Some Comments Submitted to User-Generated Websites Are an Enduring Mystery

Short days before we are scheduled to embark on a tropical vacation, my wife suddenly got cold feet when she read a comment on a user-generated website dealing with the place we had chosen.

The background: We have made reservations to stay in an apartment-with-terrace-balcony on the fifth floor of a guesthouse overlooking the sea on that island. In commenting on that guesthouse, a member of the public had stated (in a website read by my wife) that the atmosphere a block away was "like Times Square, rowdy and loud."

"You've booked us into a place like Times Square!" my wife accused me. "How could you?!"

A day later, I received a wholly coincidental e-mail from a travel-writer friend of mine, a person who has devoted three decades to traveling in the tropics and writing guidebooks about the experience. Learning where we were booked to stay, he passed on his congratulations over the choice, using these exact words (I am eliminating only the name of the guesthouse and its address):

"I've stayed there [he names the guesthouse] -- it's great! Nice little neighborhood -- not big and bustling like [he names the area a mile away], but more intimate."

So whom to believe? A self-appointed, amateur, one-time critic who has been once in his life to the place in question? Or a professional author of travel guides? And isn't it probable that this reference to Times Square was a momentary lapse of judgment, a bit of anger having nothing to do with the actual character of the neighborhood in which we are staying, but probably provoked by a totally unrelated incident or observation?

I have carefully read and considered all the condemnations of my skeptical reaction to user-generated websites. And I'm sorry, I've just experienced another real-life problem with those sites. And I will be reporting to you, on my return, from what seems to me to be an idyllic, quiet, spacious and comfortable beachside location for a 10-day stay starting just a few days from now. What's more, I will be reporting on my return with the actual name of the establishment that is supposedly situated in an area "like Times Square."