eye is a Toronto indie weekly paper. Their latest new media column discusses user-posted reviews, and includes a link here. (Welcome, Toronto hipsters!) Not a lot of depth, but it's a half-decent overview. And apparently, today's word for Listology members is punters.
From what I've read on the Internet, 'punter' is a British (and Presumably Canadian) slang term for a client or customer. So I'm guessing this just means the users of the Listology web site.
Of course somewhat more derogatory definitions of 'punter' as "someone who pays a prostitute" or "someone who places a bet."
I find it interesting that an author would use that term in a write-up like that unless s/he was trying to be intentionally funny.
No, it's not Canadian. The first time I ever came across it is in El Reg.
I'm still giddy from being listed right next to Amazon and Epinions. :-)
To greatly oversimplify things, here are some routes to getting recommendations: [1] find out what most people like and go with that, [2] find out what some esteemed critic likes and go with that, [3] find out what somebody of similar tastes likes and go with that.
Personally, I think [3] is far-and-away the most reliable, followed by [2] and then [1].
So The Listology attempts to hook folks up via method three (which is not to say we're lacking in esteemed critics). It doesn't really matter if you fall into the "it's good because I like it" or "it's good because it has these qualities" camp. If somebody likes 9 of your top 10 movies, and they haven't seen the tenth, I'm betting the tenth is a good bet for a rental.
Contrast this with typical collaborative filtering tools, which attempt to automatically tell you what you'll like based on how your preferences compare to that of the general population. You end up getting averaged recommendations from a pile of people without ever seeing the actual picks from that one person who might as well be your twin.
Anyway, I would argue that relying mostly on word-of-mouth is mostly a method [1] approach to getting recommendations. I still like method [3].
But I liked the article, even if I still prefer "Listologists" to "punters." :-)