How Amazon should fix it's reviews problem/Forbes

Hmmm... apply a non-profit non-fiction police system--which, by the way, produces not-always-factual articles--to a fiction commercial marketplace... Amazon cares too much about its sales and its stock for that to happen. I'm not saying that the system would be abused by everyone, but the potential for abuse is higher than it is now, I think.

i.e. Sub-Administrator A reads book X. Book X has 200 reviews and a 4.5 star average. A thinks X is trash and assumes, like you'll read in most negative reviews on the site, that all of the positive reviews MUST be friends and family because NO ONE could POSSIBLY like this turd of a tome.

A happily--even while singing a little tune to himself--hits delete, over and over again. The author, publisher, and the reviewers complain to no avail, for Amazon has acted and will not reverse itself.

And to "avoid running afoul of labor laws", you'll have to cite something stronger than a review program resulting from product giveaways.

If the statistics are to be believed (10% of all reviews are fake), then it's not as serious of a problem as people are describing. 1 in 10 can easily be defeated by real customers providing real feedback. I think someone around here said that it takes 4 or 5 positive reviews to make up for a really bad one (to keep a score up). I don't like the system because it gives such power to negative reviewers, but at the same time, it balances things enough not to complain too heavily. More of a grimace situation than a stand-and-shout-with-fist event.

DarkScribe said:

It isn't difficult to reduce the problem. All Amazon has to do is stop newly created accounts from reviewing newly released books. This would stop a high percentage of "fly by sock" reviewers from boosting new release popularity. Say a three month account status before they can review books less than six months old.

Click to expand...

I wonder if Amazon hasn't already dealt with the sock-puppet issue pretty effectively by deleting reviews posted by accounts linked to author accounts by IP addresses, street addresses, credit card numbers, etc., especially when you combine that effort with the purchase-first requirement for reviewing. To create a sock-puppet account now, an author would have to establish an Amazon account using a different physical address and with a different credit card that bills to an address other than the author's; would have to purchase something through that account; and would have to post reviews from a computer other than her own or at least from a network other than her own. That's a lot, especially if you want to do it ten or twenty times.

Paid reviews, though -- that's more of a problem. Restricting accounts of less than three months' duration to reviewing books more than six months old probably wouldn't put a dent in that business since there are so many people out there who've been posting such reviews for years.