Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
How is anything "destroyed" for anyone else? Is someone stopping you from buying the book or threatening you with mayhem if you do? All you need to do as a potential customer is READ THE REVIEW instead of only counting the stars on your fingers. |
What's being destroyed is the value of the review system. As has already been said, anyone who is looking at the book on Amazon knows the price. That's what first comes up in a book list: the book, the price, and the average star rating.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
As far as I can tell, people are generally objecting not to the actual price, but the price differential between the paper book and the e-book.
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That's kind of a distinction without a difference. They're complaining about the e-book's price.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
Vandalism, my eye. This is really veering into the nonsensical now.
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It actually makes perfect sense. The review system is meant to help customers decide if they want to buy a book, based on the review. "Reviews" by people who haven't read the book add only noise. If you increase the noise in a book's reviews, without adding value, that's destructive, and that's vandalism.
Remember: A person looking at a book on Amazon already
knows how much the book costs. The only thing that can make the price relevant in a review is if you compare it to another book, and you can only do
that if you've read both.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
But now Amazon should censor reviews? Ridiculous.
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I don't think Amazon should censor the reviews. I think Amazon should segregate the reviews that
aren't based on purchases from the ones that are. They've got the technology to do this, but they won't use it, because it's in their interest for people to bomb the reviews that way.
A similar thing happens on technology sites: People posting user reviews of products without ever having used them (and in some cases, posting the review
before the product is actually released). It's offensive to me there for the same reason: You read a review based on the reviewer's experience with the product, not to help the reviewer vent his/her spleen on some ideological issue.