
Amazon Book Reviews Deleted in Purge Aimed at Manipulation - iProject
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/technology/amazon-book-reviews-deleted-in-a-purge-aimed-at-manipulation.html
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ars
I don't pay a huge amount of attention to the _number_ of stars, but rather to
what the reviewers _say_.

Yes, it takes longer to decide which product is best, but I get more reliable
results that way.

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maratd
One of the niftiest features on Amazon is the ability to view the "most
helpful" glowing and negative reviews. Frequently, you only need to read 2
reviews. The glowing one will highlight the product's best features, while the
negative one will clearly outline its flaws. After that, you have a pretty
clear picture.

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codewright
Once I noticed this and start evaluating products via this angle I started
feeling a lot more confident in my purchasing decisions.

I think they've been more successful too, not too sure though.

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lutusp
I get e-mails all the time offering to submit fake rave reviews for my book,
for a price. I also get e-mails offering the same "service" for my Android
apps. It's a business -- a widespread, unethical business.

Meanwhile, one of the few real reviews of my book says, "This is a really
terrific book, and I have read it more than once! By the way, can someone fix
my mistake -- I accidentally gave it one star instead of five!"

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itsboring
I have what I think is an effective strategy for evaluating product reviews. I
ignore the five star and four star reviews. In fact, I go right to the one and
two star reviews. If most of the bad reviews are well-reasoned, thought-out
and coherent criticisms of the product, then I consider competing products
instead.

However, if the bad reviews are predominately written by morons, then I remain
interested in the product. The more "bad" reviews I see with dumb complaints,
bad grammar, ALL CAPS and irrelevant whining, the more I'm likely to buy.
These are the anti-reviews, and so far, I've used them with great success.

EDIT: By the way, this also works well for picking movies on IMDB.

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greenyoda
I give much more credibility to reviews that are marked "Amazon Verified
Purchase". This at least weeds out bought reviews, people who received free
review copies from the author, people who are supporters or detractors of the
author or his ideology but haven't read the book, etc. And it's likely that
someone who actually paid for the book actually read it. It would be nice if
Amazon had a way of filtering out all reviews that weren't from a verified
purchaser.

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mikevm
Same here, I also check to see whether this was the only book review this
person did. Too many 5 star reviews for a new book is always suspicious, btw.

Look at this piece of crap book, for example:
[http://www.amazon.com/Iterating-Infusion-Clearer-Objects-
Cla...](http://www.amazon.com/Iterating-Infusion-Clearer-Objects-
Classes/dp/1590595378) It mostly has fake reviews.

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farhanpatel
Hopefully these reviews aren't categorized as "manipulative"

[http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-
Cable/produ...](http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-
Cable/product-reviews/B000I1X6PM)

There is some amazing satire in Amazon reviews. It would be a shame if it was
all lost.

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rohamg
What took them so long to move on this?

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wissler
With so many people willing to contribute reviews, I see no reason to allow
either anonymous reviews or reviews from people who have no direct familiarity
with the product. Can there be some value from these two sources? Perhaps. But
there's a lot more noise generated than value.

