When researchers Georgios Zervas, Davide Proserpio and John Byers studied Airbnb’s reputation data, they found that nearly 95% of listings carried an average rating between 4.5 and 5 stars (Marketing Letters, 2021). When almost everyone scores near the top, the score stops telling you much. Terroo takes a different route: a plain recommendation, a few honest words, and a reveal that protects both people from writing for the other’s approval.
Terroo’s reference system replaces star ratings with a simple yes or no: would you recommend this person? After an encounter, each participant answers that question and adds a short written reflection. Neither reference becomes visible until both are submitted or 14 days pass, so people write honestly instead of trading polite scores.
Terroo uses references because a star score measures a service, while an encounter between two people is not a service to be graded. Star systems were built for hotels and restaurants, where you compare products against each other. Sharing a meal or walking a neighbourhood with someone is closer to making a new acquaintance, and nobody rates a new acquaintance 4.6 out of 5.
Star scores also drift upward over time. People hesitate to leave anything below the top mark because they worry about hurting the other person, so a four-star review quietly starts to read as a warning. The result is a scale where the useful information sits in a tiny band at the very top.
A reference asks a clearer question, one anyone can answer honestly: would you recommend this person to someone you care about?
After an encounter, each person is invited to write one reference about the other, made of a yes or no recommendation and a short reflection in their own words. The process is deliberately light:
People who know someone personally, outside any encounter, can also vouch for them with a personal reference, which helps newer members who have not met anyone through the community yet.
References are double-blind so that neither person can adjust what they write based on what the other already said. When one review is visible before the other is written, the second writer tends to mirror the first: generous if it was generous, defensive if it was critical. That reciprocity quietly pushes everyone toward bland, flattering feedback.
A field experiment run on Airbnb by Andrey Fradkin, Elena Grewal and David Holtz (Marketing Science, 2021) found that hiding each review until both were submitted led to more reviews overall and more candid feedback when a stay had not gone well. Terroo applies the same principle to encounters between people.
The 14-day limit keeps things fair in the other direction: if one person never writes theirs, the reference that was submitted still becomes visible, so nobody can hold back feedback simply by staying silent.
A binary reference trades false precision for a clear signal, and puts the real detail into words rather than numbers.
| Five-star rating | Terroo reference |
|---|---|
| Score from 1 to 5 | Recommend: yes or no |
| Averages cluster near the top | Each recommendation stands on its own |
| Written comment optional | Short written reflection expected |
| Often visible before the other side writes | Sealed until both submit or 14 days pass |
| Grades a service | Describes an encounter between people |
A yes or no also makes a negative reference easier to give honestly. Choosing not to recommend someone is a clear, proportionate answer, rather than agonising over whether a three feels too harsh.
Read references for specifics, not just the count: concrete details from different people tell you far more than a number ever could. A few habits help:
References are one layer of trust, not the whole picture. They work best alongside a few messages exchanged beforehand and a first meeting somewhere public.
Your reference becomes visible after 14 days anyway. The double-blind window protects honesty, but it never lets one person block the other’s feedback by staying silent.
Yes. You can choose not to recommend the person and explain why in your reflection, and you can ask the Safety Team to follow up with you directly about what happened.
Not quite. A review grades a product or service, while a reference describes a person and the time you spent together, with a simple yes or no in place of a score.
A reference system is really a promise about honesty: that what you read about someone reflects what it was actually like to spend time with them. Terroo (terroo.world) is built around that promise, as a community where travelers and locals, or neighbours who have never crossed paths, meet for genuine, non-transactional encounters, and where every reference is written plainly by someone who was there.
Last updated: September 28, 2026
