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Amazon Goes Wiki
StWaldo writes "Amazon.com has added a 'ProductWiki' to some of their item pages. Wikified items seem to be limited to certain categories, DVDs being one un-wikied realm. Adding Wikiness to the site is just the latest in new participatory activities Amazon has adopted, along with tags and customer discussions." From the article: "So Amazon's gradually allowing you, along with your Wish List, your purchases, your clickstream, and, if you sell anything on Amazon, how good your reputation is--to build up a pretty detailed database of what you like (or don't) and what's important to you. I don't know what Amazon will do with this--fortunately, it seems to have a pretty light touch with how it uses what it knows about you--or what it will allow us to do with all this data. But as it grows, it could become a pretty powerful profile."
The Amazon spokesman added that the wiki policy required contributions to be strictly NPOV, except for positive comments.
I wonder if they will patent Wikis as well.
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its own quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its own quotation.
I like how they make it out that consumers seem to think that someone cares about what they do and don't appreciate. We all have more crap than we can ever use, but is there really adults out there making "wish lists"? I can't imagine it, but then again...
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
Here's hoping Amazon will give us the means to control access to that profile and, ideally, use it throughout the Web to get what we really want, and avoid what we don't.
:-)
Let's hope
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
"Clickstream"? Who comes up with this stuff? Ick.
the article is about amazon building up information about you and your preferences. this leads to "silos" that do not interoperate. can this be shared with ebay, or other sites so that you don't have to teach all media commerce sites what types of things you like? no. perhaps a community based repository for preferences makes more sense. watch dick hardt's message from oscon - it just makes sense.
http://www.identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/
Somewhere, somehow, there is a hurricane of advertising just waiting to annoy the Hell out of you. They will be marketing things like Star Wars collectables and case mods among other geeky things that you bought or searched for on Amazon. You will not be able to run, you will not be able to hide, Jamster will want to give you the latest Chewbacca ringtone.
To be honest, I think that is quite a valid question. I even suspect that they have this covered by one of their patents or they have a patent pending for this. It just seems to be the way Amazon works.
My quality social news site.com.
So what does the wiki have to do with my profile? It seems like it's more specific to the product than to me. And since it's just free prose, it'll be rather difficult to do any funny shazingle to my profile by analyzing my wiki entries.
Fleur de Sel
yo. someone get me the link to jack thompson's book and the accompanying wiki, so everyone on slashdot can vandalize it ;)
(disclaimer: i do not condone the use of vandalism when dealing with idiots. still, those pictures were damn funny.)
The data is there just in case we forgot what it was that we wanted, it's not spyware. Why, what if you fell and hit your head on your new Xbox 360, and had sudden amnesia as to what games you were going to buy? Log on to good old Amazon, they know what you were planning to get!
I have one word for you friend: compensation. Being out that much money is not a laughing matter, especially if it's disrupted your plans (for shopping, celebrating the holiday, etc) and caused you to miss bill payments.
If I were you, I'd be complaining to them very loud and very clear. Sure, it was a fuck up rather than anything malicious - but it was *their* fuck up, it's caused *you* pain, so they should splash a little cash to say sorry and help put things right. At the very least, they should reimburse any expenses you incur (eg interest charges, fees for late payment of bills, etc)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
This is not the first time Amazon has experimented with the wiki system. In 2003 they were working on a system called "Review Start". Users were allowed to submit their own review and make additions and edits to the product descriptions. The system was scrapped because Jeff Bezos thought it would hurt search indexing and ultimately Amazon sales. It will be interesting to see how the wiki model works for them.
I feel -exactly- like that, but a long email complaint resulted in a 1 line reply that said 'one of our representatives has already handled this issue'.
In the box I'm returning the camera in, I have a 2 page letter (10pt font without much whitespace) and every email theyve sent me and the tracking information and all that..
I'm definately not happy, despite the many successful orders they've had with me in the past. To a degree, I do feel responsible since I cancelled the first order, but I'm sure people do that all the time and I did it after about 2 minutes, literally.
I'd love to talk to a manager or something, but most of the time you get outsourced reps. I've goten an american twice in about 10 calls.
I kept hoping they'd say just to keep the extra memory card or something.
Everything's so automated these days, its like in star wars where the planet is deleted from the database and nobody believes it was ever there. They kept saying to click the return this order button, but the order hadn't shipped according to the computer, so that option wasnt available.. It took a few calls to get that point across.. Outsourcing and automation were the two big annoyances of this process. Besides that, when my first card declined on the order due to the first order having been charged to it (I had overnight shipping on the order) the automated system said it would try again tomorrow. If someone wants overnight shipping, you darn well better call them when a card declines or something else is in the way.
Anyway, I posted this mostly to vent, but also as a warning for others to be careful with large orders- eg make sure you order it right the first time.
Thank you for your concern/support- its better than amazon's done.
Except when I called to cancel, they said it would be just fine, and the old order disappeared off the radar. This was also about two minutes after I placed it. I think someone ordering $1,500 worth of stuff on a site that's used to orders around a couple hundred dollars on average would be a little flexible.
Customer's always right, aren't they?
I'm also not 100% sure the duplicate camera was from the cancelled order- it sort of looks like the order forked when my first card declined. The invoices I received had the same order number (not the one from the cancelled order as one would expect) but had the different credit cards and different order totals.
If their computer system completely loses an order (they never knew one shipped, let alone two), its definately their fault- despite whatever the customer did. There's obviously a bug in their setup.
How the fuck can this be called spyware? I would have thought that spyware is, by definition, software that spys on your behaviour. This is a wiki, a web page. It doesn't run on your machine, and users have to wilfully input the information. There's nothing secretive about this at all. If Amazon want to search your contributions for keywords or something, then fine. But then it's called data mining. Not spyware.
OTOH, Google has more and doesn't get us calling it spyware. It's all collected legitimately, and not used for anything actively harmful to us.
I am trolling
Why not dispute the charges with your CC company? That'll get Amazon's attention in a hurry.
Recommendations and alerts based on past purchases (or browses) seems pretty neat to me. I haven't looked really hard to see if it's there already, but what would make this even better is if it could be actively tuned. This would be particularly useful if it allowed you to remove certain categories. As an example, I recently bought some lesbian literature as a gift ... and now Amazon thinks I love lesbian literature. Whilst faintly amusing, I am not actually a lesbian (though I feel sure I would be if I were a girl, heh), and the main problem with this is that it dilutes the usefulness of the system.
Right, Evil Evil Amazon for collecting information that will help me buy other products in the future.
I go to the Amazon website willingly, i know that they are collecting this information, i even help them by marking how much i liked the items i've ordered.
There is no conspiracy here.
There is a context for this information gathering.
Are you going to withold your medical history from the doctor that's treating you?
Wow... you got screwed over by an anonymous international corporation? Wow! I'm so surprised! But really, you won't get any sympathy from me. You want to not support your local economy so you can pinch a few pennies? Fine by me. You get what you deserve.
I really don't understand people who think that they can go to Amazon or Ebay in order to screw local retailers and save themselves a few bucks, yet get the same quality customer service. Customer service isn't free. Shop at a real store next time (even better... an independent retailer) and I can almost guarantee that you'd have much, much better service.
Report a fraudulent transaction on the other card - you'll get your money back, since Amazon claim to have no record of the transaction... there's no papertrail, which is amazon's problem, not yours.
The difference is that Amazon gives you options. You can turn off most, if not all of the features of Amazon. Amazon is also upfront about the data it collects and even provides handy little links to help items explaining what the data collected is used for. Amazon, to my knowledge, has never installed software on my machine.
Gator and Co use subterfuge and dishonest tactics to get programs installed on your computer. These programs are non-optional, disrupt other work that may be done on the computer, and are very difficult to completely remove.
The comparison is non-sensical.
Humorless sig goes here.
You're an idiot for not disputing the charge with your credit card company. You would have had the money back in a day. Unless you charged it to a debit card. Then you are just dumb.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
I've been getting errors on Amazon pages as a result of the wiki (Javascript -- Null Value) on Safari with the last two MacOS systems. Amazon hasn't even responded to any of my messages about it, but I've got to say, even if an error is just harmless and can be bypassed by hitting "return," I'm not inclined to browse a site very often if I keep getting error pop-ups any more than if I'm getting ad pop-ups.
Anyone know if other OS/browser combos are causing problems?
What's the significance of the person being a "Pakistani"? What point are you trying to make, that a Pakistani screwed you? It's kind of revealing
The point I think you are making is the electronic commerce is not always as flawless it we would like it to be, Confusion exists, and mistakes are made.
Knowing how to deal with errors effectively is now becoming a economic skill (i.e. using the credit card company's services for resolution) much as not spending beyond your budget has been in the past, A kind of an "economic Darwinism" if you like.
I'm not sure what your comment brings to the discussion.
I was wondering about that. Every Mac OS X Tiger system I have used to access Amazon via Safari has been giving me the same error. At first, I thought it was a PithHelmet rule.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
If you've bought a CD through Amazon.com which is copy controlled, this is a good opportunity to tag it as such by leaving a note in the wiki. For example, I did this here - nothing inflammatory, just a friendly note for others who are thinking about buying the CD. This is information that I personally would like to know before deciding to purchase a CD, and I expect some others here feel the same.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
Maybe I'm just being stupid, but can anyone give me a link to the damn site? I can't find one anywhere, not even on Amazon's main site, or in the startlingly pathetic "help" page /. links to.
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
if there is a way to remove items that were gifts from contributing to your profile, then it is not super obvious or one click easy. that may be most of the reason the recommendations i get are worthless to me personally. i don't care enough about having Old Man Amazon suggest more things for me to buy, so i never dug too far to figure out how to remove items or flag them as having been gifts.
does it not add them to your profile if you ship them to another address? i only used that a few times, but i never pondered if those had an influence on my Amazonian Profile (patent pending).
My only point was not necessarily that they are pakistani, but that they were having difficulty communicating with me and when I was already frustrated, having to explain everything several times wasn't helpful.
If they are so screwed up they can't keep track of their own paperwork, call your credit card company and get a chargeback on the card for the order you didn't want and sell the extra camera on Ebay. If they want that camera back, I'm sure that'll put a fire under their asses to get their stuff straight. Or, you end up with an extra camera to put up on Ebay. After all, if they say it never shipped, how can you send it back to them?
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
re: being offtopic.
I mentioned this because it was about amazon and the bugs in their system. The article is about how amazon is keeping track of customers information better, yet they lose track of a $1,500 order. Seems relevant, even if not directly on target- it's more on target than many posts marked informative in other threads.
Because the Canon Powershot 405x3ty will fill your needs, while the Canon Powershot 405x3tz won't?
What happens when I go to a local store, and none of the flatbed scanners on display are on SANE's supported list?
"Wikified items seem to be limited to certain categories, DVDs being one un-wikied realm."
Not really. It's scheduled for all categories, but the launch of this feature may temporarily conflict with the launch of others, thus it is dormant in some categories until various experiments settle.
I get very, very aggrivated at Amazon most of the time. I've found that unless you know EXACTLY what you are looking for when typing in your search text, the search is useless.
There used to be a day when you could literally just browse online on Amazon, and find things pretty easily. Now, with all the combined seaches and stuff, a simple search for a CD brings up 1000's of different matches, most of which have NOTHING to do with your CD or don't even contain the text of your search.
I usually Google for what I want, find the EXACT name of the item, then put it into Amazon's search.
Oh yeah sorry, I forgot, this is slashdot, where any rediculous anti-patent rants is widely accepted...
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
BookBurro is spyware.
Laws are for people with no friends.
You aren't paying attention: we are actually quite selective in our anti-patent rants. Mostly, it's software patents, patents on life forms and DNA sequences, and business method patents we rant against, that is, the kinds of patents that aren't granted in most of the world, the kinds of patents that didn't use to be granted in the US, and the kind of patents that hamper progress and innovation.
I'm sorry for you that you don't understand what a threat these kinds of patents represent to a democracy, to property rights, and to a free market economy. Just be happy that other people worry about that sort of thing.
My point is that it's just rediculous to say that Amazon will patent Wiki's after SOOOO many publicity it has received. Sure, Amazon posesses evil patents like the one-click ordering, but suggesting Amazon will patent Wiki's is just a post to get yourself modded up, and I hate that...
And well, I figured more people would see that it's just a standard reaction to ANY Slashdot post about patents, and merely posted to either get a reaction from other people or just to get himself modded up... anyway, I figured people would respond in the same way as I felt, but guess I was wrong... :-)
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
... "the problem is choice"?
Yeah, you're right. The original poster is completely ridiculous. I mean - Amazon patent wikis? That's as silly a notion as suggestiont that they would patent reviewing items, suggesting items to a customer based on their purchases, one-click ordering and so on. Why . . . just unpossible!
My point is that it's just rediculous to say that Amazon will patent Wiki's after SOOOO many publicity
It's not so ridiculous at all--it's in fact standard patent strategy and quite feasible. The strategy is known as "building a patent wall around" the core idea. That is, a company patents so many implementation details that are necessary for a real-world implementation but not contained in the original publication/patent that it becomes essentially impossible for anyone to implement it without violating a lot of them, and succeeding in striking down the patent in every single case is so expensive that people generally can't afford it.
In any case, if you are going to participate in conversations, you should be familiar with the rudiments of written expression, which includes concepts such as "sarcasm" and "hyperbole". Although, sadly, in the case of Amazon, sarcasm and hyperbole are uncomfortably close to the truth. Amazon won't bother patenting Wikis not because they couldn't get away with it (they already have done similar things many times before), but simply because there is no money in it.
On the plus side, Amazon's blatant abuse of the patent system will ultimately give us the ammunition to get big changes pushed through. Until then, any geek that wants to have a job in the future should not give them their business.
I, for one, welcome our new just fucking sad overlords.
After all, I am strangely colored.
When I placed the new order, the credit card didn't have enough room left since they'd already charged it.
No, you silly bint -- they did not charge you credit card, they asked for and received a pre-authorization -- something that they must do accepting an order. Amazon.com is absolutely 0% (or less) at fault for this and if you, as a consumer, did not understand how credit cards work prior to this purchase, shame on you
Isn't hyperbole like the national championship for kids with ADD? (Shamelessly stolen from bash.org)
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
A company who patents obvious web-application technology is now freely using wiki technology (and getting publicity for it on what is now basically a webvertisement site). I can only continue not buying anything from them, trying to keep my rage in check.
Hah, no only kidding.
:|