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Amazon Overhauling Customer Reviews

Posted by Soulskill on from the shortening-your-soapbox dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Amazon says it's making some big changes to its product review system, one of the most heavily used on the internet and a vital part of Amazon's business. A machine-learning platform will endeavor to select helpful reviews with an emphasis on more recent ones. The average score will change as well: new reviews will be weighted higher than old reviews. Reviews from verified purchasers will have more influence as well, and also reviews voted up by other customers. "For example, sometimes a company will make small tweaks to a product or address some customer complaints, though this product isn't officially updated or renamed. With the new system, [Amazon] said, these small modifications should become more noticeable when shoppers are buying products." Because the review system is so important to customers, Amazon will be rolling out changes slowly, and watching for anything that breaks or gets skewed in unexpected ways.

11 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds like reasonable changes to me by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I could be missing something, but frankly everything I read in the summery seems like reasonable changes to me.

    Someone who actually is known to have purchased the item, yea, their review should be worth more than random Internet person #4827341

    A review from last month is probably worth more than one from two years ago. The product may have changed.

    1. Re:Sounds like reasonable changes to me by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A review by someone who chose a different product is likely to be more valuable in choosing a product, assuming that person can articulate why he/she chose the other product, because that means the person knows not only this product, but also other products on the market. By contrast, someone who chose the product he/she is reviewing has a very high probability of being familiar with only that product and not any others on the market. Given a choice, I'd take reviews from non-owners over reviews by owners any day.

      That's some pretty convoluted logic there, at least by my reckoning. If the user hasn't purchased the item in question, how exactly are you assuming he/she knows the product sufficiently that they're in a suitable position to review it, judging it's strengths and weaknesses? Can you assume they're not simply biased against a completing product they happen to own, for example? You're telling me that, for example, a Playstation 4 owner is in a better position to review an Xbox one, and we should trust their judgment as being more objective and fair than someone who actually purchased an Xbox one?

      Also, if the product sucks, assuming the product isn't so bad that folks return it, people who own the product are more likely to feel the need to give it better reviews to justify the money they spent.

      Wow... again. I'd bet that people who have purchased a product and are unhappy with it are actually *more* likely to review it harshly in an effort to punish the company for their poor product, and at least warn others against a crappy purchase. There are some old marketing saws that say similar things, I believe. At the very least, that holds true for me. I've purchased a couple of stinkers, and I made damn sure to leave a one or two star review, and explain in detail *why* it was such a terrible product.

      Heh, your expectations of human nature runs about 180 degrees opposite of mine, for whatever reason.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    2. Re:Sounds like reasonable changes to me by vikingpower · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Disagree in the case of books. An old review is absolutely not worth less than a recent review, especially if e.g. a classical engineering or math text is 2 decades old.

      --
      Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
  2. Caveat Emptor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I could be missing something, but frankly everything I read in the summery seems like reasonable changes to me

    Amazon's review section is notoriously filled with fake reviews - in fact, Shanghai-Bill himself has admitted that his 15-year old daughter is getting jobs from fivers writing fake reviews on Amazon and is making $20/hr

    And I can bet you my bottom dollar that Shanghai Bill's 15-yr old daughter is definitely *NOT* the only one making $$ writing fake Amazon reviews

    Now that Amazon wants to tilt the whole system into something even worse --- and their decision on putting more weight on 'newer reviews' only mean that there will be even more brand new fake reviews appearing, along with vote stuffings by ghost visitors for those fake reviews

    1. Re:Caveat Emptor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You must have missed the bit that says: "Reviews from verified purchasers will have more influence as well".

      Similarly, if they're applying machine learning to the whole system, they could fairly quickly pick out people who seem to do nothing but review items on Amazon, or people who create accounts and do nothing but review items, etc.

      Gaming the system will still happen, but it'll be harder.

  3. The worst reviews on Amazon by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "I have to give this book one star because I ordered it and it never arrived on time even though Amazon said it left the facility six days before it was supposed to get here!"

    "This book is typical LIBTARD crap and if you buy it you're a stupid egghead."

    "I haven't read a book in five years so when this book came out I decided to buy it. This isn't the book I thought I was ordering, this is crap written by a different guy with a similar name! Buyer beware!"

    Is it really that hard to get a computer to pick these out?

  4. Transcript of a recent meeting at Dice HQ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Boss: What the hell? Slashdot's revenue dropped again? What happened?

    Middle management #1: That is strange, our beta design was supposed to increase traffic.

    Middle management #2: Yeah strange right? We spent weeks making sure the beta was difficult to use as hell, then we shove it down the user's throat, how could our traffic tank after that? HOW?

    Middle management #3: It can't be our fault, my 3 years old son was playing with beta before the launch and he absolutely loved it, he just learnt how to use a mouse and he was clicking around rapidly, he was so excited by the design he even clicked on the ads, if everyone did that our views and revenue should have tripled by now.

    Boss: Well we got to do something, any ideas?

    Middle management #1: Hmmm... well I heard there is something call 'social media', I haven't looked at it yet but it looks like people love sharing things on it, maybe we can use that?

    Middle management #2: Yeah I heard about that too, my daughter said she uses it to share elmo photos.

    Middle management #3: Oh I got an idea! Let's put a bunch of social media share link on the site!

    Middle management #1: Sounds good to me, but if everyone is already doing it we need to do something a little different.

    Middle management #2: How about... Oh I know, let's remove the most useful and popular 'read more' link, and replace it with a bunch of share links. I swear the users are so fucking stupid they won't be able to tell the difference.

    Middle management #3: Yeah! Those geeks, they don't know much about computers, they are just going to click on the same place over and over again, and come back for more!

    Boss: Geek site for retards? That is fucking brilliant! Let's do it!

    1. Re:Transcript of a recent meeting at Dice HQ by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Seriously, was putting the share button where the "read more..." link used to be designed to make people accidentally click on it?

      I am reasonably certain you are exactly correct.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
  5. Good for the consumer? by hsa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah, right. Amazon is adjusting the average score from the average score to some propietary algorithm. Yeah, there are talks about tweaks and the marketing makes it sound totally reasonable.

    Amazon sells products. Amazon likes to sell products. Products with higher rating sell better. Products with poor rating sell worse. Amazon would like to sell more products.

    I can bet $1000 right now that the "average rating" is going to go up.

  6. Top reviewers are invariably fake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Pick almost any item, movie, game, consumer electronic device and look for the highest rated "reviews". They are invariable nothing more than paraphrased product release texts. The "reviewer" does not have the item, has not used the item and probably has never seen it in the flesh.

    There is a large number of people that must create reviews for items all day every day. I find it remarkable Amazon allow these people to post these disguised adverts or non-reviews. Surely they know when someone is taking the piss by posting 50 reviews per day.

  7. good step, but... by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wish they would find a way to separate reviews of different formats. It gets annoying trying to determine which edition of a classic movie is being reviewed on Amazon. They lump VHS, DVD, & Bluray along with all editions together. It can be interesting reading someone's opinion on classic movies, but I'm more interested in format/edition information about Citizen Kane than what someone thinks about it. Some movies have had multiple Bluray releases, and some are considerably better than others. The newest is not always the best.

    This can also be the case with older music. There was a studio back in the late 1960's/early 1970's that did not have the recording speed of their equipment calibrated properly. It actually recorded at a slower rate than it should have. Some remastered versions took this into account, but several newer ones did not. This is a case where edition specific reviews are very important to me.