Comments on: Litterbugs of Amazon

By: George Purcell

George Purcell — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 21:27:01 +0000

FWIW, Roger, I might look at and use Amazon ratings for toasters and hand drills, but not for books. Too subjective.

By: thibaud

thibaud — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 04:55:57 +0000

Any rating system that does not rate the raters will produce noise for the most part. Amazon needs to take a lesson from eBay.

By: Patrick Tyson

Patrick Tyson — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 00:30:45 +0000

Done.

By: vegetius

vegetius — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 19:16:48 +0000

Ben:

Yeah I noticed the ‘Clarke’ friendly review and the other preferences.

Nice pick-up on the review dates!!!! I missed that. That should help Roger if he follows through with Amazon. He owes you an ‘attaboy’.

By: Patrick Tyson

Patrick Tyson — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 17:52:16 +0000

I mentioned here last November that negative customer reviews were being added to Jane Smiley titles in the aftermath of an incendiary essay she wrote for Slate in the aftermath of the election. The essay was being linked in the reviews. Those reviews are no longer present. Good luck, Roger.

By: Joe Bonforte

Joe Bonforte — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 17:29:10 +0000

Amazon has an obvious fix that would do much to remedy this problem. They know who has bought what from them. They could easily give a much higher weight in their recommendation engine to people who are known to have purchased the item.

And, given the fact that many books are in electronic form and indexed, there’s even a fix for those who did not buy a book from amazon. Just ask something like “what’s the fourth word on page 174″, and if that can be answered correctly, then again the review receives higher weight. (If it were not answered, the review would still be accepted – just weighted much lower.)

The higher weight reviews can then be displayed more prominently, and of course their weight would be reflected in the average # of stars for the review.

By: pdq332

pdq332 — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 17:25:29 +0000

Here’s what you do: Find one of those automatic bad reviews and follow the link to all of the other reviews by that reviewer. Then for each of those reviews, click as many times as you can to say that you did not find the review helpful. That’ll teach ‘em. Ha !

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 17:22:43 +0000

vegetius -

Also, look at the posting date of the reviews. Many were posted on the same day. That most likely means he didn’t actually read the books, but was more concerned with trashing the author.

It was also interesting to note the books he reviewed favorable (e.g., Richard Clarke). Sort of tells you his leanings, doesn’t it?

By: vegetius

vegetius — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 14:45:16 +0000

I took a look at the ‘reviews’. It seems it’s the same guy every time. I would be nice if he were actually buying the books and then panning them.

But, it’s quite obvious that he’s he’s on a mission.

I always see if the reviewer has posted other

reviews and go to their page to see if there is a pattern. I wouldn’t get worried over this guy most folks who buy on Amazon are wise to the ways of the reviews. Chrichton is getting the same treatment though on a larger scale.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 08:19:15 +0000

It really says something about the strength of ideas on the left when they put so much effort into sophomoric behavior such as this. If they spent half their time thinking up some good ideas to contribute to the democratic debate and less time with such pranks and the rest of their poisonous bile, they might do better at the ballot box.

OK… I guess it’s asking a bit much for them to THINK… easier to play their games and spew their hate.