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Old 01-24-2013, 12:01 PM   #46
DiapDealer
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Old 01-24-2013, 12:03 PM   #47
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Old 01-24-2013, 01:00 PM   #48
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Old 01-24-2013, 09:17 PM   #49
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Quote:
Originally Posted by xg4bx View Post
Reviews should only be allowed from people with an Amazon verified purchase of the item. If you bought it elsewhere, tough titty. They've got to try to maintain some integrity of the review process.

It happens everywhere, from fiction to bios to books written by politicians. It's disgusting and speaks volumes about the low character of these trolls.
I so agree with this. Doing so would sure go a long way to keeping the background noise down on reviews. And yeah, I consider it pretty low-class to try and submarine a book or other product with negative reviews even if they never purchased the item.

I can see Amazon arguing that allowing reviews from anyone allows people who were given gifts purchased through Amazon to leave reviews. Perhaps providing some sort of gift code on a "gift-receipt" could address that sort of issue. Even the invoice number would suffice.

When I was consulting for eBay one area I know they send not insubstantial amounts of cash and man-hours attempting to address the problematic nature of feedback being used as a form of extortion. Even now the system is somewhat broken. I imagine that Amazon spends a decent of attention addressing reviews.

Something to considers is the area of actual ratings. What should a 3/5 mean? To me an average product that performs as expected gets a 3/5. Many feel such a product deserves 5/5. To my logic that diminishes the value of a 5-star rating when an average product gets an automatic 5. How do we then differentiate an exceptional or outstanding product? Of course then the definition of those terms is somewhat subjective as well. Before I wander too far away from the topic I find some people's need to gush over an average product puzzling, I mean it's as if they are deriving some sort of self-worth from giving that over-the-top gushing review.
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Old 01-26-2013, 09:45 AM   #50
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All this negative attention can actually boost the sales. More people will want to see what is the fuss about.
Amazon should do what it can to remove these negative reviews, but in the end I don't think that many people care about MJ for this even to be a news. But it is. This world and all that's wrong with it. Meh :|
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Old 01-26-2013, 03:45 PM   #51
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rkw View Post
Something to considers is the area of actual ratings. What should a 3/5 mean? To me an average product that performs as expected gets a 3/5. Many feel such a product deserves 5/5. To my logic that diminishes the value of a 5-star rating when an average product gets an automatic 5. How do we then differentiate an exceptional or outstanding product? Of course then the definition of those terms is somewhat subjective as well. Before I wander too far away from the topic I find some people's need to gush over an average product puzzling, I mean it's as if they are deriving some sort of self-worth from giving that over-the-top gushing review.
Your description of 3/5 meaning an "average" product is one way of reading a 5-star rating...but I don't think it's how most people use them.

I think that most people believe that a product with no flaws deserves a 5, and they then deduct stars based on perceived flaws. This is what leads to a lot of 4 or 5 star products. Under this system, a toaster, say, with a 3/5 rating is not something you would buy because it had too many flaws.

However, under the "average" rating system, a 3/5 toaster would be what most people would want, since it would be a perfectly fine toaster. And there may be no 4 or 5 star rated toasters at all.

Kind of how a "C" grade, originally being average, is pretty much a bad grade now, with "D" and "F" being, basically, failing grades.
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Old 01-26-2013, 04:16 PM   #52
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H. View Post
Your description of 3/5 meaning an "average" product is one way of reading a 5-star rating...but I don't think it's how most people use them.

I think that most people believe that a product with no flaws deserves a 5, ....
and I think you are wrong. It's certainly not how I rate books and doesn't appear to be how most reviewers in the media give star ratings. Nor does it jive with my reading of those reviews of various star ratings.
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Old 01-26-2013, 04:17 PM   #53
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How do you rate is an interesting question. A book I'm glad I read but didn't stick with me gets 3 stars. A book I really enjoyed reading and would recommend to someone else gets 4 stars. A book I loved and can't stop thinking about for days or weeks after reading it gets 5 stars.
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Old 01-26-2013, 04:19 PM   #54
kennyc
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NickyWithNook View Post
How do you rate is an interesting question. A book I'm glad I read but didn't stick with me gets 3 stars. A book I really enjoyed reading and would recommend to someone else gets 4 stars. A book I loved and can't stop thinking about for days or weeks after reading it gets 5 stars.
Yep, that's about my ratings as well. And a book with a few obvious faults/issues of various types will get a 2 and one that totally sucks that I think people should know about will get a 1.
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Old 01-26-2013, 07:40 PM   #55
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I rate in half stars on my site, but I will round up or down on Amazon depending on a gut feeling. 3.5-4 stars means that I would recommend the book and mostly that means that an Amazon rating of 4 is recommended. 4.5-5 means very highly recommended and/or exceptional which will most often turn into an Amazon rating of 5.

But I believe I am possibly a fairly low rating reviewer with only a couple of books a year hitting that 5 star mark. Perhaps I should be surprised that people still actually want me to review given that 5 star reviews on Amazon are such cheap currency.

Back to the original, it's a bit of a shame that this kind of childish behaviour continues once we have theoretically graduated from the playground. But maturity seems to be a very rare commodity in this world so I can't say I'm surprised.
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Old 01-27-2013, 04:10 AM   #56
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Because review scores are averaged, it almost makes sense to only give one or five stars, so that you have the maximum effect on the average. A middling vote is just lost in the murk.
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Old 01-27-2013, 05:38 AM   #57
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The how you rate question is interesting, there does appear to be a section of people that give 5 star ratings very freely, whereas to me giving a book 3 stars doesn't mean it wasn't very good but that it was ok. My 5 star books have to be very, very good. I may be wrong but don't the star ratings when leaving a review on Amazon suggest 3 - OK, 4 - enjoyed it, 5 - loved it, or something like that?

The average review rating means little to me anyway, I tend to look at how many there are of each rating, so if there are 20 5* reviews and 2 or 3 of all the rest it's good, but if there are 15 5* reviews and another 10 1* or 2* then I'll give it a miss. And when reading the reviews, I tend to ignore the 5* & 1* reviews. So DrNefario, your reviews are pretty wasted on me :-)

That's why its just a rough guide, everyone writes and reads the reviews in their own way. Don't they?
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Old 01-27-2013, 01:11 PM   #58
GlenBarrington
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They're entitled to their opinions, of course, but causing favourable opinions to be taken off and even having the book taken down is wrong.
Then Amazon needs to tighten up its review rules for books. Formal legislation is not needed, IMO. Even Crappy books are an art form, and are fundamentally different from an eBook reader or a TV set. If Amazon can't or won't control a runaway review mechanism, their reliability will suffer, and people will buy elsewhere.

One of the reasons I don't have a Kindle device is I want to avoid being locked down to a single supplier for books. An Android device with a Kindle app is far more flexible in this regard. There aren't many book vendors that don't provide an android app that can read their product. I assume that is the same for the Apple environment.
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Old 01-27-2013, 03:07 PM   #59
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Your description of 3/5 meaning an "average" product is one way of reading a 5-star rating...but I don't think it's how most people use them.

I think that most people believe that a product with no flaws deserves a 5, and they then deduct stars based on perceived flaws. This is what leads to a lot of 4 or 5 star products. Under this system, a toaster, say, with a 3/5 rating is not something you would buy because it had too many flaws.

However, under the "average" rating system, a 3/5 toaster would be what most people would want, since it would be a perfectly fine toaster. And there may be no 4 or 5 star rated toasters at all.

Kind of how a "C" grade, originally being average, is pretty much a bad grade now, with "D" and "F" being, basically, failing grades.
I agree that only people who buy the book on Amazon should be allowed to review it. If you haven't read it, how are you entitled to an opinion?

For ratings, mine work like this:

1. Horrible - Usually quit after the first chapter
2. Very bad - Often dropped half way through but occasionnaly plod through to the end to see what happened.
3. Good - Decent book that I enjoyed. Worth reading once. May read again.
4. Excellent - Loved the book, enjoyed the characters. Will read it again and it needs to be in my permanent library.
5. Brilliant - Totally engaged me. Possibly changed my life. I have to find more in the series. Must own it - am evangelical in my praise of it to others. Only about 5 out of over my 200 books in Calbre are rated at this level.
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Old 01-27-2013, 03:12 PM   #60
Ripplinger
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Amazon really needs to change their system so that only people who purchased the book from Amazon can leave a review or comment and only from that account that made the purchase. I think reviews in general would be a much better quality and I might actually then consider them worthwhile to check. As it is now, the reviews are meaningless since people who haven't even read the book can post, making their entire rating system useless.
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