Do people believe the reports on Angies List?

Your response makes little sense... but I'll try and respond none-the-less. Angies list is a list of business reviews. Both positive and negative. People are supposed to pay for access to these reviews so they can decide weather or not to use a contractor (for example) that they are considering. If that contractor has several bad reviews, the client would just move on to the next contractor. So, a shady contractor comes along and pays his buddies to sign up for Angies list and right scathing reviews for all the other contractors in the area. At this point, would you say that unjust damage has been done to those other contractors? My conjecture is because of my 35 years of I.T. experience. My evidence is in my 35 years of I.T. experience.

Your question posits conclusions that you've got no evidence of at all. So my response is at least equal to the lack of forethought of shown in your question. According to Angie's List, they do have quality control measures in place. That could mean that they actually have some investigators to examine negative reviews. The potential liability that could be caused by publishing negative reviews without examination and opening the enterprise up to slander suits warrants that type of analysis. Plus, the X-Files theory of contractor reviews seems hardly worth the effort, since Angie's list is only one source of reviews. You conjecture is not based on your actual use of Angie's list, and your evidence is apparently your imagination.

My "conjecture" is based on actual use, evaluation, and discussion with Angies List I.T. personnel. My Evidence can not be presented: 1) Without actually naming companies and members. 2) A signed NDA. 3) Disclosure of sensitive corporate documents. I agree that the forethought on my part was primitive. It was difficult to post the question without revealing information that I am not at liberty to reveal. I have addressed automated quality control methods with Ancient_Hacker below. Angies List using investigators for every bad review is just a preposterous notion. Regarding liability... that's what disclaimers and terms of service documents are for.

I didn't they had investigators for all negative reviews. And if you've got all that top double secret information, why did you even ask?

Because I still can't understand why it's still a successful site, and I still don't know if people consider it reliable. While I can appreciate the attention you have given this simple question, I believe you are just looking for conflict at this point. Your opinion has been expressed. Thank you. I'm sorry if my handling information in a standard corporate manner irritated you to the point of referring to it in belittling ways.

In all of this, you've posited a scenario where you've imagined what can happen, my question is do you have any evidence, on a large scale, that it has or does happen on a regular enough basis to impugn the integrity of the site? People believe the site because 1. They're paying for it, and 2. because they want to believe it.

Thank you for stating your opinion - "People believe the site because...". That's all I asked for in the first place.

You can hire astroturfers in India for pennies an hour. That makes most review sites worthless-- anybody can pump up the positive reviews for relatively few dollars. Some sites try to be a bit more rigorous in vetting the contributors, but there is a relatively low limit to how much they can do. I would not make any big buying decisions on unverifiable third-party info like this.

Agreed. You can root out by email addy or IP address. But "burner" addresses are plentiful and proxies do a fine job of hiding IP's. Even banning all proxies wouldn't work since you can route them through wingates.