Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Overhauling Customer Reviews
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.
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.
The other problem is that they'll group different models on the same page. So the reviews you see are for all the models together. In many cases Version B is way better than Version A. But, you still see the bad reviews without realizing it's unrelated to what you're going to buy. They also need to address the paid bad reviewers. I looked up stuff just last week and the same one star review, word for word, was listed on three different items. And these were three totally unrelated items. One in electronics, one in cookware, and the third in camping equipment.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
I'd be interested to know if the data-crunchers at Amazon have looked at the Amazon Vine reviews, as a group, to see if they are slanted positive.
Amazon Vine is the program where a certain select demographic of Amazon customers receive free stuff (including items such as 60" TVs, laptops, etc.), with the understanding that they will objectively review the product and post the review on Amazon. My experience is that almost every Amazon Vine review is 4-5 stars. I'd also be curious to see if Amazon looks at the spread of reviews from Vine reviewers -- by that I mean, "Do reviewers in the Vine program rate free Vine products higher than other products they've bought?"
The implication being that Vine reviews (many of them) probably feel that a good review of a product that Amazon wants to sell is "quid pro quo". I strongly suspect that Amazon wants exactly the opposite of quid pro quo; they want early Vine reviews to weed out marginal or bad products.
Well, yes and no... http://www.amazon.com/gp/custo... ... This person's one star review was posted three years ago and has garnered 76 responses. The most current was 20 days ago. It's amazing seeing the "You're right" - "No, you're wrong" conversation. Even when the company, right from the beginning, stated, "This is how your testing methods are faulty...", people are still saying this one star review has convinced them not to buy the product. [BTW: 88% of 4,121 people gave this product a 4-5 star review. ] So, while this review has survived the test of time, the only usefulness it has achieved is to show how bad testing methods are readily accepted if it's buried in enough data.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
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
The reviews are (mostly) fine the way they are.
What really needs an overhaul is Amazon lumping together the Theatrical release and Director's cut of Blu-Rays. The first edition picture quality (PQ) of Gladiator was total garbage. Enough people complained that they got the studio to re-release it with proper picture quality. Lumping together LotR (Lord of the Rings) Theatrical and Director's Cut makes it hard to tell what is where.
"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?
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!
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.
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.
As Dice transforms /. into yet another random site (video section, meaningless pictures attached to articles, and now social media buttons), it become clear that I am no longer part of their target audience. I hate those crappy social media share buttons - they're nothing but trackers in another form.
Hello Soylent
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
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.
reviews and upvotes paid for by the author removed.
They should also ban all the "top reviewers" that sell their votes.
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?
Someone can know a product even if it was purchased through a channel other than Amazon, or received as a gift, or borrowed from a friend, or (in the case of books) borrowed from a public library or on Kindle Unlimited.
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?
A PlayStation 4 owner tries a Wii U at a store or friend's house, discovers that the graphics on its games are roughly as detailed as those of PlayStation 3 games, and thus is justified in composing a review on Amazon without buying a Wii U on Amazon.
I usually buy direct in store. Shipping time zero. Prices have adjusted, at least around here, so that in-store prices aren't much different from the online ones.
Typically I'm browsing at a book store on the way home from work, and discover a book I might like. I could order it and get it a few days later, or walk out the store, book in hand. I'm an adult, with disposable income, so a hundred yen or two price difference doesn't matter to me. Being able to get the book right then does. Amazon is great for finding out what other people think about the book before I buy it.
Another example was my used oscilloscope. Buying second-hand things online is a gamble, and returning it is a major pain (get a cardboard box, arrange for the return and get and fill in a return label, be home to do the delivery). I went to a local shop instead. They hooked it up right in the shop to make sure it worked and to show me the basics of using it. And had there been a problem they would have come by in a car to pick it up directly. Much better. But Amazon did tell me which of the available models were better for me.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.