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Amazon Overhauling Customer Reviews 116

Posted by Soulskill 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.
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Amazon Overhauling Customer Reviews More

Amazon Overhauling Customer Reviews

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  • Sounds like reasonable changes to me (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FlyHelicopters ( 1540845 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @01:12AM (#49955065)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:1, Redundant)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      Someone who actually is known to have purchased the item, yea, their review should be worth more than random Internet person #4827341

      Not really. 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 o

      • Re:Sounds like reasonable changes to me (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @02:21AM (#49955205)

        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.

        • 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.

          I agree with you that GP's logic is convoluted. But I think there is a message in there somewhere -- which is that marketing theories also clearly talk about notions of "satisfaction" in terms of "expectations."

          Someone who buys a product without researching other similar products will probably be satisfied unless that product fails the basic tasks the consumer expects. And they're probably likely to write a positive review, probably 4-5 stars. Even if they never looked at another option for their purch

          • But, you ever notice how few 3-star reviews there are on Amazon for most products?

            I'm not sure I completely agree, but I supposed it depends on the product. Let's take a peek at a technical book I was looking at:

            It has 25 reviews, with an (algorithmically weighted) average of 3.8 stars. The break down is:
            5 star 44%
            4 star 24%
            3 star 12%
            2 star 12%
            1 star 8%

            That seems reasonable enough to me. My takeaway is that the book is probably solid, but has a few serious flaws. The people who gave three stars, interestingly enough, seemed to give the best critical feedback while also

            • Technical books are one thing, but Amazon reviews of fiction are pretty close to worthless. I've seen books with all 5 star ratings that are not even functionally literate.

        • 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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          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?

          I don't, but with the exception of books and movies, you also can't assume that people who bought the product know the product well enough to review it. The majority of reviews are posted within a couple of weeks after buying a product

      • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

        by Dutch Gun ( 899105 )

        At the risk of being a bit off-topic...

        Shame on all mods who downmodded dgatwood's post redundant or overrated (his post currently stands at 0 Redundant). I disagreed completely with his conclusions, but he presented them clearly, politely, and intelligently. Moderation is not supposed to be a "I disagree with your opinion, and therefore I'm going to silence you" button. You continue to do that, and you'll simply be turning /. into an echo-chamber (well, more than it already is) where no one dares disagr

    • Well, you could see this as a 'good news' topic on Slashdot. Those points sound positive to me, too.

      It will be important to Amazon's credibility, though, to find out more about this 'machine learning' thing. Will it be programmed to maximize sales? There's a fine balance between credibility and salesmanship.

      Also, I couldn't help but thing that whole additional boiler-rooms full of online shill commenters are gonna need to be hired when this thing goes into effect. Do you have an English degree and/or go

    • Caveat Emptor (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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

      • Re:Caveat Emptor (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21, 2015 @02:59AM (#49955281)

        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.

        • I agree, those changes will make it slightly harder to game the system, except for this part:
          "...and also reviews voted up by other customers."

          Unless those "other customers" are also verified purchasers, there's your loophole. Bots and crowdsourcing can still beat the system.

    • Re:Sounds like reasonable changes to me (Score:5, Insightful)

      by vikingpower ( 768921 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @03:10AM (#49955299) Homepage Journal
      Disagree in the case of books. An old review is absolutely not worth less than a recent review, especially if e.g. a classical engineering or math text is 2 decades old.

      • On the contrary, a state of the art match or engineering text which has been superceded by a corrected version (errors in the text), which has been proven to be wrong (global cooling due to pollution), or which is simply out of date given new information - say, Viswanath's contributions to the Fibonacci number construct.

        Such revised ratings should absolutely have more weight than older reviews which could not have known there would be new information.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        Especially if e.g. a classical engineering or math text is 2 decades old.

        How do you know the latest edition hasn't substantially affected items material to the older reviews?

      • Completely agree [with the grandparent] in the case of books. A new review is absolutely worth more, especially e.g. haiku translations or biographies. What was once a classic is now sliding into deserved obscurity as we now know the translator was wrong in his assumptions. Or new information has come to light on the subject.

        Doubly so since non-Amazon reviews tend to review a book on publication and except in egregious cases forget it's existence thereafter.

        In the case of books of the type you cite, I s

      • An old review is absolutely not worth less than a recent review, especially if e.g. a classical engineering or math text is 2 decades old.

        As other comments have already noted -- this is a bad example. Science and engineering textbooks can definitely change significantly over 20 years, and a new review may point out the flaws now known given new research.

        I do agree with you regarding fiction, though, as well as other products that essentially don't change at all over time. Yes, the reputation of a particular work of fiction may gradually alter over the years, but the text stays the same. Unless a review is talking about the quality of the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      Could be.... but it's also important to consider potential abuses from shady manufacturers.

      "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. ...."

      Sometimes said "small tweaks" to improve sales --- instead of involving changes to the product, involve employees or paid shills to buy the product and write favorable reviews.

      If the product is a less popular one that doesn't have a large amount of

      • Sometimes said "small tweaks" to improve sales --- instead of involving changes to the product, involve employees or paid shills to buy the product and write favorable reviews.

        If the product is a less popular one that doesn't have a large amount of purchases and only has a relatively small number of reviews, then these changes could further facilitate artificial score inflation.

        You are assuming that the announced changes are the only ones being made.

        If I were Amazon, I'd also secretly place reviews from established accounts with long purchase histories ahead of those that are new and haven't bought much.

        Someone who has purchased 500 unique items should have more "weight" than someone who has bought 5.

        IMHO of course.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cHiphead ( 17854 )

      Thet work pretty damn well as is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

      This feels like a way to Yelp the reviews while being able to throw their hands in the air with a 'automated machine learning, what can we do but fix it and hope for the best?' excuses.

    • Someone who actually is known to have purchased the item, yea, their review should be worth more than random Internet person #4827341

      It will depend how it's implemented. Amazon's current system is better than nothing, but some of their recent policy changes make it harder to find unbiased information - and this latest change could take it further down the rabbit hole, depending on the details.

      I always look at the reviews before purchasing, and lately I've seen a LOT of reviews flagged as "Verified Purchase" - always at the very top of the list - which state, more or less, "I received this product at a discount in exchange for agreeing to

    • I agree. Reviews from someone who bought the item are more valuable.

      The change might cut out people who bought the item thru another channel.

      My main issue are fake reviews. And a company can always "sell" an item to it's employees who then give it glowing reviews. And buy products from competitors and give them terrible reviews.

    • 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.

      Well, hopefully Amazon is not doing what TigerDirect was and may still be doing, re-editing or "correcting" customer reviews, particularly negative ones.

  • I'm happy to see improvements in the review system. I rarely buy anything from Amazon (shipping takes time, returns are a hassle), but I often use their pages to check reviews and compare items before I buy them.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'm happy to see improvements in the review system. I rarely buy anything from Amazon (shipping takes time, returns are a hassle), but I often use their pages to check reviews and compare items before I buy them.

      Are you aware that such an action violates their Terms of Service? You are a common criminal.

    • (shipping takes time, returns are a hassle)

      Funny, shipping time and convenient returns are the two main reasons why I use Amazon as much as I do. Getting something delivered the next day, or two days later if I'm feeling cheap, is often faster than finding time in my schedule to go to whatever specialized store would sell what I'm buying. And returns? What could be easier than slapping a label on the box and setting it outside for the mail carrier?

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • I buy things from Amazon pretty regularly for both business and personal needs. Out of 50+ orders in the last 2 years, I've had 2 packages show up late and got a free month extension of my Prime benefits each time just by asking for it.

          • I buy things from Amazon pretty regularly for both business and personal needs. Out of 50+ orders in the last 2 years, I've had 2 packages show up late and got a free month extension of my Prime benefits each time just by asking for it.

            Amazon's customer service is, frankly, second to none... They are rather old-school in terms of "the customer is always, always right... make them happy at almost any cost..."

            In return, I buy almost everything from Amazon, from computer parts to paper towels...

        • I had the same problem when they first made the switch to USPS but it's been much better recently. Sunday delivery is nice, too.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by JanneM ( 7445 )

        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 fi

      • Ebay sellers ship quicker, and 90% of the time are cheaper than amazon.

  • Stop grouping revisions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by magusxxx ( 751600 ) <magusxxx_2000 AT yahoo DOT com> on Sunday June 21, 2015 @01:32AM (#49955105)
    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.
    • This is one of the problems I have come across a lot. I was looking at purchasing a hard drive. One particular company's 500 GB and 2 TB drives got good reviews, but the 1 TB drive had some major problems. It was a pain in the ass trying to figure out which review went with which drive unless the reviewer specifically said it.
    • They're starting to address this. I was shopping for a parabolic wifi antenna [amazon.com] recently. Amazon lumps the reviews for 4 different types (different dBi) with 2 different connectors together even though they're all very different products. If you scroll down to the reviews, you'll see above each review is what specific product the reviewer purchased - dBi and connector type.
    • Different models are definitely a problem, what's worse though are completely different products. Like this UTech Mouse [amazon.com] --- also lists 3 other mice, and two keyboards. The reviews and "product ratings" are *shared* by 5 different products.

  • Good, useful reviews don't appear every day. If a review is 2 years old and hundreds of people have said that it's useful, that's probably because it IS useful.

    This change seems designed to turn the review section into a discussion forum where you have to reload every few minutes to participate in the latest discussion. I suppose this is good for Amazon's advertising revenue, but it's bad for customers who want to know what to buy or not to buy.

    • Well, yes and no... http://www.amazon.com/gp/custo... [amazon.com] ... 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.

  • Amazon Vine (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Smerta ( 1855348 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @01:38AM (#49955125)

    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.

  • 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.

    • The reviews are (mostly) fine the way they are.

      Could not disagree more. The signal to noise ratio on most reviews is seriously poor. I regularly see paid shills (some obvious others less so), idiots who order the wrong item but still feel the need to "review" what they got, people who conflate UPS delivery with Amazon's service, reviews for different products or obsolete models of earlier products unrelated to the one being sold, useless reviews with no details explaining why the product is good or bad, reviews that are years old and no longer relevan

  • The worst reviews on Amazon (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MillionthMonkey ( 240664 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @02:32AM (#49955227)

    "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?

  • Transcript of a recent meeting at Dice HQ (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21, 2015 @03:13AM (#49955305)

    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!

    • Re:Transcript of a recent meeting at Dice HQ (Score:5, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @06:04AM (#49955583) Homepage Journal

      Yup. Seriously, was putting the share button where the "read more..." link used to be designed to make people accidentally click on it? Do you guys do any kind of user testing at all, or were you fully aware that's the most clicked on link on the site and just wanted to abuse it?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      this.

      Dice we are getting so tired of your attempt to fix something that is not broken -
          * lose the video crap in the middle of our page
          * lose the share link - swap back the 'read more' link

      perhaps readers should fork this code - you are ruining the experience that made this site what it was.

    • May finally be time to abandon ship... (Score:4, Informative)

      by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @07:00AM (#49955725) Homepage

      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 [soylentnews.org]

    • Re:Transcript of a recent meeting at Dice HQ (Score:4, Interesting)

      by kimvette ( 919543 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @11:59AM (#49956911) Homepage Journal

      Indeed; when /. readers want to share something we generally know how to copy & paste. Now, there are always exceptions to the rule but they are in the vast majority.

      Besides, /. already HAD the share feature; it was just horribly broken. Fix share, put it back where it was, and bring back the Read More link.

      Now, I realize that slashdotters are your product, not your customers, but by not listening to us you're pushing us to continue to choose reddit or even (ugh!) fark over /., thereby reducing the value of product making /. less attractive to your actual customers (advertisers).

      Hey I have an idea - why not take this whole trend one step further and start posting stories about the kardashians, other train wrecks like Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, and other child stars who delved into hard drugs or alcohol and ruined their lives, thereby increasing readership, and the all-important ad clicks?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      FUCK BETA
      FUCK SHARE :)

    • Did this same change also include eliminating the option to post discussion items on submissions [slashdot.org]? For those of us that go there, sometimes there is useful stuff added in the discussion portion of a submission by other people who have read about the topic.
    • The removal of the 'read more' link broke the Avantslash parser as well. But it's fixed now. And... Avantslash still shows a 'read more' link. I was reading m.slashdot.org from my phone over the last few days. Amazing how unusable it still is.

  • They need two ratings.. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    One for the actual object (DVD Blu-ray or Book) describing the quality of what you receive. Plus a separate review for the content. For example: how do you rate a poor transfer to Blu-ray of a terrific film you love. The disc, packaging, commentaries could be poor and deserve two stars for some reason. But what if the film itself deserves five stars?

  • Good for the consumer? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hsa ( 598343 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @03:49AM (#49955355)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by chihowa ( 366380 )

      "Average score" is a stupid metric for comparing ratings anyway. Here's a little discussion [evanmiller.org] about several different utterly wrong ways to make sense of ratings, "average score" being #2.

      Your "average score" would rate a product with a single 5 star rating higher than one with 45,000 ratings averaging out to 4.999. Their "proprietary algorithm" is likely to be more useful to everybody than a bunk rating system like "average score".

      Anyway, if all of the ratings go up, then you just continue to compare them to

      • Of course the number of reviews is important. Which is why its very easy to see how many reviews it has.

  • Top reviewers are invariably fake (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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 pis

  • good step, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The Grim Reefer ( 1162755 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @07:42AM (#49955841)

    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.

    • This is a case where edition specific reviews are very important to me.

      Then you should be looking on some audiophile / high definition music sites where people actually understand this rather than a site that also sells plastic spoons.

      • OMG, Amazon sells plastic spoons? JUST WHAT I NEEDED! Okay, here's a review:

        "Best spoon evar! All other spoons suck!!!"

        SOLD!!!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        Then you should be looking on some audiophile / high definition music sites where people actually understand this rather than a site that also sells plastic spoons.

        Sites where you can buy the special green markers for the edges of CDs? And directional speaker cables? Are your interconnects "danceable"? Maybe you didn't pay enough.

      • Sure, but Amazon should at least make an effort to classify the reviews for the correct format/version. That's the problem. You could easily be reading a review for the fifty dollar special edition while looking at the ten dollar version. Some reviewers are smart enough to specify. But others are not. Often times I'd rather get the extended version of a movie in single disk packaging because I don't care about four hundred hours of documentary shows about the movie. I simply want to watch it with the ext

  • I hope this doesn't result in the removal of parody reviews. Manually take them out of the weighting algorithm, sure, but please leave them, for the likes of Monster cables, Denon's ethernet cable, uranium oxide samples, reviews which pop up when a price gets bumped up by 33,300% due to occasional glitches in Amazon's dynamic pricing algorithm, and so forth.

    Also, PLEASE kill the reviews which rate items a 1 because UPS destroyed the package. That isn't Amazon's fault; it's UPS's fault for shoving 65,000 pac

  • I'll remain skeptical until I see (Score:3)

    by PJ6 ( 1151747 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @01:51PM (#49957407)
    reviews and upvotes paid for by the author [amazon.com] removed.

    They should also ban all the "top reviewers" that sell their votes [amazon.com].

  • Let's say a reviewer for whatever reason wants to compare the item they are reviewing with some other product. When a search is done for THAT OTHER PRODUCT, the first product comes up in the Amazon search results, because, well, I don't know why - they thought (think?) they are being helpful, BUT THEY AREN'T.

    Who cares what someone writes in a product review when it comes to product search?

    Example: Let's say I am searching for a very specific model or replacement part. I have the manufacturer part number a

  • With bad reviews, and then recreate them as clean products without any reviews. I've had this happen to a couple products I wrote bad reviews for. Polar in particular released the RC3 a couple years ago, and there were a ton of bad reviews about broken chest straps, broken buttons, GPS's that wouldn't lock up, etc.. Good luck finding any of those reviews, they changed the SKU (or something) a couple years back and all the old bad reviews (which were close to a 1 start rating) are no longer applied to the pr

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