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Originally Posted by bhartman36
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.
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The review system at Amazon might be the BEST thing about Amazon, because it is free and open. It is hardly being destroyed.
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That's kind of a distinction without a difference. They're complaining about the e-book's price.
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In relation to the paper price. This matters.
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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.
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What's the proof that any reviewer actually read the book? Should the reviewer sign an affidavit? Submit to pre-review testing on the contents of the book? After all, we must keep out the charlatans and the "vandals"!
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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.
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They are comparing the price of one version of the book to the price of the other version of the book. That's relevant.
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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.
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Even if this were a good idea, which it isn't, they only know who bought the book from them (and they do indicate that with the "verified buyer" tag). They don't know who actually read it, of course, and they certainly don't know who bought it elsewhere, got it at the library, got it for a gift, borrowed it, etc. Why can't those people express their opinions?
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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.
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Sometimes the pre-reviews are valid, sometimes not. That's why I'd READ them, not just look at the stars. I've seen plenty of pre-reviews at Amazon for DVDs--the reviewers are waxing poetic about, say, an old TV show that's coming out on DVD, talking about the show itself, not about the quality of the DVD transfer. Seems valid to me.