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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.

4 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. 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?

  3. 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.