Slashdot Mirror
Should You Trust Website Customer Reviews?
crevette asks: "I was looking on Amazon for some gizmo when I got a review from G. Cooke, TX, who is in the top 10 reviewers. Out of curiosity, I checked her reviews... She has 658 reviews, many on the same day, which include everything from knife sets to a plastic duck! She reviews many books on the same day... She must be spending hundreds of dollars on useless stuff every month. Worst of all, most of her reviews are 5 stars. Do you think those people are paid by Amazon or some company? Do you trust them? If not (like I tend to think) what can we do about it?"
go to Google's new beta product search to find cheap reviewers!
fp
icblf
It's a public website; anyone can post a review. Trust it as much as you do Slashdot. :)
I read a bunch of Cooke's reviews. She has nothing bad to say, nothing critical, and all her reviews read like an ad. Yeah, I'd say something's wrong here.
and so should you.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Most of the reviews that I see are either very positive or very negative. There are very few reviews that label a product as simply okay or adequate.
This is probably due to the fact that only people that have had extremely positive or extremely negative experiences with a particular product will actually take the time to post. Well, other than a few people with too much time on their hands that want to be listed as top reviewers.
.sig wanted. Inquire within.
The point I'm making is that the reviewers aren't always participating in a community, but also acting out a personal agenda as well, which other customers may take in as fact.
How about ignoring the reviews if you don't trust them? This isn't difficult.
I'm going to go post an Amazon review calling into question the validity of "Ask Slashdot" responses.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
We used to have fun reviewing a book called "body for life" on Amazon. Some of us put comments such as "I thought this was going to be great, I've been waiting for years. I was disappointed because of the Jar Jar Binks character wouldn't shut his mouth". The reviews were posted. There were hundereds of reviews. A cross between those those who loved the author, Bill Philips and those who were just having fun. Some reviews hinted that there was a lot of gay porn in the book, others said it changed their lives. The funny thing was that all these reviews were posted BEFORE the book even came out!
Besides Amazon, be wary of other sites that host reviews, you never know when there might be essentially bribes moving behind the scenes. I don't even trust epinions: even though they do not sell things themselves, the stores they link to could be giving them financial incentives to raise the scores of products they sell.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Might explain why she reads so much....
Name: G. Cooke
Nickname: pagebypage
E-mail: grospoin@aol.com
Reviewer Rank: 8
About me: So many good books, so many wonderful things....so few hours. For me, reading and trying is sheer pleasure, a boon companion, and sometimes work as reviewing is my profession. I hold membership in the National Book Critics Circle, and write for newspapers across the U.S. Thanks to all who have expressed an interest in my reviews, and thanks to Amazon for providing a forum in which we can exchange ideas.
Figuring out her Email address, then Googling it reveals Ms. Cooke probably does nothing but writes reviews allllllllll day long.
Man, what a horrible way to waste time. Well, back to reloading Slashdot....
sig--we don't need no goddamn sig
How much time do you have to personally go out and review a product you like? With all the reviews out on sites I have a hard time believing some/most of them aren't written up by people who don't have my best interests at heart...
This person's writing style is descriptive and consise. Far too good for a "normal" user.
This says to me: Someone is being paid to write good reviews for any product out there. A mini-Marketing agent if you will.
It's somewhat reminiscent of the Microsoft PR agent who "switched from Mac to Windows", or it's like the "grassroots pro-Microsoft" campaign that Bill sponsored in the opening days of the Anti-Trust court proceedings.
Trying to appear unsolicited and innocent, but in reality, it's just someone's job.
Money is the root of *most* work.
If you can't trust Amazon.com user opinions, what makes you think you can trust answers on Ask Slashdot? Many of us rattle off about every issue out of ignorance and get modded up despite that ignorance. Can you trust us?
Evaluating customer reviews is a lot like evaluating a website on a one by one basis. Every time a review comes in you have to take into account what sort of thing the reviewer is looking for and if you can, credentials. If your looking for something really oddball you might want to take the reviews as just a general overview of what's available, and take them arbitrarily. If your looking for whether it's something that's really worthwhile to read you might want to look into credentials and other things.
The reviews, that I recall, spoke of how the comics confronted the uber secret freemason's and so forth. I believe there were quite a few Kafka and Nietsche references as well. Hilarious.
Now I have a new google project for the day. Somebody somewhere must have saved 'em!
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I've personally found amazon's reviewing system, as well as the automated "If you like this, you'll like this" system.
I really found the trouble Amazon got in for "faking" the system mentioned above linking your laster book purchase to a pair of pants to advertise thier new clothing line. ex. readers who like Stephen King, also enjoy these fleece lined Jeans. there was a huge uproar of false advertising claims over this joke.
Cnet is definatly a mixed bag. When download gets a 1 star review because some newb user with a hosed system can't install the app properly what use is his review? I love CNet but the reviewing isn't always helpful
I have great faith in fools; My friends call it self-confidence. Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1845
90% of the reviews I see fall into one of these categories:
1. 5 star reviews from crazy fan-types who absolutely love some movie/musician/cartoon, etc.
2. Anti-fans who post 1 star reviews about stuff they can't stand being popular.
3. Fans who've turned into anti-fans, claiming that item X "isn't as good as their previous efforts" and that the creator "has sold out."
I've come to rely on Amazon.com not only for good deals, but also for basic product information. They carry such a wide range of items and have detailed information about everything.
I also admit I take the product reviews very seriously when I am going to buy something, especially if it's not cheap. I do this even if I don't plan on buying it from Amazon.
I doubt I am the only person like this. It would seem only logical that companies would do anything they can to get favorable reviews about their products on Amazon.
I guess you just have to read as many of the reviews as possible and make a judgement call. I do tend to look for negative reviews as they're definitely not paid for! However, those also must be taken with a grain of salt.
I rate Amazon's reviews at five stars! Nothing could be better!
-G. Cooke, TX
Review * 1/2
I rate Slashdot at a star and a half. Definitely take anything you hear there with a grain of salt.
-G. Cooke, TX
The sheer amount of reviews is a giveaway. Kudos to the slash for pointing this out!
Before any good/useful course of action can be taken, there are several steps to take:
1) Determine if there is some 'shady' reviewing going on (although this looks like a pretty solid set of circumstancial evidence).
2) Find out who's responsible for it.
If it is amazon, itself, that is doing this sort of thing, then the only actions that can be taken are public outcry, and possibly an e-mail campaign. After all, they may be using it to drum up business, and as we have all learned from spammers: if it works, they'll keep on doing it.
On the other hand, if it is some third party submitting reviews, it might be possible to get Amazon to remove all reviews by said person...
Just a thought
hmmmm?
The question makes me wonder if most /. comments are *really* posted by Taco, et al.
"Hey, 'Neal check out this MS bashing comment I wrote under the name Balbazare prince of darkness. hahaha" - Taco
"I'll mod that as +5 funny!" -CowboyNeal
Holy s-, it's Jesus!
I suspect that some company has paid You to
g TheNetAndGetJobsTheyAre
falsify data and submit this story to slashdot.
PleaseGodDropAMeteor OnIliadUserfriendlyAndOSDN
SoTheyCanStopPollutin
QualifiedForWelcomeTo McDonaldsWouldYouLikeFries
WithThat?
Ignore them...
:)
:)
There are many other sites out there that have reviewers that are paid to be unbiased. Most aren't of course, but we can feel comfortable in that illusory world as we check up on products on the sites the specialize in them
Seeing as Bezos probably isn't monitoring this thread looking for suggestions, the question of what can be done about it is pretty moot. If you want to eliminate the frauds, get a job at Amazon, claw your way up through the ranks and change policy.
Good luck!
I especially like how she posts multiple reviews for the same item on different days with exactly the same text.
This is what happens when you pay reviewers by the star.
Bort.
Free, Anonymous surfing: Pagewash.com.
I remember seeing some news story about this guy who's competing with another lady for the most number of Amazon reviews. He basically sits around and reviews tons of stuff that he has himself, and he does buy a good amount as well. I don't think there was any implication of anyone sponsoring him since all his reviews were fairly random. I think it's basically a case of one of those people who collect things obsessively, in this case it's reviews. In any case I usually do trust reviews from product specific websites (like a digital camera site), not something as varied as Amazon.
Listen I take it all with a grain of salt. Some of the tech book reviews on Amazon are pretty freakin' brutal. I can't believe those guys are getting paid to rip the author's a new a**hole online.
I usually look to a number of sources when buying actual physical stuff like computer hardware or even kitchen equipment (a geek that like to cook -- stop laughing). Look up reviews on a search engine and compare them with the comments online.
Take it in as a total picture look at what you need and make your decision.
ACK
I'd really like to see what Amazon has to say about this. From mishaps like this to the supposed recommendations from this "person" -- I wouldn't be a bit surprised if this is simply another bot generating high ratings for Amazon partners in an attempt to push the ratings up and thus drive up sales.
Would I buy from them? Nope. I'll stick to visiting my local Barnes and Noble.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
She uses Windows XP, which has superior multitasking! She now has the ability to open up several Notepad windows at the same time and write many reviews simultaneously!
Now just wait until they get good pre-emptive multitasking on Windows XP - she'll be reviewing products that havent even been invented yet!
really, don't take anything you read as the truth, exercise your own critical faculties and understand that THE MAN is trying to get you to buy his stuff most of these reviews are either made up by internal staff of by staff of the company that made it. always try to check out several reviews of anything you want to buy, (let's face it most stuff we buy we don't actually NEED, do we?)
Maybe your best bet is to just read the (intelligent) negative reviews, and see whether the author's arguments make sense. Obviously, comments like "Thi5 b00k sUx()rZ" doesn't do any good, but it's probably better than the glowing "OMG THIS TV REMOTE REVOLUTIONISED MY LIFE!!!"
I would not attribute a persons name to a living person with so little evidence. Now off to my date with Betty Crocker...
I know it's not exactly the same thing, but it sure takes a hell of a lot less time than actually reviewing hundreds of products.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Just for giggles, I looked to see who's number 1...
w ers-list/-/1/AFVQZQ8PW0L/103-6415275-2411025#AFVQZ Q8PW0L
Here's the link... http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/top-revie
I've stopped trusting all online reviews, along time ago...
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
.
I was once looking through some of my old favorite Sci-Fi books on Amazon, and noticed a few "top 100" reviewer reviews. I noticed that they all had one thing in common. Two paragraphs. The first paragraph was so generic and "ooh ahh neato" that it could have been about anything. The last paragraph looked like it was paraphrased right from the back/inside cover.
So I went to one of the top 10 reviewers. She claimed to be a librarian who speed reads one book a day, and rewviewed each one. ALL her SciFi book reviews looked just like one another, and all of them had 5 stars out of 5, even some of the worst SciFi I've ever read in my life.
They don't just need meta-moderation. They need personalized meta-moderation. I want to select the group of people whose reviews I trust, and the people whose reviews of reviewers I trust. Maybe the "tragedy of the commons" is ok for Slashdot, but I'd sure hate to have that affecting the reviews that I see for actual products. I want other people like me to review the products that I buy.
This problem ranks right up there along with eBay auctions and the fact that they "close" at a given point in time. In the real world, an auction continues as long as people are making bids. eBay should extend an auction by 5 minutes or an hour or a day each time someone bids on an item. That'd get rid of "last minute bid services". (I'd suggest a 5 minute extension - because then there's a natural time for everyone interested in an item to "gather" together and do the final bidding.)
.
Just as bad, they allow ballot stuffing. Just pick any random L Ron Hubbard book and read the gushing reviews by cult members. You can't write more accurate, derogatory reviews for LRH books because they've flagged the book as controversial or something and toss out new reviews.
It must be possible to produce a rating system that accurately reflects a books true worth. Perhaps they should model theirs on the IMDB system - your vote only counts so long as you're active. As it stands Amazon ratings are seriously flawed and in a lot of cases aren't worth shit.
Forget the star/number/etc. rating and read the reviews. People that have actually used a product will have real comments about the good, bad, and ugly of it. Ignor reviewers that say "Wonder product! I am completely satisfied." or "Waist of money!". They don't tell you anything. Stuff like "The battery door broke after a few days, but the company Fed-Ex'ed me a new one.", or "Works great with Bob's widget.12.tgz drivers!.", give you actual information about what happened when they used the product. Judge for yourself how many stars they're worth.
I will rarely take the word of any one reviewer, top 10 or not. They often have simple factual mistakes about products. But if you read a dozen or so comments you can usually put together a decent impression and collect useful data. Review spam campaigns like the Rush Limbaugh-led attack on Michael Moore's book are rare.
I would certainly rather have the reviews than not. I've bought many cool things from Amazon that I never would have considered or even found (music mostly) if not for the reviews and comments.
Mig
I believe every one of the glowing 449 reviews for the verbal swordsman and musical orgasm that is David Hasselhoff
Much like karma (used to be), some people see racking up review counts as a game. There was a story about this sort of behavior on NPR recently, though I can't find a link for it. It was unclear from the story whether or not the reviews were based on any real experience of the product being reviewed.
I certainly do not depend on user/reader reviews as my sole basis for prejudging an item. Usually I know enough about what I am looking to buy to be able to tell if a reviewer is clueful. If the reviewer seems clueful, I will probably allow the review some weight in my decision. If not, I just throw it out.
--
bachiatari na torisetsu o yome!
www.mtbr.com for instance. (Mountain bikes and parts user reviews)
Very few reviews are "If *I* bought it, it must be good"
and conversely
"I don't want anyone to think I'm a weenie for spending money on crap"
Add in the flush of newuseritis, and you get overly high ratings across the board.
Useful info CAN be gleaned from these things though. Look for a consistent small problem in the reviews for a particlar product. If everyone says they don't like one particular aspect of the product, you might not either. Even if they gave it a 5 star rating.
theBubbler.com puts out monthly newsletters that a poll the subscribers for their input on the site, as well as posting their comments and reviews and poll results.
It's pretty effective and the results help the site to constantly grow and develop into an extremely value added, and geography based community site.
Perhaps they are review whores - trying to get their name out there to get a job, get published, or just the little ego boost provided by being famous in a small way.
Check out Henry Raddick's stuff -- I think the guy's got a dry British sense of humor and he can be really funny:
Henry Raddick's reviewsQuick sample:
Could it be that she's a professional reviewer. In this case instead of having her own site like Anandtech or Dansdata or Tom's Hardware she does all her posting at Amazon. Are the ethical issues any different here than they are on the afore mentioned "legitimate" websites? I know that Dansdata just had a post about what the payoff or if there was a payoff for putting up good reviews. Most of his tend to be positive and as he replied any junk that he gets he just doesn't report on it because he'd rather report and test the good stuff.
I'm sure somewhere in there a reviewer wants to keep from publishing negative stuff also so that new products get sent on a regular basis.
I'm assuming that somewhere on Amazon there is a feedback mechanism designed to say that "this persons review helped my purchasing" or "this reviewers review was accurate". A feedback mechanism like that can probably be manipulated but it would take some effort.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
I wouldn't call this part suspicious at all. Haven't *you* ever done a batch upload? The preponderance of positive reviews is what scares me.
grospoin@aol.com Hi G. Cooke- I was wondering if you are a real person? How do review so many products in such little time? Are you paid by any of the companies who's products you review or re-embursed? I find your dedication to amzon.com amzing, truly you are a top consumer. Pat I'll /. know what she says.When she replies.
Surrender YR pattent!
So who really cares about the star system on Amazon? When I shop for books there, I usually actually read the reviews. If it's something like "THIS BOOK WAS GREAT!!!!!!! 10 STARS!!!!!!" I ignore it and move on to the next review. I take in a few positive and a few negative reviews and judge if it would be a book I want. I doubt G. Cooke can give very insightful reviews on books she hasn't read.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
I don't mean for this to sound like a flame, but exactly what do you expect? People are biased. It might be a matter of taste, or a matter of honesty, or a matter of psychology (canonical example of the latter: Mac fans).
Read a lot of opinions, and ignore the ones that can't give supporting evidence for why their opinion is the way it is. Weigh the evidence, and decide what is important to you.
The other option is try to find publications that provide relatively unbiased comparisons of similar products. Consumer Reports is a particularly good one, although I don't always agree with how they rank things. But they generally tell you how they came to their conclusions.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
A google search turns up several reviews with the Dallas Morning News and the Denton Record-Chronicle. I guess she submits to amazon what her papers won't publish.
bun-fhuinneog agam!
From the beginning Epinions.com thought, "That would be great/cheap content to just have people post their opinions about products, but why would you trust random people?" So they baked in a rather complex "web of trust" into their website from Day 1.
If you see someone whose reviews reflect your own opinions, you can add them to your list of trusted people. Then when you see a list of reviews, your trusted people's reviews are at the top. Furthermore, your trusted people also have people they trust and you are likely to turst those people too, just maybe not quite as much. So your trusted people's trusted people's reviews bubble up near to the top, and so on.
Also, if you see some reviewer who you think is way off base, you can block them and never see their reviews again. It's a clever scheme, and if you use the site enough, you can tailor it to serve you decent reviews quickly. And it's all based on your opinion of other people's opinions, unlike Amazon which just bubbles up reviews from people who write a lot of reviews. I think quantity of reviews is hardly a good metric to use.
G. Cooke, TX! Why, just the name is inviting. I've found these reviews to be a mini treasure! After diving in once, you won't be able to resist going back for more. These reviews will make a treasured gift, and keep you on your toes.
Websites dont trust YOU!
eBay should extend an auction by 5 minutes or an hour or a day each time someone bids on an item. That'd get rid of "last minute bid services". (I'd suggest a 5 minute extension - because then there's a natural time for everyone interested in an item to "gather" together and do the final bidding.)
Shit, I should patent that.
.
This is nothing new, I tend to take peer reviews in a forum setting with a grain of salt.. it is too easy for a company to post positive information about their products or negative reviews of the competition.
I still like google to find more professional reviews of computer hardware and consumer electronics like PDAs. I was looking up information on the palm m130 vs. the m515 today, for example, and found google invaluable. After reading about four reviews on different sites, I feel that I have a good understanding of both products. The highest ranked reviews were actually very professional and well written too, something that is harder and harder to find now..
does this leave any question as to where all the ill gotten cash Enron made off of playing the energy markets in California went too?
I submitted a book review on Amazon, only gave 1 star although it explained why (an awful lot of simply bad code etc) - funnily enough it didn't get posted.
I wonder if CmdrTaco has been moonlioghting for Amazon ?
Perhaps a comparison between her reviews, or between hers and Known Good Reviews, is in order.
OTOH, maybe she's unemployed and has nothing better to do than do Amazon reviews for her entire private library.
This is not my sandwich.
After reading through several reviews, you should probably be able to make a fair judgment on weather the reviews are valid or not. If some product gets 658 reviews all in one day, yeah, I'd probably think something's fishy, and not trust its reviews... go to another review site. Are people being payed to write reviews? Who knows, but it's definitely possible. You have to take every thing you read with a grain of salt. The way I do it is read through a collection of reviews and just get a sense of weather they look legitimate or not, then read them through again to get an idea if the product is really what I'm looking for.
I enjoy reading the reviews of music gear at: www.harmonycentral.com
--
Does anyone remember
When you give someone a token, meaningless reward like a karma point, people tend to internalize the behavior. Remember Pepsi points or Marlboro miles? People started just wanting the points. Same with Amazon. People who give good reviews are given a rank according to who gets the most "Did you find this review helpful?" clicks.
Additionally with Slashdot and Amazon, the points/rank are determined by peer review. You get points from other, regular people, because they approve of what you wrote. People *love* peer approval, even if they like to pretend they don't.
There you go, my psychological review. Engineers really out to read up on their marketing! :)
I'll take the comments of anonymous idiots (like me) from around the world into consideration before buying a product. Considering that many people hinge a purchasing decision on just one or two comments from close friends, wouldn't it be wiser to take your friend's comments into consideration and then weigh them against the marketing hype and the legions of anonymous people out there? How many people have tried Linux because of Slashdot? How many people have bought a game because of words said in the Penny Arcade! forum?
Wow, even number :P
Anyway, I don't think this is any diffrent then someone who's adicted posting stuff on slashdot or any onther posting board.
IIRC you don't need actualy buy something off amazon to review it, do you? (I know you don't if you just want to rate it). So it's possible she's reviewing stuff she has from other places.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
John Dillinger died for YOU!
There's also the excellent collection of dysfunctional Family Circus reviews.
There was an article on CNet last Friday about automatic recommendation systems. What happens when systems automatically recommend things?
In a incident that highlights the pitfalls of online recommendation systems, Amazon.com on Friday removed a link to a sex manual that appeared next to a listing for a spiritual guide by well-known Christian televangelist Pat Robertson.
The two titles were temporarily linked as a result of technology that tracks and displays lists of merchandise perused and purchased by Amazon visitors. Such promotions appear below the main description for products under the title, "Customers who shopped for this item also shopped for these items."
Basically, the gist of it is that people shopping for the televangellist's spiritual guide, and Amazon's recommendation system suggested that people who bought this also bought another book called The Men's Guide to Anal Sex.
I'm speculating, but I would guess that such a system could be hacked by ordering both books, and then shortly later cancelling your order. The order cancellation probably does not remove the association of these two items in the recommendation database tables.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
googlism.com has the answer
One of the technical book publishers I was talking to recently was telling how they discovered whenever they would release a new title to Amazon (programming or software development usually), that they would immediately get a rash of very bad reviews -- all of which came about the same time from the same IP address which happened to belong to a rival publisher. He told me that now it's almost accepted industry practive to have your employees post bad reviews of your competitors products online.
Myself, I look for the reviews that are by people who clearly have actually read the book/used the product. There is sort of an art to picking them out.
While things like these Amazon "reviews" seem to be a rather blantent, MS "grassroots" style campaign, I'm more interested in how to hold electronics manufacturers and their reviewers accountable. About this time last year, with VIA's KT266A release, all the usual suspects (Tom's Hardware, Anandtech, etc) were cranking out their reviews of the different motherboards. A year later, it seems like many of the "Editor's choice" award winners have turned out to be real dogs, with stability issues, broken drivers, botched BIOS releases, and in one case, a PCI latency problem that leaves 3 slots unusable! Yet these sites never go back and revoke their awards, nor do we ever really get much info on how the testing is done. I've asked both Tom's and Anandtech to publicly post their testing routine, but there has been nothing but silence. While I fully expect mobo makers to send review sites the sweetest of the "cream" samples, it would be nice to know that the testers are doing everything they possibly can to bring these boards to their knees, rather than just running stock settings with no add-in cards.
I suspect that one of these choices is incorrect. Correct.
http://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/hbs.cgi?feature= 621
And yes, most of my reviews are positive. Much of this is experience, negative reviews tend to get negative votes very quickly. Also the stuff I love is the stuff I want to write about. Occasionally I'll post a negative review of something I think deserves a health warning, but usually it'll be due to some technical rather than artistic consideration - "historical" CDs that aren't labelled as such, that kind of thing.
My advice is don't make a decision on the basis of one review. Note the ones that describe what the reviewer loved and see whether or not that would be something that you would love too. I usually put enough in my reviews to ensure that even if I write a rave review, someone who wouldn't like it will learn enough from what I've written to realise they wouldn't like it.
As for the reviewer that's the topic of this discussion, I have no idea. Why not read the reviews, see if they're actually useful, and if they are, then make the decision on that basis?
This isn't the kind of thing you have to get off your backside about. You can just talk about it on Slashdot. There's no need to write to your senator or congressman.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Ask Slashdot: Should you trust website customer reveiws?
Lots of good stuff here, just browse through them:
Henry Raddick's Reviews
Here's an example, for the book "Surviving Divorce: A Handbook for Men" by Gay Search:
A well-written and challenging book which I bought for my Uncle Sandy as he attempts to cope with the aftershock of divorce. Unfortunately he thought the author's name was a coping strategy being suggested and he refused to read it.
"Moderate drinking can help prevent amputated limbs" -- Abigail Zuger, NYTimes, 12/31/02
Check out Why the Left Hates America. On the Customer's Recommendation section there is currently a book on Handballing and last week it was Mein Kampf. But after reading the real reviews from people who didn't like the book and then the real reviews from people who did you can get a good understanding of what to expect from the actual book.
I know I have seen one review from the #1 reveiwer -- Harriet Klausner -- and it was awful. It's for the book The Scar by China Mieville, and it's terrible. I think she read the back cover, the first few pages, and a few other reviews to make her own review. She ends the review with this sentence: "Award winning China Mieville (see Perdido Street Station) is bound to more than just receive nominations; she is going to win many trophies for this strong story."
...
As most of you know, China Mieville is NOT A SHE. Anyone who actually had the book couldn't miss this fact, since there is a big picture of him on the back flap.
They do have some moderation, though. When I first saw the review it was one of the featured reviews on the main book page, but now that 12 people have said it was "unhelpful" it has fallen to the third page.
Anyway, that should tell you something about how good the top reviewers are
-- Hobbits suck!
Damn!
I didn't know that you could post lies on the internet! Especially where sales are concerned! Aren't salesmen supposed to be ethical?
Guess I better cancel my order for penis growth pills, then. And email that nice man from Nigeria that needs my help that I'm no longer available.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
One thing I do, though (and this works especially well with movie reviews), is to look at the negative reviews. If the writer sounds like an intelligent and reasonable person with whom I'd disagree, or sounds like an idiot, I'll consider viewing that movie. A review like this one will almost guarantee that I'll check a movie out:
That looks like parody, but it happens on Netflix all the time.OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Obvious answer - Nope, don't trust Amazon reviews. I'm quite sure if there are too many negative reviews of an item, they remove them. How many items have you found with an average of less than three stars?
When the "listmania" stuff first came I made a couple of lists one evening when I was bored, one of them was "10 worst films ever", featuring Armageddon, Waterworld, Independence Day and so on. It was quickly removed.
Still, the filters and the reviewers sometime let through stuff, and people can still take the piss out of some products if they
are creative...
"What really makes David Hasselhoff stand apart from his contemporaries is his magnificent voice. Some critics have compared his resounding tenor to that of Mario Lanza or Johnny Hartman, but I would compare it more to a wounded jackal getting whipped by a screaming pornfilm fluffer.
So enjoy this comprehensive collection of Hasselhoff's greatest. You won't regret a moment of it!"
Check it out, there are 449 reviews in that style...
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
YOu gotta see what fark hath wrought on Amazon's forums.
I started noticing this a while back with regard to Amazon "top reviewers". They tend to write these glowing reviews that read like professional advertisements. This G. Cooke person (if it is only one person) is only one example. If you look at other top reviewers at Amazon I'll wager that you'll find the same phenomenon. It's kind of like a stock brokers who gives everything a "Buy" rating so that you'll invest more. When reading things like product reviews, you need to be aware of ulterior motives, be very skeptical, and use your best judgement.
I ordered a book from an Amazon "zShop".. these zShops.. aka 3rd party sellers... are rated by customers and given comments. Well, I ordered a used book and apparently somewhere in the text description was "This book is not the one listed!" and it mentioned a different title. I just saw the picture which was the book I wanted, saw the condition as "Like new".. and ordered it. To cut to the chase, after I got the wrong book, I demanded they refund shipping as well as the price of the book. They refused. I gave them a horrible review on Amazon. Amazon only shows the 10 most recent reviews on the individual "zShop page" unless you "click for more reviews"... Mind you, for this particular zShop.. lastpagebooks specifically, the last review on them was quite some time ago. The next day, I see my review is suddenly #30 or so, with a bunch of one line "This store is great! A++++++++!" comments, 5 stars for each. And my comment is suddenly lost in obscurity. Apparently Amazon has no problem with this, or at the very least, no solution.
There was a segment on public radio (I don't remember which show, alas) a month or so ago about a guy who's trying to get the most reviews on amazon.com, and a woman who currently has the most reviews. I don't recall any implication that they're doing anything other than just trying to get the dubious honor of having the most reviews.
Is it really so surprising? She has no job. She has no life. She sits and reads and buys useless items. She then writes about them. On a more serious note -- is there anyone out these hawking some prodect or other that wouldn't hire this lady to write for them? She is a great advertising copy editor. Where better to hone her skills than by making postings praising products?
Free site to download plumper mpegs.
The only one I know of is this.
Please post others!!!
Just put a little number next to each reviewers name what their average review is. If it's a 5, we'll know they're paid to have no sense of taste or discrimination (not of the Trent Lott variety, but rather seeing things as different).
Sorry, UBid probably beat you to it. Of course on UBid you can pretty much count on EVERY big auction running over for and hour or two. Though I have gotten burned a time or two for acting on that assumption. Of course I have been burned by snipers on Ebay a lot more. Orders of magnitute more in fact... Damn Ebay.
shows that Gail Cooke is likely the same Gail Cooke that writes book reviews for Dallas-Fort Worth, TX papers. Possibly not, but my guess is she's one in the same.
i suspect some might be bored Perl scripters testing out their cute scripts that screw with reviews. Kinda like the ones we used to write to screw with CNN polls and stuff like that.
Consumer opinion sites are worthless, in my opinion.
Rely on community-oriented forums where you know the people you're talking to. It's not foolproof though because, in my opinion, some corporations have staff who do nothing but post in forums as if they're consumers like you and me. In the end I fall back on independent review organizations like Consumers Union and sole operators of web sites that have an established, widespread following (for example, dpreview.com for digital cameras).
Not to criticize or defend this review system, I think I have come up with what could be a reasonable explanation for many of the reviews being on the same day - a batch queue. Amazon does not allow you to post reviews in realtime. You post a review, and they review the review, and then post it. The way I imagine it would work is that someone reads through hundreds and hundreds of reviews in a month and then clicks on a button to force them live from a queue. One reason I know they do in fact review the reviews is that sometimes you will see somewhere where someone posts a price or a URL in the review, but Amazon brackets it out like [removed] or something like that.
--Jon
Henry Raddick
Shoot, I only read the negative reviews anyway. Positive reviews only tell what people liked about it. Negative ones tell what people didn't like. Since there are normally a very small fraction of negative reviews, I can read through them and find out if someone is having a problem with something I want to do/read/learn.
Of course, then I'll go back to O'Reilly and buy their book anyway.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
If you're trying to make a purchase decision the best thing to do is to go for volume a lot of times. Open up google, do some searches, get lots of information from lots of different places. Often you will want to throw out the most extreme positives and negatives as well.
But the best thing to do is to gather as much info as possible from as wide a range of sources as possible!
he just "found" it. :/
Read this review when she slags off a brand of laser paper (no kidding) and happened to have a technician on hand when 2 pages go through at once.
So she works in an office, but she uses Amazon bought copier paper (which she herself buys - so she knows that type it is).
How many offices do you know that are big enough to have laser repair technicians in, but small enough that the person buys their own copier paper.
Also how many companies do you know buy their office supplies from Amazon?
"1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
THE PAPER CHASE November 13, 2002
This was my first purchase of this brand of copy paper and, sorry to say, it was disappointing.
With the first use two sheets of paper came out of my printer - one blank, and the other with the proper printing. Of course, I initially thought something had gone wrong with my printer. When a technician happened by I asked him to check it, and he assured me it was functioning properly.
Out of curiosity one day I loaded the printer with another brand of copy paper and presto! - No more double sheets.
I really don't know what the problem was - perhaps the copy paper is too thin and the printer "grabs" two or perhaps there is some sort of treatment on the paper that caused it to stick together. "
A point I forgot to mention is this: I like the "Web of Trust" because it closely mirrors what we do in everyday life. You probably have a friend whose taste in movies is pretty close to yours. When he says a new movie is good, you trust him, and you go see it. Then you probably have another friend who has terrible taste in movies and when he sees a movie and tells you that it's great and you should go see it, you just filter him out completely.
Not any more than I trust an "unbiased" view on Microsoft posted on /.
Of course, since this is being posted on /., you, dear reader, have to decide for yourself if it's true or just a very subtle example of Amazon bashing over the one-click patent thing...
A negative review is more likely to be a real review
Or in other words, "How's the whoring, whore?"
She gives five stars to _another_ men's electric razor on November 26.
She gives five stars to an iron on October 1.
She gives five stars to _another_ iron on November 23.
She gives five stars to a cordless vaccuum on August 11.
She gives five stars to _another_ cordless vaccuum on September 7.
She gives five stars to a regular vaccuum on August 6.
She gives five stars to _another_ regular vaccuum on October 13.
Come to your own conclusions. My feeling is that she is either:
A: a professional product reviewer, in which case Amazon should include a disclaimer that she is being paid for her reviews,
B: a compulsive liar / attention-seeker,
C: a collection of reviewers all publishing under one pseudonym, in which case Amazon should include a disclaimer that she is not a real person.
D: the marketing department for Amazon / Target, in which case Amazon should include a disclaimer that she is being paid and is not a real person.
The 5 Reasons Why We Overeat: How to Develop a Long-Term Weight-Control Plan That's Right for You by Cynthia G. Last
Last's superb guide enables the reader to identify which "eating profile" they fall into, and thereby select the weight-loss strategy appropriate to them. With my wife, who really let herself go quite some time ago, "Remorseless Grazer" covers most of the angles - and to know this is to be prepared. I found it easy to read and well thought out, and we certainly need it after Marjorie ballooned massively over our two week Second Honeymoon.
When Ever asking people for an opinion about someting most people seem to have a very static 2 sided view on things thus 5 Stars and 1 Stars.
Lets use Slashdot as an example.
What ever Microsoft Does 1 star.
What ever Linux Does 5 Stars.
(They both did the same thing)
Marketing 1 Star.
Getting a Job 5 Stars.
Apple 2.5 Stars.
Half of the people are 5 Stars
The other Half of the people are 1 star.
And even look at moderation How many moderations do you see as 5 and -1 (1 and 2 happen without moderation) but there is usually only a little bit or 3s and 4s.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I was just doing some christmas shopping yesterday on Amazon, and it was also the first time I've ever actually bought something on Amazon. (I know, where have I been??).
:)
I was reading a bunch of the customer reviews, and noticed how a lot of the "featured" ones also had the "Top 500 Reviewer", "Top 10 Reviewer" (etc) graphics next to their review. So then I went to all of these people's review pages and noticed how all of these "Top" reviewers reviews were totally skewed towards the positive. 9/10 are 5 stars, with an occasional 4 star. And Gail Cooke was one of the ones that stood out.
Before I commited to anything, I went to epinions first to read some "real" reviews. Most of the reviews on amazon are just garbage.
Pointless post, I know, just weird that I was going through the exact same thing last night.
Joseph?
She has 658 reviews in total. In some cases, she's done more then one per day, just like you have 217 comments posted on /., sometimes posting several per day.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The five star reviews are usually just product plugs put there by someone with a vested interest. I always read the reviews with fewer than five stars...if a review doesn't list at least one drawback, then I don't give it any consideration.
Its usually the downsides that interest me anyway, the upsides were already listed in the product description.
Maybe we can get ahold of her and she can answer your questions herself...
Slashdot interview: A professional web reviewer.
Maybe she's just very perky, angelic person, who gives of herself and does well by the world.
I realize that may be a mindblowing concept for some Slashdotters, but come on, admit the possibility.
Haha.. awesome find man, thanks. This will give me hours of reading pleasure. All he does is complain about his dogs and his entire family, including his kids and especially is apparently very obese wife.
I liked this one:
How to Write Your Own Life Story: A Step by Step Guide for the Non-Professional Writer by Lois Daniel
Life dealt my wife Marjorie a poor hand to begin with, and not much came up on the flop; but thanks to this fantastic guide she is planning on penning a genuinely moving and heartwarming account of triumph over adversity. Or revelling in her own victimhood. It depends on your perspective.
-hero.
I write reviews occasionally on products I get off of Amazon.com or other sites. usually though only when I really hate a product.
There is some form of meta-moderation, You can click the 'is this review helpful' link and say whether you liked it or not. The 'power reviewers' I tend to ignore and mark 'didn't help' because all they do is continue to try to get you to buy the product, at least on Amazon.com
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Let's face it -- grade inflation exists lots of places. Read the negative reviews first. In general you'll find that one company / group won't go out of their way to try and tank another company (any press is good press), so these are more likely to be genuine.
Nice baseless accusations. I did some research and it's clear that you're talking out your ass.
The problem is the Top100 reviewers program. It's yet another idiotic and worthless online badge of honor that because you can get it some people will try.
If they eliminated the program and there was no way to be a Top100 reviewer, these people would go find something else to do.
Just imagine if Slashdot had a "Top100 posters" category...
Am I the only one that noticed that her Wishlist is empty? Maybe she has a Fairy Godmother in the Amazon... ... OK, not funny. Most people that have a materialism craze like this (assuming she buys this stuff) would have a huge wishlist. I think it's likely that she gets some form of kickback from Amazon.
Another thing that makes me suspicious is the Coffee table book reviews. If she loves to read, she would probably get novels as opposed to books about Venice. Who knows. That just didn't click with me.
If anyone read the book "21 Dog Years, Doing Time @ Amazon.com"
Mike Daisey discusses how he was a customer service call center lacky but also reviewed childrens toys for the site. He did this from home on his own time, The funny thing was he would fall far behind his reviews and have closets full of unreviewed Fisher Price and Playskool toys laying about the house.
Good thing a fat guy with no children who's never been a parent was reviewing childrens toys.
I only read the 1 star reviews on Amazon...if those are well written and make sense, then I take a harder look at the item.
5-star reviews? Meh. I used to work at a publisher that regularly had employees post 5-star review BS on amazon all the time. We used to have review "wars" with rival publishers. Sometimes a book of ours would have 5-10 reviews only by us and our rival. It was a little absurd. I pretty much assume that any overly positive review is planted (fake reviewers take notice: offer some honest criticisms of your product if you want better results).
BTW - Newt Gingrich is a frequent reviewer on Amazon. I wonder how many cyber-radicals have gone around clicking "not helpful" under each of his reviews. Just a thought.
Many of the remarks about G.Cooke seem to consider her a boring person with no life and nothing better to do other than to comment on other people and their products.
Anyone else find that surprising, coming from slashdotters...?
I say send her an invitation and a nickname.
For honest reviews check out Consumer Reports. They don't review everything but I believe the can give you the most honest reviews of products.
this reviewer probably has spent well over 14,000 US dollars on the products she has reviewed. That was a 10% sampling of her purchases x 10 ~ 50% had no price, so she has probably spent around 28,000 US, on cat stands, neon cat signs, pots, pans, mittens, $40 lotions and a whole shitload of books. I am guessing she reads a thousand pages a day when she is not trying out such products as MEN'S SHAVERS, which she rated quite well, even referencing the new bond flic in the review.
Look here: Page by Page (her knickname) yields this:
National Library of Canada.
http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/pagebypage/
That would explain the laser paper review.
I generally judge a reviewer's validity by compairing thier reviews to a known quantity (so to speak). I try to see if a reviewer has reviewed another product (book, movie, gadget) that I have also used or am familiar with. I then try to compare thier reaction with my own, and use that as a gauge of thier review of something with which I'm unfamilliar. It also helps if the review which I'm using as my point of reference is in the same category/genre as the product I'm investigating. If there is no common point of reference, then I will either ignore the review, or see if the product has numerous reviews, then it helps to find the genereal consensus.
"I'm making perfect sense, you're just not keeping up."
There appears to be a childrens book about ping, our favorite network utility. Very interesting since it was written in 1933.
6 70 672238/qid=1039722288/sr=2-2/002-0502670-0308821?v =glance&s=books
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
It's kinda like that episode of the Simpsons where Homer gets the job writing as restaraunt reviewer for the Springfield Shopper...problem is, he likes food so much, he gives everything a 5 star review...so, everyone buys the product (or Homer's case, goes to the restaraunt) and gets fat...eventually he starts to only give bad reviews, and the restaraunt owners gang up and attempt to kill Homer with a lethal eclair...you listening Gail???
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
I think reviews on any website are generally biased. The large majority of users who purchase an item don't have the comparable products to rate it against. Especially for more expensive items, like digital cameras for instance. Of course if you've only had one digital camera ever, the one you have is going to be the best you've ever used (even if you hate it).
Your knowledge on any given product is directly related to the amount of experience you have with all of it's competitive products. Many people just rate something 5 stars because relatively speaking, it is the best they've ever used due to a simple lack of exposure. Through the use of that one product, of course you'll become accustomed to at feel most at home with it's features or content and rate it accordingly.
I think truly useful reviews are those either from users which can truly lay out the positives and negatives of the product in question, or those that offer a direct comparison to a similar product in an unbiased form. It's like someone who goes from a moped to a Kia...that's a huge jump. He gives the Kia 5 stars. Then you get the guy who normally drives a Ferrari who simply cringes at the thought of a Kia and gives it 0 stars. Reviews are highly relative.
can be found here. As you can see, Harriet Klausner has reviewed over 4,000 items, which seem to be mostly books. I challenge you to find a book that she didn't like! Four stars is the lowest score that she has ever given as far as I can tell. She must be on vacation or something because she has only posted two reviews this month. Also, notice that her reviews are all three paragraphs long and the second paragraph tends to start with the word "However". Maybe she is just a book reviewing bot. She certainly doesn't write interesting reviews.
Lasers Controlled Games!
You speak though you know so little.
I trust reviews found at epinions more than those found at Amazon. Epinions allows users to moderate comments and they have built a community. I've posted a few reviews and made a few bucks myself. I've also rated a lot of reviews (there is no limit to the number of reviews a member can rate, unlike slashdot) and I've seen the good reviews rise to the top. Bad reviews and plagarists (more than 1 illiterate has tried to pass a review from another site as their own) fall off the radar.
Until you know what you're talking about (which is why you're AC I guess) go post some Soviet Russia jokes.
On Amazon or any similiar type of site I only read the negative reviews. When I read a book review on slashdot I read the intro, skip to the what's bad, then read what's good.
Ahh, A nice legally binding electronic signature...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-rev iews/-/AA9IP6AYACFK5/102-2168050-5628139
Henry Raddicks reviews need to be read in full to get some of the jokes he mentions. He has a whole cast of characters (homophobic uncle, poor dog he's always trying some crazy theory on) that he references in many of his reviews..
Examples...
Handbook of Meat Product Technology
An admirably thorough guide to the tools of the production-line meat processing trade. The superb colour photographs particularly made it a perfect gift for my 15 year old daughter who is showing alarming signs of not becoming vegetarian.
God, Why Did Dad Lose His Job?
A truly wonderful guide which has enabled me to explain my recent sacking for vandalising company property to my children in terms of a minor act of redemption. First rate.
I found it quite interesting that she reviewed men's electric shavers. She reviewed the Remington R-9100 for her husband on 10-14-02, then she reviewed the Norelco 8894xl on 11-26-02, both had 5 stars. Maybe the second was for her boyfriend?
She also reviewed A T-Fal 18301 iron (again, 5stars), and also a Bosch tpa1503uc, with, no surprise, 5 stars...
Hmmmmm....
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
2) There's some prestige attached to getting people who say that your review helped their purchase, because your ranking goes up. Yeah it's only a ranking among other reviewers, but I do know people who review constantly so that they can say their amazon ranking is higher than yours.
The same could be said about /. as some have to post for a while to get moderator status, but those that make it must at least demonstrate writing something worthy of posting among peers before being given rights to moderate.
The correct quote is: "If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck then its probably a duck." I used to use "If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, ... then it would probably taste good with an orange sauce." as my sig.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Okay, running Gail Cooke through an Anagram Generator, I get 'A GECKO OIL'. As we all know a gecko is a type of reptile, or should I say snake? We all know that selling 'Snake Oil' conjures up a marketing scam. So, Gail Cooke = Snake Oil.
Thank you. Is there like a prize or something for like the best post ever? I now kneel as you bestow thy Karma upon thee.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
And in fact you have done it, and told us about it. You checked into the reviewers background. You found information that leads you to decide not to trust her. End of story.
Take an average.
If you're planning on a purchase and not sure exactly which manufacturer/model to buy, half an hour in Google Groups should make up your mind.
Search on the product you're interested by date, and read what people are saying. Sure, you will get the odd one or two who have had nothing but trouble, but see how it works out on average.
Google Groups is especially good for getting the low down computer / electrical consumer goods.
I usually look for the negitive reviews myself. Those can say alot about an item, especially if there is a particular problem that keeps getting posted throughout the comments.
I wouldn't put it past Amazon to pay people or have in-house staff write-up 5 star reviews. Then, have people follow up behind and click "Yes" to "Was this review helpful?" question, just to add insult to injury. No on in their right minds would sit on Amazon writing reviews in order of thousands of comments. If i were a betting man, i'd say about 1/2 of the top 1000 reviewers are staff members, or at the very least, oursourced and paid-for comments
In any case, use the feedback system as a tool, not as a deciding factor. This is where smart comsuming comes into play. Check out independent reviews on the product in question. Check out other various feedback systems such as www.pricegrabber.com etc. Talk to people who may own the product you're looking to buy. Or simply google up "(pruduct here) review" By doing this, you can compare the results side-by-side, and note any discrepencies in feedback posting. That, and you will be better informed afrerwards.
When I out to buy something online that costs me more then $20, i do some hefty research, price comparing, check out return policies, even shipping cost differences from site to site. This may sound anal-retentive, however this is your money we're talking about, and it's a *privledge* to any online store who gets it. You have everything you need right in front of you to do some smart shopping, it'd be a shame to let it go to waste.
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
I've heard credible stories (from the students themselves) of being given extra credit in classes for posting a favorable review of the Professor's book to Amazon.
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
I take it back, her knickname (pagetopage) yields the National Library of Canada.
I.e. she has exactly the sort of job where laser printer technicians are on hand and she does nothing but read books.
So I don't deserve the "+1" mod I got.
There's a few people there with 4000+ reviews!
... days ... years.
Seriously. How much money would someone have to spend on books, videos, or trinkets to be able to produce that many reviews? Thousands and thousands of dollars.
How much time would someone have to spend reading, viewing, ordering, etc to get to all these products -- and still hold down a job? Hours
Unless, of course, reviewing these products WAS their job. It's pretty obvious reviewing is all these people do, and pretty obvious that someone is paying these people to do it. Is it illegal for Amazon to pay reviewers in an attempt to increase sales? Probably not, but I question the morality of paying someone to review products you sell without letting people know you are paying them to do so.
Most all reviews are worthless because they simply lack any context. I've made this comment about the Slashdot book reviews too.
When Joe Blow say this product is great or that product is crap, it really means NOTHING, and putting any faith into these reviews is a major mistake. Unless the reviewer gives some background about themselves and their history with the product or category of products you have no way of knowing how they relate to you.
This is especially true of technical book reviews. Without having some idea about the persons knowlege and skill level and what experience they have, there is no real value in the review. For this reason, when I write book reviews I also include a brief resume listing things like years of experience in that field, certifications, other books that I have read on the subject, etc.
I trust a review if the reviewer seems knowledgeable and insightful. I buy a lot of opera on DVD and it's pretty easy to figure out who knows what he's talking about and who doesn't. With cookbooks, I look for people's description of what actually cooking the dishes was like. With technical books, I skip the "I loved it, you should buy it too" reviews and head for the long ones that discuss in depth the strengths and weaknesses of the author's presentation of the material. With other topics, YMMV, but this has worked for me and I have generally felt that I understood pretty much what I was buying.
Consumer reports it ain't, but most of what I buy at Amazon falls into the category of experience rather than search goods (see G.J. Stigler, "The Economics of Information," J. Pol. Econ., 69, 221 (1961); see also H.R. Varian, "Economics and Search," Plenary address at ACM SIGIR 1999). The question is, of what value is the time it would take you to research the quality of Amazon merchandise via a more trusted source than customer reviews?
There's lots of noise in the reviews, but you can still filter out a useful signal. Many reviews are also obviously dumb, such as the guy that ordered a CD player, loved it, but decided he didn't need it after all, so he gave it one star. Brains entirely optional. After reading through ten or twenty reviews of the CD player, you'd find recurring mentions of good or bad battery life, skipping/no skipping etc, which is usually all you need.
So there's this Slashdot user named "Anonymous Coward" that posts several thousand times PER DAY! Very little of what he or she writes is useful. I'm having a hard time believing that one person can generate this much garbage.
This is astroturfing, plain and simple... My friend and I used do this. We'd set up fake BBSs to get free US Robotics modems :-)
The number 1 columnists at both Byte My Magazine and PC Techniques for Virgin Geeks both gave favorable reviews to products where a business relationship with the vendor was subsequently revealed.
Is this G. Cooke a real person? Sony had a movie reviewer it was quoting in its movie ads who was 100% bogus. Nowadays, being bogus is a key to integrity. Bogus reviewers are incorruptible.
If these suspicious persons have reviewed so many products, they may have a reviewed a few of which you have personal knowledge. Those are golden data points.
If there aren't any such datapoints, maybe somebody whose reviews you DO agree with has reviewed products the suspicious person has also reviewed. Those are, shall we say, silver data points.
Obviously what I'm working up to here is an automated system for finding short paths in networks of reviewers. Not a Web of Trust, but a Web of Agreement, built upon the mutual information (the degree of agreement) between various reviewers.
I have seen "mutual interest" systems such as for music. Those are useless because of shills that (pretend to) like everything, but a system built on mutual information would find those reviewers to have 0 information content.
You kind of have to wonder about the motives (or indeed the sanity) of someone who would write hundreds such glowing reviews for so many trivial little items.
Maybe it's like those "satisfied customers" who call up QVC or Home Shopping Network and give a testimonial about the product. They always gush, they always give a rave review. You get the feeling they just enjoy hearing their own voice on the TV set -- like it's some kind of thrilling brush with fame. Some people get really into QVC; they know the names of all the salespeople and everything.
I have to wonder if a subculture like that might have sprung up on Amazon.com? The fame of being a "Top 10 Reviewer" might lead some people to go off the deep end.
Let that be a lesson to you. NEVER marry!
... can be just as bad. I read a letter from the editor of my favorite audio magazine not too long ago, where he complained of too many honey-dripped, 101 out of 10 star reviews in competing magazines.
What some magazines (and perhaps websites) having going for them is trust and familiarity. If I read reviews from a particular writer over an extended period, I begin to understand WHY they write what they write. If a reviewer specializes in live sound, he may tear up a high-grade microphone as too expensive, when a studio engineer might praise it highly. Likewise, someone who is obsessed with a particular author may write a glowing review of what others call crap.
I guess it's good to know how big of a grain of salt you should take with a given review.
Have you ever noticed there's -always- a "This is the best movie evar!" review on the Internet Movie Database? It's cute, but no - you CAN'T trust everything and everybody 100% - so what else is new?
A few years ago, after Q3A was released. (I bought it from amazon) I went back to write a small review on it, I figured, why the hell not. About 3 weeks later, I got a call from my friends father who said they just bought it. He said while he was thinking about getting it, the noticed my name on the reviews. He figured it would be good if I was playing it :)
... there are like 1% of those which are real. Just try to pick and choice what to belive. I belive in my review on Q3A I said like 3 disavatages it had over xyz product. (Can't remeber off hand) Thats a good thing to look out for. Spelling and grammer errors are an intresting thing to look for.
At anyrate
until (succeed) try { again(); }
A negative review implies thoughtfulness, because the reviewer is rejecting the marketing (formal and social) and going against the grain. Sometimes it's just a rant to be ignored, but often there are clues to flaws that might be critical in my overall evaluation.
So, I also tend to only look at negative reviews, which I compare against the seller's (or manufacturer's) specs/feature list. If I'm still undecided, I might look at positive reviews to see if they're intelligently written and provide concrete examples of benefits.
No Laughing Allowed!
If you want a real treat, check out Harriet Klausner's reviews. She's Amazon's #1 reviewer and bugs the hell out of me. I browsed through a whole bunch of her 4000+ reviews one day and they all have the same features: 3 paragraphs (1 intro, 1 plot summary, 1 about how much she loved it). Then she gives everything 4 or 5 stars. The strange thing is that she would occasionally have read only the middle book of a trilogy or other sketchy things like that. Buncha crap if you ask me.
dipshit learn to flame properly.
I've found that you generally shouldn't trust the conclusions of reviewers (unless they're personally known to you.) Many many things in this world are subjective, and just because it's a downside for someone doesn't mean you won't like it.
For example, if a reviewer of a dvd says 'filled with mindless violence and no plot' and gives it 1 star, that's no reason you should avoid it. Maybe you like mindless violence. Maybe plots bore you.
So, I guess trust reviews as far as they mention relatively objective things. Unless the review appears to have been written by a raving fan or a hate-filled lunatic, take out the factual bits and see if you like them.
And ignore things like *Top 100 Reviewers*. Why should that even matter? Quantity is not quality.
End ramble
The Solution seems simple to me. Limit the amount of reviews any one person can post. That limits the amount that any one person can skew the results with their boilerplate/spam reviews. Of course then you would have to institutes some sort of IP tracker to keep people from posting under multiple aliases, but it would basicaly kill off the Amazon Power Reviewers, but I am fine with that.
Google Viewer - View search results as scrolling web page images
Google Webquotes - View search results with quotes about them from other sites
Check it out at Google Labs
Must be true since it is on the internet.
read 21 dog years doing time at amazon.com by mike daisey. He tells how as an amazon employee he volunteered to write reviews for toys.
www.resellerratings.com
use it live it love it
She also reviewed 4 blenders, 2 vacuum cleaners, 2 food processors, and 3 coffee makers (she reviewed one she didn't like after she reviewed two she liked). And she actually reviewed 3 irons (a Hamilton Beach 15420 got 5 stars, like the other irons).
One one mitten review, she was talking about the neighborhood kid who makes snowballs. she says she lives in Texas. Her dog is a lab. She also really likes knives. Remember that...
My review of G.Cooke : ** stars.
-although a prolific reviewer, she is overenthusastic and redundant. She also is too corporate for my tastes.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Should You Trust Website Customer Reviews?
Heh..that's like determining your self esteem level by your Slashdot moderation points..
-ted
In early '99, they were getting about 5000 reviews in a day. Each review is checked twice, once by a filter(dirty words), and the other by eyes(relavence). There were about 20 catalogue people then. They post all book listings, CD's, products, answer crazed author questions(my fav part)...and if they have time, post reviews.
If you guys think Amazon is trying to pursuade you with reviews...your high on conspiricy juice. They are pure fluff for your sake. We barley had enough time to add new products to the site, let alone check reviews. Trust me, Amazon would LOVE to get rid of the review system, cuase it is a pain in the ass to maintain and labor intensive. But they keep it cuase customers wanted/want it.
And no, we didn't re-order the reviews and put the good ones at the top. It is a pure FIFO (First-In-First-Online) system. People just usually post if they really hate, or really like something. So the reviews are more rants than critiques and tend to be very biased...just like /.
P.S. I still smell like the Art Bar too!
i posit that gail cooke is not, in fact, an actual person at all. oh, no. gail cooke is a large collection of monkeys, chained to typewriters and employed by amazon/target to post favorable product reviews in order to boost revenue.
soupy twist
Amazon has no metamoderation.
Slashdot does and it seems to have some weaknesses to me. I bet a large percentage of 3,4,5 point postings are a result of people using second accounts to moderate thier own posting up.
Just like seemingly everything else on the internet, eBay feedback can be a sham too.
Just because someone has dozens of glowing ebay reviews doesn't mean they're not a scam artist.
Just because a product has glowing reviews doesn't mean that it's a piece of shit.
Sometimes people just have no idea how to operate something, so they give it a *negative* review.
Reviews of any sort can be misleading, no matter where they're printed.
You can do this one: :: Review:________
Moderator:MetaModerator
Even they are fakes. At least they give you some aspects that will not show in the description of th e product. Like "people" say this book tell me how to cook French steak etc and easy to follow stuff like that. It may be helpful some time. Just be careful and skaptic.
I don't trust UBid at all. Some of the prices seems to go way too high - higher than the amount I would pay at a retail store combined with the shipping charges even though there's 25 of them.
No, I'd be skeptical of the ordinary people writing legitimate reviews, too. It doesn't take long reading a site such as Epinions.com to realize what an act of self-definition shopping is for Americans. Portraying satisfactions deeper than any porn star could deliver, the reviews are often windows into a banality so advanced that you wonder what these people did before the Net waited to record their deeds. Then you realize: they were cruelly forced to shop in a cage of silence, longing for the day when they could sing great songs about their trips to the cash register.
Yeah, I like a little advice on purchases, too. So my approach is this. Ignore all the positive reviews, especially the glowing ones. Those people are either professional liars or idiots. Instead, read all the negatives, particularly the embittered, angry, cynical and self-loathing pieces -- the pieces written in anonymous fury to take revenge upon the despicable refrigerator company or the Saddam-like hard drive maker. You'll learn something, and have more fun to boot. :-)
Ok, so I followed the link to G. Cooke's reviews and then out of sheer curiosity followed the link to Professional Clog - Polyurethane -- Blue and down at the bottom of the page found this:
Customers who wear clothes also shop for:
Rather than the ones who go naked, right? But it gets better. Look what they shop for:
Clean Underwear from Amazon's Target Store
I look at the reviews of something Im aware of as being good or not good. Look at reviews of say knuth's "Art of" or Joyce's "finnegans wake"; Also
look at some lesser known works Billingsley's
"probabiliy and Measure"; and of course some obsure works that you have knowledge about. You get the idea....
So who reviews the reviewers?
Take your meds. It's clear you need them desperately.
shill
One who poses as a satisfied customer or an enthusiastic gambler to dupe bystanders into participating in a swindle.
Informative??? This is supposed to be a JOKE. Froogle has nothing to do with reviewers. It's a products-for-sale search engine. "Find cheap reviewers at..." -- get it? JOKE!
An Ask Slashdot for 'should we trust anonymous opinions'?
Goes back to my favorite saw: 'Free advice is worth what you pay for it.'
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
...by revewing books on Amazon that I never read! I suspect I'm not the only one.
Best Buy can have you arrested
I think, for a good number of the prolific reviewers, it's about status. These are the people who will look up every item they've purchased in the last ten years and put up a review for it on Amazon simply to increase their count.
Also you sometimes see people posting lots of really positive reviews of reviews, presumably to kiss up to each other, but having designated epinions editors whose reviews of reviews are weighted more heavily seems to have helped that.
That said, I then found these editors' opinions to vary pretty wildly. Some gave me really good reviews, while others gave me lukewarm reviews when the work and thought on my end were essentially equal. It was an interesting illustration of how subjective these things are. Ah well, at least my ratings don't go on my permanent record...
...are still the "Customer Reviews" of just about anything by Bil Keane. For example, check out The Family Circus by Request, which was reviewed just this past August.
Some days, I really miss the DFC. These Amazon reviews kinda help. :-)
"Given the pace of technology, I propose we leave math to the machines and go play outside." -- Calvin
Seen that policy; we use it at work with our online bidding system. Basically, we ask companies to bid to provide a service or supply something and they "bid down" to lower prices. If there's a bid in the last 5 minutes, it gets extended by 5 minutes (potentially indefinately). Bear in mind this is for auctions normally lasting 30 minutes.
Why? Because I thought it was important for potential buyers to know that this book was written by an admitted, convicted pedophile. I thought that some buyers would want to know this.
Apparently, Jeff Bezos loves pedophiles (he's a pedophile-phile) because he rejected the review three times. I gave up after that.
Best Buy can have you arrested
The nice thing about the reviews, whether they are valid or not, is that they lead to more books being shown if your recommendations list. Why is this good? Remember: if you buy something from Amazon based on its recommendation, and you didn't like it, they'll take it back.
Get off my launchpad!
Helllllllo Moderators-
This is some seriously funny stuff. Take this for example:
I don't know if anyone posted this yet but this guy's reviews are HILARIOUS:
r ev iews/-/AA9IP6AYACFK5/002-2729239-6010442
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-
It seems the top 10 reviewers are based on the number of reviews they have ever written, not on qualtiy. The number 1 reviewer wrote over 4000. Where did fact that all reviews were written in one day come from? It seems she posted this over time according to the dates of each review. Also, check out the number of people that found her reviews helpful. She may be a troll, but come on, wheres the beef?
I have a Nexis subscription. This lady seems to publish a book review in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel about every six months. The best part is her bio-tagline-"sig file" (for lack of a better term): "Gail Cooke, who lives in Fort Worth, Texas, reviews books for a number of newspapers."
Technically true...but the "number" is one! (and frankly, as someone who writes book and record reviews for a living, I do find it incredibly bizarre that someone would spend that much time just giving it away.)
The thing is, it's hard to impulse buy at a place like amazon. I say this because, if you want to see a particular product, you have to consciously search for it.
Compare this to walking around Target. You see something that looks cool, you buy it. You have no idea how good the product really is.
So, what you're getting from amazon is customer feedback on a product that you were already leaning towards buying. At least you're getting SOMETHING. And finding bad reviews on amazon about a product I nearly bought at some department store has saved me more than once.
She should be reviewing movies for WBAI or American Urban Radio Networks.
This fellow, Henry Raddick is a top 100 Amazon reviewer. The funny thing about Henry is he only does fake reviews and they are funny as anything. Henry Raddick Amazon Profile Be sure to read the one about getting your kids off porn.
an unnamed UN source has REVEALED that an independant reviewers have been appinted to evaluate Iraq's dossier on its chemical, biological and nuclear programs.
:
According to the source their findings can be summarised as follows
- 'I COULDN'T PUT IT DOWN'
- '... this book took me by suprise. The story was so moving. I cried at the end.'
- 'I loved this book. It was romantic and heart-warming. A must read!'
- 'I was completely drawn into this story of a women by a woman. It was obviously written by someone educated, who read Jane Austen and was well-treated. I belive it's authentic.'
A few months ago, I bought a terrible technical book. So, I went to Amazon and wrote a review pointing out some of the eratta and strongly recommending that people not buy it. I also criticized the publisher for being so lax in editing. A week later, my review "magically" disappeared from the site and was replaced by a five star review raving about this disgraceful publication.
Ok here's what I found out:
= 110)
Amazon Review (the one in the original message):
"The foot cream is another triple treat as it softens, heals and disinfects. It contains camphor if there is a need for soothing dry skin, and a natural disinfectant, Tea Tree Oil to banish any potential odors. It's a true treat for your feet!"
Now, here's a paragraph written on a web page selling the foot cream: (http://www.beautysak.com/products.asp?mode=m&mid
"A 3-in-1 product that softens, heals, and disinfects. Contains soothing Camphor to heal painful cracking. Naturally disinfecitng Tea Tree Oil kills odor-causing bacteria, and Dead Sea minerals provide the ultimate in softening."
Something rotten in the state of wherever.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
It seems fairly obvious that Amazon is doing a very self-destructive thing here, similar to when the marketing consultant posed as an "I Switched" customer for Microsoft. It's not just a question of, "Take it with a grain of salt," it's fraud. IANAL but I believe that misrepresenting paid advertising as bona fide customer feedback is illegal, and the company should face criminal charges if they are doing it. If you agree, take 5 minutes and complain to the FTC here.
Great. Now we have to start reviewing the reviewers! "I rate G. Cooke, Tx, a 1 * reviewer. She rates everything 5 *'s and never has a single critical comment anywhere."
And I know for *sure* that at least one of the reviews wasn't legit. It came out too quickly after the initial release and at that point in time the only people who had the book in hand were publishers and tech reviewers. And it was written in fluent marketroid. Draw your own conclusions.
So much for being a top 10 reviewer. Her reviews reviewed:
1 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
0 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
0 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
1 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
It goes on like that through her entire list.
Maybe these meta-reviews are influenced by the dot, but they're good numbers to have when reading someone's review. If everybody actually goes out of their way to check the "No, this review wasn't helpful" box, that should tell you something about how good a job the reviewer did...
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
Oh crap, did I miss the memo? We're now supposed to add ebay to the list of websites real nerds must hate? (And by the looks of this article, amazon too?)
Amazon reviews YOU!
Morning Edition I think it was had in interwiew with a a guy that has the most reviews on amazon. Its become his only goal in life. All he does all day is review stuff for Amazon. I think he actually said that he doesn't care if people like the reviews or find them helpful he just wants the most. There's another reviewer that's trying to get the most helpful reviews of some such thing. I'd link you the realaudio at NPR but I'm not going through all that just search NPR for "Morning Edition Amazon reviews"
-
Every time I read the reviews at amazon I summarize how many positive comments vs. how many negative.
If a negative comment makes sense and could be corroborated by another negative comment then all the positive comments are suspect if they outnumber by a dramatic ratio.
- Best Plastic Surgeons... by Michael Jackson
- Best Browser & OS... by Bill Gates
- Best MP3 player... by Hilary Rosen
You get the picture.
I used this site "eopinions.com" to check for reviews when I was looking for a new (well, used, but new to me) car. It came up fairly accurately towards what I've heard. My current car, a '91 Accord, fit most of the reviews very well (excellent body/speed/reliability, a little underpowered on hills, plastic in the interior breaks).
These tend to be best for older products, since they've got more time to be reviewed, but you could probably check out that new PC/printer/etc based on prior models.
OnSale used to do this. They did auctions for closeout/overstock/refurb items. They merged with EggHead and went out of business a few years ago. Too bad, their auction site was pretty good...
How bout it? a REAL online auction site, with time extensions, and no girly proxy bidding. Isn't the point of bidding to balance what you're willing to pay with what you think others will pay? Makes sense. You're selling your stuffed cat and there's a guy willing to pay $100 for it, but no one else wants one so he only pays you $50. Boooo
Whale
Al-Qaeda (sp?) is using the review system to get us all to buy CRAP! It's their latest brain storm to destory our economy.
Or perhaps they're doing the opposite. They're communicating to one another through reviews. If all the reviews on Amazon suddenly fall negative, I'm staying home...
- soupmaster
Has anybody used this thing? Does it work? Just got quoted $605 to repair two small dents caused by shoppingcart vs. cardoor.
According to Mike Daisy, who worked at Amazon.com for 3 years, he actually was paid to review toys. This does not mean he was paid to review toys favourably, just to review them.
Perhaps Gale is a professional reviewer. Perhaps she's also manic when she writes her reviews, too. That would explain the constant 5 stars.
On a side note, his book gives a very funny account of the insanity that is(was?) Amazon.com during the boom.
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
Me: It totally sucks and is quite biased. I give Amazon's rating system 5 Amazons.
Conan: 5 Amazons? That doesn't sound too bad.
Me: Yeah, but it's out of 672 possible Amazons!
Conan: Your review system makes no sense!
Conan has done it again!
She copies and pastes her reviews for the same books on B&Bi sbnin quiry.asp?isbn=0525946896
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/
my personal policy is to boycott any products promoted by fake reviews.
circuit city has a web site that allows reviews too. some are interesting. but then there's always the comments that say something like: "by the way, BUY MONSTER CABLES! they'll make the audio/video/whatever so much better!"
at that point you have to know it's a fake review. especially the one that says that using a monster cable for digital sound will make the sound better. yeah, like using a monster cable ethernet will make the pictures off the web prettier. it's all digital! methinks that monster cables are grossly overpriced and giving circuit city a nice profit margin... give me a break.
Unless of course, you ARE G. Cook! :(
Amazon Nimbus 2000
I wrote an article for an in-house publication about a new technical book. I was surprised to find that this brand-new book had alredy garnered two glowing reviews on Amazon - until I noticed that the reviewers were two of the same names in the author's acknowledgements - and one of them was his wife!
I always sort by "Lowest rating first". It can give you a better idea, IMHO, to read these along with the top ones.
...when you answer that question, they theoretically can get close to your "group of people whose reviews I trust."
it seems like they'd want to do that. after all, although they are trying to sell you products, they have a whole lotta products for sale, and satisfied customers are more likely to come back.
i'd say try regularly "rating" the reviews that way and see if their quality (for you) doesn't improve. if it doesn't, make suggestions to the collaborative-filtering team (if you like amazon anyway).
This Like That - fun with words!
This lady sounds like Homer in the episode where he becomes a food critic.
7 thumbs up!!!
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
They will only let you reveiew items that they sell. It worries me that they could influence reviews based on how it is going to affect its sales. Think about it, if you are trying to sell this widget, do you want people saying bad things about it?
Unless they have changed that policy lately, that has always bothered me.
Now Epinions that would let you review anything you wanted to review, that would be cool.
Crap, I think I'll patent that idea!
Ron Paul
eBay hasn't been too bad to me in the sniper department these days. Maybe it's just that I quit buying computer parts and the only things I've bought in the past few months have been posters, a hat and a carton of irradiated soy milk, but I haven't been sniped at later than 5 minuites in any of them.
Anyway, I prefer the occasional snipage to time extensions that'll just jack up the price. The whole point of online auctions is buying stuff you don't really need at ridiculously low prices and being disapointed when it arrives. I don't want an extra 5 minutes for it to taunt me into paying more for the matched set of French Star Wars water bottles.
I've posted a few score Amazon reader reviews.
Amazon reader reviews include a one-to-five-star rating, and the review proper. Readers of Amazon reader reviews are invited to click "Yes" or "No" to "Was this review helpful to you?" and each review is preceded by the notice "15 of 29 people found the following review helpful."
It's very noticeable that there is a strong correlation between the number of stars and the number of readers finding the review helpful. Generally speaking, three stars or less will garner a high percentage of "unhelpful" replies.
Presumably (although I don't know for sure) these factor into your "reviewer rank," which is, of course, just a number in a database and not an indication of your merit as a person.
I don't know WHY this happens. Although I do know that authors read and respond to their own reviews. I don't believe it's astroturfing. I suspect that people just like positive reviews better than negative reviews. I dunno.
If you don't believe this influences ratings, then, well, you have more integrity and independence than I do. I try to be honest in my reviews, but, frankly, I rarely give less than three stars any more because I don't like seeing my reviews rated as "unhelpful."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
They already have this. It's called "Friends and Favorites." All you need to do is create an account with them to take advantage of it.
Here's the description from their FAQ:
How can we afford to ever sleep
So sound again
--ebtg
Oh crap, did I miss the memo? We're now supposed to add ebay to the list of websites real nerds must hate? (And by the looks of this article, amazon too?)
/. article about 1-click patent).
Hmmm... you are new here. Amazon has been on the sh*t list for well over a year (see the other
As a rule of thumb, I visit third-party sites for product reviews. These sites do have links to the given products and earn a little on comissions, but in general strive to provide an objective and balanced service.
If a review starts off like this:
"Some Book, by Joe Somebody is a tail of adventure and intrigue set in 18th century London....."
- It's not a real reviewer but a marketing person for either the publisher or the author or amazon IMO and I don't trust it
BUT If a review is more like:
"This book kicked ass! The story was about a killer in the 18th century that ate people too!"
- then I am more inclined to beleive that opinion.
Ave Molech Setting
My favourite feature of the epinions.com site is that one can quickly see the top-rated items in a category, and then go and glance at the 'cons' section of each review of the interesting ones, and therefore quickly know-about anything that would clobber one's intended use for the thing...
If I care about rapid-fire photography .. and particular good-rated cameras have no capability to do it .. probably that non-capability will be noted in one of the reviews 'cons' section, and .. then I know ( having not had to trust a single+solitary reviewer or a 'review'-site )... .. to make sure that the market doesn't choose objectively, eh?
Particularly important when amazon.com seems to be interested in suppressing non-favourable reviews
( yes I know that permitting correct perception damages established entity's profits, and yes I know that that is 'evil' to market/economist types, but human-real worth is worth more to me than monetary appearances are )
Also, the reviews on epinions give me the 'gotchas' to look out for, so I understand the requirements ( for a given kind-of-item ) better! ... ) cannot evolve, but rather would only devolve, as marketing displaced, totally, vital perception.
Many thanks to everyone who makes public valid reviews, because without such we ( or 'the market'
Messages to/for me ( in me journal )
I'm not a member, but I have found a whole bunch of items I have researched before on this online forum. I think it's only useful for Home and Garden items, but I haven't looked here from the start before.
I usually start at epinions, get some ideas, model numbers, etc., then I plug the model numbers into Google and look for more reviews that way.
I'm still looking for a free version of Consumer Reports website...
- OrbNobz
In Soviet Russia...We are belong to all your base.
*this is notably untrue for many auctions, I realize; the logic only applies to auctions with lots of "sniping".
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Yes, reviewers are paid to give rave reviews, just like search engines are paid to increase web page rankings.
Once, after I gave a rave review, I got an email several months later from John Wiley & Sons, offering me $50 to review a similar book of theirs. (This was back when Amazon.com put email addresses next to reviewers' names.)
I don't remember if the paid review was to be submitted to a bookseller's site, or to more conventional book review media.
Damn right. Mod the parent up!!!
I've surfed all the Score: 3+ comments. I really am not seeing people express what was is such an obvious pattern to me.
First, these reviews may be getting five stars, but in the majority of cases, only a minority of people are finding them useful. If they're not useful, they're trash. How can you write hundreds of honest reviews and not write things that people find helpful?
The *majority* of the product reviews (not book reviews) follow a painfully obvious format:
"Spider veins on my legs have been the bane of my existence for some time now, but when those little blue lines appeared on my chin it was too much." --- Some small personal reference to the product in a sentence.
"I'd been hiding the veins on my legs with a concealer, which was an okay solution. Then someone recommended this product from Joey New York." --- What I had been doing, and the switch.
"After a few weeks the veins on my chin are no longer visible, and the veins on my legs have greatly diminished." --- A positive testimonial.
"Thanks to my friend and Joey!" --- A compliment back to the product.
Frankly, this format can be easily used to write positive reviews about any product you can come up with. Go ahead. Try it yourself. Use, say, Linux. Or a bath soap.
These are NOT reviews. These are advertising copy that gives absolutely no information about the product other than, "I was doing something else but then I did this and it was all better."
Remember: "This isn't just a clock - it's a total experience!"
This then led to a whole culture of people writing insanely positive reviews for things they had no idea about. It made the entire customer review useless. "I don't have this, but it sure looks great!" being one I remember.
However, I was a 'Catalogue Specialist' (the people who post new listings) at Amazon for a few months and I can confirm you don't have a clue. You seem to think that Amazon has a whole staff of people making sure that product rankings are high, when in fact, they could give a shit what the ranking is. The only people I've ever heard of bitching about ranking and reviews were authors, complaining about their books negative listing.
In fact I have a memorable and funny story to illustate just how much Amazon could care less about the reviews and rankings.
So what was the point of that story...to a) illustrate how Amazon could really care less about ranking and b) that there is no review/rating conspiricy at Amazon.
I have a feeling the reviews in 'question' were like this, "This thing sucks, and it took an extra day to get here." Or some similar crap. In that case, yeah it gets rejected cuase it's a space waster.
I wrote a review to a very obscure book "The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants (The Virtual Laboratory)
by Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz, Aristid Lindenmayer, Prezemyslaw Prusinkiewicz, M. Cutter
The Reviewer: A reader from United States
is me
An what I wrote was serverly doctored!
Is that legal to claim it was me who wrote that?
If we all ask nicely, maybe Signal11 will give the amazon review editors a call and "fix" G. Cooke's account.
The original poster has a great eye!
You can't prove that Gail Cooke is a professional copywriter but you can say that she writes exactly like one.
How's this for evidence:
In a country famous for its difficulties in teaching reading and writing, Ms. Cooke has learned to write in short, concise sentences using well-chosen adjectives and without any of the most common spelling and punctuation errors. She even ends everything with an airy flourish of praise.
If she isnt a professional copywriter, she should be one.
Big hint: Could Amazon be using people like her to write ad-copy into their reviews? Could they also use others? Say, someone with a more masculine voice and approach? Perhaps someone with a love for computers and digital cameras?
Bigger hint: I have a two-sentence resume. It says that I spend a lot of time at home and, that I am rotten to the core.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
Hopefully said reviewers don't mangle my review as bad as you mangled your post.
"cuase" * 2
"relavence"
"We barley had enough time" as opposed to wheat?
We all know about "Google Bombing". This is the same thing, "Amazon Bombing", and involving public perceptions and trust being leveraged over the Internet. Amazon is a huge retail presence, and on top of that they have a public interface to their product review/promotion API! Cha-ching...the sound of money.
But the same thing happened when the snake oil salesman rode his wagon into town in the 1800's. There would be a plant, a shill, in the crowd who on cue would get all hysterical about the presentation and appear buy 6 bottles. Cha-ching...the oil flowed.
But then again, some celebrity going on about how great some gadget or pill is isn't so different; just playing on your goofy, unquestioning trust.
Trust is the ultimate sales API, and goes straight to the brain stem. Your instincts are used against you and...cha-ching...everywhere the sound of money.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
I have noticed this in the past when dealing with Amazon. I did quite a few check-ups on the people doing the "this is great blah blah blah" reviews and almost inevitably they worked for the company of the product I was looking at. So I'm not sure if it is Amazon as much as the individual companies. At least, that was my experience. ;)
Becuase I know you won't read it on your own, I've posted the relavent portion of Amazon's policy.
Does this seem like a reasonable explaination for your review not getting posted? Or is it more reasonable to assume that a whole company supports crimes against children? Get some counciling blockhead.
This is why the bad reviews say so much more about the product than the good ones. Of course, it might be a competitive company trying to write its competitor down, so you never know.
Read'em with open eyes, I guess.
Mr./Ms. Cooke,
I thought that it would be polite to tell you that a discussion concerning the validity of your Amazon.com reviews is taking place on Slashdot.org, a popular bulletin board web site about the Internet and other aspects of computing.
The post, and corresponding discussion, can be accessed at the following URL:
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/11/22 45234&mode=thread&tid=95
Though I have not taken part in the discussion, most of the comments are negative, and I thought that if you were aware of the situation you might be able to defend yourself or offer an explanation. A copy of this correspondence will be posted to the bulletin board, and in the interest of dialogue, fairness, and curiosity, it is my hope that you will reply by posting directly to Slashdot. If you would prefer not to post directly to Slashdot, I would be happy to act as courier for any statements you would like to make in that forum.
Regards,
emailaddressedremoved@domain.com; Slashdot name: shylock0
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
I failed to do this for the longest time but, if I'm thinking about maybe purchasing a book, I dont necesarily read the reviews online. Instead, I'll either go to Barnes and Nobles and check out the book myself, or *gasp* check it out at the library if they carry it. Just a thought.
This lady is not an Amazon employee or on their payroll, she is just looking for validation for her meaningless life by publishing reviews and GIVING them to web sites. GIVE is the important qualifier here.
BYAHAHAHAHahahaaaaaa!!
man, that was the funniest thing i've heard during my whole boring day at work.
... to keep nice stuff coming in from the people who makes it. If I build something and want it to be reviewed in order to get some attention, I better be sure not to be trashed... El Alex Dinamo
Gail is just someone who doesn't have a life.. She's a reporter for the Dallas Star.. Maybe she gets off on Amazon reviews or something.. Or, since she can't write about any real stories, she just makes stuff up for these products.. Longing to be 'someone', but being a top 10 reviewer.
I highly recommend trusting any and all reviews you may encounter.
my other sig sucks less
I saw that on some awful old auctions site. They basically extended it 10 minutes if you tried to bid in the last 10 minutes. It worked really well that I can't remember the name of the site it was on.
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
We not only submitted dozens of positive book reviews of a client to amazon, but we also used an extras casting company to fill a booksigning with "fans". The result, a spot on the LA times bestseller list for our client and a movie option in the same week.
This book?
Your reply is off the mark. The poster was talking about big releases and not about some little known dummies guide.
And with all due respect, had there been a conspiracy taking place in Amazon, I have the feeling that you were not high enough to be in on it.
Juxtapose:
Is that better $unflattering_noun? Dyslexia is not an eastern-bloc country.
No...I can't remember the title. I'll have to go digging for it. Damn, where's the 'pubgrep' tool when I need it.
i have had them change the wording of my reviews. for example they changed the word "crap" to the word "fair" - heh heh.
I suppose the same may apply now to non-books, but I have no personal knowledge of that.
One quick question: Was this back in the heydey of Amazon, or more recently?
I know early on where I worked, money was flowing so freely that we didn't care if something got a bad review. We were all going to be rich either way, I mean, it's the Intarweb!!
When things started to turn sour though, people starting paying a little more attention to anything that would start bringing just a little more money in. Didn't work though, we still went under.
Isn't it possible that the first filter filters out 'negative' reviews based on certain keywords? After all, you were just part of the 2nd phase filter, and (I presume) you didn't program the backend and first filter, so how could you know?
Often management tells their employees one thing and implements something completely different.
had there been a conspiracy taking place in Amazon, I have the feeling that you were not high enough to be in on it.
Your right, I had nothing to do with Oprah's Book Club. But it would've been pretty easy to find out if the reviews were being feltched in the position I was in. All I'd have to do is look at the site and I'd know. It's not rocket science. And you give Amazon WAAYYY to much credit to think they have the time/money/inclination to sit around and alter the reviews that come in for "big releases". Big Releases sell themselves, that's why you consider them "big releases". How would a few altered customer reviews make a difference? Think about it.
In fact, you probably won't believe this, but Amazon spends time/money making sure that authors and they're friends don't post positive reviews for their publications, to artificially alter the books ratings.
Do a quick search on Bill Keane.
Once upon a time there was something called the Disfunctional Family Circus. And it made it's way over to Amazon. While most of those wonderful reviews are now gone, apparently the spirt has been kept alive.
I Just Dropped Grandma! (Family Circus)
"This is a tragic tale in which the beloved Granny is exposed to a radioactive meteorite which causes her shrink quite rapidly. The children think she is a doll, unfortunately, and stuff her into clothes and make her go to the mall in her Barbie (r) convertible, and to play WWF Wrestling. But tragedy occurs when they "accidently" drop her out the window. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll wave Granny goodbye!"
The Family Circus Sings Christmas Songs
"This lost classic of America's favorite family moves beyond the limits of the time, space and tempo. Thel and the clan bring new meaning to these classic tunes by changing the words of classic Xmas songs we have loved through the ages. You'll love Billy's version of "We wish you a hare krishna!", and Dolly's sensitive new version of "Oh Come All Ye Fat-holes," and tears will roll with 'ol Gandpa's "I'll Be Dead For Christmas."
These songs will take on a new meaning for America in the post-9/11 world, as we try and link our past with the new world each 9/11 brings us"
Unquestionably the Family Circus
"This book makes profound statements in the form of a question, when Jeffy and Barfy get hooked on Jeopardy and grandma gambles the family savings on one Final Jeopardy question.
They think they are sure to win once they see the Final Jeopardy category is "Dead Grandpas Look'n Down From Heaven," so they bet it all. During the commercial break, "Not Me", "Ida Know" and "Just B. Cause" whisper in Jeffy's left ear that the question is sure to be: "Who is Aaron Carter?"
Poor Jeffy! When the answer is: "He's really burning in heck! He's not up in heaven after all." Jeffy panics and doesn't write "Who is 'ol Grandpa" and goes with Aaron Carter. The Circus clan loses their home in a side wager that Grandma had placed in Las Vegas and they all end homeless.
A beautiful tale, with something for the whole family (dogs and all)."
No Zen is good zen
Programming is not an excuse. Programmers are smart enough to be able to spell, spellcheck, or check a dictionary.
Not doing at least one of these three things is pure laziness. You tell us all "Here's my opinion, but I don't care about it enough to even check it for simple mistakes". If you don't care enough about your opinion to write it properly, why should the rest of us?
People like you think your meaning is clear simply because you know what you wanted to say, but you force everyone else to try and figure out what the hell you DID mean from context, which means reading your opinion is a task that requires effort. I want to spend my time considering people's opinions, not trying to decipher them. "Your" vs "You're" is a kindergarten level mistake, and it makes sentences a PITA to read.
Take some pride in your writing, and show at least a LITTLE consideration for the people you supposedly want to communicate with. I count at least 2 child-level grammatical errors, and 6 separate spelling errors, some repeated. Fine, some people can't spell, but those that can't should recognise this, and be extra vigilant in checking their writing.
Based on what I know and saw...they don't have the manpower to pull those kinda backhanded tricks (they'd get caught fast). It's cheaper to keep the reviews in tact and try to ignore them, then to mess with em. Trust me. They have millions of entries to mess with, no way could they pull it off. They aren't the US gov.
The customer reviews really don't have much of an impact book sales. It's usually the little unknown books when it matters. When nobody knows anything about a book, and word of mouth is everything. Stuff that appears on bestseller list sells itself.
Well, I think mostly the best way to "trust" a customer review is not base it on the stars they put up, but put more weight in how well thought out, clear and concise the review is. What would probably improve things is a moderation system similar to this one. I've met more than a few trolls that think twice before stirring up shit or post randomly if they realize that if they act stupid, they'll likely simply be ignored. Just an idea.
I recently noticed something interesting when browsing for some Web development books:
4 7/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/06723245
There are 4 "instead of" recommendations for an O'Reilly book, even though this book has not been published.
Makes you wonder.
It's nice that you worked for Amazon, just at the time when I, as an investment analyst in real life, criticized Amazon for allowing bad reviews for products ;)
In one of the other replies, you spoke about not enoug manpower to handle all the incoming reviews. That may be true, but tell me: is it so hard to create a script that will automatically flag all low-rating reviews for personal attention while chack 4+ star reviews for profanities only and then publish them immediatelly? Otherwise, how do you explain that out of 11 products I gave a negative review as the first customer, five have never appeared on the site and the other six appeared with a 1-2 weeks delay? How do you explain that the turnaround for any positive review of mine was below 24 hours? Having written over 300 reviews so far, I have some more recent statistics to show.
Don't get me wrong: I don't blame Amazon. As I indicated at the beginning: censoring out negative reviews at Amazon is a very sound business decision, and I would be very surprised if Amazon wasn't doing it. Thus, trusting the rating at Amazon is foolish, and nobody with a genuine interest in a good purchase should be doing it.
I always used to read consumer reviews @ http://futureshop.ca but then I bought a TV Tuner card from them which didn't work at all with Windows 98 (I put it on Linux and it worked without a hitch), so then I sent a review in saying it didn't work with Windows 98, but it did with Linux, and it never got posted. I did this about three months ago. Go there and you'll notice *all* the reviews are positive, they may have 1 or 2 negative points, but in the end it's always good.
Kill them!
That'll teach them a lesson!
While we're at it, lets kill the spammers and the people doing popup advertising too.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
To some exent it is probably true. I know there are ad firms that would do this. But, I would suspect that a lot of these people are also members of the affiliate program. The more they recommend the better their chance of selling stuff.
Never take those 'top 100' 'top 10' whatever reviewers seriously...They're always suspect, and always positive. Other than that, all the reviews I've done have been posted on Amazon within a few weeks, so I know that the majority of reviews are by Joe Schmoe like me.
I personally love amazon reviews, and have made many purchasing decisions based on them. I don't think I would have bought half the stuff at Amazon I have, if it weren't for their 'real' customer reviews...
I'm wondering if this Gail Cooke is a real person at all. Remember David Manning of The Ridgefield Press? That was the Make-Believe Movie Reviewer that Sony created to give their films glowing reviews.The internet breeds such things.
...
I am reminded of a section of George Orwell's 1984 where Whinston Smith (the protagonist) has to rewrite a bit of history and decides to create a dead hero to be the subject of Big Brother's rant instead of the commitee long since dismantled.
"What was needed was a piece of pure fantasy. Suddenly there sprang into his mind, ready made as it were, the image of a certain Comrade Ogilvy, who had recently died in battle, in heroic circumstances. There were occasions when Big Brother devoted his Order for the Day to commemorating some humble, rank-and-file Party member whose life and death he held up as an example worthy to be followed. Today he should commemorate Comrade Ogilvy. It was true that there was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but a few lines of print and a couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into existence.
Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past, and when once the act of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and upon the same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.
Gamesuck.com Review Archive
It's hard to believe that a human being actually approved some of those!!! (make sure to hit the banner ad on this page :-))
she's a MAN, baby! yeah!
Intercarve Networks, LLC
Hmmmmm.. I guess they missed this one.
Not that I'm biased..., January 18, 2001
Reviewer: Kendra K. Hodges from Little Rock, AR United States
I think this is a wonderful book. Anyone interested in World War II information will find it to be very informative. And I'm not saying that just because I'm marrying the author. Really! It's a great book! I promise!
By the way, she gave the book five stars.
This one's great.
1 40 502416/qid=1039753613/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/?v=glance& s=books&n=507846
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
5802 of 5947 people found the following review helpful:
5 out of 5 stars
Ping! I love that duck!, January 25, 2000
Reviewer: John E. Fracisco (see more about me) from El Segundo
PING! The magic duck!
Using deft allegory, the authors have provided an insightful and intuitive explanation of one of Unix's most venerable networking utilities. Even more stunning is that they were clearly working with a very early beta of the program, as their book first appeared in 1933, years (decades!) before the operating system and network infrastructure were finalized.
The book describes networking in terms even a child could understand, choosing to anthropomorphize the underlying packet structure. The ping packet is described as a duck, who, with other packets (more ducks), spends a certain period of time on the host machine (the wise-eyed boat). At the same time each day (I suspect this is scheduled under cron), the little packets (ducks) exit the host (boat) by way of a bridge (a bridge). From the bridge, the packets travel onto the internet (here embodied by the Yangtze River).
The title character -- er, packet, is called Ping. Ping meanders around the river before being received by another host (another boat). He spends a brief time on the other boat, but eventually returns to his original host machine (the wise-eyed boat) somewhat the worse for wear.
If you need a good, high-level overview of the ping utility, this is the book. I can't recommend it for most managers, as the technical aspects may be too overwhelming and the basic concepts too daunting.
Problems With This Book
As good as it is, The Story About Ping is not without its faults. There is no index, and though the ping(8) man pages cover the command line options well enough, some review of them seems to be in order. Likewise, in a book solely about Ping, I would have expected a more detailed overview of the ICMP packet structure.
But even with these problems, The Story About Ping has earned a place on my bookshelf, right between Stevens' Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment, and my dog-eared copy of Dante's seminal work on MS Windows, Inferno. Who can read that passage on the Windows API ("Obscure, profound it was, and nebulous, So that by fixing on its depths my sight -- Nothing whatever I discerned therein."), without shaking their head with deep understanding. But I digress.
Try getting a negative review of 'The Matrix' accepted on the Internet Movie Database! Somebody at IMDB is a zit-faced, trenchcoat-wearing, vampire movie-loving virgin, that's for sure...! ;p
Egghead auctions had something like this about 3+ years ago. The auction had a closing time. If someone bid on an item as the auction was closing, the time would extend for a few minutes. The auction end times were relative, and did not apply for "popular" items that saw a lot of bids. At least this is how I remember it.
Try this. Type "web hosting" into google. See this
http://www.tophostreviews.com
Totally bogus.
So last spring a buddy of mine and I were going to a climb a mountain near Leadville, CO. He's a real smart guy but kind of a mountain man, not too up on Internet lingo. We got to talking about climbingboulder.com, a great resource for CO climbers that has a commenting system for routes. We talked about the people that posted comments on the site and he said:
"There's this one guy on there that I fucking strive to be like. This Anonymous Coward guy, dumb name, but he's climbed *all over*. I don't know he does it."
I couldn't keep a straight face for very long. It had never occurred to him to take the name literally ;-)
How much did they pay you to fsck that polar bear??
*huh* Sig? WTF?
This problem ranks right up there along with eBay auctions and the fact that they "close" at a given point in time. In the real world, an auction continues as long as people are making bids. eBay should extend an auction by 5 minutes or an hour or a day each time someone bids on an item. That'd get rid of "last minute bid services". (I'd suggest a 5 minute extension - because then there's a natural time for everyone interested in an item to "gather" together and do the final bidding.)
If I'm not mistaken they had something like that at one point. If not eBay, then I definately remember seeing it on some auction site. I seem to remember them describing it as "Going, Going, Gone". A look at eBay today shows that they just use that phrase for auctions that are going to end soon, not because they've been extended.
NO CARRIER
In the end I think this is Amazons loss since the whole idea of their review system depended on the trust of genuine reviewers. I hope the press picks up on this story so amazon visitors and reviewers realise the reviews are a waste of time and space.
This problem ranks right up there along with eBay auctions and the fact that they "close" at a given point in time. In the real world, an auction continues as long as people are making bids. eBay should extend an auction by 5 minutes or an hour or a day each time someone bids on an item. That'd get rid of "last minute bid services". (I'd suggest a 5 minute extension - because then there's a natural time for everyone interested in an item to "gather" together and do the final bidding.)
Ebay doesn't host real-time auctions, they host auctions where one bids by proxy. In these sort of auctions it's a very common thing to end the auction a a given time. To properly bid on an auction of this sort, one simply bids the maximum amount one is willing to pay for an item and the software does the rest. Unfortunately, since it isn't a sealed bid system, many fools seem to think that it is a real-time auction and bid it as such. This behavior only encouraging bidding wars which inevitably raise the price of an item. The only wise thing to do, given this sort of behavior is to bid at the last possible moment. If a person correctly uses the proxy bidding process and bids more than an individual using a sniping service then that person will win the auction. Extending auctions by five minutes would solve no real problem, but it would very likely cause winning bids to increase relative to the actual value of the item sold. Based on personal experience, this is already the case the majority of the time and the situation doesn't need to be exacerbated, as it can only drive away buyers.
a parent-post-personally-abusive and corporate defensive posting gets moderated +5 interesting??!
"If you do post content or submit material, and unless we indicate otherwise, you grant Amazon.com and its affiliates a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such content throughout the world in any media. You grant Amazon.com and its affiliates and sublicensees the right to use the name that you submit in connection with such content, if they choose. You represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content that you post; that the content is accurate; that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity; and that you will indemnify Amazon.com or its affiliates for all claims resulting from content you supply. Amazon.com has the right but not the obligation to monitor and edit or remove any activity or content. Amazon.com takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any content posted by you or any third party."
You can't very well sue for copyright infringement. Your case could possibly used in a class action suit if you have some evidence that they are attempting to decieve customers, but on the face of it that seems unlikely.
What's the book like, really?
Ask yourself this question, what does the website have to gain if the review is favourable?
In the case of Amazon, you purchase something from them. Therefore it wouldn't be too cynical to suggest that they'd rather people submit good reviews than bad ones.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Some telemarketing company use the same technique. "When you call back, ask for Stephanie." and you'll be redirected to a particular branch office with many working there, all under the handle Stephanie. It's a way for the branch managers to track returning customers after a particular operation for instance.
I buy mainly programming books, and I find the comments extremely useful on the whole. I'm amazed how candid some of the comments are: on more than one occasion I have been thinking of buying a book, and the reviews have been so bad I have changed my mind.
Reviews are like interviews: if they are good, they don't tell you much, but if they are bad, they are usually worth listening to. On the occasions I have bought a book from Amazon in spite of the bad reviews, I have usually ended up agreeing with the negative review.
And I can't imagine that Amazon care much: if I go to their site, it's because I want to buy a book, so helping me to buy the right book makes sense for them and me. It's a win-win situation.
My one frustration is that there are not more reviews for some of the more specialised books. But then maybe I should submit some myself...
Virtually serving coffee
when u do that, u should patent doing fake reviews.
also, patent doing fake reviews under many names, since after amazon's staff read this, they'll prolly wise up and generate random profiles for reviews...
i would think that amazon would also stop selling certain things that weren't getting good ratings after a period of time. it would make business sense to do so.
instead of having 10 products and 2 of them are found to be crap, eliminate them altogether and have 8 great products.
it is my guess that amazon does this and that is partially why you don't see too many things that have been available for a long time with very low recommendations and rankings (or stars)...
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
What we see here is infinite recursion. This is neither a buffer overflow nor a segmentation fault. It's clearly a STACK OVERFLOW.
I've always found it amusing that so many people buy beginners' books on technical subjects, and then post massively pro reviews on places like Amazon about them. By definition, these people are beginners in the subject, and therefore unqualified to review the books for technical accuracy!
By all means comment on whether you liked the writing style and presentation, but please... This is why people like Herb Schildt (familiar to almost anyone in the C(++) world) get rave reviews, yet continue to have enough serious technical errors in their work that informed critics write whole web pages pointing them out, in the hope that newbies see them first and don't get screwed because of their inherent naivety.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Oh how cute a review system etc.
But I ignore them.
Unless I want a good laugh..
A clearly experts only refence reviewed as a must have for all newbies.
A Unix programmers guide reviewed as great for NT admin.
You usually have to have the book to see whats wrong.
I suspect thies people review as a game. They don't know dit about the products they just want to be on the top 10 reviewers list...
Like having your name up on a video game console before they unplug it for the day.
And once the stink hits I'm sure Amazon will be checking out the review system.
Look for review sites that include a voting system and reward quality not quantity.
I've used pure review sites to check out stuff however I seldom use those reviews.
I found a review for my favoret PDA at the time to be unusually down.
But the total review was accurate and detailed every flaw. This would have made me think twice before buying that pda and I did eventually have to upgrade purely out of need of missing features.
I don't actually exist.
I bet it'd be really easy to get smart about filtering out bullshit reviews, if anyone ever thought it was worth bothering with.
mmmmm.. I guess they missed this one [amazon.com].
Hey! The guy didn't say *how* much time/money amazon spent!
Believe in all the conspiracies you want, I'm sure amazon is working on global domination, but they're going to have to compete with Microsoft, Google, and Walmart along the way, so I'm not worried.
I'll have something intelligent to add one of these days...
I took a really interesting college class entitled "Consumer Psychology" that dealt with exactly that. As a final project, we had to come up with our own study related to the cirriculum. One of the other students in the class focused on consumer-reports type reviews and their impact on purchasing behavior. He had two different sets of reviews of stereo recievers -- one gave four glowing reviews to four recievers, the other gave three mediocre/average reviews, and one glowing review. He had different sets of people read the reviews. Before and after reading the reviews, he gave them a brief set of questions about their likelihood of buying a new stereo receiver. Among those who on the first survey answered that they weren't planning on buying a stereo reciever, the three mediocre/one glowing review was more than three times as likely to stimulate a desire to purchase any stereo reciever than the four glowing reviews. Additionally, among those who were already in the market for a stereo reciever, the four glowing reviews left the consumer more confused and less likely to buy.
The rationale is that a glowing review among poor reviews creates the appearance of a "diamond in the rough," as he termed it. People think that they've stumbled on to a great product (that has advantages over others) and they want to buy it. By giving people a clear choice, instead of blanket positive reviews, those people are more likely to overcome indecision and actually buy the product. The truth of the matter is, good
Amazon knows that people use their reviews system to comparison shop. Not only that, but Amazon's cross-link and categories features make it really, really easy to comparison shop. If we could find an example of some top reviewers giving consistently negative reviews, then perhaps we could support the sort of conspiracy-theory arguments made in this forum. If, on the other hand, we could find that compulsive-reviewers rated high marks for particular items when there were otherwise lackluster reviews within the category. A cursory examination of the top 100 reviewers, and some of their reviews, has indicated that this probably isn't the case; maybe somebody else has time to do more in-depth research.
In the meantime, however, speculation on the ulterior motives of apparently innocent reviewers appears to me to be both paranoid and degrading to the reviewers themselves. Innocent until proven guilty...
Questions welcome. Comments invited.
-Shylock
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
This would just about guarantee that I never used Ebay again, because you can always count on someone who doesn't know realistic prices coming along and bidding used stuff up over the new retail price, and the longer an auction runs, the more of this happens. No doubt would make the sellers happy, but would piss off the knowledgable buyers (except for those that just recently got sniped and are out for revenge).
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Totally different question with creative works i.e., fiction books, music, movies, etc. In those categories, personal taste is very relevant and you basically have to read the reviews to determine if the reviewer knows what he/she is talking about.
I have a pet peeve about music for instance. What I hate is when people who hate a particular genre of music, go on and post a negative review of an album. Examples are readily available on metal, rap, or trance music. Opinionated people will post and say, in essence, "trance/rap/metal sucks, is boring, repetetive, etc." These can be ignored.
Much better reviews are ones where the poster says something like, "I have all their albums, this is not as cohesive as their 1999 release, but is commendable for . . ." These people may be lying, of course, but they are better sources for info.
Conclusion, read the reviews and determine the credibility of the reviewers on your own. If there are too many reviews, look at the negative reviews, then the positive reviews, then the 'helpful' reviews.
As an Amazon reviewer, I would like to respond to the generalized, non-specific charges against Top Ten Amazon reviewer G. Cooke. 1)A good reviewer, as G. Cooke certainly is, can write more than one review per day. 2) The best Amazon reviewers are the ones who are diversified. They write well about many subjects. 3)Amazon reviewers are NOT paid. Most of them review because they like to do so or wish to be helpful to other customers. The implied accusations toward G. Cooke sound to me like someone who is somehow envious of well-earned success. There are over one-half million reviewers for Amazon. To reach the Top Ten shows talent, determination and ability.
Mittens on String--Child by Marshall Field's
STRING ALONG WITH ME........ December 1, 2002 These mittens on a string proved so popular with the very young set that I've had to go back for more.
One of my more energetic 9-year-old friends who is the best snow ball packer and thrower on the block loves that her hands stay warm even when she's indulging in her favorite winter pastime.
For anyone who has never been to the Lone Star State, let me assure you that snowfall is an extreme rarity. In fact, that is the exact term that the Dallas CVB uses to describe the Winter weather. The average annual snow fall in Houston is 0.0 inches. Ignoring the fact that this lady mentions having 9-year-old "friends", I'm curious to find out how this child has developed a "favorite winter pastime" of snow ball hurlage when THERE'S NO F'N SNOW TO PACK AND THROW.
Perhaps I just overlooked Gail Cooke's review of the snow machine she purchased 4 years ago.
Also interesting are a few of the books Gail has reviewed at Amazon:
The Art of Deception by Ridley Pearson
Faking It by Jennifer Crusie
Grave Secrets by Kathy Reichs
This Pen for Hire by Laura Levine
Conflict of Interest by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg
Fleeced by Carol Higgins Clark
Basket Case by Carl Hiaasen
The topic of the parent's parent post was about taking it up the ass. So the parent post was ON TOPIC!