My Suspicions are Awakened
Do us a favour, if you feel like it and have a minute. I’ve heard from two readers who have written good reviews of the Dictionary at Amazon. Neither one has shown up; one was several days ago, the other was a week and a half ago. So the one-star just sits there uncontradicted all this time. Hmm…that seems odd. So if anyone else has written a favourable review that hasn’t shown up, perhaps you could let me know. I’m just curious…
Amazon has a bizarre and opaque reviewing policy – I suggest your reviewers read it carefully and try to squeeze their reviews into its strictures – they only get cursorily skimmed and then summarily rejected or accepted.
Paradoxically, I find it very hard to get negative reviews published.
Amazon’s review system seems totally random. About a third of my reviews–many of them favorable to the item under review and quite unobjectionable in content– never get posted. Maybe it’s a metaphor for God’s inscrutable Providence. That’s it: Amazon is run by Calvinists!
And, contrariwise, Amazon quite happily prints reviews that are personal attacks on the author (with no mention of the book). I know a few people who have Amazon “stalkers”–in a couple of cases, the stalking is a continuation of years of off-line harassment. Very unpleasant.
I shifted your comment, as you see, Connie. You actually not only read but type before you’ve had coffee! You’re made of sterner stuff than I am, I must say.
Ah, it’s random. Okay. Here was me getting all paranoiac, and it’s just the usual randomness of things.
Oops, cross-post.
Really! Amazon system sounds like a complete mess. I’ll just forget the whole thing then.
Thanks for the feedback, all.
It’s obvious that Amazon doesn’t take its own review policy seriously. Look up any biography of Hitler or Mussolini on the site and see what gets through. It’s a cornucopia of neo-nazi fulmination. Or check out the obscenity-laced flame wars over the gangsta rap albums. I sometimes wonder whether the customer reviews live or die at the whim of whatever editor happens to be on duty in the Amazon boiler room. Boredom and low-wages cause people to do strange things.
Thanks, OB! I am now properly caffeinated.
Karl: You ain’t kiddin’. I just took a gander at some of those reviews (particularly of books by Deborah Lipstadt and Eberhard Jackel). Yikes. One might get the impression that Amazon’s policy actually favors rabid diatribe.
I posted a fawning review of a lecturer’s textbook a few years ago; that went up no probs. (Yes, I meant it – his unit alone was worth the whole price of the MBA).
And I posted a critical review of ‘Critical thinking – tools for taking charge of your learning and your life’. That was also posted no worries. It then took the authors (or maybe their mum) MONTHS to post a rhapsodic POS review to try and get their sales moving!
“I sometimes wonder whether the customer reviews live or die at the whim of whatever editor happens to be on duty in the Amazon boiler room.”
Karl, I don’t just sometimes wonder that, I’m pretty sure that is exactly the case.
Hmmm. Yes, quite. I meant to say, “at the MERE whim, without regard to any policy Amazon might officially have.” I suppose if I were stuck in some dreary, low-wage, dead-end job at a computer terminal in some basement office, I might grow rather perverse and capricious, just to liven things up a bit.
More likely it is a hard-working functionary who has 10 people going for their lives supporting the website, and 20 high-priority jobs at once who ALSO has to review all the reviews.
Like Bruce Almighty, using the ‘grant all’ or ‘deny all’ buttons.