For all the information the Internet provides, there is a corresponding lack of transparency about the truth of that content. How can we verify not only the news we read, but know what we read is free of financial corruption or ethical compromise? How can we trust a review, be it of a restaurant or a realtor, when there are ways – very obvious and easy ways – to manipulate the system? How can we choose a doctor, if the reviews are false, the praise more partisan than impartial, the prominence more a product of promotions than even the slightest prospecting for accuracy?
I am not, thankfully, the first person to ask these questions. Nor am I the only one who wants a comprehensive – and credible – solution to these problems, in comparison to those review sites in which the quality ranges from possibly right to egregiously wrong.
A meritocracy of reviews, safe from cyberattacks and separate from any conflicts of interest, is the answer to this challenge. I say that because a true meritocracy is free of graft, favors, unwritten codes of loyalty and reciprocity, as well as favoritism of any kind and finagling of any sort.
I believe in such a meritocracy, as do the individuals at Completed, because, based on my review of other review sites, I do not see a similar commitment to truth and transparency.
What I want is what the Internet needs, if it is to be a source worthy of scholarly citation and everyday use.
What I want is this: A system that consumers can use, and merchants can trust, where I do not have to double- or triple-check everything I read. I am, to put it mildly, sick of having to question the reliability of even the simplest things, including directions.
What I want is incorruptibility, which, by the way, is what our country also needs. For a rigged system is no system at all; it is an inscrutable means to an incorrigible end –– unless we do something to stop this, as we should; as we must.
Let the meritocracy, therefore, flourish.
Let it begin.