That was not the kind of reaction I expected from amazon, and I am wondering what kind of response this lettercampaign can elicit – perhaps the amazonprofiles of all the letterwriters erased ;-)

ETA: redundant post. Sorry about that.

I actually think that community moderation is a very well-explored problem, and it has a simple solution: meta-moderation. Amazon doesn’t have the time to meta-moderate, so–based on some scores–allow community members to meta-moderate in tiny amounts each, at random. Say, you can moderate at most five scores a day. If someone is consistently abusing the “report abuse” button, ban them from reporting abuse. And you know what? The higher someone’s reviewing rank, the more moderation should be required before abuse is reported.

I can almost always tell when authors are using (I hesitate to say the word “abusing”) their circle of friends to punish harsh comments. Typically, if I post a negative review, I will–within hours–get a bunch of comments berating my personal taste. People will post vigorous replies. Ten people will say almost instantly that my review was unhelpful. (Nobody’s ever called them abusive, though, as far as I can tell–and if the practice of abusing the “report abuse” button spreads, Amazon really will have to start some kind of meta-moderation.)

And you know what? In the long run, it never matters. People read the review, and even those that don’t disagree will say it’s helpful. If I were trying to maximize my reviewer rank, by the way, I’d give every book I read three or four stars. Nobody takes the five-star reviews seriously, and three or four stars makes people think you’re “moderate” in your praise.

This is a separate problem from that of giving perks to high ranked reviewers. To be honest, my reviewer rank is high enough now, and based on a large enough number of books, that I doubt I’ll fall significantly if I gave up reviewing entirely. I earned my high rank before Amazon instituted the Vine program. Back then, it was really just a matter of cataloging what I liked and didn’t like, so that when I was confronted with an author I remembered reading, but didn’t recall anything else, I could just look up what I said on Amazon and say, “Oh yeah, I like her” or “Ugh… gonna pass.”

Now I get free stuff. Maybe some people will be super-motivated to buy and read several hundred books a year just so they can have the chance to receive, once a month, a foil packet of Bertolli’s pasta sauce or some similar benefit. Those people, though are completely irrational. Are people going to cheat to get their free foil packeted pasta sauce? Probably. But honestly…. WHO CARES?

ETA: Agree completely with Mark Baker. I buy a lot through Amazon–heck, I’m a Prime member–but I also pick up a ton of my reading through browsing bookstores.

The rankings are what got me posting reviews back in 2001. I wanted a spot in the top 10,000. By the time I reached it, I was hooked and am still doing it 7 years later.

I can tell you from personal experience that I used to hardly buy anything from Amazon. Now I buy lots from them (about half my books). Why? Because I am there every day and they are recommending me more things.

And I think it is the same for other customers. They go to Amazon to look up information and end up buying something, whether it is the item they intended to buy or not. So the reviews are good for Amazon’s bottom line.

But please don’t take away my ability to review stuff I haven’t bought there. (Yes, I know it is just a proposal of those on this site.) See, I don’t buy music there because they never discount it. I will often review movies I saw in the theater but never buy. And I buy books at book signings that I still review. That would drastically affect my reviewing life, and wouldn’t provide any information to Amazon’s customers.

Yes, there are serious cheats in the top 100 (and lower, I’m sure). It makes those of us who got their honestly look pretty bad. But it generally don’t take more then a minute or two to decide if the review is written by someone you can trust or not. Just look and see what else they have reviewed. That should tell you a lot. If they only review one author, there might be a connection there.

But eliminating the review ranking system still wouldn’t get rid of DAM’s nasty attack on Reba. DAM and her ilk could still harash honest reviewers who wrote less than 5 star reviews of their books. The only thing that will help in that situation is if Amazon actually looks at reported review before pulling them. And they need to start doing that because I am hearing more and more stories of authors getting negative reviews pulled.

The extract you quouted from “The thinking mother” misses out the bit before ….

I have a personal policy of not reviewing books which I don’t read cover to cover. I don’t think it is fair to review a book if I haven’t actually read the whole thing, to see if the story gets good by the end or whatever.

…. and the bit after ….

A pressing issue is that my status as a Vine reviewer is tied up until I review this.

…. which then goes on to explain that deadlines have to be met.

The inclusion of these lines changes the impression somewhat. I don’t know anything about the Vine program, nor do I know “The thinking mother”, but I do recognize deliberate quoting out of context when I see it.

FWIW, I don’t qualify for the American Vine program anyway, but I’m not interested in the British program either because I don’t like reviewing to deadlines and I like the right to veto anything that I’m offered.

Same with the “unhelpful” button on reviews. I may not object to it AS LONG AS it’s not used to rank reviews or to banish reviews to some cyber-basement on the Amazon site.

Any time you link the popularity of a reviewer — however indirectly — to these things, you’re asking for people to try to cheat the system, IMO.

The curious thing is that the writer appears to be a highly intelligent person, based on the final word (feculence). I had to look it up in a dictionary and I’ve never seen it used anywhere else but in this review, or in discussions about it. You’d think that such a person could have expressed her thoughts clearly without resorting to a personal attack.

In that case, go to my Amazon topics blog where you’ll find my detailed description of Amazon’s ranking system as best we know it, together with analysis, options for change and statistics. For most people, it makes mind-numbing reading.

Let’s be real here. Do you honestly believe in your heart that every review system is based on the reviewer personally buying those items? Breaking it down even smaller, that reviewers you find at major magazine or newspaper houses BUY the items to be tested? And breaking it down even further, that romance or other genre review sites require that their reviewers purchase the items?

NO! This is part of the reward system for your time and effort. Freebies. (Yes, yes, some big name mags and such hire you on staff, meaning a salary or weekly paycheck, but that is not the norm.)

So I personally think that the Amazon Vine system holds weight. Where it breaks down is in the rating of reviewers, be it a normal consumer, a Vine participant, or a top reviewer.

Is there a way to fix that? I dunno.

It could be as simple as (without naming the voter, something kept for Amazon only) that a positive or negative vote about a review requires a why. Just a short sentence, perhaps replacing the current comment section which is arbitrary at best. There is no counting vote to that.

However, to vote on the review would then require further review. Should we then have the right to vote if the positive/negative vote and comment are helpful?

I dunno.

I’m sorry if I’m so anal. I spent fifteen years as a Quality Engineer and statistics and how to better handle them tweak my fancy. You try to figure out ways to get the clearest numbers without being cluttered by the human tendency to add personal opinion. A million miles away from writing novels, I know. LOL

I think that the the release valve statement was the reason Amazon gave their employees for quarries, but it makes a kind of sense. I had in fact written about something entirely different and we ended up chatting a bit about other things including negative votes.

I am in awe of the review you posted as an example of invective by a reviewer against an artist.

I think it’s great that you are willing to help with this particular reviewer. I had sent a letter but I didn’t think it would do much by itself although I hope it will add to the cumulative effect.– it was just pointing out a few things rather than making the whole case. I wouldn’t know how to go about it. I think mentioning specific situations where she gave a 5 star review to a book when she was a co-author/cover artist/”secret co-publisher” would only result in that particular review being yanked and do nothing about the underlying situation.

Nice theory but ranting opposing reviews are usually stronger than “this book sucks”. I posted an extreme example earlier although I’ve never come across anything that strong since – however, I’m sure it’s by no means unique. The “comment on reviews” option is another alternative, but it’s a relatively new thing in the history of Amazon. It was introduced partly to reduce the ranting reviews that you describe. Whether it has done, I don’t know, but it’s certainly generated a lot of ranting that wasn’t there before.

I am well aware of this and following what I’ve seen here, I’ll be spending a lot of time assembling the case against her and bringing it to Amazon’s attention. I hope maybe that one or more lawyers who also happen to be Amazon reviewers can be drawn in, but I won’t mention any names because I haven’t even contacted them yet.

But the point about Amazon reviews being honest for the most part still holds, which is the specific point I was addressing.

They are, as long as you remember that most of them are fan reviews. It’s just a few people like Klausner, Harp, MacGillivray and others who play dirty tricks.

Also a link to the customer reviews discussion board.

The thread “Weird neggie action” is particularly interesting. It’s where I made one of my very rare (these days) posts.

I was also unaware that people were “gaming” the review system. I feel betrayed. I now understand why after buying a highly rated book I am sometimes very disappointed. Color me disillusioned. I nearly always use the reviews to help me to decide whether to purchase items. Now not knowing if I can trust these reviews is depressing.

I have strong feelings about cyber buying and I hope that Amazon will take steps against the perpetrators.

I agree with the above posters that changes are indicated. I’m not sure exactly what should be done but Amazon stands to loose a lot of their customer’s faith if things aren’t changed.