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Are Amazon Vine Reviews of Technical Books a Joke?

Posted by timothy on from the you-should-try-the-craiglist-personals dept.

First time accepted submitter jasax writes "As an Amazon frequent buyer, I rely quite a lot on reviews of the books I want. However, some caution is in order: the (bad) quality of Amazon's reviews and reviewers under the Amazon Vine program has already been news in Slashdot. Today I was shocked by a practical result of that program. This second edition (published in 2012) of a very specialized system identification book has 12 reviews: the oldest (dated 2007) certainly targets the first edition. The remaining 11 reviews are all from 'Vine Reviewers' (VRs). All seem to be ignorant of what 'System Identification in the Frequency Domain' really is. None of the reviews is tagged with a 'Verified Amazon Purchase'; most (if not all) are 'small talk reviews' peppered with technical phrases cloning the publisher's book description, and some of the reviews are ridiculous, to say the least. If this sample of reviewing by VRs really is the norm, then the bottom line is that the Vine program is totally irrelevant and unreliable — at least for technical books."

4 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Amazon needs their head read. by CuteSteveJobs · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Their books reviews on Amazon proper could be a great resource for anyone deciding whether to get a book, but they're full of crap reviews like "FAST SHIPPING! RECOMMEND THIS SELLER! A+++++" or "COVER DAMAGED AND ARRIVE 2 LATE 4 CLASSES. ME MAD!" They have a system where you can vote down these reviews, but why not just tell lamers "This isn't eBay" Problems been pointed out to them by many but they have twiddled their thumbs while their database has filled up with crap.

    So they should fix what they already have before launching new programs like Vine. Giving favored reviewers free crap is hardly going to inspire independent reviews anyway.

  2. Re:They're just useless by red+crab · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd say ditto for food reviews, movie reviews etc generally published on magazines and newspapers. They are written by youngsters with just a good command over language who don't actually understand the subject. Or worse the reviewers get sometimes paid to write favorable reviews. In Amazon Vine's case, reviews are sponsored by the seller of the product, you can hardly expect them to be honest in any way.

  3. Re:Binding, hardcover, etc. by MatheoDJ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Perhaps there are Vine reviewers farming out their writing and receiving free products in exchange. I've been experimenting with Amazon's Mechanical Turk, and a fair number of the assignments seem to be fake reviews of some sort, with improved SEO as the endgame. I've been offered HIT's (Amazon's shorthand for the small tasks often worth as little as $0.01) that require a person to write small articles or reviews, 150-500 words, using incredibly specific technical jargon or product lingo. Sometimes it's Ph.D. level stuff. I can't imagine anyone having the technical prowess and educational background necessary to write intelligently about such subjects being interested in making $0.75 to do so, but maybe that's enough money to inspire someone in Bangladesh to write meaningless positive reviews peppered with jargon, and small enough change to inspire someone in America to outsource a large number of reviews in order to increase their Vine ratings.

  4. Guilty as charged by wezelboy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've totally written crappy vine reviews. Quite a few in fact. I'm sorry.

    The bottom line is when I get my Vine newsletter, most of the time all of the stuff that I might consider buying/reading is already gone. I don't know if Vine has 'favorites' program where certain people get access to items before others, but most of the time Vine is a bust for me. I'm left with the items/books that are leftover- which often means technical books. I'll get these things if I have an interest in the topic, but I just don't have the time to delve into the finer points of signal processing. It will sit on my shelf and gather dust until I find something I want on Vine that is actually available, then I have to write a review to be able to get that thing.

    I've pretty much given up on Vine. It's a waste of time, and not worth the guilt of writing a crappy review. Even if you write a heartfelt review, people will mark it as unhelpful anyway. Call me jaded.