I have been on the internet, since its opening to the public in 92, and I was on ARPNET, FIDONET, and others long before they were popular. I am nowhere near as old as some of you , only got my start in computers in 83, but old enough to have been burned many times over. I would offer this advice...
1) NEVER reply to malice, hatred, or purely inflammatory reviews or posts in kind. All you will do is escalate the emotion, and you will look like the bad guy AND give legitimacy to the original attack.
2) If you MUST reply, never ever address the personal attacks, the insults, or anything of the like. Stick to polite objective facts only.
3) ALWAYS take the high ground. In the long term this will help you, and your case. If they other person is being vile and mean, and you are polite and kind the unseen observer will tend to think much higher of you, and much less of them. This will almost always work to your favor.
Keep in mind, people may stop and gawk at a car wreck, but they do not LIVE there.
And, no, I am way to emotional and hotheaded to follow my own advice perfectly, so I never reply to reviews on Amazon, B&N, and so on. I do reply to emails, comments on my blog, and posts on forums when I seen them though. My goal in those replies is to follow my own advice.
As a side note, I gave up on anonymity when I decided to market myself (blogs, books, services,etc) as a product.
