, and where joining is actively encouraged. Nowadays there are many makerspaces here in B.C., like the Vancouver Hack Space or the Vancouver Community Laboratory, but they remain a relatively recent phenomenon. Makerspaces are growing in popularity, not just here in Vancouver, but around the world. As of 2016, there were 483 such spaces in North America, a 14-fold increase since 2006. In 2014 the White House held its first-ever Maker Faire, and celebrities like Adam Savage from Mythbusters are encouraging people to become involved. Calgary’s Mini Maker Faire had 700 attendees in 2012; by 2015, that number had risen to 4,300.

Living around Vancouver is expensive, and that’s forcing people to adjust. Over the past decade, this has taken on many forms, from community living areas, community gardens, and now community makerspaces. These low-cost environments give hundreds of Vancouverites access to tools they need, to a community of supportive, like-minded people to help them with their work. It could be one individual wanting to do a small woodworking project; it could be a professional business that wants an open work environment.

Makerspaces are new, innovative ways to fill these niches, to help bring communities together. What’s more, they just make economic sense. If you have 20 people who need to use a tablesaw a few times a month, why should they each buy their own? The future depends on people becoming more comfortable with sharing, with collaborating, and with getting out and making things together. ■

stars reaching for the HOW A FIVE-STAR RATING COULD SOON IMPACT YOUR LIVELIHOOD, YOUR DATING LIFE, AND MORE.

story by JULIANA FERRANTE

IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT IN DOWNTOWN, Vancouver and you just arrived at your dinner reservation. You grab a seat and check your watch. It’s nine on the dot. As you begin to squeeze the lemon off your glass into your $12 gin-infused cocktail, you start to actively scan for “Mark, six foot tall, brown hair, lawyer, likes dogs, nice eyes.” You met him online last week, and agreed to the date because his overall score was 4.5. His rating only heightened your interest as he had reviews from more than 10 other women stating he was “kind,” “gentlemanlike,” and “easy on the eyes.” He has no negative reviews and since you have 3.5 rating, you jump at the chance for a date with a 4.5, because maybe, the encounter will increase your average.

In comes Mark; his profile did not lie in the looks department, but his personality, on the other hand, is not what you expected. You leave the minute the bill is paid and once you’re out the door, you give him the one-star review you felt he deserved because he didn’t pay for your portion of the meal, and how could a 4.5 do such a thing?

Imagine a scenario where, after every interaction you could publicly rate the individual on his or her performance. If a date did not hold the door for you, one star; if a waiter provided poor service, one star. Either positive or negative, you could review someone entirely based on a interaction you had in a moment of time. CEO of Peeple, Julia Cordray, wants to do just that.

Peeple, an online tool which allows you to rate individuals online, was first lauchned in 2015. This “online reputation space” operates a selection process where you have the ability to rate individuals on a personal, professional or romantic level.

“Peeple allows you to safely manage your online reputation, while making better decisions on the people around you,” says Cordray. Her inspiration spawns from wanting to give workers she meets in daily life, “who are good at their jobs,” a new type of recommendation where they can attain a rating on the platform and later present it to employers. Cordray states that the platform is a place you can “get to know your neighbours” from reading about them online.

Though her ideas stem from inspiration on what the future may bring us, rating people online may not be the best idea for our society, yet we are already seeing varieties of it on social media and other service apps.

“This ain’t for the best, my reputation’s never been worse, so, you must like me for me,” Taylor Swift sings delicately on her 2017 album about her struggles with being “rated.” Her reputation, as she describes, it has been destroyed in recent years due to increased media attention and online negativity.

Don’t worry, this is not about TSwift; her situation is far away from the ordinary concerns most individuals might have. But with concepts like Peeple, we are beginning to see reputations slowly blended into online ratings and reviews.

“Check them out on Instagram first,” or

“Google them” is advice we receive on a daily basis because of the constant research and online attention we undertake before we commit to a choice or action.

Instagram, Yelp, Google, Trip Advisor,

Airbnb, Uber, Skip the Dishes, RateMDs,

Rate My Professor (RMP) and more, are all examples of networks primarily based on reviews and testimonies of millions of daily active users. Now, thanks to Peeple and other apps, we have journeyed beyond rating consumer goods or services towards people and professions. New platforms will exert a huge influence on how we choose products, services and people to interact with, but in a world of fake news, fake reviews are also destined to influence our decisions.

When apps allow public reviews to be accumulated, the danger is that it turns into a dumping ground of comments which will impact a person’s reputation in several ways. Although Peeple is not in full swing quite yet, we are already seeing the reputations of academic professionals being damaged on Rate My Professor.

Earlier this year, student Sydney Knox of Vancouver dug deeper into the reputational consequences of Rate My Professor, surveying 29 professors and conducting four in-person interviews at Capilano University. Knox discovered that 80 per cent had actually searched for their names on the site, and 41.4 per cent of the instructors felt negatively about their reviews posted there. Knox describes the results she attained as surprising.

Most people would probably not appreciate being rated online, especially with no ability to check the credibility of the reviewer, respond to the comment, or request it be deleted altogether. On Rate My Professor, it’s almost always the case that reviews are posted either by students who had very good or very bad experiences. One disappointing letter grade that prompts a student to write a negative review can motivate others to add similar comments, sometimes embellishing them for dramatic effect.

“Students using RMP express their opinions, which are always individual and personal. There is more freedom to exaggerate or outright make things up in the less

controlled environment of RMP,” says a Capilano professor.

As Knox reflected on this particular comment, she mentioned that universities already conduct in-class surveys and evaluations which, in turn, should be made public. Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)in the U.S. is already controlling its reviews and ratings by posting them on the university’s homepage.

“They’re allowing reviews to be public and not allowing any room for bullying, because it’s just information from the teacher evaluations. In my opinion,” Knox says, “Rate My Professor should not exist, and this school [CMU] is genius for publishing their own results. In situations like this, we can see if teachers are working on different areas [that their students suggest need improvement] and hold them more accountable.”

Evaluations can be a useful, honest tool for students when the integrity of teachers is protected. Knox suggests more universities take up the same practice as Carnegie, which could potentially lead to the dissolution of RMP.

When rating become more intertwined with reputation, it is hard not to take offense to online comments. “This also impacts me in my personal life as people outside of work have looked up my rating” says another Capilano instructor. “I don’t like that, as I feel like I am being judged without a fair trial by students and anyone else that cares to look up my name. I feel a bit violated and I have heard that I have a good rating. It must be really hard for those that don’t.”

Knox concluded in her results that 60.9 per cent felt that the ranking on the site could “potentially harm an instructor’s career.” But others see online rating as a interesting opportunity, such as an English teacher at Capilano. “In an effort to stop students who use Rate My Professor to choose classes based on rankings from taking his class, this teacher left himself negative reviews at the end of every summer, so that they would be seen by students applying for classes in the fall. His strong feelings toward users of the site are based in the opinion that even positive comments weren’t constructive,” says Knox. Discouraging students who rely entirely on a ratings system to cherry-pick their instructors is a way to subvert the system.

Currently being revamped, Peeple is still pushing for success but is also removing many of the criticized areas. Even Rate My Professor has dropped the chili pepper icon that as rates

teachers on their “hotness.” Rate my Professor is currently being criticized by the teachers union in France which strongly believes naming teachers online should be illegal.

At this moment China is launching its own mandatory “Social Credit System” to create a country of trustworthiness and is aiming for completion by 2020. This credit system would give you a public ranking which could determine your eligibility for a mortgage, what school your children can attend, or simply your chances of getting a date.”

It’s inevitable that a website like Peeple will attract users who want to vent about their negative experience, and the necessity of reputation management as a result will fall to both the app or website owners, and to the person who is (unfairly?) being maligned. Where we once looked online for honest, unbiased reviews of the best burger joint, or the best coffee shop, we’ve moved now to an unsettlingly critical place where we are rating our interactions with each other. If we continue on this path, damaged reputations (and legal action against those doing the damage online) could become prevalent in society.

Given its one-star rating on Google, the Peeple app may not have a bright future, but a replacement may be popping up sooner than we think. ■

Is 1 to 5 the new 9 to 5?

ONE STAR OR FIVE? HOW ONLINE REVIEWS (AND THE CLEVER MANIPULATION OF THEM) ARE SHAPING THE FACE OF WORK. story by MIA PROKOPETZ

There are many ways to research whether a product or a service is worth buying, but there’s only one shortcut: online ratings. When you’re scrolling through websites like Groupon and Amazon, comparing ratings and reviews is a crucial part of the online shopping experience. Ratings play such an important role in establishing business credibility that some companies are even using ratings as a part of their business model. Rating culture has immersed itself in the business world, but is this a bad thing?

Services like Uber and SkipTheDishes, have their employees rated on every interaction they have with a customer. Uber passengers and Skip customers are basically unpaid supervisors for these companies. At Lyft and Uber, employees startsoff with a five star rating and if they drop below a 4.6, the company informs them that they’re on review probation. If ratings continues to drop, they could lose their jobs and be deactivated from the service. The pressure of being supervised via customer ratings is a severe representation of the motto, the customer is always right. Riley, a 22-year-old university student, is a prime example of someone who suffered under the pressure of rating culture. He was first hired as a SkipTheDishes driver during the summer of 2018, and was fired for poor ratings given by customers.

“Sometimes there would be traffic and I would get a poor rating because the food took a while, or a main street would be closed because of the snow and I wouldn’t be updated on how to get to their house,” Riley explains. Many of the complaints made by customers were issues that he had no control over. “I got fired because one restaurant left an item out of the order... The customer who ordered it was really drunk and accused me of eating it. The problem is the restaurant wouldn’t let me look at the food to make sure everything was there because it was stapled shut to save heat,” says Riley.

User ratings also have a huge impact on our buying decisions. A study of Seattle restaurants found that a one-star increase on Yelp led to a five- to nine-per-cent increase in revenue. Considering how important ratings are for businesses, it’s not unusual that some reviews may be falsified. MIT research found that online ratings are one of the most trusted sources of consumer confidence in e-commerce decisions, but they are systematically biased and easily manipulated. Their study found that people are more likely to leave good reviews if the consumers before them wrote positive comments about the service, and vice versa.

Reviews can also be manipulated to benefit certain businesses. Some websites will allow business owners to pay to have poor reviews removed from their page, and others will personally hire people to leave positive ratings using fake accounts. For example, if you’re looking for a cosmetic surgeon, going online and reading reviews may help you decide where to go. In Canada, RateMDs is the most popular website for reviewing physicians. This site is beneficial for patients as it allows them to anonymously post reviews about their experience and doctors can use the reviews to promote their practice. But patients should be wary of RateMD, as it permits doctors to manipulate their reviews. If a physician is willing to pay a monthly fee of $179, her or she can delete a certain number of negative reviews and even place banner ads on the profiles of other doctors.

Some aspects of the rating system are corrupt, but there are still positive results when receiving and leaving reviews. Pierre Eady, a 45-year-old real-estate agent in Vancouver, frequently checks his ratings on sites such as RankMy Agent to make sure his services are being well received by his customers. “I do two things. Do my best all the time, and do what I say I’m going to do. I like happy clients. I then ask them to write a review, which goes online, and is available to the masses. This is great for business, as well as my professional reputation,” says Eady.

Without reviews, it’s easy to question whether a business is active or real. But as we search the web for ratings and reviews, we should still be cautious of their authenticity. ■