Amazon topics (Peter Durward Harris)

Questions about Amazon's reviewing system

2011-07-13T02:32:00.000-07:00

Questions about Amazon's reviewing system

This post is divided into sections, with apologies for any confusion arising from the way some of the questions are classified, as follows :-

Jump to section
or just scroll down
Introduction
Terminology
Search, contact and notification
Votes
Fans
Reviewer rankings and blue badges
Reviews
Attitudes
Other features and add-ons
Ideas for software changes
Trivia
Omissions

Introduction

Disclaimer

I have no wish to mislead anybody, so I try to keep informed of developments. However, Amazon change their software when they choose to, without notice and usually without telling anybody, although they do announce major changes. I try to keep the information up to date, but I can't update things I don't know about. See Disclaimers and Add your comments please.

The intent

The idea is to provide short answers where possible and long answers where needed. The short answers follow the questions. The long answers direct you elsewhere, usually to one or more of my other blog posts. Some blog posts are mentioned in the answers to more than one question.

By the nature of Amazon’s software and the shroud of secrecy that envelops it, it is not always possible to answer questions conclusively. See Shroud of secrecy. When questions involve aspects of people’s behavior, there are normally multiple answers.

Although I wrote this blog post primarily for Amazon.com users, most of it applies to other Amazon websites too. Where there are known differences, these are noted. However, the differences between the various sites are fewer than they once were.

Terminology

Reviewers use some weird jargon.
Can you explain some of the terms?

Words and phrases

Blockbuster reviews	see jackpot reviews below
Campaign votes	may be helpful or unhelpful, and are cast by customers who like or dislike a particular reviewer or product.
Current ranking system	A numerical ranking system introduced by Amazon in October 2008 in America and in March 2010 in Europe. Until the second ranking system was abolished in December 2011, the current ranking system was referred to as the new system. You may still find that term in this blog, but I am phasing it out.
Fan	a customer designated by Amazon because of voting for or against that reviewer several times - also see questions further down about fan votes.
Fourth ranking system	A (presumably) numerical ranking system not yet introduced by Amazon. It will become the current system if and when it is installed in both America and Europe. though it may not be installed worldwide simultaneously. During the transition if there is one, I'll call it the new American system within this blog or on UK forums. The system it replaces will become the third ranking system on this blog within a few days of that happening.
Generic reviews	the identical review used for multiple products, not necessarily variations of the same basic product. See Cheating or reviewing unethically on Amazon.
Hall of Fame	Amazon's list of current and former top ten reviewers on either the second or current ranking systems. It's not actually a hall of fame, but a ranking chart history.
Jackpot reviews	reviews that acquire hundreds or even thousands of YES votes while acquiring relatively few NO votes. When I use the term, I’m thinking of a review with around 500+ YES votes and with any NO votes accounting for under 10% of the total votes cast on that review. Others may have different minimums of 100, 200 or whatever.
Loyalty votes	not the same as fan votes - see question further down.
Neggies	negs / negative votes / spite votes / unhelpful votes / NO votes.
Negginator	somebody who habitually casts neggies, usually against a specific reviewer - may be designated a fan (see above) eventually.
One-hit wonder	a reviewer with just one review.
Original ranking system	Amazon's very early non-numerical ranking system, abolished circa 2000.
Pozzies	positive votes / helpful votes / YES votes.
Placeholder reviews	are provisional reviews, possibly prepared in advance, based on expectations of the product about to be released, and subsequently substantially edited once the reviewer knows the product.
Pre-release reviews	are reviews posted on Amazon for a product not publicly available at the time.
Rank-hog	somebody obsessed with their own ranking.
Second ranking system	A numerical ranking system introduced by Amazon circa 2000. Currently, it is often referred to as the old or classic system. You may still find those terms in this blog, but I am phasing them out.
Shill	a reviewer who has an undisclosed close relationship with the author, giving the impression of an enthusiastic independent customer. On Amazon, the shill could be the author using a sockpuppet account.
Sockpuppet	an online identity used for deception. See question further down for reviewers’ usages.
Spotlight reviews	are the three reviews (maximum) for each product that are displayed in full on the main product page.
Template reviews	are reviews by the same reviewer for similar products that share part of their reviews to describe the common features, but which are tailored for each individual product, thus distinguishing them from generic reviews (see above).
Trigger words	are words that cause Amazon's software to send reviews for inspection prior to them being posted publicly. See Review quality controls.
Troll	may be a negginator (see above) or somebody who posts on forums where they are unwelcome.
With respect	when used as a form of address, it is a most disingenuous phrase that really means with contempt.

Acronyms

ARAT	Amazon Reviewer Analysis Tool
ARC	advance review copy
AVP	Amazon Verified Purchase
DB	usually means the customer reviews discussion board, the original (external) Amazon forum, but sometimes used to mean any or a different forum
DTB	dead tree book (i.e. made from paper, whether recycled or not)
GBF	gold box forum
HK	Harriet Klausner
HKAS	(sarcastically titled) Harriet Klausner appreciation society
HOF	Hall of Fame
OOP	out of print
OP	opening post/poster
PDH	Plesiochronous digital hierarchy - but you knew that already :-)
TBR	to be read (or reviewer Timothy B Riley, depending on the context)
TRF	top reviewers forum
VV	Vine™ Voice (member of the Amazon Vine™ program)

For more acronyms, see Acronyms.

What is a sockpuppet in the context of reviewing?

Somebody who sets up multiple accounts to do one or more of :-

hide their reviews from negginators so that they can post on forums or comment on other people’s reviews with impunity and not worry about reprisals.

vote for themselves.

in the case of authors, review their own books.

Not all people who set up multiple accounts do so to cheat. See Multiple accounts for legitimate reasons, as well as dubious reasons, to set them up.

Search, contact and notification

I can’t find what I want on Amazon. What can I do?

Amazon’s search engines are poor, but made worse by products being classified incorrectly or by names and titles with wrong spellings. See Find the books and music you want on Amazon, which highlights problems that may help you with other searches too.

If you’re looking for a song but don’t remember the title, see Name that tune (You know some of the words).

How do I switch between different Amazon websites?

The standard way is to go to the bottom of most Amazon pages, where there should be a row of links to Amazon's other websites. These links go to the welcome page for each site. As Amazon progressively conquers the world, new links are added.

To bypass the welcome page and go straight to the corresponding page to wherever you are on the other website, you can try changing the URL. For example, to go from the USA to the UK, just change the website name in the URL where it says Amazon.com to say Amazon.co.uk, and most of the time you'll get the corresponding page. This trick is particularly useful for switching between profile pages, product pages, search pages and ranking table pages. If the corresponding page does not exist, you'll get an error message, for which see next question.

Why do I get an error message saying the web address is wrong?

You mean this one? (If not, read the possible answers anyway, as error messages can vary.)

Looking for something?

We're sorry. The Web address you entered is not a functioning page on our site.

This error occurs under the following conditions.

You clicked on a link to a page that Amazon haven't yet made universally available. Some pages are for pre-release products that are only available to selected customers, such as members of Amazon Vine™. Most links to those pages would not be accessible to the general public, but if the product has been reviewed by one of the selected customers who has access, there will be a link from that customer's review pages within their profile.

You clicked on a broken link within Amazon. This could mean that Amazon deleted the linked page and forgot to update the page, or it could be that Amazon can't find the page before it times out, because Amazon's database is so large that it cannot be held in one physical space, but is all over the place. Either way, you may wish to complain to Amazon. Note that a different We're sorry message sometimes occurs when looking through reviewer profile pages. It is explained further down, but is also caused by Amazon's database being all over the place.

You clicked on an external link to an old page that Amazon either couldn't find in time (see above) or deleted after the link was set up.

You tried switching to a different Amazon website by changing the URL, but the corresponding page does not exist on that website.

You typed, copied or edited the URL in some other way and got it wrong.

How do I contact Amazon customer service?

Via the small Help link at the top right of every Amazon page, or via Help and advice supplied by Amazon, which lists some of the more useful help links. You may contact Amazon via e-mail from anywhere in the world. Depending on where you live and which website you want to contact, you may also be allowed to contact Amazon by telephone.

How do I find a reviewer's Amazon profile?

The only way now that can catch any Amazon reviewer is Google. You may be able to get away with just putting the name in the standard search box, but that may produce too many entries, especially if the name is common, so you may need to narrow the search to reduce the list.

Click on Advanced search (to the right of the main Google search box)

Enter the reviewer’s name and the words profile reviews in the top box marked all these words

Enter the website name (amazon.com, amazon.co.uk or whatever) in the box titled Search by domain name

Click the Advanced search button and hope that you find what you are looking for in the results of the search.

If that method fails, what else can I try?

If you know of a product that the reviewer has reviewed, look up that product and find his or her review, then follow the link.

If you know that the reviewer posts on an Amazon forum (except the Associates forum or the old customer reviews discussion board, which are both external forums), find one of the reviewer's posts and follow the link in the top left.

If you know that the reviewer posts on any forum, including the Associates forum, the old customer reviews discussion board or any other external forum as well as standard Amazon forums, find the reviewer on that forum there, or ask other posters nicely.

If you know that the reviewer is highly ranked (top 10,000) in the ranking system, you can find them via the ranking table. Find any reviewer, go to their profile then click on the Top reviewer link. That takes you to the top of the rankings. This could be quite tedious if you're not sure of their approximate rankings. You can fiddle the page number in the URL as an alternative to the page number links. This can be useful if you want to jump in at a mid-point within the table.

How do I find a reviewer's account number?

The account number appears in the URL of any page specific to a customer including the profile page. The account number is a mix of letters and number beginning with A. In the profile page, it follows the /profile/ part of the URL.

How do I find reviews with star ratings by product?

There are two ways of doing this. In the first method, you mouse over the star rating near the top the product page, whereupon you are presented with a small pop-up that gives you a breakdown of reviews by star rating, with links for each rating. Click on whichever link you want and you'll see reviews for that product with that star rating, presented in Most helpful order according to Amazon's algorithm.

In the second method, scroll down the product page below the customer reviews, where you’ll find a text box titled Search Customer Reviews in the right-hand margin. Put in the word rating followed by a colon, a space and the star rating you are looking for, in the range 1 to 5, for example rating: 2. That will produce the same results as the first method, but with this method you can narrow the search by entering key words, with a space before the first word and between words. If you do that, only reviews containing the key words in the body of the review will show up. The search does not look at review captions. Of course, you may search for key words alone without the star rating.

Omission of the colon causes Amazon to assume that you want to search for reviews containing the word rating and the number that follows it; the likelihood is that it won't find anything that matches.

How do I find reviews with star ratings by reviewer?

You have to do this search from a product page, because there is no option to search within a profile. It does not matter what product you choose, as long as it has reviews; they do not have to include one by the reviewer you are looking for. Locate the text box titled Search Customer Reviews as mentioned above. Below the box is a check box titled Only search this product's reviews. It is automatically displayed with a tick, it being assumed that that’s what most people using the function want. Remove the tick to search reviews on all products.

Put in the word customer followed by a colon, a space and the account number (sometimes called the profile ID) of the reviewer you are looking for. Harriet Klausner’s account number is AFVQZQ8PW0L so if you want to find her reviews, you’d enter customer: AFVQZQ8PW0L. Enter a space followed by the star rating (and key words if you wish) as described above. Again, do not omit the colon after customer or rating. If you wish, narrow the search further by including key words.

You may use this search to combine key words with a specific customer but without a star rating. For example, you get particularly interesting results if you do the search for customer: APRY1W9VFEFQ6 willows on Amazon's UK website - but remember to un-check the tick-box. You could specify willows customer: APRY1W9VFEFQ6 instead - either way produces the same results.

How do I find a specific review that is buried on a product's back pages?

Locate the text box titled Search Customer Reviews within the relevant product page, then enter the word customer followed by a colon, a space and the account number, all as mentioned above. but leave the tick box checked so that only this product is searched. If the reviewer hasn't reviewed the product (or has deleted it, or if you miss out the colon or otherwise mistype something), you'll probably get a page saying There are no results for this query!. If the customer has reviewed it, you'll get a page showing the start of the review. If you search for a customer who has duplicate reviews, all duplicates should be offered. Click on the Read more link to see the whole review. You’ll then be allowed to vote or comment as you choose.

How do I receive e-mails notifying me of comments on my reviews?

When posting a review, tick the box asking if you want to receive e-mails. You shouldn’t have to do this again.

How do I receive e-mails notifying me of replies to my comments on other reviews?

When posting a comment, tick the box asking if you want to receive e-mails. You’ll need to do this every time you comment on a review that you haven’t previously commented on.

How do I contact a reviewer?

Having located the reviewer, ensure that you are on their main profile page rather than one of the review pages within their profile, then proceed as follows.

If they show an e-mail address, use it to contact them.

If they don’t show an e-mail address but they show a website link, contact them via that link.

If they show neither an e-mail address nor a website link, check their profile description to see if that helps. I know of at least one reviewer who puts the e-mail address there, but replacing the at sign and dot with words. Just like the website link, this reduces the volume of spam. Some authors use automated software to select reviewers, which is a bad idea because it often selects reviewers who aren’t interested in the product.

If no contact link is shown, they don’t want to be contacted. In that event, you may choose to post a comment on one of their reviews, but they may not appreciate the comment being used for that purpose.

How best can I find someone to review my book?

Ignore reviewer rankings. Many people get high rankings without reviewing any books. The days when Amazon mostly sold books are but a distant memory. In any case, even those who review books may not be interested in the type of book you want reviewed.

Look up reviews of similar books to identify suitable reviewers.

Click on their name.

Follow steps in How do I contact a reviewer? above.

If you contact them, remember to say what review(s) impressed you. It might make the difference.

Votes

What do Amazon mean by “Was this review helpful to you?”?

Amazon ask a (deliberately?) vague question that people interpret however they wish.

See Was this review helpful to you?.

Why do my reviews get unhelpful votes?

Ask yourself if you did the best review you could. If so, don’t worry about it as you can’t please everybody. If not, improve it. See Spiteful votes for possible reasons. See Write Amazon reviews for ideas to improve.

Unhelpful votes are often spiteful. What is the point of them?

Nobody likes receiving those dirty NO votes, but their abolition would create different problems.

See Abolish negative votes on reviews? for my analysis of the cases for and against abolition.

See Spiteful votes for reasons that people vote NO. They aren't all spite votes.

Facebook don't have YES/NO votes, only a LIKE option.
Why can't Amazon follow Facebook's example?

There are like options on Facebook that can be cancelled (but not negated) by use of the unlike option. There is no dislike option. I suppose this is intended to keep everything warm and fuzzy, but Facebook is a social networking site, not a commercial business. Even on Facebook, things can become quite nasty. Indeed, mainstream news reports nastiness far more often regarding Facebook than Amazon.

Amazon's reviews are intended to be used by customers making buying decisions, and therefore a dislike option is needed so that customers can push bad reviews down the spotlighting order. Reliance on a lack of YES votes would not achieve this because plenty of good reviews don't get seen by customers due to their product's popularity. It would also put newly posted reviews near the bottom of the order.

See Abolish negative votes on reviews?.

How can I report campaign voting to Amazon?

See Cheating or reviewing unethically on Amazon for descriptions of the issues.

See Complain to Amazon about a reviewer for creating and sending the actual complaint.

Why can't I vote for my wife's reviews?

You cannot vote for your own reviews.

Even if you and your wife have separate Amazon accounts, you probably share a computer.

Even if you each have a computer, you may occasionally log on to Amazon using your wife's computer, or vice-versa.

Amazon's software is clever enough to know that your account and your wife's account are somehow connected.

Amazon therefore play safe and disallow your votes for each other.

Some years before the introduction of the current ranking system and its associated fan voter system, somebody posted on a forum the story about him, his girlfriend and their Amazon accounts. They lived separately, had separate computers and Amazon had no way of linking them. One day, one of them logged on to their Amazon account on the other's computer. Not long after that, all their votes for each other disappeared and they were never able to vote for each other again.

Why do Amazon occasionally say that a reviewer has 100% helpful votes when they don't?

This is due to rounding because Amazon do not show decimal places, only integer percentages. It is compounded by Amazon rounding up any remainder rather than applying standard mathematical rules and rounding to the nearest integer.

Applying standard mathematical rules, 995 out of 1,000 would round up to 100%, but 994 out of 1,000 would round down to 99%.

Under Amazon's rules, 991 out of 1,000 rounds up to 100%, as does 9,901 out of 10,000.

Why are votes on my reviews disappearing?

Anti-campaign software cancels most fan votes. By cancelling rather than deleting them, it ensures that the voters cannot ever again reinstate their votes. Of course, if the reviewer subsequently deletes and re-posts the review, it is a different review as far as the software is concerned, but it does not automatically follow that the original voter can vote on the re-posted review.

How can I tell which reviews are getting new votes?

You can't easily tell just by looking up pages on Amazon. However, there is a software tool for PC users to allow them to look at reviews in ways that Amazon won’t allow. This makes it easier to keep track of new votes, lost votes and deleted reviews. See Analyse your reviews and track votes with ARAT.

Can I tell who is voting for or against my reviews?

Not normally. Sometimes you can tell with near-certainty and at other times you may have suspicions, but most of the time there are no clues to go on. Only Amazon have the definitive information, and they don't allow external software access to it. See Show names of people who vote on reviews?

Fans

What are fans as defined by Amazon?

Fan totals are only shown on Amazon.com, but exist hidden away on other sites. As defined by Amazon, fans are people who have voted for or against your reviews several times, so a negginator may count as a fan. Once they become a fan, they can only vote for you occasionally if at all. Some fans are never allowed to vote for you again. The fan system is Amazon’s greatest mystery, ahead even of the current ranking system. See Fan voters.

What happens with votes after someone becomes a fan?

It seems that at the point of somebody being designated a fan of a particular reviewer, their previous votes for or against that reviewer are removed but this does not affect the reviewer's ranking, suggesting that Amazon give ranking points to reviewers for having fans. See Fan voters.

How many times can I vote for or against a particular reviewer before being designated a fan?

Nobody knows, but I think the answer is that it depends.

I have seen people say that you are allowed 5 YES votes and I've also seen other people say that you are allowed 3 or 4 NO votes, but I think these claims are based on votes that occur in quick succession, and all the same type of vote. Amazon's software could easily recognize such voting as the behavior of customers voting for or against the reviewer rather than the actual reviews.

Amazon prefer customers to vote for or against the actual reviews. Customers who do that are less likely to vote a lot for any particular reviewer, and they are more likely to mix YES and NO votes for the same reviewer. I suspect that Amazon's software recognizes different voting habits and treats them accordingly. This would also explain why some customers are allowed to vote for reviewers that they have been designated fans of, providing they do so in moderation, while other customers are not.

What were loyalty votes?

(For historians only)

The second ranking system only counted ten votes per customer when calculating a reviewer’s total ranking points. Loyalty votes were the excess votes beyond the first ten. Because of the way the fan system works, some customers won’t even be allowed to vote for or against ten of your reviews, but some will be able to vote for or against more than ten. Thus, there may be some votes that appear on your reviews and which count towards your current ranking and product page placement, but which did not count towards your second ranking. See Amazon's three reviewer ranking systems explained and Fan voters.

Reviewer rankings and blue badges

Why did Amazon have two ranking systems?

(For historians only)

Amazon had two ranking systems from October 23rd 2008 in America and from March 9th 2010 in Europe, when the current ranking system was introduced. Abolition of the second system happened in America and Europe simultaneously on December 8th, 2011. Amazon may initially have been afraid of losing more customers if they abolished the second ranking system too quickly, but they eventually did just that.

How did the second and current ranking systems differ?

(For historians only)

The second ranking system only allowed a few points to be awarded per review however many votes a review acquired. The effect was to favor reviewers who wrote lots of reviews and acquired a few votes each on plenty of them. The system therefore rewarded hard work over a long period of time, so most of the top reviewers on that system were old-timers. Newer reviewers found it hard to make headway.

The current system was designed as a sort of antidote to the second system. It rewards recent activity, but particularly rewards those who post jackpot reviews, providing those reviewers continue to post new reviews. People can sometimes gain a high ranking very quickly, the extreme case being Debbie Jones in the UK, who made it to #1 having only been reviewing for exactly three months to the day. Of course, the volatility built into the system means that even reviewers who regularly post reviews find it tough to defend their ranking if they don't have a review that keeps acquiring a steady stream of votes.

See Amazon's three reviewer ranking systems explained, which also briefly mentions the original reviewer ranking system that pre-dates both of the systems we are familiar with.

If you are interested in how the second ranking system was reverse-engineered, see Proof of the second ranking system's mathematics.

If you wonder why it’s so hard for Amazon to come up with a ranking system that is fair, see Votes and rankings in the real world.

Will there be a fourth ranking system?

It may be that Amazon are developing ranking system number four. If that happens, it will change a lot of things on Amazon generally and also in this blog. Nobody outside Amazon knows when it will happen, and it is still possible that it doesn't happen at all. Perhaps the December 2011 changes are all that we will get for a while.

Amazon's USA and UK sites never give any warnings except by accident (and such an accident caused the speculation about ranking system number four; some other things implicit in that e-mail came true), so don't be surprised if you log on one day to find the current rankings have been replaced by a different system.

See the section in Harriet Klausner's reviews titled Now the second ranking system has gone for my thoughts on the issue as it specifically applies to Harriet Klausner.

Amazon Germany have been known to give warnings on rare occasions, but even then they are likely to be only a few hours in advance of the event. With the abolition of the second ranking sysystem, I lost my top 100 status there and probably won't receive any more e-mails from them, but I really appreciated the one they sent to me in March 2010.

Why do Amazon rank book reviewers against gadget reviewers?

Put that way, there isn’t really any point, but Amazon established the first numerical ranking system when they sold mostly books, music and movies. At that point or not long afterwards, they considered the idea of category rankings. I’d love to see category rankings, but I can see why Amazon don’t want to provide them.

Departmental categories (books, music, DVD, electronics, toys, etc.) would be useful up to a point, but wouldn't of themselves satisfy everybody.

Lower level categories would cause no end of controversy because

Many products are wrongly classified, especially but not only in music.

There is no clear agreement on how a lot of products should be classified anyway.

No ranking algorithm that Amazon have yet implemented would be a good basis for category rankings.

Screen displays, however done, would provide further controversy.

Computer time could be an issue if too many categories are ranked.

See Rank reviewers by product category?.

Do votes on images and comments count towards reviewer rankings?

I very much doubt it. In the past, Amazon always said No and it was certainly true for the second ranking system. It is possible that the current system counts votes for them, but the admittedly limited evidence I’ve seen so far indicates No there too. The anti-campaign software only concerns itself with reviews, which also suggests that the answer is No.

A few people have asserted that at the very least, votes on lists and guides counted towards the current rankings before such votes were removed. While some reviewers are adamant that big changes in their rankings were due to list and guide votes, most of the evidence I saw contradicted them, and the anti-campaign software never cleared out bogus votes on lists and guides. Had I known earlier that some people believed such votes made a difference, I may have studied the issue, but I only found out after the votes had been removed.

Why do some reviewers have top reviewer badges that don't agree with their rankings?

Badges are not updated as quickly as the actual rankings, so somebody who has recently crossed a badge boundary in either direction (for example, entering or dropping out of the top 500) may still keep their old badge for a few days while the system catches up. In the interim, people can have different badges on their profile to those showing on product pages. Ranking system changes cause a lot of badge changes, but these also take a few days to take effect.

I don't want to be part of the stupid rankings game.
Can I opt out?

Yes. Just send an e-mail to the relevant Amazon site(s), but remember that if you opt out, it is almost certainly for life. Amazon don't take kindly to requests from people wanting to have their rankings restored, so while they have been known to let people back in, they don't usually do so.

Why don't Amazon restore people's rankings if they want to opt in again?

Probably because the option would be abused, as so many other things are abused on Amazon.

When are rankings updated?

Usually every day, but there can be delays, particularly during busy periods.

See Updates to Amazon's rankings.

What is the reward for a high reviewer ranking?

Normally, the only tangible rewards come in the form of offers of free stuff to review, almost always books. If you make it to the top ten, and especially if you make it to #1, you may occasionally attract attention from other sources, particularly the media who are sometimes cruel to reviewers. In 2010, Amazon.com sent Christmas cards to a few of the top reviewers on the current ranking system. Amazon.co.uk did not follow their example. Occasionally, reviewers receive other offers on the basis of their Amazon profiles (attending workshops, judging competitions, etc.) but these are extremely rare. See also the section in Harriet Klausner's reviews titled How influential is the #1 reviewer badge?.

The intangible rewards include a greater awareness of your reviews, but this cuts both ways as customers can get upset if they see a reviewer with a high ranking who they think does not deserve it.

How did Harriet Klausner become #1 reviewer?

She posted more reviews than anybody else, and those reviews were often the first review for the product, usually a few days ahead of anybody else. Even though most people regard them as being of poor quality, they have collected far more than 90,000 YES votes, scattered widely over many reviews. The second ranking system has now been abolished, but she now has a #1 Hall of Fame reviewer badge instead of her old #1 reviewer badge.

What is the Hall of Fame?

It's not actually a hall of fame, but a ranking chart history, listing people who have made the top ten in whatever reviewer rankings were used at the time. In the USA only, it also includes people who were in the top 100 of the second system at the time it was abandoned. See Hall of Fame or Amazon pop chart history?.

Where can I find the Hall of Fame?

Go to the ranking table page, where there is a Hall of Fame tab in the location previously occupied by the tab for the second ranking system. That takes you to the Hall of Fame Reviewers page, (My link is for the American site, but you can get to other sites from it just by replacing the dot com in the URL by whatever the suffix is for your required site.)

How can I improve my reviewer rankings?

Write the best reviews you can in the style you like to read. Like-minded people will find and appreciate them. See these posts.

Improve your reviewer rankings

Improve your Amazon reviewer ranking
Write Amazon reviews
Other people discuss writing Amazon reviews

What do those blue reviewer badges signify?

See Badges for Amazon's official explanation of the following badges.

2008 Holiday Team
Amazon official
Artist
Author
Community forum 04
Manufacturer
Real Name™
The
Vine™ Voice

#1 reviewer
Top 10 reviewer
Top 50 reviewer
Top 100 reviewer
Top 500 reviewer
Top 1000 reviewer
#1 Hall of Fame reviewer
Hall of Fame reviewer

The Amazon Verified Purchase badge is not defined there, because Amazon say it is a label, not a badge. However, I call it a badge because on product pages, it stands out more than the blue badges. To my mind, a badge should be more conspicuous than a label, not the other way round.

What is the official definition of a top reviewer?

Good question. Amazon have never officially defined top reviewers as far as I know, and the conclusions that can be drawn from their references are contradictory.

Before the current ranking system came along, the ranking tables displayed all reviewers from top to bottom, and all pages proclaimed that these were Amazon's top reviewers. Therefore on that basis, everybody who had a reviewer ranking was regarded as a top reviewer.

When the current ranking system came along, the ranking tables displayed only the top 10,000 reviewers in each system, until the second system was abolished, and only the top 10,000 in the current system thereafter. Therefore on that basis, everybody who was in either top 10,000 (while both systems operated) or the current top 10,000 (since the second ranking system was abolished) is a top reviewer. Since only 1,000 pages are displayed and the second ranking system allowed for ties, there may have been some people who were tied at (say) 9,980 but who were not shown in those tables.

Top reviewer badges have only ever been awarded to top 1,000 reviewers, including ties on the second system when it operated. Therefore on that basis, only badged reviewers, approximating to the top 1,000 on each system, are top reviewers. Now that we are down to one system that doesn't allow ties, that is exactly 1,000 reviewers.

Amazon's USA site sent out Christmas cards in 2010 to its top 10 (?) reviewers on the current system at the time, so maybe Amazon only regard those reviewers as top reviewers.

Like I said, I have never seen an official definition. Choose or make up your own definition and stick with that. Personally, I have never tried to define a top reviewer, but any definition of mine would require a minimum number of reviews to show commitment, plus a minimum helpfulness ratio to show customer approval. I don't know what those minimums would be, nor do I know if there would be other criteria. I would not automatically include all highly ranked reviewers, reflecting my feelings about rankings. If Amazon ever install a ranking system that I approve of (and not merely as better than what we have now), I may regard the top N in that system as top reviewers. Neither the second nor the current system come close, even allowing that no computerized system can be perfect.

What do those top reviewer badges truly mean?

Not as much as some people would have you believe. The badges of themselves are meaningless because Amazon's second and current ranking systems are both arbitrary. When there were two operational systems, they sometimes more or less agree with each other by giving people vaguely similar ranks, but at other times diametrically oppose each other, as evidenced by two top 100 reviewers on the second system in America being ranked among the worst on the current system. One thing is clear - the so called top reviewers are not necessarily the best on any given subject. For example, I achieved my top reviewer status primarily on the basis of my music reviews (and not normally the popular stuff) but I have also reviewed books and a few other things. A laptop review from me would be useless because I've never used one. That might change, but I probably wouldn't review it because I rarely review anything other than books and music. So my advice is don't worry about whether somebody is designated by Amazon as a top reviewer. Just judge each review on its own quality. Make a note of the reviewer's name if you wish, then if you keep coming across the same name on different products, you may decide that you can trust (or avoid) them. See also the section in Harriet Klausner's reviews titled How influential is the #1 reviewer badge?.

Reviews

Are there any official rules about writing reviews?

The official rules can be found in Amazon's review guidelines. Though called guidelines, some are enforced by Amazon while others aren't. The main points (not always quoted verbatim) are:

Written reviews must be at least 20 words long. Amazon say that the ideal length is 75 to 500 words - or 75 to 300, depending on where you look. 300 is the old upper end of the range and it seems that Amazon forgot to change it everywhere when they extended the range.

Your review should focus on specific features of the product and your experience with it.

Feedback on the seller or your shipment experience should be provided at Feedback and not in a review.

Amazon do not allow profane or obscene content. This applies to adult products too.

Advertisements, promotional material or repeated posts that make the same point excessively are considered spam.

Do not include URLs external to Amazon or personally identifiable content in your review.

Amazon welcome your honest opinion about products, positive or negative. They do not remove reviews just because they are critical. In reality, critical reviews are more likely to be rejected because they are generally less well written than enthusiastic reviews.

Although reference to prices in the official guidelines has been removed, it remains advisable to avoid them, not least because they can go up or down. It is better to allude to prices with adjectives such as bargain, expensive or whatever. Remember that customers may read your review months or years after you write it.

How long should reviews be?

I've already mentioned Amazon's official guidelines, but it's really not that simple, not least because it depends what you are reviewing. Books are usually suited to longer reviews than music, while gadgets with lots of things to discuss may be suited to even longer reviews.

Amazon supposedly allow an absolute maximum of 5,000 words, but there are a few reviews on Amazon.com that exceed 5,000 words. Personally, I think 75 is a good minimum, but my reviews have, on average, got longer as I've gained experience.

A lot of people say that most customers prefer short reviews. Voting patterns suggest otherwise, because if you look up the product pages of a range of products, you are likely to find that most of the spotlight reviews are longer than average. If it is true that most customers prefer short reviews, it seems that those people who like short reviews are less inclined to vote, while those who allow themselves time to read long reviews are more inclined to vote.

You should write the kind of reviews that you like to read and like-minded customers will appreciate them. See Write Amazon reviews.

How do Amazon select spotlight reviews?

By a mathematical formula that, as far as I know, nobody has tried to work out. I don't think it would be difficult if one were prepared to spend the time needed, but it might take a lot of time. It clearly weighs NO votes more heavily than YES votes. You can get some idea of how it works by looking at products with lots of reviews.

When there are two or more reviews with identical voting scores, they are presented in date order with the most recent first. Despite assertions that reviewer rankings are factored in, they aren't. There was a period a few years ago when they were a factor, but that was a long time ago.

At first glance, the system appears to be crazy, but the spotlighting algorithm is not just designed to pick out the most helpful reviews. It also allows newer reviews some sort of chance by rating voteless reviews and those reviews that only have YES votes more highly than most customers think they deserve. A comparable effect might be achieved (and maybe with better results) by including date written as a main factor, rather than only using dates as tie-breaks for reviews with equal voting scores.

Why do Amazon allow pre-release reviews?

Amazon don't allow them as often as they once did, but they still do sometimes. They hope that reviewers know enough about the product to generate some buzz, but they've learned that such reviews are generally of a poor quality. See Pre-release reviews for an exchange I had with Amazon over one particular case, including examples of pre-release reviews.

Are video reviews worth doing?

For the right product where a visual demonstration helps, yes, providing you have the skill to do it properly as illustrated by the video review of the Garmin Friction Mount. Do not bother if all you do is talk without demonstrating anything; it would be seen as ego tripping. One reviewer enquired about the possibility of doing a music review utilizing sound clips from the album, but the rules do not permit this, probably because of copyright issues.

Why hasn't my review posted yet?

It has been identified as a review that needs to be checked by a human. As far as I know, video reviews are always checked manually, because the automatic filtering software cannot process them.

Allow 48 hours before either attempting to post again or contacting Amazon. Note that it is best to write your reviews offline and save them, then paste them into Amazon’s space. This ensures you have a copy in case it doesn’t post, but also allows you to spell check the review first and to re-read the review once you’ve written it. See Review quality controls.

In America, Amazon now send out e-mails (unless you opt out of them) after you post a review. This only began at the end of August 2011. If your review there doesn't post immediately, you should get an acknowledgement that will give a generic explanation, which I have yet to see but will post when I see one. If Amazon reject your review, you get a generic e-mail saying so but not explaining why. For a sample, see Rejected review message.

Why won't Amazon tell me exactly why my review has been held up?

Because Amazon's policy is to filter a proportion of reviews. If they tell us exactly what the rules are, even if they only do it bit by bit, people will more easily learn how to avoid the filters and Amazon might then add extra filters. Some of us have a fair idea of how the system works as I explain in Review quality controls. In some cases, if you telephone Amazon and ask nicely, you may be told exactly why your review was rejected, but that costs money. Maybe Amazon feel that you deserve the information if you go that much effort. However, in most cases you should be able to work it out for yourself, perhaps with reference to Review quality controls.

Why did Amazon delete my review?

Maybe Amazon deleted it, maybe not. If not, customers deleted it via the Report this link, which counts how many customers do that for each review. It used to be that if some magic number (believed to be ten) was reached, the review was deleted automatically. The magic number has since been replaced by an algorithm because the system was too easily gamed, but it is likely that the review is deleted automatically if enough customers use the Report this link associated with a particular review, at least on Amazon.com; I have suspicions that Amazon UK may remove such reviews from public view, then send them through the filtering system normally used for some new reviews.

If Amazon deleted your review following an e-mail complaint, you probably deserved to have it deleted. See Review quality controls and Disappearing reviews, lists and guides.

How much time should I spend writing a review?

As long as you feel is necessary to do the best review you can. I once spent a week writing a review for a CD whose playing time was little more than half an hour, though that was exceptional for me.

Why do so many Amazon reviews carry five stars?

Basically because people aren’t paid anything. They do it for fun. They choose what to review, which for the most part are things they enjoy, especially if they’re reviewing books, music, movies and games. See Star ratings on Amazon reviews.

Surely five stars should be reserved for perfect products?

Amazon‘s rating system recommends that five stars should be used to indicate I love, which allows for some imperfections. See Star ratings on Amazon reviews.

How can you love or hate purely functional items like cables and towels?

You can't, but Amazon devised their rating scale when they just sold books, music, movies and (maybe) games. These are all emotional products that people can love or hate, though they don't necessarily do so. Amazon's product range has expanded substantially since then, but the range of emotions expressed in the scale is still valid. See Star ratings on Amazon reviews.

A lot of people give five stars for products that I know are bad.
Surely this proves that Amazon reviews cannot be trusted?

No. It just means that their opinion is different from yours, most likely because we all have different experiences and want different things. We even use some gadgets in different ways. See Star ratings on Amazon reviews.

Should I review a product I bought and used that has technical aspects if I do not understand how the technical aspects work?

Yes, as long as you have something to say and you feel comfortable reviewing it. Look at other reviews of similar products (not necessarily the same product) and see what other reviewers have said. You’ll probably find a mix of highly technical reviews, non-technical reviews and some that have some basic technical stuff but not too much. Draw inspiration from, but do not plagiarize, any reviews that you feel good about.

Should I include my deeply felt personal beliefs in a review?

If you want to do this, it is best to do so in a way that as far as possible avoids annoying anybody who disagrees with you. You can’t avoid it completely, but you don’t need to say (or even imply) that anybody who disagrees with you is a moron. Generally, restraint is a good thing in reviews, which are meant to aid buying decisions. See Write Amazon reviews.

Why do I get an error message when I look through somebody's reviews and what can I do about it?

Amazon's database is so large that it cannot be held in one physical space, but is all over the place. If Amazon cannot find a page within a certain time, it times out with an error message as follows.

We're sorry, but this customer's list of reviews is currently not available. Please check back soon.

You can keep refreshing the page and if you do so enough times, Amazon should eventually find it, but this process can be tedious. An alternative method (if you have a Windows computer) is to use ARAT. See Analyse your reviews and track votes with ARAT.

In September 2011, it seems that Amazon addressed this problem, as some reviewers noticed that they don't get the error on their reviews anymore. However, I still get the error occasionally so the problem is still there.

Why do I get a message saying I've already posted a review of that product?

I assume you mean the oops message that reads as follows.

Oops! Only one review per customer per product set is allowed.

You have already reviewed this product. We only allow each customer to write one review of each product set. An example of a product set is the collection of all editions of a book: hardcover, paperback and audio book. If you'd like, you can edit your existing review.

As that message indicates, it may be that you have tried to review a product that Amazon have linked to a different (supposedly related) product that you have already reviewed, but it may also be that you submitted a review of the same product already. Either way, you should be able to see your review on the product page if Amazon have posted it. If it is an old review, it may be buried on the product's back pages. See earlier question in Search, contact and notification section. If you only posted the review quite recently, it may be held up while Amazon check the review to see if it is acceptable. See Review quality controls. Most such reviews show up within 48 hours. If Amazon reject a review, the reviewer should be allowed to re-submit, but such re-submission will automatically be filtered for checking.

Is it OK for an author to review his or her own book?

No. Ask Amazon about facilities for authors. There are ways of promoting your book, but not within customer reviews. Customers sometimes like to know what an author has to say, but it is a bad idea for an author to pose as a customer. Authors are allowed to review books by other authors, but if there is mutual back-scratching, customers will notice that too.

Can I review something that I didn't buy from Amazon?

Yes. Amazon’s Japanese site made a rule that only stuff bought from there could be reviewed, but they eventually revoked that rule. Amazon's USA site indicates reviews of purchases from that site (but not from other Amazon sites) by marking them Amazon Verified Purchase, but of itself that badge does not mean that the review is good.

Do I have to read the whole book?

If it's a novel or a book that tells a story such that it reads like a novel, yes unless you have a good reason for being unable to finish it and clearly explain why. If it is any other type of book, then you don't have to read the whole book but you must read enough of it to be able to write a valid review, and in the case of practical books (cookery, etc.), you should sample enough of the advice given therein to judge it. See Write Amazon reviews.

Why do some reviewers have multiple accounts?

Most customers tend to be suspicious of such reviewers, on the basis that anybody with multiple accounts must be cheating, or at least unethical, and I've already mentioned sockpuppets. It is therefore understandable that suspicions are aroused, but there are legitimate reasons too, including security issues. See Multiple accounts for details.

Who owns the copyright on Amazon reviews?

The writers of those reviews. All Amazon reviewers continue to hold the copyright on their reviews, but grant Amazon a nonexclusive right to more or less do what they like with them. However, the reviews do not become Amazon's property even though the terms and conditions mean that in practice, the difference appears technical. Because the right granted to Amazon is nonexclusive, it means that reviewers can also do what they like with their own reviews.

Other websites that accept reviews are not always so generous. Some of them have terms and conditions that grant ownership and copyright of any reviews to the website owner. I think that this means that the writers are no longer able to do what they like with their own reviews. If you decide to post your reviews elsewhere, I recommend reading the small print first.

Why are there so many reviews about shipping and delivery?

About a month after an order is dispatched, the customer gets an e-mail suggesting that they write reviews of the products (unless he or she has already started reviewing stuff from the order), something like this.

Dear [Customer],

Thank you for your recent purchase from Amazon.com.

We invite you to submit a review for the product you purchased or share an image that would benefit other customers. Your input will help customers choose the best products on Amazon.com.

It's easy to submit a review--just click the Review this product button next to the product.

I saw a suggestion that the e-mail is poorly worded and some people may not realize that Amazon are looking for reviews, but it seems clear enough to me. A lot of customers apparently don’t understand what is required and just comment on shipping and delivery or post an equally meaningless review. In America, such reviews are marked Amazon Verified Purchase if the order was placed there. Perhaps Amazon could clarify the e-mail by saying what is not allowed, such as seller feedback.

What useful purpose do joke reviews serve?

While it may be rare for customers to buy products based on joke reviews (though that does happen), joke reviews amuse a lot of customers and help to sustain their interest in Amazon, so joke reviews help Amazon's business indirectly. See Joke reviews.

Can I post my reviews on other Amazon websites?

Yes, but I recommend that you check to see if your reviews need modifying for customers in the country where you intend posting. See Copy your reviews to another Amazon website.

Is it ethical to delete and re-post reviews?

If you want to get rid of spiteful comments, I would say yes. Otherwise it’s a tricky question. See Deleting and re-posting reviews.

Can I prevent people seeing my reviews via my profile?

No. It used to be possible to post reviews that appeared on product pages and in a private section of your profile that only you could see. Apart from reviews attributed to A kid’s review, the option was blocked long ago because authors abused the option by posting many thousands of shill reviews. See Private reviews.

What are permalinks on reviews?

Permalinks exist all over the net, particularly on forums and blogs, but Amazon use them on reviews too. They ensure a unique and permanent link for each review that they apply to. Review permalinks are particularly useful for linking to reviews from blogs and websites, but can also be used in e-mails, forum posts and other messages. On each review, the link to the permalink page is underneath the review alongside the comment link. The comment takes you to the same page, but skips past the actual review.

Why do my Amazon reviews appear on loads of websites?
I never knew most of these websites existed.

When you post a review on Amazon, you give Amazon a nonexclusive right to distribute the review wherever they like, but you still own the review and can therefore distribute the review wherever you like. See Make a little money from Amazon (if you don't live in the wrong place).

Please note that your review could end up at a porn site, a gambling site or any other kind of website that's out there. If this upsets you, then you have to decide whether you wish to review on Amazon at all, and if so whether to change your reviewing policy in any way. Some people have deleted all their reviews from Amazon as a consequence of discovering that Amazon sub-license them.

Why do Amazon's UK and Canada sites sometimes offer American reviews?

As of December 2010, this was a beta test feature. You will sometimes see a review marked as follows.

Published on Amazon U.S.

The product in question has a maximum of two reviews on the relevant site, so Amazon provide an extra review (the one deemed most helpful according to Amazon's strange algorithm) from the American site. Unfortunately, they don't check to see whether the selected review duplicates one that they already have. Because I generally post my reviews to both UK amd USA sites, and because I review a lot of products that few other people review, plenty of my reviews show up twice, one being the version I posted in the UK and the other being the USA version.

Attitudes

How does Harriet Klausner get through so many books?

Harriet Klausner doesn’t read books the way you or I would read books. Maybe she only reads the publisher's publicity blurbs. Nevertheless, she has purchased well over 200 books from Amazon. I wonder if she read those books properly. See Harriet Klausner's reviews.

NOTE - Harriet Klausner normally only posts reviews in America, though some of her reviews also appear in Britain, Canada and Germany; links are in the table below. Most of the reviews in Canada and Germany were copied to those sites by Amazon, when Amazon were setting up those sites.

Harriet Klausner's profiles

America	Britain	Canada	Germany

Does Harriet Klausner write all those reviews herself?

In all likelihood, yes. I've seen the theory that she could have a team of people working for her, but no evidence to support that idea. Given that she doesn't appear to spend much time with each book, she could easily knock out two or maybe three reviews in an hour. The uniform style of her reviews points to her doing it all herself. Sure, there is variation between different genres, but that’s to be expected. See Harriet Klausner's reviews.

Is Harriet Klausner paid anything beyond getting the books free?

I very much doubt it. Anybody paying for reviews would expect better quality. I think the reason for her prolific output is much more likely to be addiction. See Harriet Klausner's reviews. Amazon's removal of all 186,000+ reviews by Midwest Book Review in December 2011 shows that nobody is above their rules.

Were there more cheaters among the top reviewers on the second ranking system than there are among the top reviewers on the current rankings?

We have no way of knowing, although there were several highly ranked reviewers on the second system who got there by cheating, while others including Harriet Klausner review unethically. It was easier to spot cheating on the second system, but it might actually be easier to cheat on the current system. See Cheating or reviewing unethically on Amazon.

Why would anybody post reviews in a foreign country?

Amazon only have websites in ten countries, of which nine allow customer reviews, these being America, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Spain, so anybody living in (for example) Ireland, South Africa, Austria or Australia has to post reviews in a foreign country if they want to post them on Amazon. Amazon have a website in Austria that does not allow customers to post reviews there, but uses reviews posted in Germany. Amazon have their European headquarters in Ireland but do not operate a customer website there.

I’ve been a customer of various Amazon websites since 1999. A lot of the music I enjoy is American and not all of it is available in Britain. More of it is available as imports but even Amazon UK don’t list everything and some of what is listed may not be available. I have over 450 Amazon Verified Purchase badges in America (not including my European Amazon purchases, because only American purchases qualify), illustrating my commitment to that site despite limited resources these days; I bought a lot in the period when I had a paid job. In any case, Amazon UK provided appalling service to reviewers in its early years and if I had been limited to posting my reviews there, I might have given up during that period. I get most of my reviewing fun out of the USA site, with any excitement provided in the UK being a bonus. Links to my Amazon profiles can be found in What is Amazon?.

Other reviewers who post in multiple countries may be expatriates who have a vested interest in both countries, or they may simply want to allow more people to see their reviews. Who knows? I’m sure there are a lot of different reasons.

Why do some reviewers think they are special to Amazon?

The reason why some reviewers think they are special to Amazon is that apart from whatever reviewers spend themselves, they also influence a lot of other spending. I think a lot of that other money would have been spent on Amazon anyway, although maybe on different products. Obviously not all of it, otherwise Amazon wouldn't continue to support such an expensive system.

Not all reviewers think that reviewers are special customers; I certainly don't. That said, the introduction of the Hall of Fame reviewer badges in December 2011 suggests that Amazon may regard reviewers more highly than they have traditionally shown, although Amazon admitted in their announcement that the Hall of Fame and associated badges were introduced to replace the second ranking system.

Nevertheless, I think that some reviewers over-rate the importance of their reviews, and think that Amazon under-rate them. They can't understand why Amazon are often quick to deal with problems of ordering and delivery, but don't react the same way with reviewing problems. It's simple. Amazon could delete every review and still be quite a successful business, albeit less successful than it is now, but they need orders to keep the business going. See Attitudes to Amazon reviews and reviewers and Stereotypes for other perspectives on reviewers.

Should I trust reviews that are not marked Amazon Verified Purchase?

NOTE - this question does not apply to Amazon’s European websites, which have not installed these Amazon Verified Purchase badges. I have not checked Canada, China or Japan.

Judge each review on its own merits, ignoring any labels or badges. If you are in doubt, then ask yourself Is the reviewer familiar with the product?.

Reviews that are marked Amazon Verified Purchase may have been bought as gifts, so the purchaser may not know much about the product, but may still review it and that review will be marked Amazon Verified Purchase.

Recipients of such gifts will not have their gifts so marked, nor will people who have bought products from other sources (including Amazon’s websites in Europe, Asia and Canada), nor will people who have borrowed books from friends, family or libraries.

Despite the enthusiasm that some customers have for Amazon Verified Purchase badges, some reviewers prefer not to disclose their purchase history and suppress the badges, either by being careful when they post reviews or by setting up separate buying accounts to ensure those Amazon Verified Purchase badges do not appear.

See Verified purchase badges.

Should I use my actual name for reviewing on Amazon?

Ultimately, each individual must judge what is right for them. I know of people that have had bad experiences in real life as a result of using their real name on Amazon, but I have not encountered any problems so far. Using your real name may give you extra credibility with some customers but that is trivial compared to security issues, so you must decide for yourself. See Choose a name to review as.

Why doesn't anyone else think I am funny if I think I am funny?

Unless you have a natural talent for it, writing reviews that are truly funny is very difficult. Sadly, most reviews that try to be funny don’t impress me although there are exceptions and I treasure those. Then again, my sense of humor is not always shared by others. I used to find reviews by one particular reviewer hilarious but others complained and Amazon eventually deleted them all as I feared would happen, not because they were funny but because he broke the rules about how to write reviews. Some years later, he started again with a different name. Of course, if you’re going to be truly funny, it can be quite hard to stick to the rules. I occasionally include a touch of humor in my reviews when a suitable opportunity arises but I don’t set out to be funny when writing reviews, although I occasionally do when writing blog posts – for example in Assemble furniture from kits (badly).

Other features and extras

How do I get on the Amazon Vine™ program?

Vine™ is by invitation only. Just keep writing good reviews and hope. Nobody outside Amazon knows the criteria, but it seems that having a recent review with a lot of YES votes improves your chances considerably. It doesn’t have to be a jackpot review, but the more YES votes the better. See Amazon Vine™.

Does a reviewer with a Vine™ Voice badge get free copies of everything?

No. Only those reviews with the green banner proclaiming that they are Vine™ reviews are freebies from the Vine™ program. See Amazon Vine™.

Why do Amazon need Vine™ when they have Amazon Verified Purchase?

Vine™ pre-dates Amazon Verified Purchase.

Unlike Vine™, Amazon Verified Purchase badges are limited to America. It has been suggested that displaying such badges in Europe would violate data protection laws. I don't know if that's correct, but I'd be very happy if it is.

The two features in any case serve completely different functions.

Vine™ is a marketing tool for product suppliers. Those suppliers don't always get the complimentary reviews they hope for, but it does not deter them as they keep coming back with more stuff.

Amazon.com created Amazon Verified Purchase as a response to a Federal Trade Commission edict. Looking at that edict, it is clear that it is about bloggers rather than Amazon reviewers, but laws and edicts are always open to interpretation.

An Amazon Verified Purchase badge merely signifies that the product was bought from Amazon.com.

Because the two features are so different, you will never see any review that is both a Vine™ review and also an Amazon Verified Purchase unless somebody has both received a copy through Vine™ and bought a copy, whereupon their bought copy would theoretically be designated as an Amazon Verified Purchase. Such a phenomenon would be rare but not impossible. Apparently, somebody bought a copy of something they had originally received from Vine™, then edited the review to try to add the Amazon Verified Purchase badge, but it didn't show up. This may be a glitch, but I suppose Amazon didn't think of the scenario described here.

See Verified purchase badges and Amazon Vine™.

How do I make money from Amazon?

You need to have at least one website or blog into which you can insert special links and widgets. See Make a little money from Amazon (if you don't live in the wrong place).

What is ARAT?

ARAT is a software tool for PC users to allow them to look at reviews in ways that Amazon won’t allow, making it easier to keep track of new votes, lost votes and deleted reviews. See Analyse your reviews and track votes with ARAT.

Do you like the “comments on reviews” feature?

On balance, yes. I get nasty comments, particularly in the UK where I am an obvious target because of my ranking, but I can deal with those either by ignoring them or responding to them. Some of the other comments make reviewing worthwhile .See Comments on reviews.

What is the point of tags?

There are different uses for tags, but I used them as a poor substitute for the long-vanished featured review categories until the ability to add them to new reviews was withdrawn. Note that the ability to add tags to lists and guides has been disabled, but the old tags are still there. See Classify your reviews by featured category, also see So you'd like to ...Categorize Your Reviews & Navigate the Tags Labyrinth by mirasreviews on Amazon.

For a look at Amazon's original method of classifying reviews, see Featured review categories.

Amazon come up with weird recommendations.
Can I do anything to get good recommendations?

Yes, you can get good recommendations with some preparatory work. See Recommended by Amazon.

Where can I see the slide show about reviewing on Amazon?

Here is Reviewing - the slide show. For my comments providing background information and supporting notes, see Slide show notes.

Ideas for software changes

I have some ideas for improving Amazon’s software.
What do Amazon think?

Send your suggestions to Amazon via the Help system and see what response you get. You’ll be very fortunate if you get a meaningful response. Most of the ideas have been around for years and Amazon know about them. A lot of them are recorded in this blog. Feel free to send them to Amazon if you wish.

I have some ideas for improving Amazon’s software.
What do you think?

See these posts.

Ideas for software changes
General list with lots of ideas
Ideas for upgrading Amazon's software
Specific ideas in detail
Abolish negative votes on reviews?
Customer profile review pages
Disappearing reviews, lists and guides
Eliminate reviewer rankings altogether?
Featured review categories
Ignore selected reviewers
Lists and guides
Rank reviewers by product category?
Show names of people who vote on reviews?
Thank you for your review

If your idea isn’t there, please let me know. As those blog posts with titles that end in a question mark show, I’ll include ideas that I don’t like or have serious reservations about, but I’ll explain why.

Trivia

Which is the most popular review on Amazon?

Steve Gibson’s review of the original Kindle. Before then, John E Fracisco's review of The Story About Ping was the most popular, but such was the impression it made that some people still assume that it is the most popular Amazon review. It's not even close, but I can only dream of having such a popular review. I'll settle for eventually breaking 500 YES votes.

Who has posted the most reviews on Amazon?

In the USA, Harriet Klausner has now posted more than 25,000 reviews and acquired over 90,000 YES votes, which is far more than any other individual reviewer. The consortium Midwest Book Review posted more reviews and acquired more YES votes, but consortiums don't count in the USA, although Amazon UK allow them to be ranked. Amazon deleted all 186,000+ reviews by Midwest Book Review in December 2011.

In the UK, Professor Donald Mitchell has posted the most reviews and acquired the most YES votes.

Which is the oldest review on Amazon?

It isn't easy to pin it down definitely because the earliest reviews were anonymous, although some people put their names on them anyway. Furthermore, Amazon lost some of those early reviews because of software bugs. The oldest review I can find anywhere is for Readings in social theory: the classic tradition to post-modernism. In the UK, the oldest review I can find is for A woman of means (Southern Writers Series).

How many reviews are there on Amazon?

I suspect the total exceeds 100 million on the USA site alone, but I don't have figures.

How many reviewers are there on Amazon?

First, remember that reviewers may have multiple accounts for a variety of reasons, some of them entirely legitimate as I explain in Multiple accounts. However, the total number of reviewing accounts is relatively easy to establish with a fair degree of accuracy despite Amazon declining to tell us. It exceeds 8 million in America.

See Targets for rank strivers, which looks mostly at the top 10,000 but also discusses the ranking basements.

There is no way to determine the total number of reviewers from the total number of reviewing accounts. One cynic suggested that the number of different people with reviews in America could be well under a million. I don't think so. I'd guess 70% to 80%, which is a long way from the 10% or less suggested by the cynic. Both of us could be wrong, but I'm not sure if Amazon have any idea. One thing I am fairly sure about is that the majority of reviewers on Amazon's older sites have been inactive for a year or more. A lot of reviewers have come and gone since Amazon started up.

Which is the longest review on Amazon?

Back in 2007, Laura Knight-Jadczyk posted a review of The haunted universe, which then became the longest Amazon review. It has a 12-word caption and contains 5,137 words in the body of the review, making a total of 5,149 words. It is very likely still the longest two-star review on Amazon, but the overall length has since been surpassed by others. I'll update this page when I find one of them again.

My own longest review is of The story of your Life: A history of the Sporting Life newspaper (1859-1998), with 1,370 words in the body plus an 11 word caption for a total of 1,381 words. I haven't seen any UK discussions on the subject, but the UK copy of that review might be the longest UK review by anybody.

Which product has the most reviews on Amazon?

As far as I know, it is the Kindle Wireless Reader (3G) Wifi Graphite. Opinions are divided on its merits. When I checked on December 2, there were 34,382 customer reviews with a star ratings distribution as follows.

Kindle (3G) reviews
Star ratings
*****	24,808
****	5,825
***	1,587
**	849
*	1,303

I'll periodically update the data, but you can click on the Kindle Wireless Reader (3G) Wifi Graphite to see the latest stats.

Which reviewer has the most fans?

In the USA, Harriet Klausner has the most fans by a substantial margin, though the interesting but unanswerable question is how many of them are really trolls, and whether the trolls form a majority of her fans. as appears likely.

Without any fan counts being displayed at Amazon's other websites, we cannot be sure of the answer, but I'd be very surprised if anybody has more fans than I do in Amazon UK, especially given all the voting nonsense that I describe in Abolish negative votes on reviews?. Like Harriet Klausner in the USA, my UK fan total must include a fair number of trolls, but I am confident that trolls form a minority of my overall fan count.

Which reviewer has the lowest ratio of reviews to fans?

It isn't possible to even guess at the answer outside the USA, where it seems that NLee the Engineer, a top ten reviewer in the current rankings, has a ratio of around three reviews to every two fans despite having fewer than 300 reviews when I checked on September 26, 2011.

Can you name all the people who have ever been #1 Amazon reviewer?

I only keep a close watch on the UK and USA sites, so here is the data for those, with full names where known although anything in parentheses does not currently show on Amazon profile pages. The so-called hall of fame has enabled me to identify the former #1 reviewers in France and Germany. In some cases, I can tell which ranking system they topped, but not in others. I have therefore just listed them in the order that they might have ascended to #1 but withot any other indication. Canada's hall of fame only begins in 2011. I know that there have been at least four Canadian #1 reviewers, but there may have been others. I include these four in the list. Italy and Spain have not started a hall of fame.

Amazon #1 reviewers
USA second ranking system
Harriet Klausner
Lawrance M Bernabo
USA current ranking system
Beth Cholette
Mark (Espinosa)
(Alana) Chandler
UK second ranking system
Jason Parkes
Lawrance M Bernabo
Peter Durward Harris
UK current ranking system
Peter Durward Harris
S Thomas
D (Debbie) Jones
France
Elvis
fifi59
Latour07
Mélomaniac
Germany
MD
robotgeorgie
Helga König
Fuchs Werner Dr
Detlef Rüsch
Dr R Manthey
Canada
S McEvoy
Lawrance M Bernabo
E A Solinas
Professor Donald Mitchell

Note that although Lawrance Bernabo has been #1 reviewer in both the UK (April 2005) and USA (November 2006), both of those stays were very brief, and he has not been credited with a #1 Hall of Fame reviewer in either country, only a standard Hall of Fame reviewer badge. He managed a much longer stay at #1 in Canada, but he has not been credited with a #1 Hall of Fame reviewer there either, because the Canadian hall of fame ony begins in 2011. He has nevertheless been #1 reviewer in three different Amazon websites, and that is likely to remain unchallenged at least until Amazon open up in a lot more countries. For details of his period at #1 in the USA, see Bogus top 50 of November 2006. For details of his period at #1 in the UK, see Abolish negative votes on reviews?.

In the UK, I was really looking forward to somebody overtaking me on the current rankings. When that happened in April 2011, the new #1 reviewer's reviews came under scrutiny and some people made their feelings clear on the UK Vine forum. It seems that S Thomas, who posted prolifically prior to becoming #1 reviewer, wasn't so keen on defending the position so I ended up back at #1, although S Thomas still returned to the #1 spot sometimes over the next few months. In November 2011, Debbie Jones overtook both of us. Within a day or two, I had dropped to #3, but it now seems that Debbie will be at #1 for a while yet, leaving S Thomas and myself to share #2 and #3 between us.

Omissions

The question I want answered isn’t here. Why?

One of the following reasons :-

I don’t think that it is relevant.

It is answered in Questions about forums.

It is answered in Questions about me.

It is answered in Questions about this blog.

It is in one of my other blog posts as part of a long answer to another question here. For example, there are a lot of questions about Harriet Klausner, but I’ve only mentioned four here.

I haven’t thought to include it.

I would include it if I were able to provide an answer.

The last two points indicate that I am still open to the idea of adding questions to this page. If your question isn't here, I may be able to answer it via e-mail. I will then add the question and answer to this page.

Questions about forums

2011-07-13T02:31:00.000-07:00

Questions about forums

Introduction

Although I wrote this blog post primarily for Amazon.com users, most of it applies to other Amazon websites too. Where there are known differences, these are noted.

Forum posters use some weird jargon.
Can you explain some of the terms?

I refer you to the blog post Questions about Amazon's reviewing system, where you will find a similar question about reviewers, which includes forum jargon.

Amazon's own forums help page

Click What are customer discussions? for the official answers to the following questions.

What are Customer Discussions?

Who can participate in discussions?

What should I post?

What shouldn't I post?

How do I find and read a discussion?

How do I reply to a discussion?

How do I start a new discussion?

How do I edit or delete my post?

What if I find an inappropriate post, or one that detracts from the discussion?

How do I get back to a specific post?

How can I keep track of new posts in an interesting discussion?

What do I do if my message was deleted?

Do messages impact my Top Reviewer ranking?

Not being able to improve on the official answers, I won't expand on them here. However, while Amazon provide good answers to those questions, they don't answer all the questions that people ask. The remainder of this post attempts to answer at least some of those other questions.

How do I know which post somebody is replying to?

In the top right of each post except the opening post of each discussion, there is usually a message that begins In reply to. The rest of the message is a clickable link that will either say your post in orange or an earlier post in blue. If there is no message and the post is not an opening post, the poster did not use the reply option, but simply used the Add to discussion option.

Some posters use the Add to discussion option when they are replying to the most recent post. This is a mistake (whether deliberate or accidental) because

While the poster is typing their reply, somebody else may finish posting their message on the same thread, so the intended reply does not immediately follow the post it is supposedly replying to.

Even where the post follows the one it is supposedly replying to, it is not always clear that it is a reply to that post.

When should I use "Add to discussion" rather than "Reply"?

I only intentionally use the Add to discussion option when I know that I am not replying to any previous post in particular, and in these cases it is obvious what I am doing.

Some people create posts that include replies to several individuals in one post. Personally, I don't like these posts because if I want to skim a discussion for replies to me, I look for the orange Your Post link and may therefore miss the multi-reply posts. Other people prefer the multi-reply posts because they don't like seeing several consecutive replies by the same poster, whoever that poster might be. But do they understand the significance of the orange link? I can't answer that one.

Do Amazon answer concerns that are aired on forums?

No, except on very rare occasions when it suits them to do so, which may happen on one of their announcement threads. Even then, they don't usually bother. If you want a response from Amazon, always contact them directly by e-mail or telephone.

Where can I find a list of all the Amazon community forums?

Good question. I found the path to the complete list in the Spring of 2011 but the link was broken. It appears to be one of the casualties of the 2011 cutbacks. It is no longer possible to find such a list as far as I can see. Of course, Amazon might one day decide to restore the option to see the list.

The best one can now get is the Tag cloud, which contains a lot of tag links. Clicking on one of these links takes you to the main page for that tag, which allows you various options including these.

Click on See all discussions or Start a new discussion in the Customer Discussions box (down the left-hand side of the page) to go to the forum associated with the tag.

You will see a list of other tags down the left-hand side. These are provided so that if you are searching for tagged products, you can narrow your search, limiting the results to products tagged with the tag you now select as well as the one you arrived at the page with. (I haven't tested the tag software recently and offer no guarantee that it works that way.) You can use this option to navigate to less popular tags. The page you arrive at may also have a list of other tags down the left-hand side. When you find a tag name that appeals to you, click on one of the discussion links.

Why can't the forums be moderated?

It would cost Amazon too much money to moderate all the forums. They may occasionally intervene in a particular forum if things get really nasty, but they prefer not to.

Why can't different viewpoints be respected?

This is a question about life itself. I wish that people could respect other opinions. Some can. Some can't. It was ever thus. Traditionally, people used to kill those they disagreed with. That still goes on, but less so.

Do votes on forum posts ever mean anything?

For the most part, they aren't worth worrying about, but trends can usually tell you more than votes on individual posts. Remember that votes can be cast by anybody, not just those who post, so if the voting seems to be different from what you would expect based on the posts, the votes may tell you something about the lurkers.

Just occasionally, votes do give a clue. If I post something that I expect people to respond to, but they don't respond, I look at the votes on my post and if they indicate that people didn't like my post, I may delete it. Of course, if I feel that it was an important post, I'll leave it up.

Why do people vote against opening posts in forum discussions?

In no particular order of significance, these are the reasons :-

It is an off topic subject that they feel doesn’t belong in the forum.

It is a topic that has been discussed way too many times already.

They don’t like the person who started the discussion.

They don’t like the post itself, perhaps because of the stance it takes or because the post is aggressive or poorly worded.

They accidentally clicked the wrong button and didn't reverse their vote.

Why are some posts replaced by an unhelpful message with an option to show them?

I assume you mean the posts that say :-

Customers don't think that this post adds to the discussion.

There is a mathematical formula to this - something like (Total NO votes) = (Total YES votes) times 5 - that has to be exceeded, with a minimum number of 5 or 6 NO votes in total. An increase in YES votes for a post hidden in this way may return the post to normal status.

Are my own posts ever hidden from my view?

Your own posts will never be hidden if you are logged in to Amazon. If you want to see which of your posts are hidden from other people and you aren't sure of the formula, visit the forum without logging in or after logging out.

Why is a question of how something works inappropriate?

There are thousands of forums on Amazon. You very likely asked the question in the wrong forum. For example, the place to ask for Kindle help is in the Kindle forum. I hear you say "Topic drift", but you have to establish your credentials within a forum before causing topic drift. When you venture into a new forum, you have to go with the flow. Again, this reflects real life. If you go somewhere that nobody knows you, you start by ingratiating yourself, or at least not annoying people.

What are permalinks on forum posts?

Permalinks exist all over the net, particularly on forums and blogs. They ensure a unique and permanent URL for each post that they apply to. On forum posts within Amazon's websites, the permalink is in the bottom left of each post. Unlike reviews, which each have a separate page, the forum permalinks merely point to the post's position within the page.

What is the quickest way to find a forum that you think should exist?

Two methods. The quicker method may depend where you are within Amazon's website at the time.

Go to a relevant product page and scroll down until you come to the discussion list. Actually, as this is near the bottom of the page, you may be quicker to hit END and scroll up. Either way, it ought to list the most relevant forums.

Go to any discussion forum. Remove the tick from the box Search only this forum or Search only this discussion. In the actual search box, enter the subject of interest and click Go. This gives you a list of posts containing the word(s) you keyed in, together with the titles of the discussion and the forum containing that post. The results may or may not be relevant.

If you try the second method, be careful what you enter into the search box. I suspect that being specific might produce better results than using general terms made up of common words. For example, if you are looking for a forum about a genre of books or music, you might try putting in the name of a leading author or artist within that genre rather than the genre description itself.

How can you see the full range of the most popular forums?

Amazon provide a list of the most currently active forums at the bottom of every page within a forum. These may not always be the most popular, but they usually are. Occasionally, a forum that is not normally among the most popular suddenly becomes very active for a brief period due to some topical event.

How else might I find a specific forum?

Two methods, both of which require you to know the exact name you are looking for.

Go to any forum and change the URL, replacing the forum name with the one you are looking for, remembering that spaces are represented by %20. For example, the top reviewers forum contains top%20reviewers in the URL.

Go to a product page relevant to the subject and add a tag, with the name of the tag being the name of the forum that you think should exist. If the forum didn't already exist with that name, your new tag creates it. You can now look up the forum to see if other discussions are already there. If not, start a thread and either hope that other people find the forum or actively encourage them to join in.

Do I have to stay on-topic?

This depends on the forum and the attitude of the regular posters. You will find some forums where people mainly stick to the forum topic, while there are other forums where people welcome off-topic discussions. Some forums are more akin to general chat forums where it seems that anything goes, sometimes to the exclusion of whatever the forum is supposed to be about. The gold box forum in America is an example of a forum where anybody who starts an on-topic discussion about gold box deals generally gets short shrift. You have to judge the mood of each forum individually. Sometimes, the mood of a particular forum changes gradually over time.

Personally, I don't mind some of the off-topic stuff and sometimes join in or even start such discussions, as illustrated in Fun on the discussion board. However, I normally go to forums to discuss particular topics, so I generally don't bother with forums that are dominated by general chat. Obviously, other people enjoy those forums, some of which are much busier than the forums I participate in. Each to their own.

Why am I expected to stay on-topic even though others don't?

On some forums, newbies are expected to stay on-topic when they first come to the forum and establish their credentials, before being accepted as contributors to off-topic discussions. Again, you need to judge each forum individually, but given that Amazon have thousands of forums, I wonder why anybody would visit a forum that is at least nominally devoted to a topic that does not interest them, unless it is known to be a general chat forum. OK, I am sometimes directed to another forum to see a specific thread, but I only stick around if the forum interests me.

Why do people confuse matters with topic drift?
Why don't people start new discussions instead?

In real life, if we have a conversation, it is likely to drift from topic to topic. Some people want internet discussions to emulate real-life discussions as closely as possible. I understand that up to a point, but it can often make it hard to search the archived discussions. Furthermore, there are people on some forums who deliberately hijack or derail threads that they don't like, steering them off-topic rather than simply ignoring those threads. Such tactics contributed to my decision to set out my thoughts on Amazon issues away from forums, allowing me to either post links or copy/paste paragraphs. This blog is the end result. While it contains some off-topic posts, those posts are separate from the on-topic posts as far as possible.

Why do people derail threads they don't like?
Why don't they just ignore those threads?

Because they are nasty. Derailing threads is not the same as topic drift. Derailing a thread is a hostile act, whereas topic drift isn't intended to be. As with so much else in life, there is blurring at the edges, but you come to recognize the basic difference with experience, then you can make up your own mind about the boundary between the two.

Where can I find the top reviewers forum?

From any reviewer's profile page, click View top reviewers near the foot of the page. This shows you the top ten in the new rankings. Scroll down to find the recent threads in the top reviewers forum, with options to See all discussions and Start a new discussion.

In America, there is also a direct link titled Review discussion boards from the left margin of review pages within a profile.

Where can I find the Vine™ forum?

If you are a member of Vine™, you can go to your local forum via your Vine™ home page, where there is a link at the foot of the page.

Whether or not you are a Vine™ member, you can access the UK and USA Vine™ forums via Wikipedia. Go to the Amazon Vine page, where you will find forum links near the foot of the page.

Where can I find the Amazon discussion feedback forum?

Here is the Amazon discussion feedback forum. Other than that link, I have only seen links from other forums and I found it from one of those.

Where can I find the Amazon help community forum?

Here is the Amazon help community forum. Other than that link, I have only seen links from other forums and I found it from one of those.

Where can I find the old DB?

From my links within Fun on the discussion board, or go directly to the customer reviews discussion board. There are no longer any links from within Amazon to the old DB. Links from Amazon.com reviewer profile pages that used to point there now point to the top reviewers forum instead.

You can invite people to participate in that forum via the discussion board invitation page.

The question I want answered isn’t here. Why?

One of the following reasons :-

I don’t think it’s relevant.

It's answered in Questions about Amazon's reviewing system.

It's answered in Questions about this blog.

I haven’t thought to include it.

Questions about me

2011-07-13T02:30:00.001-07:00

Questions about me

Introduction

This post is divided into sections as follows :-

Jump to section
or just scroll down
My knowledge of Amazon
Other Amazon-related questions
Questions unrelated to Amazon

My knowledge of Amazon

For more on this subject beyond the answers below, see Facts and opinions.

How do you know so much about Amazon?

Because I have spent a lot of time studying it, consulting others and I have used my knowledge and experience to interpret what I find with a high degree of accuracy. Nevertheless, there are some people who just don't believe that is possible for anybody outside of Amazon to know so much.

Do you ever get anything wrong when it comes to Amazon issues?

Yes, but less often than most customers, and not as often as my critics imply.

Why do people have such divergent opinions of you?

There are many reasons, most of which are different ways of saying the same things, but I think that they can be summarized as follows.

Some people think I take Amazon too seriously. I should point out that I only discuss Amazon on forums that are supposed to be about Amazon, but those forums attract posters who aren't interested in these issues.

Some people appreciate my knowldge of Amazon, but others resent it (and not just those who think I take Amazon too seriously), especially if they disagree with me on some issue that they feel strongly about, or if they feel that I am intrudung on their territory.

I sometimes feel obliged to defend my position robustly (but I don't resort to name-calling even when my opponents do), whether presenting my opinions or facts that other people think are just my opinions.

My campaigns against cheating have also been divisive, and not just because my targets don't appreciate them. Some people regard such campaigns as snitching and therefore more despicable than whatever my targets had done. The reality is that Amazon rely on snitches to alert them to the cheating on their websites. They pick up very little themselves.

I am a high-profile reviewer on both sides of the Atlantic.

Among the reasons that people sometimes give is that they think I have a big ego. I don't think I do, but the people who say I do invariably dislike me for one or more of the reasons listed above. If somebody who I hold in high regard tells me I have a big ego, that'll be the time to worry, but the humiliation of unemployment puts things in perspective for me. Also, if I had a big ego, I don't think I would be raising the topic here. It occurs to me that accusing somebody else of having a big ego can be a good escape route for those who lose an argument. I tend to associate big egos with people who habitually belittle others for the fun of it, often by use of sarcasm. I'm not that type at all.

Another thing that people occasionally say is that I always have to have the last word. I don't. Of course, such people tend not to notice if I drop out of a debate, as I often do on forums, but they do notice if I post something that nobody replies to. With my knowledge of Amazon and this blog as a reference, I have a detailed answer to just about any topic related to reviewing on Amazon. Even if people disagree with me and vote against such an answer, it can be quite intimidating.

With some people, it is easy to see exactly why they dislike me but with others it is virtually impossible, even sometimes where they give a reason. For more about my interaction with people in cyberspace, see My Amazon journey.

Why are you so fascinated by Amazon's software?

I am a former computer programmer, frustrated at no longer being able to do that for a living. Studying Amazon's software is one way of easing that frustration, as I can at least use some of my old skills in figuring out some of what the software does. Anybody who has ever worked with software knows that finding out what it does can sometimes be just as difficult as finding where the errors are.

How long have you been an Amazon customer and reviewer?

I have been a customer since 1999 and a reviewer since April 2000, but I only took reviewing seriously in June 2002. See My Amazon journey.

Why did you delete most of your Amazon lists and guides?

Because Amazon seem to have lost interest in them, making more them difficult for normal customers to find. Given that, the restrictions imposed by Amazon including a 5,000 word limit on guides made it an easy decision to transfer the important guides to this blog, to get rid of the unimportant lists and guides and to archive a few that may be revived at some future date. See My Amazon journey.

Do you work for Amazon, or have you ever worked for them?

No. See Disclaimers.

Why do you review on Amazon?

Because I enjoy it, albeit not as much as I did a few years ago, and because I want to share my thoughts on the music I enjoy listening to and the books I read. See Why do I post reviews on Amazon?.

Why don't you review anywhere else?

I tried it once and didn't like being told how to review, nor did I like having to prioritize which reviews I would do first, especially when I discovered that the order I was told to do them in wasn't reflected in the order in which they were posted on the website. Sorry, but I review for fun. When it ceases to be fun, it becomes a job. I'd like a job if somebody pays me. Nobody pays me to review on Amazon. See I once tried reviewing away from Amazon.

How can you afford all these Amazon purchases?

This is the infamous question. False assumptions lead to stupid questions. See Unemployed Amazon reviewer.

Questions unrelated to Amazon

If you are such a smartass, why can't you find a job?

Obviously I'm not a smartass, but this very complex subject is dealt with in other blogs. The nineties job quest describes my first long period out of work and how I eventually managed to find gainful employment again. The politics of unemployment draws on my experiences of being unemployed since 2002. Career looks at my career to date and options for the future.

Do you have a sense of humor?

Yes. See Assemble furniture from kits (badly) for the most obvious case, although you will find plenty of other evidence if you look for it.

How old are you?

Too old, although the consolation is that retirement is becoming ever closer. When that happens, I'll be classed as a pensioner rather than unemployed. See When I was born.

What do you look like?

The picture captioned Look at me now at the bottom of the first gallery listed below shows what I look like now. Most of the pictures in these galleries date from the fifties and sixties, because I have never liked having my picture taken and I have largely (but not entirely) managed to avoid the ignominy as an adult.

Pictures

Picture gallery (just me)
Picture gallery (with Barbara Jane)
Picture gallery (with Frances and Alison)

What sort of places have you lived and worked in?

See Where I've been, which also covers many of the places I've visited. Also see Picture gallery (homes and pubs) to see some of the homes I lived in. No, I didn't live in the pubs; they just happen to share that page.

Why do you have such lousy taste in music?
I can't believe you're so highly ranked after reviewing all that garbage.

Amazon’s previous ranking system was strange and the current system is strange in different ways, but their basis is counting the votes. If somebody gets enough YES votes, that will show up in their rankings; see Amazon's three reviewer ranking systems explained. So the answer must be that a lot of customers like at least some of my reviews, therefore (unless they were interested in my book reviews) share some of my taste in music. Maybe the answer is that you and I simply have different tastes in music. I may well dislike your CD collection but I don’t have to listen to it so it doesn’t upset me. You should adopt a similar attitude.

Anybody who has found this page without knowing what music I like, or anybody who is interested in a quick summary thereof, can look at these posts.

Music
PDH selection
Men I listen to
Women I listen to
People I listen to

If you are confused by CD titles, or simply want to laugh at them, see Decipher those CD titles. Yes, that's another one for those who think I lack a sense of humor.

If you are interested in the subject, also see What exactly IS country music, and what isn’t?, which discusses one aspect of my musical tastes.

What else are you interested in besides reviewing and music?

All sorts of things, some of which are reflected in my reviews. Also see Blame bad weather and Mill Reef, which briefly discusses my interest in horseracing.

Have you looked into your ancestry?

Not much before 2011, since when I have spent a fair bit of time on it. My father has studied it a lot so that aroused my interest after he sent me the family tree as far as he has completed it. See these posts.

Distant relatives

Poetic connections
Political connections
Royal connections

As noted in the latter, it's no big deal to be distantly connected to royalty. About half of the British population have ancestors among the British monarchy, if only they look for the connections. I am more impressed with the poetic connection, having reviewed the work of one of the poets long before I knew of the connection, although my father already knew long before Amazon existed.

The question I want answered isn’t here. Why?

One of the following reasons :-

I don’t think it’s any business of complete strangers. I am more open on the internet than most people, but I have my limits.

I haven’t thought to include it.

Questions about this blog

2011-07-13T02:28:00.002-07:00

Questions about this blog

Why Do All The Amazon Widgets Link To Amazon.com?
I Want To Buy From Amazon.co.uk.

I joined Amazon.com Associates several years ago. I make very little money out of it (all in the form of credit to buy stuff from Amazon) and would be unlikely to get rich from Amazon.co.uk either. Still, I might apply to join Amazon.co.uk Associates one day. Whether they would let me in is another matter, if they read this blog. I'm still not sure how I would adapt this blog to include UK widgets.

Usually, you can find the page you want in the UK by going to the American page and changing the website name in the URL. This does not always work because the UK and USA editions sometimes differ, but it works most of the time.

But You Are British. Why Did You Choose Amazon.com In The First Place?

I joined in the early days and had serious doubts about Amazon.co.uk's enthusiasm for anything beyond fulfilling orders. But really, the main reason for joining at all was so that I could practise HTML and decorate my blog pages and to make the pages look nicer. Yes, Amazon supply the HTML for the widgets, but the extra scope for designing blog posts provided by those widgets provides more variation for setting up other HTML.

Why do some pages have the text on a blue background while others have a white background?

I don't like too much white on a page, preferring a pastel background. However, some pages don't work so well with a blue background while others have too little text to make the use of blue worthwhile. Amazon's widgets all have a white background and I can't change that even though sometimes I'd like to.

Why is some information repeated on different posts?

Remember that people often look up web pages in isolation. While duplication can be annoying to anybody who reads the whole blog, I feel that it is necessary to strike a balance. I do try to avoid excess reetition, not least because I'd have to update more pages if I need to change whatever they say.

Why is there information that helps people to cheat?

I think that a lot of those people who want to cheat generally know how to, while a lot of customers don't know how to spot them. It is a sad reality that you can't help people to spot cheating without also helping other people to cheat.

As I point out elsewhere in this blog, trolls have learned how to use ARAT to aid their stalking. Some of these trolls discovered ARAT because of my blog post or the guide that it replaced. That's the price of providing information that helps reviewers who appreciate being able to use ARAT for its intended purpose. Of course I could have kept quiet about ARAT for fear that trolls would discover it, but that's not my style.

Some people prefer to err on the side of not saying anything publicly that helps trolls or cheaters, but I err on the side of disseminating information. It's not as if any of this stuff is endangering life. I can see that there would be situations in real life where I would err on the side of secrecy.

Ultimately, it is up to Amazon to update their software to deal with the problems that arise.

This blog doesn't look like other blogs. What gives?

Like most of my blogs, it is a website in disguise. I set it up that way because I never wanted to buy webspace. Of the various free space options available a few years ago, Blogger was the most appealing. I learned that it isn't meant to be used the way I use it, but this was another case where I used my programming skills to figure out how to set up websites within the Blogger framework.

The main disadvantage is that I can't add new posts without messing up the indexing, although I can easily update existing posts, so I put new pages in Amazon topics extras and link them from the appropriate pages here. If that becomes too messy, I'll reorganize the blog to absorb those pages and take the opportunity to look at other possible improvements. Having done so in July 2011, I don't expect that to happen again any time soon. See Blog setup for more information about why and how I set up my blogs, including technical details.

I posted a comment on this blog. Why hasn't it shown up?

I check posts before allowing them to show up, so either :-

I haven't seen it yet - and if my home internet connection is down or if I am otherwise busy, it might be a while before I do.

I have seen it, but I am thinking about how to respond prior to posting both your comment and my response.

I have decided that I can't or won't post it.

See Add your comments.

The question I want answered isn’t here. Why?

One of the following reasons :-

I don’t think it’s relevant.

I haven’t thought to include it.

Abolish negative votes on reviews?

2011-07-13T02:28:00.001-07:00

Abolish negative votes on reviews?

Amazon's voting question

See Was this review helpful to you? for an analysis of this question and what it might mean, if anything. For a more detailed look at those NO votes, see Spiteful votes, where I describe many of the reasons for customers voting NO. I do not discuss the issue of abolishing such votes altogether in either of those posts, though this idea has been around ever since Amazon allowed voting on reviews. A lot of reviewers would like only YES votes to be allowed and for all NO votes to be removed. Nobody likes receiving those NO votes, but opinion is split as to their worth. Arguments about the issue work on several different levels.

The abolition question

This generates a lot of heated debates. Here, I present the case for, followed by an analysis, then followed by the case against. I then link to two other blog posts that are relevant to this topic.

The case for abolition

The system as it is allows trolls to flourish, which upsets a lot of reviewers. Some trolls stalk their targets by spraying NO votes around, though the anti-campaign software that came in with the current ranking system has made life more difficult for them. Prior to the introduction of the current ranking there in March 2010, Amazon UK didn't bother with anti-campaign software of any kind although Amazon USA had software that curbed the worst excesses. In early 2005, I was subjected to one of the most vicious campaigns against my reviews ever seen on any Amazon site, albeit it was mitigated by a counter-campaign, but I learned a lot from that. If customers were only allowed to vote YES, it could never have happened. Here’s how it unfolded.

The UK voting farce

When reviewer rankings (in the form of the second ranking system, as the original system never made it across the Atlantic) were first introduced in the UK in the fall (autumn) of 2002, I was way down in the triple digits but I hadn't been reviewing for very long at the time. In November 2003, I finally made it to #2. Almost exactly a year later, I lost my internet connection from home due to my financial difficulties. At the time, I was still #2 but I'd given up hope of becoming #1 by then, because an American reviewer was up to #3 and it seemed only a matter of time before he overtook me. I still expected to overtake the #1 reviewer but not before the American had overtaken both of us. I'm glad I had that expectation as it was to stand me in good stead.

Without a direct line from home, I continued to write reviews, saving them on my computer for some unspecified future date when I could load them up. Soon afterwards. I started using the computers in my local library, where I was allowed two hours per day every day that the library was open. With such limited time, I initially decided not to use the library for loading reviews but I eventually did so, two and a half months after I lost my home internet connection. I started copying my reviews to floppies and posting them to Amazon from the library. By that time, I had a backlog of around 150 reviews. Now it wasn't always easy to post reviews in the UK, but the early months of 2005 happened to be a good period.

After about two or three weeks, I noticed a huge number of NO votes suddenly appearing on my UK reviews. Clearly, somebody was noticing the rapid increase in my total number of reviews and was panicking. To this day, I don't know and don't care, but it was obviously somebody who didn't like me and certainly didn't want me to become the UK #1 reviewer. The guilty person(s) could have included the #1 reviewer but I don’t assume that at all. I've sometimes been wrongly accused of voting against somebody else’s reviews. In such cases, it often transpired that somebody wanted to support me, but the effect was that my reviews got extra NO votes, so I knew not to jump to conclusions.

With this cyber-war declared, I made it my mission to become UK #1 reviewer as quickly as possible and teach my attacker(s) a lesson. The more British reviews I posted, the more savagely my reviews were attacked, and not just the new ones. My attacker(s) took their battle to my old reviews, too. Some of my supporters, noticing what was happening, counter-attacked by giving me plenty of YES votes. I didn't ask for such support and don't condone what they did, but I don't even know who these supporters were, just as I don't know who my attacker(s) were.

Anyway, the result of all this attacking and counter-attacking was that I ended up with hundreds of reviews showing vote totals of 3 out of 6, 4 out of 8, 5 out of 10 and so on, even including totals like 20 out of 40 and beyond. On one level, this was quite amusing but it is clear that none of the voters involved really understood the way Amazon's rankings worked, except that my supporters knew that 3 YES votes were a basic requirement for reviews to count towards ranking under the only system then in use. Until the current ranking system was installed in 2010 with the associated anti-campaign software, you couldn't find very many of my British reviews posted pre-2007 with fewer than 3 YES votes. I was by no means unique in that regard because a lot of high-ranking British reviewers could have said the same, although their reviews were never attacked on a big scale. What I didn't know then was that the British rankings were based on a very old version of the American algorithm, so every vote counted.

Even as I continued to catch up with my backlog of reviews, I continued to write more, stepping up the pace after my attacker(s) declared their cyber-war, partly to annoy my attacker(s) but primarily to ensure that the anti-campaign software would notice if it ever crossed the Atlantic. The anti-campaign software is better now than it was in 2005, but still imperfect. I needed to help it all I could, by forcing the trolls to cast more NO than they otherwise would have, making their dirty deeds even more blatant. For several weeks, I was able to post reviews at a crazy rate, as many as forty a week. That was really tough once the backlog dried up. I was glad to be a music reviewer rather than a book reviewer, although I've since learned that certain types of books are very easy to review, especially poetry and picture books.

When my ranking changed in mid-March 2005, it was down, not up, because the American finally did what I'd always expected and overtook me. The timing was, of course, unfortunate because it appeared to many people, including some of my friends, that my attacker(s) had won. I didn't agree, thinking that I must be gaining on the #1 reviewer regardless of what else was happening. If I had to be content with being second behind the American, that would be fine.

As soon as the American overtook me, he stopped posting reviews in Britain. He eventually started again but not for a long time, and he has since given up for good. I was surprised by this and it was not what I wanted. British customers don't have many reviews to choose from except on the most popular items. Nevertheless, it was clear that the American did not want to get entangled in any voting nonsense. With the #1 reviewer only posting reviews at a modest pace, the American not posting any and myself posting relentlessly, I knew that there could be only one outcome in the end. Meanwhile, my attacker(s) eased off, presumably thinking that my drop in the rankings was a result of all their spiteful votes. I also noticed that the American's reviews were not subjected to attack as far as I could see and I was pleased about that. The attacks against my reviews had been intended to stop me and were nothing more than that, so it wasm't simply a case od defending the #1 position. For the next month or so, the top three positions remained static with myself at #3, but I was undeterred.

On the 18th day of April in 2005, the American finally became the new UK #1 reviewer while I stayed at #3, but within a few hours the rankings changed again. I became #1 with the American at #2 and the original #1 reviewer at #3, so I was finally proved right in my assessment of what was happening. At this point, some of the American's supporters on the customer reviews discussion board decided that he should be the UK #1 reviewer and started voting for his reviews. The next ranking adjustment put us both as joint #1 reviewers. The American didn't like all the bogus votes he was now getting and told his supporters to stop, which they did reluctantly. I was finally able to ease off on the reviewing and things settled down with myself at #1 and the American at #2, where we stayed until June 2006. As for the original #1 reviewer, he stayed at #3 during that period except for a brief period when he dropped to #4.

During the time that I was getting all my bogus votes, I exchanged e-mails with Amazon in Britain and America. They said that they couldn't use the anti-campaign software until a lot of other software was upgraded. I suggested that maybe they could at least look at who was casting the votes and send them some kind of e-mail warning them about their voting. Amazon didn't respond to that e-mail, but several weeks later, much of the campaign voting stopped abruptly, and not only on my reviews. Other reviewers noticed that they were getting far fewer votes on their British reviews. I don't know if Amazon actually took up my suggestion but the circumstantial evidence is interesting. The main thing was that the silly voting on both sides stopped for a while, though it eventually resumed on a smaller scale.

In a period of three months, I acquired something like 13,000 YES votes in Europe. In those days all European votes were added together and displayed as a combined total, which clouded the issue because I've also posted reviews in France and Germany. I acquired many thousands of NO votes in Britain, but I didn't know how many until 2009, when Amazon UK finally provided proper totals that had already been available for USA reviews years earlier. When I finally saw how many NO votes I had, it was bad but nothing like my worst fears. Really, I wouldn't have been surprised if the total, which had continued growing since 2005, had been over 20,000, but it was actually around 10,000.

In June 2006, Amazon changed the British ranking algorithm, bringing it into line with America (thus showing me that they hadn't been the same earlier). Despite my not posting any British reviews in the first half of 2006, I retained my #1 position. The other two reviewers I've mentioned dropped a few places but later recovered some of the lost ground.

In 2009, I was subjected to another nasty campaign against my UK reviews, though not on the scale of the 2005 campaign. This time, the counter-campaigners came in for a while but soon stopped, leaving the attacker(s) with a clear run. Amazon UK still didn't use any software to clear out campaign votes, but the 2009 campaign was so blatant that it offered the best chance yet for me to convince them that they should. Without the helpful votes from counter-campaigners, I hoped to get Amazon's sympathy this time. I know enough about Amazon's software to understand that the avalanche of NO votes would be easily spotted and eradicated by the software. I didn’t get the response I hoped for, but I didn't really expect to. However, by then I knew about the current American ranking system and the associated anti-campaign software, so I pinned my hopes on that.

While the 2005 and 2009 campaigns were particularly nasty, I was subjected to all sorts of campaign voting of both kinds in the UK, going all the way back to 2002. I therefore couldn't take my UK votes or ranking seriously until the votes were cleaned up on March 9th, 2010.

In March 2010, the current ranking system was installed simultaneously in Britain, France and Germany. The anti-campaign software came with it and wiped out well over half of my YES votes and over 90% of my NO votes. As a consequence of so many votes being wiped out, my % of YES votes rose from 79 to 94 and I was installed #1 on the current ranking system. I hadn't expected that, thinking that maybe I'd recover to somewhere around 85% or a little higher at best.

Analysis of the UK voting farce

I probably posted some reviews in 2005 that I might not otherwise have posted, and some of them were very successful, as can be seen after the bogus votes were wiped out five years later. A lot of my reviews lost spotlight positions because of the NO votes, but many regained them after the clean-up. It is impossible to know whether I gained or lost overall but it doesn't really matter. I won. Amazon won. Customers won. Trolls lost.

All of the above goes to show how nasty things can get, but they also show that trolls don’t necessarily get what they want. If reviewers are easily discouraged by trolls (and some are), the trolls win. I was made of sterner stuff and defeated them. Posting reviews at a crazy rate not only showed the attacker(s) what I was made of but also left markers for the anti-campaign software when it eventually arrived five years later. Because I forced my attacker(s) to be more vicious with their spite votes, the anti-campaign software couldn’t help but notice. However, that saga and other experiences have proved to me that votes and rankings don’t indicate nearly as much as people might think. Indeed, Amazon’s ability to come up with a markedly different ranking system that ran alongside the second system for more than three years prior to the latter's abolition confirms it. A reviewer’s ranking can depend more on the method of calculation than on what that reviewer actually does. In particular, the curreny ranking system focuses heavily on NO votes while the second ranking system focused heavily on YES votes, although there are other significant differences too. See Amazon's three reviewer ranking systems explained.

Having experienced such farcical voting on my reviews, people might think that I’d be a strong supporter of abolition of NO votes, but I’m not because I also saw was that effective anti-campaign software can deal with trolls. That software is not perfect, but the answer to any of its imperfections is for Amazon to improve the software.

Nevertheless, the whole business of those NO buttons often leads to spite and bad feeling, and can be very discouraging to people who write reviews. You certainly need a thick skin to review on Amazon, but I doubt that abolition would have the effect that those who call for it would expect.

The case against abolition

On one forum, somebody suggested that if a review attracts 10 YES votes and another for the same product attracts 2, it is obvious which review is useful to the majority, but it‘s not that simple. The 10-vote review may be older, so maybe some or all of the 10 customers who voted for it didn’t have the choice of voting for the other review. Also, especially where books by obscure authors are concerned, the 10 votes (or even 20 or 30) may all be from friends, family and multiple accounts. You'll notice that in my description of the UK voting farce, I referred to my attacker(s), thus alluding to the possibility that one person with multiple accounts was responsible. Leaving that aside, in the case of one review with 10 helpful votes and another with 2, there are any number of reasons why the 2-vote review might be more helpful than the 10-vote review and it not be reflected in the votes. However, the NO option makes it easier to draw a distinction between a review that is genuinely helpful and one that is not. Spite votes can distort things; one consequence of the UK voting farce was to drive a lot of my reviews out of the spotlight, though many returned after the bogus votes were wiped out. However, mine was an extreme case. I remain unconvinced that they distort things as badly as some reviewers think. If Amazon UK had used the anti-campaign software in 2005 (which they said they weren't able to), the whole UK voting farce would have been nipped in the bud very quickly.

The likely consequences of abolition would in any case include more nasty comments and more reviews being driven off product pages altogether by frustrated customers unable to vent their feelings by voting NO. Also, a review that currently shows 10 out of 500 customers found this review helpful would show only 10 customers found this review helpful after abolition. I expect that a lot of bad reviews would resurface on the main product page if their NO votes were removed. In America, Harriet Klausner would be among the beneficiaries. We'll come back to her later.

Supporters of abolition of NO votes point out that there are like options on Facebook that can be cancelled (but not negated) by use of the unlike option. There is no dislike option on Facebook. I suppose this is intended to keep everything warm and fuzzy, but Facebook is a social networking site, not a commercial business. Even on Facebook, things can become quite nasty. Indeed, Facebook makes mainstream news for nasty stuff more ogten than Amazon.

We must remember that the primary purpose of reviews is to help customers make decisions about what to buy. Customers don't normally take any notice of votes, but the spotlighting algorithm does. We can argue about whether the algorithm gets the balance right (I think not) but it takes both YES and NO votes into consideration when it decides which reviews should be spotlighted. Bad reviews don't usually stay in the spotlight positions if there are enough good reviews to drive them out. No system is perfect, but if NO votes were abolished, there would be a lot more bad reviews in the spotlights. That wouldn't serve the interests of customers at all. Abolition would also put newly posted reviews near the bottom of the order, above older voteless reviews but nothing else.

In any case, Amazon will never abolish NO votes. The second ranking system was built around YES votes, with NO votes being largely disregarded. It's actually quite difficult to be penalised for NO votes under the second system. For any given review, you need at least 5 more NO votes than YES votes to incur a penalty at all. It still didn't stop people complaining bitterly about them.

YES votes aren't always genuine. In my time, I know that I've received YES votes for the opposite reasons that I've received NO votes. For example, I get NO votes from people who don't like me, but I get YES votes from people who do like me. In both cases, these votes could be related to the voter's own interests but aren't always. I've also given out helpful votes that have absolutely nothing to do with my own interests, but simply to endorse the reviewer. I do so in moderation and I normally try to find a product that interests me, but it doesn't always work out that way. In the same way, I'm sure many reviewers have done the same for reviewers they like. I don't see anything wrong in that providing that it is done in moderation, except that it nullifies the argument for abolition of NO votes.

When Amazon USA decided to design the current ranking system, they clearly realized that the old assumption, often repeated even now, that NO votes are usually spite votes while YES votes are usually genuine had long since been shown to be a myth. They also realized that any ranking system based largely on YES votes would keep Harriet Klausner as the American #1 reviewer in perpetuity. They wanted a system that kept her well away from #1 and that appears to be the primary reason that NO votes weigh so heavily in the current ranking system. Even with all the other differences between the second and current systems, you can be sure that simply cancelling all NO votes would put Harriet Klausner very close to being the #1 reviewer in America on the current system, if not actually make her #1. Even if it doesn't quite make her #1, her dogged persistence would be likely to promote her to #1 as others give up reviewing. That alone is enough to kill any chance of abolition of NO votes.

In my early days as a reviewer before I became high profile, I was able to learn from those NO votes. That was in the days when any votes I received were genuine. I am a better reviewer for having learned those lessons. I can still occasionally learn from those NO votes, usually if I get several of them on a review that I didn't expect to get that many. Most reviewers never achieve the high profile that I now have, so they retain the ability to learn from NO votes, should they choose to do so. If I hadn't been able to learn, would I have ever achieved what I later did as a reviewer? Maybe, but perhaps it would have taken longer. Votes aren't the only (or even the best) way of learning, but they certainly helped in the first few years, when there was no comments feature, and in the very early days before I discovered forums.

Placeholder reviews

See Placeholder reviews, which explains why this method of cheating would flourish if people couldn't vote NO.

Washing reviews of dirty NO votes

Reviewers sometimes decide to get rid of votes in the only way they can, by deleting reviews and (maybe) re-posting them. See Deleting and re-posting reviews for my thoughts on this issue.

Acronyms

2011-07-13T02:27:00.001-07:00

Acronyms

There are many more comprehensive lists of acronym definitions out there on the internet, notably the urban dictionary, but while this page has some of the standard ones, it also includes some that are specific to Amazon. For example, the urban dictionary gives many definitions of HK, perhaps the most famous among them being Hong Kong, but the meaning of HK in an Amazon context was not among those listed when I last looked in August 2011.

Personally, I am not a great user of acronyms although I use them sometimes, but of course I have to understand them to read other people's posts. Just because I have included acronyms in this list does not mean I have ever used them myself.

For words and phrases with special meanings among Amazon reviewers, see Questions about Amazon's reviewing system, which also contains a much briefer acronym listing than the one here.

Acronyms
A
AFAIK	as far as I know
ARAT	Amazon Reviewer Analysis Tool
ARC	Advance review copy
AVP	Amazon Verified Purchase
B
BF	boyfriend or best friend (depending on context)
BFF	best friends forever
BIL	brother-in-law
BRB	be right back
BS	Bible study (more bullshit)
BTW	by the way
C
CYA	cover your ass
D
DB	usually means the customer reviews discussion board, the original (external) Amazon forum, but sometimes used to mean any or a different forum
DH	dear husband
DILLIGAF	do I look like I give a f?
DTB	dead tree book (i.e. made from paper, whether recycled or not)
E
ETA	edited to add
F
FEAR	false evidence appearing real
FIL	father-in-law
FINE	f up, insecure, neurotic and emotionally unstable (as in, I'm FINE)
FUBAR	f up beyond all recognition
FWIW	for what it's worth
G
GBF	gold box forum
GF	girlfriend
GMTA	great minds think alike
H
HEA	happily ever after
HK	Harriet Klausner
HKAS	(sarcastically titled) Harriet Klausner appreciation society
HOF	Hall of Fame
HTG	honest to God
HTH	hope that helps
I
IIRC	if I remember correctly
IMHGLO	in my humble god like opinion
IMHO	in my humble opinion
IMO	in my opinion
IOW	in other words
IRL	in real life
ISTM	it seems to me
ITA	I totally agree
J
JMO	just my opinion
K
KISS	keep it simple, stupid
KWIM	know what I mean
L
LOL	laugh out loud
M
MIL	mother-in-law
O
OMG	oh my God
OOC	out of control
OOP	out of print
OP	opening post/poster
OTOH	on the other hand
OTT	over the top
P
PDH	Plesiochronous digital hierarchy - but you knew that already :-)
PITA	pain in the ass
POV	point of view
R
ROFL	rolling on the floor laughing
ROFLMAO	rolling on the floor laughing my ass off
RTFM	read the f manual
S
SIL	sister-in-law
SNAFU	situation normal: all fouled up
SO	significant other
STFW	search the f web
T
TANJ	there ain't no justice
TANSTAAFL	there ain't no such thing as a free lunch
TBA	to be announced
TBB	to be bought
TBR	to be read (or reviewer Timothy B Riley, depending on the context)
TIA	thanks in advance
TMI	too much information
TRF	top reviewers forum
TSTL	too stupid to live
TTFN	ta ta for now
TTIWWP	this thread is worthless without pictures
TPTB	the powers that be
V
VV	Vine™ Voice (member of the Amazon Vine™ program)
W
WTF	what the f?
WTG	way to go
WTH	what the h?
Y
YMMV	your mileage my vary

For more acronyms than you could ever wish for, see these wwbsites.

Acronym websites
Acronym finder
Acronym Search
All acronyms
The free dictionary
Urban dictionary

Add your comments, please

2011-07-13T02:25:00.000-07:00

Add your comments, please

Your comments are welcome, but I check them first

I know as much about Amazon as I do primarily because I have learned so much from other people. I would not have learned anything like as much purely from my own observations. I therefore welcome your thoughts on these issues, because there is always something new to learn. Of course, some people can be nasty or libellous and that's why I need to check comments before I allow them to post. I will sometimes allow the posting of comments that I don't like, if it suits me to do so. That puts me ahead of a lot of bloggers who won't allow any criticism whatsoever. Indeed, some bloggers don't allow comments at all.

You do not need to be a registered blogger to comment on my blog posts, though it is probably easier to do so if you are registered. Some bloggers only accept comments from registered bloggers but I allow anybody to submit comments. I prefer that you identify yourself in some way, be it your Blogger ID, your Amazon profile name or whatever, but I may nevertheless post completely anonymous comments.

You can also e-mail me

You can send comments by e-mail from my Blogger profile page, where there is an e-mail link.

If you are worried about security, you can always set up an e-mail account for public access, while keeping your existing e-mail account(s) for private use. In my case, my main concern is official snooping, so I set up a special e-mail account for job applications and related activity. In that way, if a government official demands proof of the jobs that I've applied for, I can open up that e-mail account for inspection without needing them to see my other e-mails. I doubt that I would ever be required to open up my e-mail account, but having it separate from my other e-mails sets my mind at ease. Also, if I come across a suspicious official, I tell them what I've done and they sense that I'm telling the truth, so it might act as a deterrent if they are thinking of investigating me. They may decide to pick on an easier target, but if not, then I am better prepared than most benefit claimants for whatever comes my way.

In the same way, you can set up a separate e-mail account to relieve you of whatever fears you have. If you do set up a special e-mail account for public access, remember that Amazon allow you to have two e-mail addresses. Put your public e-mail account on your Amazon profile page, leaving your main account e-mail as it is, remembering to tick the box saying you want Amazon to remember both.

Allegations better sent to me by e-mail

I regularly hear about allegations regarding particular authors or reviewers and I am sometimes able to help with researching such cases. Because such allegations may be libellous and because people can ask Google to alert them to new posts about themselves, I cannot allow these to show up as public comments, and it is difficult to respond to comments that I cannot post. Because of this, I urge you to send allegations by e-mail. You probably won't be telling me about a new type of allegation, as I've probably come across something similar before, but I'd still like to hear your story. You may have spotted a particular case that is worth investigating. Even though there are likely to be similarities with previous cases, there may be new twists on old themes.

Nasty comments

I expect to reject most of these, since most of the points they make can be made in a more diplomatic way. When I allow nasty comments to go public, it will almost always be so that I can respond to them. The best example from the past came when somebody noticed that I had posted a lot of reviews and also noticed that I was unemployed (which I still am). It was a particularly nasty comment, but summed up a widespread attitude towards unemployed people. I therefore allowed it to post, responded to it and added another thought a few days later. Eventually, I decided to provide a more detailed analysis in my political blog. I thought that was the place for it and I was right, but subsequent events have shown that readers of this blog (who are not usually the same people) are sometimes interested too and I have included the page here too, with a different title and some other modifications, as Unemployed Amazon reviewer. So there is an example of somebody sending in a particularly nasty comment that I posted, replied to twice and then set out a detailed analysis that is now on two different blogs. The original exchange can also be found on my Central hub Welcome page. That is an extreme case and likely to remain uniquely so, but it shows that I do sometimes allow nasty comments to show up, however rarely that may be.

Although not responses to blog posts, I have reproduced some nasty forum comments elsewhere in this blog, if only to show that I can cope with them.

Please comment on the blog post that your comment relates to

This sounds obvious, but it doesn't always happen that way. Sometimes people continue reading other posts then comment on the earlier page wherever they happen to be, while at other times people may compile a file of comments then post the whole lot together, which is fine in an e-mail but not suitable for public blog posts. I will accept such comments but may subsequently move them to their correct place, which may mean splitting them up and that all takes time.

Error corrections

We all get things wrong, myself included. For reasons set out in my blog post Facts and opinions, I probably make proportionately fewer mistakes than most when it comes to Amazon issues, but I make them. Amazon may also make fools of us by changing the software so that an established truth is no longer true. Most of the errors I make are actually typos, although I have spent a lot of time trying to weed them out of this blog.

So I am happy to receive error corrections although I would prefer them to be sent as e-mails. If you MUST send them as comments, please keep them in separate comments from other thoughts you may have. My normal procedure would be to post the comment containing the error correction, correct the error if I agree that I am in error, post a reply saying either that I've corrected it or why not (so that you get an e-mail if you've asked to track the response) then delete both the comment and my reply after a suitable time interval, as they are now superfluous. Obviously, that procedure is more complicated if you have mixed up error corrections with other comments. In such cases, I may delete the comments totally, or I may move them into my part of the blog page and edit them.

I occasionally move comments into my part of the blog page

This can happen for a variety reasons noted above. When I move comments in this way, I tidy up the formatting and correct any spelling errors that I see, as I take responsibility for them. On this blog, you'll find an example at the foot of Attitudes to Amazon reviews and reviewers. This comment originally appeared on my "Amazon topics" header page that no longer exists, its contents having been moved to other pages or deleted. There wasn't a page about attitudes when that post was made, so the header was the right page for it at the time.

Although it hasn't happened yet, there may be cases where I want to keep part but not all of a comment and the only way to do that is to move it into my part of the blog page, edit it and delete the original. I cannot edit original posts that are not mine, although I can delete them.

Amazon Vine™

2011-07-13T02:24:00.000-07:00

Amazon Vine™

Products mentioned here but not offered via Vine™

Just to be clear, the purifier, the Kindle and the steam cleaners mentioned in this blog post were not offered via Vine™, but are mentioned to illustrate points.

Purpose of this blog post

This blog post was originally written as an Amazon guide to describe the theories about how people might be offered invitations to Vine™, and contained only a brief description of Vine™ itself. After seeing Questions about Amazon's reviewing system (when it was in the form of an Amazon guide, and its title mentioned FAQ rather than questions), an American reviewer requested that I do an equivalent FAQ about Vine™ issues.

As I looked into the idea, it became clear that there were two very different needs. One was for a FAQ that is only for Vine™ members, which I will have no part of, and which seems to be as far away as ever. The other idea was for an outsiders’ guide to Vine™, so I expanded my guide as it then was to include a lot more about Vine™ itself, with further changes being made during the conversion to this blog post and thereafter. The result is not a FAQ guide as such, but inevitably it contains the answers to some FAQ about Vine™. Anybody who is interested in creating a FAQ is welcome to pick ideas from this blog post and to provide their own answers in their own way. That guide, like Questions about Amazon's reviewing system, will contain a lot of short, snappy answers and avoid opinions and theories as far as is possible. Given the shroud of secrecy that Amazon wraps their software in (at least in part in order to limit abuse of the system), it isn’t always possible to stick to facts alone.

Therefore, this blog post is not meant to be a FAQ guide, but is intended to demystify the workings of Amazon Vine™ to those outside. There are plenty of facts, but also a lot of opinions and theories. Some questions that would be asked in an internal Vine™ FAQ guide are not included here because they are only relevant to Vine™ members, for example questions about contact address, terms and conditions, etc., that outsiders do not need to know. However, I have seen the nearest thing to a members' FAQ guide and I have covered the questions that will be of interest to outsiders without breaching terms and conditions. At least I don't think they breach the terms and conditions, but if I am thrown out of Vine™, it won't be the end of the world as long as I can continue with my other Amazon activities.

Introduction

The first part of this blog post describes aspects of the program itself and is based on hard evidence. Where I add an opinion, I make clear that it’s just my opinion. Where I add a theory, I make it clear that it’s just a theory but it isn’t necessarily mine unless I say so.

The second part of the blog post is about how people might get selected for invitation into Vine™. The big question that nobody knows the answer to is how Amazon decide who to invite. The little question that also needs to be considered is whether Amazon’s different websites use different selection criteria, although there is no obvious reason why this should be so, nor is there any observable evidence to suggest it. This part of the blog post begins factually, but most of it is speculation based on observations by myself and others. I am not surprised that a reviewer friend of mine has described some of this speculation as far-fetched, but none of us truly know and I don’t rule anything out at this stage. Many of these sections have titles ending in question marks to emphasize the point that there is no proof. If you have other theories, please let me know.

It is clear to me is that there is more than one way of getting in, because for every theory there are clearly people who don‘t fit. It is also clear that Amazon‘s assertion that people are chosen based on the quality of their reviews is a load of bull, although some people might be chosen that way. Anybody who looks at Vine™ reviews overall notices that there are some good ones and bad ones too. Looking at their profiles, one might wonder how some of them were allowed in. Looking at the profiles of some outsiders who have never been invited (and you can only be sure that they've never been invited if they tell you and you believe them) adds to the mystery, but also raises the question of how some of those outsiders have never been invited. More of that later.

How the program operates

The basic program

The Amazon Vine™ program allows publishers and manufactures to send their products to Amazon for distribution to reviewers. For the suppliers, it is a form of advertizing designed to create interest in new products before (or soon after) they become widely available.

In setting up the program, Amazon decided to distribute the items free to reviewers, but that only selected reviewers are allowed to join the program, those selections being made by Amazon.

Personally, I think Vine™ might work better all round if reviewers were expected to pay a nominal amount for whatever they receive. I know that a lot of reviewers who are already part of the program don’t like the idea, but it would curtail some of the worst excesses and allow for a much wider selection of participants. Just having to pay the shipping costs or 5% of the list price (but not both) would give people pause for thought. The race to order as soon as a new list arrives might be less frenetic, if it were to still happen at all. Most Vine™ members would order less stuff, which would allow more Amazon customers to participate. It might even allow everybody to participate who wants to.

Vine™ offerings

Reviewers are sent two lists per month, the first being a list that is meant to be tailored to their specific tastes. For some people it works quite well, but it doesn‘t work for me. It is called the targeted list and is normally a very short list. A maximum of two products can be selected from this list. We’ll come back to targeting later.

The second and much larger list is called the leftover list and is sent to everybody. Again, a maximum of two products can be selected from this list. No carry-forward is allowed from one list to another. Thus, no reviewer ever gets more than four products per month.

There is a much wider range of offerings on USA Vine™ (including food and drink) than on UK Vine™. I think a few CD’s were offered in the early days of both the UK and USA programs, but I haven‘t seen any since I joined UK Vine™ and I‘m told that it‘s a similar story in the USA. Both the UK and USA programs are dominated by offers of books, but small appliances, office supplies and computer supplies including software sometimes appear on the lists. Larger appliances such as TV sets may occasionally be offered, but not very often.

France and Germany also operate Vine™ programs, but I am not in contact with any reviewers who are in those programs so have no information. I haven’t found any Vine™ pages in Canada or Italy (but maybe Italy will start up eventually; it is a young site) and I haven’t looked in China, Japan or Spain, though I'd be surprised if at least some of them don't have Vine™ programs.

The non-disposable rule

Vine™ members are not allowed to sell or give possession to anybody else EVER, though it appears that after six months, Vine™ products can be disposed of for scrap. Amazon reserve the right to recall products at any time, but obviously if I'm right about the six-month rule, they won't recall anything that is too old. As far as I am aware, Amazon have never done recalled anything. Of course, in the case of products with a limited lifespan (food and drink being obvious examples), it would be impossible to enforce anyway. Actually, if they want to recall food or drink because of (say) an e-coli outbreak, it will be very worrying for any Vine™ reviewers who have already consumed those products. While disposal for scrap appears to be allowed eventually, the rules clearly forbid resale. Sometimes people defy the rules and offer Vine™ items on sites such as E-Bay. If you see a Vine™ item being offered for sale, you may report it to Amazon, but please remember to give them all relevant details. Amazon can only reprimand the reviewer, which may or may not mean throwing them out of the Vine™ program, if they have enough information upon which to act.

Targeting

One of the ideas behind Vine™ is to somehow find the right reviewers for the right products. We must always remember this is a system for reviewing, not for filling people’s homes with all the gadgets that they’d like to have. Reviewers sometimes wonder why they are offered (say) a vacuum cleaner or a computer printer not long after they’ve reviewed the one they own. It’s precisely because they are known to review that type of product. What Vine™ hope is that the reviewer will accept the product and compare it with the one they’ve already reviewed.

Customers like comparative reviews of this type, providing they contain all the relevant information. (Alana) Chandler’s reviews of steam cleaners have proved extremely popular (see below). She didn’t get them from Vine™, but borrowed them from friends who between them had a variety of steam cleaners; however, the same principle applies. If a reviewer is offered rival gadgets or appliances through Vine™, it presents a great reviewing opportunity, assuming that the reviewer has room for them all.

Selection policies

With a conspicuous absence of music CD’s among the products on UK Vine™, and with the books mostly not appealing to me, I haven’t found much to interest me. Others get much more out of Vine™ than I do. The bottom line is that as there is no obligation or pressure to accept anything, you may as well accept the invitation if you get one. While you can opt out at any stage, there’s no point. Even I occasionally find something that interests me. Amazon can issue new invitations whenever they feel the need to do so.

Some people say that Vine™ isn't for stuff you want, but that it is an opportunity to try stuff you'd never think of buying with your own money, and I suspect that most people regard it that way. However, I have a simple rule that if I wouldn't consider buying it EVEN at a knockdown price (such as when I browse my local discount bookshop) then I'm not interested. Of course, if something comes up that I'd pay a normal price for, that's even better, but that hasn't happened yet. I have plenty of books and music to review and I'm not going to waste time with stuff that doesn't interest me.

Pre-publication books

Books are sometimes supplied to Vine™ in an unfinished state. So far, my Vine™ books have all been the finished article, but they’ve all been books that have been out for a while. People who accept pre-publication copies (also known as advance review copies) can find pictures missing, typos and various other deficiencies that are supposed to be rectified before publication. Reviewers are meant to make allowances accordingly. Of course, some of these books are closer to the published version than others.

Food and drink samples

As noted above, food and drink manufacturers have not yet supplied anything to the UK Vine™ program, but they have supplied the USA program. Some American reviewers have been very disappointed to discover that while the standard product may be offered as a pack of 6, 12, 20 or whatever, the samples supplied to Vine™ reviewers sometimes (but not always) contain much smaller numbers. In these cases, the number may be just one can, one bottle, one chocolate bar or whatever. It may even be that one bottle may be enough to base a review on, but one chocolate bar? If I were to review a chocolate bar that I’d never tasted before, I’d want to eat a few in order to make an accurate judgement. Anybody with children might want to see what they think too. Of course, some reviewers might be able to review chocolate effectively based on just one bar, but I don't think many would. In any event, the meanness of some (but not all) food and drink suppliers in providing only limited samples discourages some reviewers from accepting them at all. Those reviewers who like to order the maximum number of products often feel they can do better by selecting other stuff.

Nevertheless, if food manufactures join the UK Vine™ program, they are likely to adopt similar policies. These industries are dominated by multi-nationals such as Nestlé and Kraft who operate in America, Europe and elsewhere, irrespective of their home bases. I’ll be watching with interest to see what happens, as it inevitably will at some point.

Please note that while I’ve highlighted food and drink here, the same basic idea may apply to some other household products that would normally be sold in packs.

The 75% rule

Reviewers are only required to review 75% of everything they receive. Although it is not obvious from the way people discuss the rules (but is clear from the wording of the actual rules themselves), the 75% rule is not enforced until a reviewer has ordered four products. Having done so, a reviewer has to review three of the four products before being able to order any more. The whole point of the rule is to allow you NOT to review some products that you don't want to for whatever reason. If the very first product that a reviewer ordered from Vine™ happened to be such a product, it would stop the reviewer before he or she got started if Amazon enforced the 75% rule on the first order.

One thing that has become clear is that the rule errs on the side of generosity. Even beyond the first four products, it is sometimes possible for a reviewer to have reviewed less than 75% of products received and still order more. My theory is that Amazon works in blocks of four, so for every four products received, a reviewer must review three. If true, once having reviewed three of the first four products, a reviewer could receive a further four before having to review any, bringing their total to three reviews from eight received. The reviewer would then have to review any three of the five un-reviewed products before receiving any more.

I have now done this. Having ordered an eighth product but only posted UK Vine™ reviews for three of the previous seven, I called up another product page and was told I needed to review three more. No problem, as I already had two reviews ready, and had posted them in America where they don't count towards my quota. I promptly posted them in the UK, leaving one more review before I was allowed to order anything else. I reviewed the newest book within a couple of days of receiving it and can now order again when something appeals. If my theory holds good, I should be able to order four more before having to post further UK Vine™ reviews, bringing my total to six books reviewed out of twelve ordered. In the meantime, should I write reviews for any of them, or for the other two yet un-reviewed, I'll post them in America if they are listed there. You will notice that the way I operate the system, the 75% is becoming a maximum rather than a minimum.

Being the maverick that I am and given the rarity with which I find anything appealing, I am more interested in testing the formula than in whether I have spare ordering capacity. So, I am satisfied that I have confirmed my theory thus far, but the cynics will say that I haven't got enough data to satisfy them. While I think it highly likely that my theory is correct, I'll continue with my policy of not posting UK Vine™ reviews until I have to, so that I can confirm the limits, but I'll prepare the reviews whenever it suits me and post them in America at the earliest opportunity thereafter. Even after I have enough data for the cynics (if that situation ever arises), they will no doubt respond that I have only proved the case for the UK. While the UK and USA software have differed in various ways historically, I think it most unlikely that they would use different algorithms. The differences have normally been caused by some software being installed at one site and not the other. The two Vine™ systems are both operated from Seattle, so I'm told, making it even less likely that thy would use different software. I can only prove the USA algorithm if Amazon remove the restriction about Vine™ membership being limited to those with a postal address in the relevant country, and if I am subsequently invited into USA Vine™, which would not be a certainty by any means. The best chance of proving the USA algorithm is for an American to take up the challenge.

An alternative theory is that Amazon may be more lenient in applying the 75% rule to the leftover list than to the targeted list. Most of what I order is from the leftover list anyway.

In practice, most reviewers in the program make sure they stay ahead of the 75% mark because they want to avoid the possibility of being unable to order something they want from a future list. Given the speed at which stocks of some products are claimed, that is a chance that most reviewers don’t want to take. By the time they’ve posted another review, it may be too late to get what they want. I'm happy to risk that.

The green banner

Any review of a product that a customer receives from the Vine™ program is branded with a prominent green banner in the country where the review is posted via the Vine™ program. In America, the banner reads as follows.

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program

In the UK, the banner reflects the different spelling of the last word as follows.

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme

In France and Germany, the wording is different again to reflect their own language.

If a reviewer posts the review in a foreign country, the banner does not show. Because I am a member of UK Vine™, the green banner doesn’t show up in the USA. I have copied and pasted the banner into my American reviews where applicable, though of course it just appears in standard black type, and I deliberately didn‘t edit the spelling. Meanwhile, here are the links to the UK reviews that illustrate the green banners. I also list the star ratings I've given each product here, showing at a glance why I'm not wildly keen on Vine™. (Note that this list is not always up to date.)

My UK Vine™ reviews
Stars	Review
***	A Matter of life and death: or how to wean a man off football (Ronni Ancona and Alistair McGowan)
**	Whose side are they on? How Britain's bonkers government is coming after you (Alan Pearce)
***	The future of work (Richard Donkin)
****	Amazing and extraordinary London Underground facts (Stephen Halliday)
*****	Steam: a life on the railway (introduced by Pete Waterman)
***	Tales from Facebook (Daniel Miller)
**	You're hired! CVs, interview answers and psychometric tests
***	God rest you merry: the story of Christmas in words and music (BBC)

The Vine™ Voice badge

Any reviewer that is part of the program has the option to display this badge on their profile and all their reviews. However, a lot of customers who are not in the Vine™ program find this badge confusing, thinking that it also means that the customer received the product free via the program. Look up Surround Air XJ-3800 Intelli-Pro Air Purifier. Look for the review by J Lee, which on the last occasion that I checked, was in the top spotlight position. Now look at the comments attached to that review. Many of the comments are about the product and the contents of the review, but there are some comments about the Vine™ program. I’ll reproduce a couple here.

Since this is a "Vine Voice" review, you got this machine given to you. What's all this nonsense about research and budget?

I understand that through the Amazon Vine program you get these items free. Why did you pay for it?

J Lee replied to both comments explaining the situation, but as a result of that experience, removed the Vine™ Voice badge from their profile. The green banner will still show on any review that J Lee posts as a result of receiving a free Vine™ product from the program, but there will no longer be any confusion regarding J Lee’s other reviews. Seeing those comments, I have removed the Vine™ Voice badge from my UK profile. There are enough problems with Vine™ reviews anyway, and that’s one that we are allowed to opt out of.

Reviewer objectivity - or lack thereof

Some customers, upon realizing what those green banners mean, choose to disregard all Vine™ reviews. That is their choice, but are Vine™ reviews any more or less objective than other reviews? Reviewers sometimes get thrown out of the Vine™ program, but not for giving one-star reviews. Nevertheless, some people may fear this and give more generous ratings than they otherwise would. However, because some reviewers take more risks with Vine™ selections precisely because they are free, they are more likely to be disappointed with what they get via Vine™ than what they buy, and this disappointment may be reflected in their reviews. Other reviewers have a policy of never reviewing stuff they don’t like, but feel obliged to do so in the case of Vine™ products. These are just examples, but there are a variety of other reasons for a Vine™ review being sometimes more favourable and sometimes more critical than a standard review. Looking at all the arguments, we can see that the overall evidence is inconclusive.

So far, I’ve reviewed three Vine™ products, giving one two stars and the others three stars. Whenever I post them in America, I mark them as noted earlier. In one case, I had to put the review on a Kindle version because the hardback isn’t listed in the USA, but I added a sentence to the front of the review saying so. Reviews of books are normally linked to all versions, so if I'd been able to review the hardback, it would probably have appeared on the Kindle version anyway.

How reviewers are selected - maybe

Amazon's official statement

How are Vine Voices selected?

We want the Voice program to reflect the best of our growing body of customer reviewers. We invite reviewers to participate in the Vine program based on feedback from other customers. A reviewer's rank is determined by the overall helpfulness of all their reviews, factoring in the number of reviews they have written. More weight is given to recent reviews. For more information on how reviewer rankings are determined, please visit How ranking works . Ultimately, Vine Voices become eligible based on the value and trust other Amazon.com customers place in the Voices' ability to provide helpful and insightful reviews. In addition to the reviewer rank, we also weigh customers' demonstrated interest in products similar to those enrolled in the Vine program. This facilitates product reviews by people who are familiar with the category they belong to. For example if a Vine Voice mostly purchases and/or reviews home and garden products, it is more likely they will be offered similar products.

Anybody who has looked at those reviewers who are in Vine™ knows that is not really how it works, while Amazon's explanation of How ranking works, which their statement also mentions, is just as misleading. For my explanation of how rankings work, see Amazon's three reviewer ranking systems explained. Obviously, Amazon's statement contains some elements of the truth, but there's far more to it than they admit. So how might Amazon really be selecting reviewers?

Selection by geography

The only certain requirement for Vine™ membership is that you must have a postal address in the same country as the Amazon website, though that might be the address of a friend or relative. Unless the rules change, you definitely won't ever find Amazon issuing invitations to reviewers whose only postal address is in Australia, unless Amazon eventually open a website there and set up a Vine™ program. If an existing Viner moves to Australia, he or she will not be able to receive any further products through the program unless they retain an address in their former country. Even then, it may not be worth their while, as Vine™ will ship everything to that other address.

I get the impression that Amazon would like to offer Vine™ membership irrespective of location, based on a comment I saw in their terms and conditions, I think suppliers don't like the idea. For them, the whole exercise is part of their marketing and in some cases, it may not help them if their product is reviewed by (say) an Australian. As the vast majority of Vine™ offerings are books, and the vast majority of those books could be reviewed by people of all nationalities, I think the rule needs looking at. I'd join USA Vine™ if given the chance, because there might be some books that might interest me. Nevertheless, I don't take many Vine™ products from the UK and I doubt that I would take many from the USA either. If the problem isn't with the suppliers but with the shipping costs, all I can say is that if I were invited to join USA Vine™, I'd be happy to pay shipping costs on any books that interest me. But really, the main beneficiaries would be those Amazon customers who live in countries that do not have Amazon websites, or which have such websites but don't operate Vine™.

The inaugural USA launch

Amazon USA launched the program in 2007. The very first batch of reviewers were restricted to high-ranking reviewers in order to provide Amazon with feedback on the program. Amazon got the feedback they wanted and made whatever adjustments they felt necessary, if indeed there were any.

Subsequent invitations

The inaugural USA launch was a one-off. Subsequent invitations have been based on a different set of criteria that may or may not include elements of the original launch criteria. Amazon later launched the Vine™ program in the UK, France and Germany. Those websites didn’t bother with feedback and probably used the revised USA criteria from the beginning, though they may have adjusted them in some way.

I was invited to join the program when Amazon UK launched Vine™ in 2008. I declined but my invitation must have remained open because I later decided that I wanted to read the Vine™ forum to see what people were saying about me and found that I could, but it‘s not the most exciting forum out there by a long way. As I suspected, I found that the products on offer weren’t really that interesting to me, but it does no harm to be a part of Vine™. Amazon don’t enforce any minimum requirement for orders placed, so I’ll stay in.

Selection by lucky dip?

Some people suggest that Amazon selects reviewers at random, because they see no pattern among reviewers invited. I have never subscribed to the view that it is completely random, but that there are many different ways of getting in and if so, that would cause the apparent randomness. Just as a recruiting employer has different needs and offers jobs to people for different reasons, it appears that Amazon offer Vine™ membership to people for different reasons.

There is bound to be some element of luck, as it may be that if Amazon decide they need a particular type of reviewer, there are likely to be more reviewers to choose from than they need. Somebody suggested that Amazon could set up software to identify potential candidates and then simply select at random. It’s possible, but even though it is likely that Amazon use software to identify candidates, I hope that they would at least look at those candidates to pick the most deserving, although I fear that they may just rely on software alone. It appears that Amazon have some software and it incorporates a weird algorithm that is so characteristic of Amazon. Nevertheless, they might invite individuals directly if they so choose.

If Amazon don’t choose people by lucky dip, how might they choose people?

A review that grabs lots of votes?

One popular theory is that where review history is a factor, having one or more reviews that accumulate plenty of votes may be a factor. Of course, it would depend what threshold is set. If the threshold is (say) one review with at least 20 votes, thousands of reviewers qualify, but thousands more don’t. I’ve seen reviewers get invited early in their reviewing career who have yet to have any review reach 20 votes, but who clearly write good reviews. While I’m sure that having review(s) with plenty of votes might help, I think it would normally apply in conjunction with other factors. A high threshold might allow reviewers in irrespective of other factors.

Susan appears to be an example of a reviewer who Amazon invited purely on the basis of a popular review. Her review of Kindle: Amazon's Original Wireless Reading Device (1st generation) has acquired many thousands of votes, but a look at her profile shows that she only posted two other reviews before she was offered a Vine™ invitation. Of course, she may have deleted some reviews but if so, it’s unlikely that they would have made any difference to whether Amazon offered Susan an invitation or not. The reviewer with the top spotlight on that product does not display a Vine™ Voice badge, nor has he posted any Vine™ reviews. He may have joined but not yet found anything of interest or he may have declined the invitation to join.

We must always remember that just because somebody shows no evidence of being in Vine™, it does not mean that they have been overlooked. It is not possible to say something like "This person isn't in Vine™ despite fulfilling all these criteria, therefore those criteria aren't a factor in Vine™ membership".

Susan’s example is an extreme case, where it is possible that the votes on a single review are so plentiful that other criteria become irrelevant. Looking at many other Vine™ members’ profiles, they often have at least one quite popular review that pre-dates their Vine™ reviews, but not always. While I suspect that a popular review is the most likely reason for a reviewer being invited, there have to be other reasons. In the UK, I’ve found people who got in with a relatively small number of reviews (around 20 or fewer) and without any of them having reached ten votes, helpful or otherwise. So how might those people have been chosen?

Amazon need to shift Vine™ stock?

Amazon do not force people to review anything. They send out lists and reviewers choose whatever they want subject to availability. Some products are very popular and quickly become unavailable. At the other end of the spectrum, it may be that there is insufficient interest in some products. Amazon can either return these products to their source or they can invite other reviewers into Vine™ who might be interested. Suppose that Amazon have a stack of children's books that existing Vine™ members don't want, they may invite people who might want them. It would then be a question of hoping that those surplus stocks are disposed of to interested reviewers.

Reviewer ranking?

While this was a major factor in the inaugural USA launch, I very much doubt that it has had much impact subsequently. It may be a deciding factor (and to that extent would be better than a pure lucky dip) but those American reviewers who didn’t get in initially despite their high rank have mostly not got in since. Of course, a new ranking system has come in since then, but some of those high-ranking reviewers who didn’t get in initially also rank high on the new system and still haven‘t got in. If rank (either system) plays any role in selection now, it is likely to be a minor one. High-ranking reviewers may still be invited, but probably for other reasons. In any case, it certainly doesn’t apply to those reviewers who have twenty or fewer reviews with no popular reviews among them.

Posts on forums?

This is an element that appears to have more enduring appeal to Amazon’s Vine™ selectors than reviewer rankings. While it is true that reviewer rankings are often meaningless, they tend to provide some sort of guide to a reviewer’s merit, especially if one takes both new and old into consideration. However, there is absolutely no basis for relating review quality to forum activity. It nevertheless appears that posting on the top reviewer forum in the UK or USA increases the likelihood of being allowed into Vine™ in the relevant country. So why might Amazon reward forum posters with Vine™ membership?

I suspect that the Vine™ selectors appreciate the interest that forum posters show. If they are positive, perhaps the selectors feel they deserve to get in anyway. If they are critical within reason, inviting them may defuse any tension they feel. People outside Vine™ sometimes resent those inside. Maybe Amazon feel that it is better to have such people on the inside spitting out than on the outside spitting in. However, Amazon have also shown an intolerance of bullies. Criticism is accepted up to a point (and where that point might be is unclear) but anybody wanting to get into Vine™ would be wise not to go overboard with their criticism. Suggestions that Vine™ is a corrupt system are unlikely to help anybody’s cause.

If Amazon do invite forum posters, I doubt that the invitations are generated by software. It would almost certainly require human intervention. The software automatically generates an e-mail when it issues an invitation, or at least it is supposed to. The interesting thing about forum posters is that a lot of those who have got in are adamant that they never saw an e-mail, but they got in via the link to the relevant Vine™ home page when somebody posted it on a forum.

Owners of blogs and websites?

This would seem to be a strange one at first glance, but maybe Amazon feel that these people have something to offer. It appears that one particular batch of American invitees came from this group of people. It would be easy for Amazon to identify people who set up links within their Amazon profile. It would also be easy for Amazon to vary the invitation selection criteria from one run to another.

Purchasing history?

This idea springs from the observation that some Viners have little or no track record as reviewers prior to joining Vine™. Some Vine™ members say they hardly spent anything at Amazon prior to joining Vine™, so they didn’t get in because of their purchasing history. Fair enough, but I think there are several different ways of getting in, and those people obviously got in for other reasons. However, looking at some of the people who have become Vine™ members, it is difficult to see how they could have got in by any other way unless they have an alternative reviewing account, which is allowed under Vine™ rules, or unless they've been posting on forums that aren't related to reviewing. Even so, we can’t eliminate the idea that Amazon might be tempted to reward big-spending customers with Vine™ invitations, irrespective of their reviewing history.

Of course, we have no access to anybody else's purchasing history, and nor should we. Nevertheless, it may sometimes be possible to get a sense of somebody's spending power from clues they provide. Amazon Verified Purchase badges provide one clue, if the customer is a regular reviewer, but such reviewers may qualify anyway on other criteria. Those badges are only currently shown in America as far as I know; they certainly aren‘t shown in the European sites. Reviewers with little or no reviewing history may (for example) say on their profile what their job is. We might recognize that it is a well-paid job. They may be lying or they may spend their money elsewhere, but it's the nearest we can get to sensing whether Amazon might be impressed by their purchasing history.

Anything else?

Every section above that has a title ending in a question mark is guesswork, albeit that guesswork is based on observations by myself and others. Nobody outside Amazon really knows what the criteria are for new invitations, though they many in any case vary from one selection run to another. Only the original USA launch criteria are known. There may be other criteria that Vine™ selectors consider that aren’t featured here, though nobody has suggested anything else so far. Like all my blog posts on Amazon related topics, I’ll update this one whenever I feel the need.

Improve your chances of an invitation

Amazon clearly don’t have a fixed size membership; they recruit more members whenever they choose to. How they do it, as this blog post makes clear, is a mystery. Nevertheless, it seems that you can improve your chances of getting an invitation by continuing to write good reviews and by becoming a regular poster on the top reviewer forum, providing you live in a country that has an Amazon website. If you live in (say) Australia or the Republic of Ireland, you either need to emigrate or hope that Amazon set up a website in your country, or hope that Amazon relax the Vine™ membership rules. Amazon’s European headquarters is in the Republic of Ireland, probably for tax reasons, but they haven’t set up an Irish website for customers.

Amazon's three reviewer ranking systems explained

2011-07-13T02:23:00.000-07:00

Amazon's three reviewer ranking systems explained

Introduction

Please note that Amazon removed the so-called classic ranking system on December 8th or 9th, 2011. I now refer to it as the second ranking system, although few people remember its predecessor, which even pre-dates my time on Amazon. The so-called classic system wasn't a classic from my perspective, nor from a lot of other people's perspectives, which is why it was abolished. I could call it the old system, and will do so on forums for a while yet, but if the current system is replaced, it will also be an old system. Therefore, I now refer to the so-called classic system on this blog as the second ranking system, which is a description that will always be correct.

Please also note that Amazon may be developing ranking system number four. If and when it appears, this page will be updated as and when details become available and as they are analyzed. I cannot change the URL (which says three ranking systems) without reorganizing this blog, but will make a decision about whether to do so or not once things settle down and I see what impact the system has, if it appears. Meanwhile, speculation about ranking system number four remains on its own page.

Amazon provide sales rankings for individual products and reviewer rankings that are supposed to provide a guide to the merits of individual reviewers. This blog post is concerned with reviewer rankings, primarily the second ranking system and the current ranking system, although the original stripes system that was before my time is also mentioned briefly.

Throughout this blog post, you'll see a lot more information about the second system than the current system, simply because a lot more was known about it. Over time, I expect to expand this post to reflect increasing knowledge of the current system. I may remove some of the stuff about the second ranking system or split this page to transfer the historical stuff to a separate page, but I want to see whether there are to be further changes in the early part of 2012 before committing myself. It is in any case helpful to have an idea of what the second ranking system was like when trying to comprehend the strange design of the current system.

Much more is known about how the second ranking system used to work than the current system. The current ranking system was installed in America on October 23rd, 2008, followed by Britain, France and Germany on March 9th, 2010. Canada followed the European websites not long afterwards. When Amazon started up in Italy and Spain in 2011, they only installed the current ranking system. China only has one ranking system, which pre-dates October 2008. It always looked like the current system except for the page layout of the ranking tables, and it may well be that China was used as the live testing ground for that system. China was a curiousity because the layout of the ranking tables looked a lot like the layout that was used prior to the current ranking system, and the ranking table was not limited to the top 10,000, but there were no equally ranked reviewers. China now uses the same layout for ranking tables as all the other sites.

The ranking algorithms are complex and Amazon change them occasionally. Most people were confused by the details of the second ranking system. We never knew all the details anyway, so I'll first mention the basic strategy. Later, I'll compare the second system with the current system (which we know even less about), then give you the full detail of the second system as best we knew it. After that, I'll discuss the flaws in both systems, then close with a few thoughts about rankings, including top reviewer badges, spotlights and ranking update frequencies among other things.

Before doing any of that, it's worth taking a brief look at Amazon's original ranking system, which was before my time.

The original Amazon reviewer ranking system

I know very little about this system and might not have heard about it at all if it hadn't been for one reviewer who occasionally used to suggest a return to it. It was abolished late in 1999 or early in 2000, when the second ranking system was introduced. Apparently, it was based on being awarded stripes for attaining various landmarks, but there weren't many stripes to award. In concept, it sounds a bit like the judo belts system, with two obvious differences.

In judo, the top belt (black) is very difficult to achieve, whereas it appears that the maximum number of stripes that a reviewer could achieve wasn't all that difficult.

In judo, even after acquiring a black belt, it is possible to enter competitions that carry enhanced status, with the ultimate accolade being an Olympic gold medal. On Amazon, once a reviewer had the maximum number of stripes, that was it.

Well, that's all based on what I've heard about the original system. I wasn't on Amazon when it was in use and I never pressed for any details, but I didn't feel the need to. I'm only mentioning it here because I see people refer to the second system as the first Amazon ranking system. It wasn't the first, although it was the first numerical system that Amazon created. I can see why the original system didn't survive very long and I can also see why only one reviewer that I know of has ever suggested going back to it. That reviewer has opted out of the numerical ranking systems because of a dislike for the pressure to maintain a rank level that these systems exert. Other people have opted out of the numerical ranking systems for similar reasons, but most of them are not aware of the original Amazon ranking system. In August 2011, I saw a suggestion for a ranking system that sounds similar, by merely awarding gold, silver and bronze status to reviewers, but nobody supported his suggestion.

If anybody who remembers that ancient system wishes to provide further details, I'll be happy to update this post in the interests of historical completeness and accuracy, otherwise let's dismiss it as an irrelevance.

The main details

Second ranking system - apparent anomalies

Anybody looking at reviews produced by a variety of reviewers quickly realized that there were plenty of anomalies (even more so on the current system). Compare the number of votes and the number of reviews that each reviewer has. Reviewers with more votes and more reviews generally had a better ranking on the second system than those with fewer votes and fewer reviews, but not always.

An extreme example could be seen on The Story About Ping. John E Fracisco has received many thousands of votes just for his review of this book, mainly due to a link from Slashdot, His reviewer ranking on the second system was always modest. His current ranking is also modest, mostly for different reasons though his limited number of reviews is a factor in both.

Second ranking system - the basics

Excessive votes by friends and family were disregarded to limit abuse of the system. I called these excess votes loyalty votes. They share a common root with the current system's fan votes in that they were caused by customers voting too often for particular reviewers, but they operated differently, so I'll continue to use different adjectives.

Ranking points were awarded based on votes for each individual review, based on the number of votes that review received (after deduction of loyalty votes). Each review could only get a certain number of points and once a given review had its full quota, any extra votes for that review had no effect on the rankings.

Thus, a reviewer's ranking depended not only on how many votes and reviews they had, but how well those votes were distributed, and whether those votes were loyalty votes or not. This explains why John E Fracisco, who only wrote a few reviews, had such a modest ranking on the second system. (On the current system, his modest ranking is due to the age of his reviews and his inactivity as well as his small number of reviews.)

I have so far only discussed YES votes. These were the ones that really mattered when it came to calculating rankings on the second system. You may have noticed that the American #1 reviewer on the second system, Harriet Klausner, has a huge number of NO votes and you may wonder how she came to be #1. The answer is simple – NO votes only had a modest impact in the second ranking system. As each review was looked at to determine how many points it was worth, NO votes were disregarded altogether unless there were at least five more NO votes than YES votes for that review. Even then, the impact was small.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that the algorithm worked exactly the same way on all reviews, regardless of whether they were for books, movies, music, food, clothes, garden equipment or whatever. Some people thought this was unfair as it takes longer to review an 800-page book than most of the other stuff that can be reviewed, but it's up to each individual to choose what to review. So, for ranking purposes, all the following products (and the Ping book mentioned earlier) are assessed equally.

Once all ranking points were calculated, ranking numbers were calculated simply by listing everybody in order, #1 rank being the person with most points. So your actual ranking depended on how many points everybody else had as well as how many you had. This explained why, over time, your ranking fell if you stopped reviewing, or if you didn't review as much as other people with a similar ranking.

Current ranking system protects Amazon’s secrecy

Amazon know that customers worked out how the rankings were calculated in the second system, at least in all the main details, and the method used. Amazon were determined to make the current algorithm more difficult to crack. Apart from making the algorithm more complicated, they took two special measures that appear to be a direct attempt to deter people from trying to work out the current algorithm. Amazon introduced tie-breakers, so ensuring that everybody has a unique ranking on the current system, while restricting the public ranking tables to the top 10,000, so ensuring that statisticians couldn‘t easily compare people with few reviews and few votes.

A truly determined and talented statistician could overcome Amazon’s obstacles, but the customers who cracked the second system also learned two lessons. Firstly, the knowledge became available to those wishing to abuse the system, although their failure to appreciate the complexities meant that their efforts to apply that knowledge were often less effective than they might have been. Secondly, knowledge of the system caused a lot of dissent among reviewers, who sometimes complained to Amazon about the basis of the system, but more often argued with each other about how rankings should be calculated.

Even if the pioneering researchers amuse themselves trying to crack the current algorithm, they are (from what I’ve heard) unlikely to publish their findings and I‘m happy about that. I was not part of the original research, but I corroborated the findings (a much easier task prior to the curtailment of ranking tables outside China to the top 10,000, and even China followed suit eventually) and I’m pleased that the current system is so hard to crack in detail. I won’t be doing any detailed research, but some patterns are clearly evident and I’m happy to share those. Things have probably reached a point where it wouldn't matter if the full algorithm became public knowledge, as those who wish to cheat already know what it takes to climb the current rankings quickly. They can already manipulate the situation if they are determined to do so.

Current ranking system takes NO votes seriously

The second ranking system was largely based on YES votes, presumably because Amazon agreed with the majority of reviewers that YES votes were mostly genuine while NO votes were mostly cast for spiteful reasons. It always seemed crazy to people, upon first learning about the second ranking system, that YES votes weighed far more than NO votes. Once people accepted the prevailing wisdom, it all made sense. Unfortunately for reviewers with sensitive egos, the evidence suggested that while YES votes were more likely than NO votes to be genuine, plenty of customers abused the YES voting buttons, thereby undermining the case for largely ignoring NO votes.

At first, I thought that the current system gave YES and NO votes equal but opposite values, but it soon became clear that NO votes carry more weight than YES votes. My review of Going Rogue : An American Life attracted approximately 70% YES votes (it has dropped a little since), yet the NO votes caused my current ranking to drop from 10 to 25 over the early weeks of 2010 and further thereafter, corroborating other reviewers’ experiences. It appears to be that the over-weighting of NO votes was caused by Amazon's determination that Harriet Klausner would not be #1 on the current system, nor would she be anywhere near it. In fact, she was installed at #442 on that system, and that remains the best ranking that she has ever achieved on the current system.

Current ranking system introduces fan voter totals

I’ve already used the term loyalty votes when discussing the second ranking system. These votes remained attached to the reviews and were included in all the relevant totals, but they didn’t count towards ranking although they influenced the selection of spotlight reviews and thereby attracted other votes.

When the current ranking system was introduced in October 2008, it was accompanied by a massive vote cull and the creation of fan voter totals (only displayed in the USA; other sites hide them). As far as I could tell, the votes culled were the loyalty votes. Different rules have applied to subsequent vote culling and addition of fans. I’ll therefore continue to use loyalty votes to mean votes ignored by the second ranking system, while using fan votes when referring to the current system. Since the original cull, many people have found it difficult to make votes for some customers stick. In theory, once a customer is designated as a fan of a given reviewer, no further votes by that customer for that reviewer should stick, but research has shown that this is not always the case. See Fan voters for further analysis.

Current ranking system rewards popular reviews

The second ranking system didn’t reward popular reviews much. Once a review had enough votes from people who didn’t normally vote for that customer, further votes didn’t help. The philosophy was a good one - to even up the competition between reviewers of popular products and reviews of obscure products - and it was very effective at doing that. Nobody ever proved that there was any clear advantage to be had based on product popularity. Reviews of obscure products attract few votes, but few people review those products. Popular products attract lots of reviews so in order to get lots of votes, a review has to be spotlighted. In the old days, when the product page layout was different, most people thought that reviewing popular products offered a better strategy overall than reviewing obscure products. Actually, I like the theory that the ideal products to review were mid-ranking products that attracted a reasonable amount of traffic but not many reviews, but as reviewing has become more popular, it has become harder to find such products.

A major change to the product page layout, utilizing two columns to display reviews, appeared to have tilted the balance in favor of reviewing obscure products. The two-column layout looks better and is easier on the eyes than the old single-column layout, but because of the design of the two columns, customers are less likely to look at the second column. Some customers certainly look at that second column (or look beyond the main product page for reviews) because I know that I’ve got votes on reviews while they were in that column, and not just recent reviews, but it is clear that the two-column layout as it is designed makes it more difficult to acquire votes on reviews that aren’t spotlighted.

Maybe Amazon noticed that the two-column page layout gave the advantage to reviewers of obscure products, or maybe they responded to complaints from people who had popular reviews with vast vote totals, but for whatever reason, the current ranking system rewards reviews with high vote totals in a way that the second ranking system didn’t.

Current ranking system addresses stagnation and inactivity

The designers of the second ranking system never envisaged that large numbers of people would pursue reviewing as a lifelong hobby. Nic Pottier was a staff member involved in the design, which came at a time when Amazon were far more open with reviewers than they are now. He posted on the customer reviews discussion board in 2001 saying that Amazon expected that people might review for two or three years at most, then lose interest. Actually, their prediction was accurate for the vast majority of reviewers, but among the millions of reviewers there are plenty who continue posting reviews year after year. Inevitably, those who posted year after year gravitated towards the top of the second ranking system. The end result was that the second ranking system stagnated (especially but not only on Amazon.com), with the upper reaches of the rankings showing very little change from one month to another. Within the top 100, any movement had become a notable event. Even if a highly-ranked reviewer quit or died, they only dropped down the second ranking system very slowly.

The current ranking system builds in some kind of ageing factor. This appears to take both review dates and voting dates into consideration, despite Amazon seeming to say that only review dates matter. If it only took review dates into account, there is no way that I could have been ranked in the top 20 in the current system when it was installed in October 2008. Even though I was prolific in 2009, only my reviews of We'll Meet Again: Very Best of Vera Lynn (posted in September) and Going Rogue: An American Life (posted after Christmas) attracted a significant number of votes among those reviews I posted in 2009, and the second of them pulled my ranking down.

I like to take other people's experiences into account too, but as a start, here is a summary of my thoughts on the ageing built into the current system, based on my experiences with my own reviews, before commenting on one reviewer's alternative theory.

In America, I was installed at #14 in October 2008 with a higher ranking than my ranking on the second system, which was at #19 then as it was when the system was abolished over three years later.

I had not been prolific for the previous three and a half years or so. Therefore, my ranking was based primarily on reviews that were already very old, but I was still getting plenty of votes on those old reviews and I still am.

I posted no reviews after the introduction of the current system for a few months, by which time I had dropped from #14 to #20 (but still #19 on the second system). I climbed further in the current rankings while I was prolific in 2009, peaking at #8 and maintaining that position for several months. I dropped a couple of places later when overtaken in turn by two people who eventually became #2 and #1 respectively on the current system. The #2 has dropped a little since then but not much. The #1 has not dropped at all. So my drops were not due to my laziness or to any reviews that I posted, but to the efforts of others.

Except against those two reviewers, I held my position against all comers until the end of 2009, when I posted a review of Going Rogue: An American Life that I knew would take me out of the top 10. I was still #10 when I posted the review on December 26th, and it didn't take long for my ranking to drop to #19.

Aside from that review, only one other review of the hundreds that I posted in 2009 acquired more than three votes during 2009, although some others have since acquired further votes. My review of We'll meet again: very best of Vera Lynn, posted in September, got close to 50 YES votes (and now comfortably exceeds that total), but its success merely delayed (if at all) the remorseless rise of the famous two.

Given the steepness of my slide in 2010, I would expect to see a noticeable rise in my ranking if and when those old NO votes are devalued, although I have no expectations of returning to the top 10 on the current system. A different ranking system might give me a chance of doing so, depending on its design.

While my fall has not been a continuous slide, such rises as I have seen do not suggest that those votes have been devalued in any significant way. Of course I can't prove anything, especially as I have not been prolific either in 2010 or 2011, but I could always find other reasons to explain such rises as I've had that slowed my fall.

I remember somebody once suggesting that two years may be a significant time period in the current system's ageing process. That of itself wouldn't explain why I was installed as a top 20 reviewer when the current system was launched, but if there is anything in it, my ranking should improve in the early months of 2012 as those NO votes are devalued, assuming I continue reviewing.

Incidentally, my peak period for reviewing was the period from June 2002 to May 2005, during which I posted over 2,400 reviews in America. In the much longer period since then, I have posted over 1,000 reviews, most of them in 2009, which amounts to less than half in double the time span.

Inevitably, other people have had other experiences that may help to clarify the way the current ranking system operates. One reviewer suggests that votes are not aged, and that the really important thing is to keep posting reviews. As long as you do that, the current ranking system will assess all votes equally regardless of the age of either the votes or the reviews. If correct, it means that the critical age factor is the date of the most recent review, or the dates of the most recent N reviews, where N is a number determined by Amazon, relative to the current date. I'm not sure that's entirely correct, but maybe it is. If correct, it may be that Amazon assesses recent posting activity, then uses an algorithm to convert actual ranking points into aged ranking points. More research is needed.

Current ranking system has tie-breakers

On the second system, if ten people were jointly ranked at 5,000, this actually covered the rankings 5,000 to 5,009. On the current system, tie-breakers ensure that people who are jointly ranked internally will each be given separate numbers.

Current ranking system ignores deleted reviews but ranks anonymous accounts

Ever since its introduction, the current system has had a lot more reviewers than the second system. This was most likely caused by anonymous reviewers being included in the current ranking system but not the second system. (Except for kid's reviews, anonymous reviews can no longer be posted. See Private reviews.) Deleted reviews are ignored by the current system, so anybody who has deleted all their reviews is unranked in the current system. The second system counted deleted reviews towards rank, so you could sometimes see ranked reviewers with no reviews under that system. However, such accounts were far fewer in total than the anonymous accounts ranked in the current system but not the second system.

Similarities between second and current systems

While the current system at first glance produces very different results, closer inspection showed that plenty of reviewers in the current top 100 were also in the top 100 on the second system, these being long-term reviewers with a high percentage of YES votes. Originally, just over half of the reviewers in the top 100 on the second system appeared in the top 100 on the current system, but this proportion was slowly dropping for these reasons.

Newer reviewers, and not just those catapulted to high rankings by the introduction of the current system, felt encouraged to review more, at least initially, because they felt it gave them a chance.

The high scores obtained on spotlighted reviews, particularly on Kindles and other gadgets, catapulted other reviewers to high ranks on the current system.

More of the long-term reviewers quit, died or simply reduced their commitment to reviewing. Gadgets weren't a big feature of Amazon in its early years and the majority of long-term reviewers were not interested in reviewing them.

All of which shows that if people take ranking too seriously, it can become difficult to sustain interest in reviewing if your ranking is heading downwards with no obvious way to reverse the trend other than luck, cheating or reviewing different products. Those who love the current ranking system should not invest their heart and soul in it. Nothing is guaranteed to last forever on Amazon.

Mathematics of the second ranking system

Full details as best we knew them

Don't bother reading this unless you really need to know. It gets very confusing.

There are some details that nobody was ever able to figure out and they remained among Amazon's closely guarded secrets. Nevertheless, we knew all the important details. You gained ranking points for each individual review, depending on how many votes you acquired for that review. As you will see below, any review with only 1 or 2 votes counted for nothing. Such votes were not wasted if the review eventually acquired more votes.

Patrick Shepherd used his skills in statistical analysis to come up with the following :-

The basic numbers were:

+2 ranking points for 3 counting YES votes
(+2 possible bonus points for first review of product; these bonus points were not awarded in later years)

+2 ranking points for 10 counting YES votes

-1 ranking point for 5 more (counting?) NO votes than YES votes

-1 ranking point for 10 more (counting?) NO votes than YES votes

After the ten counting YES votes, additional votes didn't do anything for your rank. Please note that in order to get 10 counting YES votes, you may have had to get a lot more than 10 actual YES votes if you already had plenty of reviews that had been voted for.

The '5 more NO votes than YES votes' meant (for example) 0 out of 5, 2 out of 9 or 15 out of 35. Some people forget this - if you had a review with 0 out of 5 and it then acquired a YES vote, you regained the point you lost, as 1 out of 6 meant you only had 4 more NO votes than YES votes.

IMPORTANT The above numbers only tell the basics. If somebody voted for lots of your reviews, eventually they didn't count towards your ranking, because they were loyalty votes. It was no good getting all your friends and family to keep voting for you. Those friendly votes gave you a boost initially but had no effect thereafter, unless they affected spotlighting. In some circumstances, the anti-campaign software removed such votes anyway. So you may have found that a third vote on a review did not help; it may have needed a fourth or fifth vote to get that ranking point. It just depends who cast the votes. This explains why I refer to counting YES votes. As we never knew all the rules about NO votes, I refer to (counting?) NO votes. With the fan voter system now in place, some such votes may be wiped out anyway.

You used to be able to verify the main details of the formula for yourself by delving into the lower reaches of the ranking tables, before Amazon made this difficult by only publishing a table for the top 10,000 when the current ranking system was introduced. I nevertheless showed how it used to work in Proof of the second ranking system's mathematics.

For a detailed analysis of the first review bonus and what I think happened to it, see The old first review bonus. I put it in a separate post because it is so arcane that it is best ignored unless you really must read it.

Flaws in the second and current ranking systems

Both systems seriously flawed

Here, I take a look at the limitations of second (now obsolete) and current reviewer ranking systems, explaining why both are seriously flawed. Some people prefer the second system while others prefer the current system. Depending on where you look on the internet, you might get the impression that there is a clear majority preference for one system or the other. Remember that by the nature of the internet, one view normally dominates on any given forum, blog or website. (I present both sides on this one, although making clear which system I prefer of the two.) Some people mistakenly equate the views that they come across in one place as typical of opinion as a whole.

While it is often true that people prefer whichever system gives them their best rank, it isn't true in all cases. I am in the minority who prefer the system that works against my own ranking (albeit in my case I regard it as the lesser of two evils). I have reviews on five Amazon sites where they operated dual rankings and my ranking on the second system was as at least as good as my ranking on the current system in all of them in 2010 and 2011. Only in the UK were they close. On that site, my ranking on the current system sometimes matched but never bettered my ranking on the second system. In the USA, my ranking on the current system was better than my ranking on the current system from October 2008 until near the end of 2009, except for a brief period in March 2009. Because of the volatility of the current system, it is possible that my ranking on the current system could once again return to the top 20, but I regard that as unlikely. I might have a better chance under a different ranking system, depending on its design.

There were plenty of active reviewers who ranked better on the second system prior to its abolition than the current system. Some were long-term reviewers, but others were people with a poor percentage (by the standards of Amazon reviewers generally) of YES votes. It remains to be seen whether Amazon lose a significant proportion of those customers having dropped the second system. I suspect that as a lot of people quit following the introduction of the current system, those who remained will mostly stay, but who knows? There are plenty of cynics who will never be satisfied unless Amazon abolish rankings altogether. See Eliminate reviewer rankings altogether? for my thoughts on that idea. However, while I accept that no computerized ranking system can ever be perfect, I know as a former computer programmer that Amazon could do better than what they have now.

Some of the flaws in the second system were briefly mentioned earlier, when looking at how the current system appears to work, but we can take a closer look here. While doing so, it is worth pointing out what the ranking systems were trying to achieve.

In the beginning

When Amazon decided to introduce a numerical ranking system to replace the original stripes system in the year 1999 or 2000, they set up an algorithm based on some good ideas. They wanted to encourage customers to review all types of products at all levels of popularity. Obscure stuff may not sell in large quantities, but that's all the more reason to encourage reviews of those products. As I said in My Amazon journey, it is easy to show that one review of an obscure product can sometimes increase the sales of that product through Amazon disproportionately. Mindful that most votes would be cast for reviews of popular products that don’t depend as heavily on reviews to boost sales, Amazon designed a formula that they hoped would help reviewers of obscure stuff compete equally. In that much, they succeeded because nobody was ever sure what the best strategy for most people to improve their ranking is. So Amazon’s second ranking system had some good aspects, but there were some things that were never considered and couldn't really have been expected to be considered. Hindsight is always easy. The current ranking system introduced in October 2008 was radically different and benefited from that hindsight, but we‘ll come back to that.

With the second system, I really believe that Amazon thought they’d come up with a formula that would encourage both quantity and quality and to some extent it did. People were quick to point to what they perceived as bad reviewers with high rankings as counter-proof, but if you were to take the top 100 reviewers as a group, you'd probably have found that the average quality of their reviews was at least as good as the average for any other block of 100 consecutive reviewers in the ranking table. Why? Because those reviewers who write lots of reviews generally enjoy what they do, get plenty of practice at it, learning and improving as they go along. Of course, Amazon could never have imagined how things would develop. Harriet Klausner was installed at #1, but she wasn’t pumping reviews out then at the speed she did later and has more or less maintained, though as with everybody else, her pace is not constant. In any case, Amazon thought that people would review for two or three years at most before moving on to other things as mentioned earlier. A lot of reviewers do just that, but some of us keep going year after year.

Second ranking system largely ignored NO votes

Of course, many reviewers didn't see this as a flaw at all, but it produced some unfortunate side-effects. Mistermaxxx, who had been in the top 50 on the second system for many years, acquired far more NO votes than YES votes. Even allowing for spite votes, a YES votes percentage in the low forties suggests that customers don't like his reviews, to say the least, remembering that Amazon customers overall are much more likely to vote YES than NO. If his case is bad, there is a much worse case despite that reviewer actually having a helpfulness percentage in the mid seventies - still low compared to most reviewers who have helpfulness percentages exceeding eighty. That case is discussed on blogs, forums and websites all over the internet. Some people seem to have made a hobby out of following her. Yes, we're talking about Harriet Klausner, who arouses such a following that I discuss the issues in Harriet Klausner's reviews. Suffice to say here that, to some people, her position as number one reviewer on Amazon.com was of itself enough to destroy whatever credibility the second system might otherwise have had. While I agree with the basic criticism of her reviews, she is in many ways a one-off. Nevertheless, her unassailable position at the top of the USA rankings was a major reason, perhaps the primary reason, for designing the current ranking system. If the second ranking system had simply been adjusted to take those NO votes seriously, that might have been enough to allow there to be a new number one reviewer though I doubt it, but only Amazon would know for sure. In any case, ignoring most NO votes wasn't the only flaw in the second system and Amazon knew it. They wisely decided not to tweak the second system but to create a different system.

Second ranking system seen as rewarding quantity of reviews

The second ranking system assessed each review individually and imposed strict limits on how many ranking points each review could accrue. In trying to give equal chances to reviews of obscure products and popular products alike, it succeeded admirably, but as some reviewers posted thousands of reviews, the effect was to reward quantity to a greater extent than was ever intended. Of course, this effect was exaggerated by largely ignoring NO votes. Quantity wasn't the only factor (the top UK reviewer on the second ranking system was neither the most prolific on that site, nor the one with the most YES votes, as Professor Donald Mitchell beat him easily on both counts, while Teens Read Too also beats him easily on number of reviews), but anybody who looked at how many reviews the top 100 reviewers on the American rankings in the second system had posted saw that quantity was certainly a major factor. Of course, the positive way of looking at this is to say that the second system rewarded hard work over a sustained period of time. In today's culture of instant gratification, some people don't like seeing hard work rewarded.

Second ranking system counted votes on deleted reviews

Looking at the rankings in the second system, you might at first have thought that some reviewers did extremely well to climb as high as they did with so few reviews, but you might have also noticed plenty of reviewers who were ranked, but who had no reviews at all. Both of these quirks were a consequence of the second system counting votes on deleted reviews.

Second ranking system allowed loyal voters to push reviews into spotlights

Before the current ranking system was introduced, all votes were recorded although some were disregarded for ranking purposes; these excess votes became known as loyalty votes. We didn’t call them fan votes because some of them were from loyal trolls. Unfortunately, the spotlighting algorithm assesses all recorded votes, not just those used in the ranking calculations. This allowed voting cliques to flourish, enabling some reviewers to unfairly grab spotlight positions at the expense of others. This problem was solved, or so it would appear, with the vote-culling software that was brought in simultaneously with the current ranking system, although that software has itself proved to be very controversial. See Fan voters for a detailed analysis.

Second ranking system spoiled by stagnation and inactivity

The second system assessed all votes equally on all reviews, however old those votes or reviews might be. Without either a time limit or any form of depreciation, anybody who quit or died kept their ranking points in perpetuity and may have continued to acquire more. Newer reviewers may have overtaken them eventually, but they had to write a lot more reviews than the inactive reviewers did to get to the same ranking position because there were an ever-increasing number of active reviewers. It was also much easier to get votes in the early years than it later became. So the second system was loaded in favor of ex-reviewers and long-term reviewers. Ex-reviewers only dropped down the ranking as others overtook them. At any given time, you could see several top 100 reviewers who hadn't reviewed for several years. Of course they would have dropped out of the top 100 eventually had Amazon retained the system, but by then other top 100 reviewers would have also become inactive. The number of long-inactive reviewers on the second system had become an embarrassment,

Current ranking system addresses above problems but create new ones

The biggest problems with the current system stem from an over-reaction to some of the problems with the second system. It may be that the best that can be obtained with a computerized ranking system is some sort of midway point between the two systems, though maybe there are other things that could be done. Let's look closely at the problems with the current system.

Current ranking system over-emphasize NO votes

When the current system was first introduced and I saw that helpfulness percentage was a significant factor, I naturally assumed that Amazon had given equal but opposite values to YES and NO votes, but this was not so. For whatever reason, but most likely to ensure the dethronement of Harriet Klausner as #1 reviewer, Amazon decided to give substantially greater weight to NO votes than to YES votes. One reviewer suggested that NO votes count double (so a NO vote would cancel the effect of two YES votes). I think the ratio is worse than that, but haven't come up with a figure.

When I decided to review Going Rogue: An American Life, I knew that if my review were successful in securing a spotlight, it would drop me down the current rankings. While I had other reasons for reading and reviewing the book, I was particularly interested to see what would happen to my ranking. At the time I reviewed the book on December 26th 2009, I was still in the top ten but only just. By April 2010, I had dropped out of the top forty. Now votes come in more slowly, but still they come and I am now outside the top 70; my low point so far is 74 (a figure that may be out of date when you read this), but it is not a continuous decline, as my current ranking sometimes recovers a few places before falling back again. I would probably have dropped a bit anyway due to my inactivity for much of 2010 and 2011, but I think my ranking would still have been much higher than it is now. However, I was still actively reviewing during January 2010, when my biggest fall occurred. The interesting thing is that my helpfulness percentage on that review has never dropped below 66%. It means that about two-thirds of those who voted found my review helpful to them. Not a great ratio by overall standards, but great for such a controversial book. If a NO vote neutralized two YES votes, my review of that book would not have affected my ranking either way. As it took a nose-dive, we can reasonably assume that NO votes carry a much greater penalty, if there is a fixed ratio between the value of YES and NO votes. Another theory is that distribution of votes could be a factor; there is also the issue of ageing, whether of the reviews or the votes cast.

As the impact of votes diminishes with time, the theory is that my ranking should recover eventually, though I don't ever expect to return to the USA top ten in the current rankings unless I get lucky with future reviews. We'll see what happens, but I think the ageing is less dramatic than some people do. I summarized my thoughts on the ageing of votes earlier in this post.

The significance of NO votes is illustrated to some extent in the spotlighting algorithm, which is reflected in the way the current rankings work. A review with no votes of any kind is regarded as more helpful than a review with 17 out of 26 YES votes, while a review with 1 out of 1 YES votes is rated more helpful than a review with 338 out of 504 YES votes. However, the current ranking system penalizes NO votes more heavily than the spotlighting system.

So while the second system placed too much emphasis on YES votes, the current system places too much emphasis on NO votes. Any sensible system should give them equal but opposite values. On that basis, Going Rogue: An American Life is the subject of my most successful Amazon.com review ever. Subtracting the NO votes from the YES votes, I get a figure that comfortably exceeds any other Amazon.com review of mine. I therefore consider it to be my most successful review so far, yet I am 30 or so places lower down the rankings than I would be had I not written it, or if I were to delete it. I don't mind because I expected my ranking to fall and the only uncertainty was how far it would fall, but I can understand why others may feel differently about plummeting down the rankings because of one review. Indeed, it was one such angry reviewer who brought that book to my attention in the first place.

Current ranking system rewards reviewers of household stuff at the expense of reviewers of books, music, movies and games

In what appears to be an over-reaction to the perception that the second ranking system rewarded quantity of reviews, the current system rewards popular reviews big-time. In principle, this sounds fair enough. If you get a thousand YES votes for a review, it does seem rather mean to only be rewarded for ten of them, as happened in the second system. I've seen the term super review used to describe reviews that get hundreds of YES votes and comparatively few NO votes, but such reviews aren't necessarily super in terms of quality (some are but others are average or poor). I therefore refer to such reviews as jackpot reviews; some people call them blockbuster reviews. Jackpot is a better word because it reflects the luck normally involved in posting a review that ends up acquiring hundreds of votes. My Going Rogue: An American Life review does not qualify as a jackpot review because it carries too many NO votes and damages my ranking, unlike a jackpot review that helps somebody's ranking substantially.

Just as reviews with lots of NO votes can push people down the current rankings disproportionately, jackpot reviews can push people up substantially, though neither had any significant impact on the second ranking system. On Amazon UK, we had a case where somebody became the number two reviewer on the current ranking system primarily on the basis of two jackpot reviews. He eventually got into trouble with Amazon over a different issue not related to those reviews and all of his reviews are gone, though he may have deleted them himself as he claimed in his supposed confession. See Confession of an ex-reviewer. Still, his getting to number two as he did shows the effect that jackpot reviews have on the rankings. Ironically, the only reviewer who he didn't overtake hasn't got any jackpot reviews. At the time, he only had one review with 100+ YES votes, and that one was somewhere around 140 or 150, but he had a lot of reviews with 50+ YES votes to help him stay ahead. In November 2011, a different reviewer made it all the way to number one with a solitary jackpot review and about 230 other reviews, exactly three months to the day after posting her first review. In the USA, things are a lot more interesting. You will see a fair number of reviewers who are highly ranked despite having comparatively few reviews. A closer look at these reviewers' profiles reveals their jackpot reviews. One good example is Roxanne Mchenry, whose review of Kindle Lighted Leather Cover, Burnt Orange is entirely responsible for her lofty position in the current rankings. It looks like a great review but I prefer physical books so won't be concerning myself with a Kindle or its accessories.

The biggest problem with jackpot reviews is that they are much more likely to be for reviews of household stuff, particularly but not only electronics, than for books, music, movies and games. There are two obvious reasons, but there may be others. One is that such products generally attract fewer reviews than popular books, music, movies and games, though this is not always the case as the various editions of the Kindle and associated accessories illustrate. It may be that as people realize that there are votes to be earned in such reviews, more people will write them, in which case it will become harder to get votes on household stuff. In that way, the system will self-correct and household stuff will be just as easy - or hard - to get votes on as books, music, movies and games. Not quite, because reviews of household stuff can focus on whether the products function correctly and adequately. Books, music, movies and games are mostly about people's individual tastes. Household stuff, particularly electronics, is far less about taste and far more about practicalities. A few brands have passionately loyal fans, so there are exceptions, Apple being one of them. Exceptions such as Apple aside, you can therefore write a 1-star review of such a product and get universal praise for it, where this rarely happens with books, music, movies and games. Likewise, you don't have to worry about people disagreeing with your opinion, if you assess the product accurately.

Current ranking system allegedly disadvantages specialist reviewers

The fan voter system has proved to be very controversial for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that specialist reviewers are at an apparent disadvantage. The top ten reviewer who specializes in batteries appears to disprove the notion. Against that, such reviewers have the option to diversify into other areas if they want to improve their ranking. In any case, I don't accept the idea that a specialist area has a fixed number of potential customers. People's interests and shopping habits change over time, and both of these introduce new people to a specialist's reviews.

While reviewers avoided the term fan votes for votes that didn’t count on the second system, Amazon chose the term fans for the current system, hoping that nobody would notice that Amazon also count trolls as fans, and also hoping that nobody would think that Amazon was really interpreting fan votes as cheating votes. The different terminology is useful because the fan system is very different in practice from the loyalty votes in the second system. Also, because of the way the systems differ, loyalty votes are still there on the current system, albeit severely reduced in number.

Current ranking system fan totals suppressed outside USA

Personally, I am disappointed that Amazon have suppressed fan totals outside the USA. Apart from reinforcing the suspicion that Amazon was really interpreting fan votes as cheating votes, I would like to use my UK fan total in other ways. I am unemployed and while I don't always mention being an Amazon reviewer, I'd be more likely to mention a fan count than a ranking. To the vast majority of people in the real world, having 500 fans (or whatever the number might be; it mould probably be higher) might sound more impressive than a ranking number. My UK fan total is likely to be substantially higher than my USA fan total, but while some people, particularly the customer once known as Hiawatha Winstanley, may regard it as a cheating count, I have a clear conscience about how I acquired my votes. I explained some of what happened in Abolish negative votes on reviews?. Inevitably, once those bogus votes were culled, my fan count must have increased substantially, even allowing for a small number of accounts being responsible for a large number of the lost votes.

Current ranking system may discourage posting of new reviews

This sounds really crazy, but if you post a pile of new reviews that don't get votes, it may damage your ranking on the current system. It wasn't always like that; I remember posting a pile of reviews in Germany in one batch. I zoomed up the rankings as soon as the rankings were adjusted. Perhaps that was crazy, but not as crazy as causing somebody to drop down the rankings after posting new reviews. A voteless review shouldn't have any effect on rank in a properly designed system, but hey, we are discussing Amazon.

The evidence regarding whether the current ranking system discourages posting of new reviews is mixed, with some reviewers being convinced that their falling rank is down to posting too many reviews, but I'm not entirely convinced. Nevertheless, even a perception that the ranking system is a deterrent to posting new reviews is enough to cause some reviewers to post fewer reviews.

Current ranking system encourages posting of placeholder reviews

See Placeholder reviews.

Current ranking system philosophy hard to encapsulate

This may appear to be the least of the problems, but a problem it is. For all its faults, the second system could be seen as rewarding hard work over a long period of time. It would have been possible to improve that system by addressing some of its inherent flaws while retaining the basic philosophy. While the current system retains an element of that philosophy, it isn't obvious that it is there and I certainly wouldn't summarize the current system that way. There are other elements in the current system that are much stronger. I have yet to see a neat summary of the current system's philosophy. One could cynically describe it as a lucky dip, but that's not accurate either although it has an element of that too, one that is stronger than the hard work element.

At first glance, the inability to summarize the current system's philosophy does not matter, but it is another way of saying that nobody really understands what it is meant to achieve, even though certain patterns can be observed. I'm becoming increasingly aware of the effect the current system has on some people. The effects include the problem of having a high rank to defend and the value people place on top reviewer badges. There may be others. Of course, the second system had its own problems, not least of which is that it was very hard for new reviewers to get anywhere near the top 100, but the volatility of the current system that opens up chances for a lot more people isn't as positive a development as it at first appears.

Defending a high ranking on the current system can be discouraging

Some reviewers who have a high ranking, and not just those who achieved their high current ranking via one or a few popular reviews, find that defending their current ranking is difficult and they may become easily discouraged. The volatility built into the system gives them a chance to climb again at some future date, but since there is no sure way of climbing the current rankings honestly, that is no consolation. I've heard it claimed that people feel they have to review every day to defend their current ranking and they aren't willing to do that. I don't think that's necessarily true as my reviewing is very uneven and it doesn't do me any harm, albeit the trend is slowly downwards, but perception is often more important than reality. It may be that it is easier to defend a rank if one has a lot of reviews, but the vast majority of my reviews are dated May 2005 or earlier.

Current ranking system's credibility or lack of it

I'll stick to reviewing mostly music, some physical books and the occasional other product as I've always done, but I don't mind the upper reaches of the current rankings being increasingly dominated by reviewers of household stuff and gadgets. Nevertheless, there are plenty of people who think that's all wrong, and that reviews should be about books, music, movies and games (or maybe only some of those) and can't take the current ranking system seriously because of that.

There are also people who say that jackpot reviews of themselves are rewarded disproportionately and this also destroys the credibility of the current system. It is becoming increasingly clear to me that a lot of customers, and not just reviewers, think that a reviewer should have to prove their worth with a body of reviews. This harks back to the second ranking system, but Amazon don't want Harriet Klausner returning to #1 in America, so their problem is that even if they'd like to have a ranking system that strikes a better balance between quantity of reviews and quantity of votes on individual reviews, can they do so without at least giving Harriet Klausner a chance of returning to #1? Maybe we'll find out if and when Amazon introduce a fourth ranking system.

The ageing element built into the system means that reviewers whose ranking relies on jackpot reviews find their position unsustainable in the long run, but these reviewers are often replaced in the top 100 by other jackpot reviewers. John E Fracisco might have been number one on the current system a few years ago for his review of The Story about Ping had the system existed then, but his ranking is very modest these days.

All of these problems have to be set against the credibility problems of the second system, which were different but also serious.

One thing is clear. Amazon still haven't designed a ranking system that gains general acceptance. While no system can ever gain universal acceptance, Amazon could do much better than they have done so far,

Bugs and other inconsistencies

When the current ranking system and the associated vote-culling and fan voter software was launched in the USA, it was riddled with bugs. While many of these have been resolved, the result remains flawed. I've heard claims that some people's rankings have been permanently damaged by these bugs, though I cannot corroborate this for myself. By the time the system was launched in Europe and Canada, the bugs had been solved so the other sites do not have a legacy of people who have been badly affected.

Another problem, which affected the second system and may also affect the current system, is that when Amazon tweak the algorithm, they may no longer recalculate everybody's rank. That would result in a big shake-up and complaints from losers and friends of losers, so Amazon now make changes apply only from the launch date. It avoids the one-off shake-up, but creates inconsistencies as older votes and reviews are calculated differently. Of course, it's always possible that Amazon might build in some adjustment mechanism, as I suggested they did in my theory about first review bonus points (see The old first review bonus), but even if that particular theory is correct, it doesn't follow that they will apply the same principle to future tweaks.

Cheating

Cheating takes many forms as I explain in Cheating or reviewing unethically on Amazon, but where rankings are concerned, both ranking systems are affected. Critics of the second system point to all the people they regard as guilty as a reason to discredit it. Fair enough, but their mistake was to contrast that situation with the supposedly clean current system, in which one top ten reviewer is suspected of plagiarism and another of manipulating votes, though nothing has been proved. While the mathematics of the current system is more complicated, the fact that people can get near the top with comparatively few reviews makes it vulnerable in different ways. Any idea that the current system is less corruptible than the second system is unfortunately an illusion. It's just that being newer and more difficult to see what is required to exploit it, it's taking a while for some people to exploit and for the rest of us to identify them. I've seen allegations suggesting various ways in which people are manipulating the current rankings, though nothing has been proved yet.

My overall assessment

I don't particularly care for either system, but I nevertheless regard the current system as an improvement on the second system. The flaws with the second system were more obvious and need less explanation than the flaws on the current system, hence the paradox whereby more of this blog post is devoted to the flaws in my preferred system than in the other system.

Just as they learned from experience of the second system, I hope that Amazon will one day learn from the current system and eventually create another ranking system, but that could be a few years away if it happens at all, but as I said at the top of this post, it could be quite soon. As noted earlier, my real preference would be for a system in which YES and NO votes have equal but opposite values, and where some suitable compromise is found between the two systems on how many points any individual review can accrue. The second system allowed too few, resulting in quantity of reviews being over-important. The current system allows too many, resulting in jackpot reviews being over-important. Don't take either system too seriously.

A few thoughts about Amazon rankings

Value of top reviewer badges

At one level, these badges have always been meaningless. They don't lead to fame and stardom, nor do they necessarily lead to vast amounts of desirable free stuff. Sure, some people accept and review a lot of free stuff, but is it the kind of stuff they would buy anyway? Some of it, yes, but if they are indiscriminate in what they accept, probably not a high proportion. I only accept free stuff that genuinely interests me, which means that I very rarely accept anything. My best benefit was being offered and accepting the opportunity to take part in a research project, described in Slide show notes. I know of another reviewer who has been a judge in an online competition for authors, but the fact remains that for most people, the main tangible benefit of a high ranking is free stuff. So do reviewers really appreciate their badges?

From what I've seen, and allowing for exceptions either way, it seems that reviewers who made the top 100 in the second system prior to the introduction of the current system appreciate their badges more than those who now make the current top 100. We know that nobody could make the top 100 on the second system easily, and that it became harder with each passing day. Thus, nobody could make it without putting in a lot of hard work over a number of years. The very few who made the top 100 on the second system since the introduction of the current system know that their achievement is devalued by Amazon regarding the current system as the more important, but still appreciated their new badge nevertheless.

Meanwhile, the current system is designed to give more people a chance of making the top 100. This means that a lot of people drop out to make way for the influx of new entries, some of which may be re-entries. In short, it takes less work but more luck to make the current top 100 than the second top 100, but it is also harder to defend a high rank in the current system. This appears to be reflected in the attitudes of at least some reviewers in the current top 100. Some of them wonder what they've done to deserve their lofty rank. Some know that they got lucky. Some are certainly good reviewers and deserve a high rank but feel that they made it too quickly. A ranking system that rewards hard work as the second system did, but which addresses the problems inherent in the system as described earlier, would alleviate the problem.

Now that the second ranking system has gone, what next?

The short answer is that nobody knows, beyond the obvious impact on the top reviewer badges. My American top 50 badge has been replaced by a top 100 badge and my UK badge has also been downgraded, but some people will fare a good deal worse. Amazon may lose customers, but it may be that most customers who were going to quit because of the current ranking system have already done so. The new Hall of Fame reviewer badges may soften the blow for some old-timers, but that may depend on how they are seen to be awarded. They are a good idea in principle, but their effect remains to be seen. I am likely to set up a page about the Hall of Fame in due course.

Apart from reviewer reaction, the other unknown is publisher and author reaction. Publishers and authors place more emphasis on reviewer rankings than those rankings deserve. Will they drop their support for Harriet Klausner? Probably not, especially as former number ones on either ranking system gave been awarded #1 Hall of Fame reviewer badges. For some people )but not for me), that is the most interesting question arising from any disappearance of the second system. As this is more of a Harriet Klausner issue than a general ranking issue, I address this conundrum in Harriet Klausner's reviews.

Spotlighting algorithm

Amazon changed the spotlight algorithm a long time ago to include ranking as a factor in the hope of reducing the number of bad spotlighted reviews. You know what? It did. The improvement in quality of spotlighted reviews was noticeable, but lower ranked reviewers were not happy. Some time before the current ranking system came along, spotlighting changed again and the current algorithm is based on a mathematical formula based on votes cast. There is absolutely no advantage given to reviewers on the basis of rank. Where multiple reviews of the same product have identical vote totals, they are placed in date/time order with the most recent first. Sometimes the higher ranked reviewer may benefit from this but not always. Perhaps because there was once a period when ranking was a factor in spotlighting, some people suspect that it still is, but I have seen no evidence for it. At first glance, the algorithm appears to be built into the current ranking system, but it's not quite that simple. Some reviews deemed Most helpful according to the spotlighting system can actually damage the reviewer's current ranking severely.

Advance review copies

Reviewers with access to advance review copies of new books (generally known by reviewers as ARCs) have a decisive advantage over everybody else. Harriet Klausner, the American #1 reviewer, is the most famous among them. While nobody can post a book review on Amazon before publication unless Amazon open up the product page early (they sometimes do, though not as often as they once did)), Harriet Klausner and others with access to ARCs can post their reviews on the day of publication while everybody else (if they wish to do a proper review) has to buy and read the book before reviewing it. In my case, I am offered opportunities to receive ARCs of books. I accept a few but reject the vast majority. My main interest is music, but record labels are much less likely to offer ARCs than book publishers. I've received a few free CD's to review but not many. Neither those CD's nor the books have made much difference to my ranking but I enjoyed most of them and appreciate them for that.

Note that not all books offered free to reviewers are ARCs. All the copies I've received so far have been standard publication copies. Then again, I don't go looking for ARCs and rarely accept free offers anyway. Some books offered via Amazon Vine™ are ARCs while others are standard publication copies. However, with Vine™, there are usually a lot of free copies distributed to reviewers (at least where books are concerned) so any advantage that Vine™ reviewers have over other reviewers is mainly limited to the books being free.

Even where reviewers receive free copies of books or CD’s, the vast majority don’t get paid for reviewing them. The only benefit they get is that they don’t actually have to pay for the books or CD’s in question. A few reviewers (such as Harriet Klausner (see Harriet Klausner's reviews) receive large numbers of free copies and presumably dispose of them to charities or sell them as used copies but they aren’t going to be able to earn a living that way. Indeed, those that receive a lot of free copies may be liable to pay tax on them, which is likely to wipe out what little money they fetch as used copies.

Updates to reviewer and sales rankings

See Updates to Amazon's rankings.

Most reviewers had a better ranking on the second system ....

As a consequence both of the tie-breakers and of there being fewer ranked reviewers in the second system than the current, more than half of all reviewers have a better ranking in the second system than in the current system, if they are ranked in both.

.... But that may be a misleading statistic

Many of those people who do better in the second system are inactive. I have not tried to prove anything, but circumstantial evidence suggested that the majority of active reviewers do better in the current system than the second system, though those who did worse sometimes did considerably worse.

Ranking statistics

See separate blog Amazon ranking statistics.

Find your ranking neighbors (on any ranking system)
but only if you are in the top 10,000

To compare your situation with people of like rank, click on your reviewer rank. You can only do this if you are in the top 10,000 reviewers; this restriction was introduced with the current ranking system. This shows you a page with nine other people, at or near your rank (and also has next and previous links to more people, as well as providing links to the top reviewers). From this, you can visit other reviewer's pages and see how many reviews they have. Remember that the ranking table shows your position within the table but not the points. Even if people are tied, the current system uses tie-breakers to give everybody a unique ranking.

Climbing the second ranking system

It was certainly a strange experience until you became used to it. Your ranking deteriorated from the time you first get your ranking until the time that you got three votes on a single review. To those who didn't know how the system worked, this was hardly a form of encouragement to keep going, but when your ranking did improve, that improvement was spectacular. From then on, you noticed that your ranking deteriorates more often than it improved, but that when it improved, the improvement was a giant leap forward, usually to a new all-time high. As you continued your climb up the rankings, the numerical value of any movement became smaller. Eventually, you reached a level beyond which you could not go without changing your reviewing strategy in some way. The actual level depended on a number of factors including the frequency with which you posted reviews, the type of stuff you reviewed, the popularity of the stuff you reviewed, the diversity of products you reviewed and (of course) the helpfulness of your reviews to other customers.

When I started reviewing seriously in June 2002, most of the top 100 American reviewers had around 150 to 250 reviews each. The top 10 had more. Anybody looking at the top 100 back then could imagine that there was a space waiting if they posted lots of helpful reviews. Then as now, I had a huge CD collection. I realized that the average number of reviews required to be in the top 100 would increase with time, so I would need a lot more than 150 reviews to get there, but I was up for the challenge. In those early years, I was competitive, but I’ve long since got past that stage. I abandoned my policy of posting the occasional anonymous review and started posting public reviews. I posted over 1,000 reviews before breaking into the top 100. Some reviewers who started much later posted over 2,000 reviews and still didn't always get there, and that threshold increased with time. I was once the newbie noticing how the system worked against me. If I’d started reviewing seriously two years earlier, I would have made the American top ten and very likely stayed there. On the other hand, if I’d started two years later, I don’t know if I’d have made the top 50 or even the top 100.

It became much harder to climb the rankings than it originally was. In 2003, the year in which I made my American top 100 debut, I was one of 21 who did so. In 2007, only seven new names made it into the American top 100. There was a re-entry by somebody who had dropped out of the top 100 a few years earlier but worked his way back up the table. 2010 yielded a solitary new entry. The reason for this increasing difficulty was twofold. Firstly, there are a lot of reviewers with over 1,000 reviews now and many with several thousand. In the beginning, there weren’t so many reviewers and those reviewers didn’t have so many reviews. Secondly, as reviewers quit, they kept all their votes and ranking points, which continued to increase unless they actually deleted their reviews. So newer reviewers had to get the same number of ranking points as the quitters had before they could overtake them. It was much easier to get votes and ranking points in those early days. Newer reviewers noticed that in order to overtake the old-timers who quit long ago, they needed to post a far greater number of reviews, which all seemed so unfair.

If you've looked at the tables that I set up on the Amazon ranking statistics blog showing ranking movements in a one-year period, you'll realize just how much harder it became to climb the old rankings than it once had been. In 2003, the year in which I made my American top 100 debut, I was one of 21 who did so. In the first seven months of 2007, only two new names made it into the American top 100. A third made it in August only because a top thirty reviewer dropped out of the rankings voluntarily. (Anybody can drop out simply by asking Amazon to remove their rankings, though some drop out because Amazon removes them as a punishment, either for cheating or because Amazon think, sometimes wrongly, that the reviewer doesn't deserve a ranking.) Things picked up a little in the remainder of 2007, which ended with seven new entries and one re-entry by somebody who had dropped out of the top 100 a few years earlier but worked his way back up the table. In 2010, there was just one new entry, although somebody else became the first new entry of 2011 early in January of that year, so 2011 has already matched 2010 for new entries.

Judging reviewers in the old top 100

Harriet Klausner is a complete one-off but because she is #1, people often didn't see what else was going on in the top 100. Even when they did, there was a tendency to judge the top 100 by much higher standards than everybody else. I believe the overall standard of the top 100 was higher, but not by as much as some people think it ought to be. Yes, there were great reviewers at all levels in the rankings (and there were some infamous cheaters in the top 100), but if you looked at some of those lowly-ranked great reviewers in conjunction with the 99 people around them, you'd almost certainly find the average quality of the 100 was lower than for the top 100.

Old ranking arguments

It became increasingly obvious that the second ranking system that had once appeared to work so well turned out to be so unfair in so many ways. In fact, I later discovered that some people saw the problem at least as far back as January 2002, before I took up serious reviewing. Look for Professor Donald Mitchell’s Goodbye, Friends! thread on the old customer reviews discussion board. One of the ironies of that thread is that the opening poster returned to Amazon 18 months later and still posts reviews on Amazon in Britain, Canada and Germany as well as the USA, while many of those who posted on that thread have long since given up reviewing on Amazon. However, it is the discussion about rankings, beginning at the post my link takes you to, that I find interesting.

In 2003, I started the thread A popular reviewer new to me, which was initially about a reviewer who had plenty of votes on her reviews. (A lot of those votes have long since gone, probably due to the vote sweep that accompanied the introduction of the current ranking system.) That thread gradually drifted into a rankings debate. When Amazon indicated an interest in looking at rankings issues in January 2004, I alerted them to the thread, pointing out that it contained ideas that might be worth considering, together with posts from other people opposed to those ideas, so Amazon could look at both sides. Whether the thread itself was influential, I don’t know, but I see some echoes in the current ranking system. Of course, it could be that Amazon forgot about the thread altogether (it would be another four years before they started serious work on the current system) and came up with their own ideas independently, but at least two ideas from that thread are integral to the current ranking system. One is to give more weight to recent activity and the other is to apply tie-breakers to the rankings. The way in which recent activity is factored into the current rankings appears to be markedly different from what I suggested on that thread, while the thread gives no indication of how tie-breakers would be applied. Maybe it is all just coincidence, but it illustrates that some reviewers were thinking along those lines long before Amazon got around to creating the current system.

Analyse your reviews and track votes with ARAT

2011-07-13T02:22:00.001-07:00

Analyse your reviews and track votes with ARAT

The advantages and disadvantages of using Amazon

All the software that Amazon uses to display pages is held internally by them, so anybody can log on from any computer, with any type of browser. Unfortunately, Amazon only allow us to look at reviews in a very limited way. We therefore appreciate having other software to go where Amazon refuse to go. However, because Amazon is so easily accessible, let’s look first at what can be done within Amazon’s website; it may be more than you already know.

Within Amazon profiles

All Amazon customers have publicly accessible profile pages that include, where applicable, pages containing that customer’s reviews, lists and guides. Those pages that contain reviews can be somewhat tedious to look through if the customer has hundreds of reviews. There are only two ways that Amazon allow us to sort them, one is all reviews in date written order and the other is reviews with attached comments in date commented order. In both cases, the order is most recent first. Fair enough as far as it goes, but some reviewers want a lot more.

Within Amazon product pages

On any product page containing customer reviews, you’ll find a text box titled Search Customer Reviews in the right-hand margin, below the reviews. Below the box is a check box titled “Only search this product's reviews”. It is automatically displayed with a tick, it being assumed that that’s what most people using the function want. Remove the tick to search reviews on all products. A lot of people will use that search to look for reviews containing particular key words, which is a useful feature that can be used alone or in combination with the other options, which are for customer and star rating.

Put in the word customer followed by a colon, a space and the account number (sometimes called the profile ID) of the reviewer you are looking for. Harriet Klausner’s account number is AFVQZQ8PW0L so if you want to find her reviews, you’d enter customer: AFVQZQ8PW0L . Put in the word rating followed by a colon, a space and the star rating you are looking for, in the range 1 to 5, for example rating: 2 .

So in addition to the options available within a customer’s profile, you can also obtain a breakdown by star rating, although the reviews are displayed in an apparently random order.

Omission of the colon in either case causes Amazon to assume that you want to search for reviews containing the relevant word and whatever follows it; the likelihood is that it won't find anything that matches.

Introduction to ARAT

ARAT (an acronym for Amazon Reviewer Analysis Tool) does not have direct access to Amazon’s internal data, but looks at the code used to display the pages that interest it. This necessarily slows it down, but it is still much quicker than paging through your reviews. You need to download ARAT to a Windows PC, so if you wish to run it at work, you are advised to seek permission to install and run it. It is not my purpose here to describe ARAT in all its detail (though I‘ve included some detail), but to provide enough information to enable you to decide whether to use it, and to get started. For further information beyond what is here, and to download it, go to the developer's website, mentioned later in the section on getting started near the end of this blog post.

ARAT graphs

ARAT produces graphs showing distribution of reviews by star rating (as bar charts) and by review posting date period. It also produces a graph showing your ranking movements, but this only works if you retain historical data.

ARAT main grid

The focal point of ARAT, this grid displays a list of products reviewed with links to both the actual reviews and to their product pages, together with star ratings, dates reviewed, votes totals, tags totals and comment totals, while also indicating which reviews are from the Vine™ system and which reviews carry Amazon Verified Purchase badges. There is an option to also show which reviews are spotlighted, but identifying them slows ARAT down considerably as we’ll see later.

Paging through this table, once generated, is obviously far quicker than paging through Amazon’s review pages, but this grid also has many hidden options.

ARAT grid sort options

ARAT normally displays the data in descending order of review posting date, just as Amazon does within profile review pages, but you can sort by any field you wish simply by clicking on the relevant name in the title row at the top of the grid. One click sorts in ascending order; two clicks sorts in descending order. To sort on multiple key fields, you have to hold down the shift key when selecting the minor fields.

ARAT grid selection filtering options

You can use selection filtering on any number of fields simultaneously. To select on a particular field, again go to the name within the title row at the top of the grid, but click on the little check box in the top right corner. If you require several values or a range of values, choose the (Custom) option at the top, but if you are only interested in a specific value, you may choose from the options provided, scrolling if necessary. Repeat the process for other fields. There is an option (button furthest right immediately above grid) to clear all selection filters, so you can cancel all selections simultaneously rather than resetting each in turn to All.

ARAT unrated purchases

ARAT provides an option to list your unrated purchases, with various options including one that gives you un-reviewed purchases. Because purchases from different Amazon sites are only recorded at the site from which products were bought, those who purchase from and/or review at multiple sites have to be careful. The unrated purchases software only works for Amazon.com just now and fixing it to work for other sites is not a priority. (It might move up the agenda if a significant number of users want it.)

ARAT Vine™ data

Quite apart from indicating Vine™ reviews in the main grid, ARAT provides two special displays (a reviews analysis and a newsletter analysis) for members of USA Vine™, which I am not a member of so cannot see. I am in UK Vine™, but ARAT doesn't cater for that.

My understanding is that one of the analyses is able to tell you how many Vine™ products you are able to accept before posting another Vine™ review. although I believe it errs on the pessimistic side, sticking to a mathematical interpretation of the 75% rule. Whether my theory about Amazon's interpretation of the 75% rule, described in Amazon Vine™, is correct or not, it is clear that a mathematical interpretation is pessimistic. Still, most Vine™ members want to ensure that they stay within the rule, so nobody will fall foul of it if they stick to what ARAT tells them; it's just that ARAT may sometimes underestimate how many more products can be ordered before a review has to be posted. Against that, it is worth reminding people that there is usually a delay in Vine™ reviews being acknowledged by the software that checks the limits. If you get a message saying that you can't any more stuff yet, you may not be able to order anything from Vine™ until a day or two after you submit those reviews.

Not having actually seen these pages within ARAT, I have no idea what else these special displays show.

ARAT gets old review pages

If you page through a prolific reviewer's pages, you'll usually get to a page that Amazon cannot display within the time limit, so it displays an error message as follows.

We're sorry, but this customer's list of reviews is currently not available. Please check back soon.

While most people give up after two or three attempts at displaying such pages, ARAT is more persistent, trying many times if necessary before conceding defeat and going on to the next page.

ARAT detects deleted reviews

When comparing current data with historical data, ARAT makes a note of any reviews it finds in the historical data that are not in the current data. These deleted reviews may simply be ones that it was not able to find because of Amazon not supplying the pages despite trying many times as indicated above. If Amazon doesn’t supply a page, all the reviews will be shown as deleted, so except for the oldest page of reviews, these will always be in blocks of ten consecutive missing reviews.. Apart from those, any deletions that show up have either been deleted by the reviewer, or by Amazon, or by customers using “Report this” in sufficient numbers.

ARAT other output

Apart from the on-screen displays, ARAT generates an XML file and (optionally) an EXCEL spreadsheet file. The XML file doubles up as the historical data file. When you run ARAT again, you have the option to compare the new data with any existing historical data. You can therefore see where new votes and comments have been added in the period between the two runs. The spreadsheet file allows you to load the file into EXCEL and do whatever you wish to do with it.

An Open data folder button on the top right of the main grid page provides easy access to the relevant folders. These folders are accessible without loading ARAT, but that button is a useful feature.

My XML files are huge, so I delete most of the historic files, but I always remember to keep the most recent. I also keep the end-of-year files so that I can compare with previous years, but I copy these to a separate folder to avoid accidentally deleting them. I have to copy the end of year files back again when I need them, but it’s a rare event so I don’t mind.

Getting started

Go to the ARAT website to install ARAT.

IMPORTANT If you are installing ARAT for the first time, use the full installer. If you subsequently upgrade to a new version, use the minimal installer unless you are told otherwise.

Once installed, you should click on Help > Contents for further information, which comes up in a separate window. Go back to the original window and click on File > Preferences to set up the options you want to use, referring back to the help window as necessary. After setting up your preferences, set up your profile ID as explained in “How to …” (link from Welcome page within Help).

You can change the options later, but it’s a good idea to study the options before trying to run anything. In particular, those who review outside the USA should check the Amazon website options, while those who review stuff other than books or who want to identify spotlighted reviews should check the Enable product data option. The latter option slows ARAT down considerably, but remember that you can always change the option between runs.

Assemble furniture from kits (badly)

2011-07-13T02:20:00.000-07:00

Assemble furniture from kits (badly)

Introduction

First, a disclaimer - in this guide, all the products mentioned are examples only. I am not familiar with these specific products but I am familiar with similar products. As this guide is light-hearted, it does not matter which specific products are included. I am also assuming that all this furniture comes in sections that have to be fitted together before use. This is the crux of the matter – it all looks so simple – a few pieces of wood, metal and plastic that just need to be joined together. Simple, eh? Actually, no, especially not for me.

Tools

You'll need a hammer, a set of screwdrivers, a mallet, pliers and a drill that can be used instead of a screwdriver to tighten up those pesky screws, and a few other tools. Here are some examples.

Furniture

Examples of the kind of stuff I've had to assemble.

Appropriate songs

I was one of several unemployed people doing some self-assembly in a charity factory. Another worker had a radio turned on to an oldies radio station. Some of the song titles (It's impossible, I fall to pieces) seemed particularly appropriate. That's why I did this guide. This section provides many more songs for those struggling to assemble furniture.

Very Best of Perry Como It's impossible – well it is for me. Of course, you make it seem so easy.

Patsy Cline - The Definitive Collection I fall to pieces – so the furniture keeps telling me.

Highway 101: Greatest Hits The bed you made for me – if anybody is expecting me to make a bed, they've got no chance. I struggle with chairs and tables.

If I Had a Hammer: Songs of Hope & Struggle (Pete Seeger) If I had a hammer – I'd be very careful about the hand that holds the nail that the hammer is required to attack. Hope & Struggle? Little hope but plenty of struggle.

Move Over Darling: the Complete Stiff Recordings Shattered – so there was a pane of glass in that carton? It's a bit late to tell me now.

Classics & Collectibles (Dusty Springfield) Bits and pieces – this is what you start with and if you don't carry out the instructions correctly, it's what you end up with.

Original Gold (Bobby Darin) If I were a carpenter – then I wouldn't have any problem. Unfortunately I don't have the talent.

Now & Then: Greatest Hits 1964-2004 (Roger Whittaker) If I were a rich man – then I wouldn't bother with self-assembly. I could afford proper furniture.

Very Best of Bernard Cribbins Right said Fred – if you've decided it's safer with ready-made furniture, the perils of getting it moved as described in this song will make you think twice.

Hot & Sassy (Peggy Scott-Adams) If it ain't broke don't fix it – good idea but any furniture I assemble gets broken quickly

Surfacing (Sarah McLachlan) Building a mystery – the art of building furniture is truly a mystery to me

Anthology (Brenda Lee) Big four poster bed – the prospect of building one of these from a self-assembly kit doesn't bear thinking about

Monster (R.E.M.) Bang and blame – I bang away with the hammer and I get the blame for the results

Runt (Todd Rundgren) Broke down and busted – you should have asked somebody else to assemble that swivel chair

Classics (John Conlee) Busted – my furniture and my finances

Give it up (Bonnie Raitt) Give it up - unfortunately, I have no choice just now.

From the heart, greatest hits (Bonnie Tyler) It's a heartache to see all that wasted furniture being scrapped, but I don't feel guilty.

Appalachian Blues (Stella Parton) The missing part - always plenty of those to cause endless frustration

Tunnel of Love (Bruce Springsteen) Spare parts - sometimes included to confuse me, making me wonder what to do with them. Even more confusing if there are missing parts.

Ultimate Collection (Madness) Our house, House of fun – the place where all this furniture is destined for, if it can be assembled correctly.

Rubber Soul (The Beatles) Norwegian wood – I don't mind where the wood comes from as long as it behaves itself (it never does).

Legends (Waylon Jennings) Door is always open – it won't shut. If you want it to shut, take the thing apart and fit it together yourself.

Little things mean a lot (Kitty Kallen) Little things mean a lot – especially when they're the bits that have just rolled under the sofa.

Sue (Frazier Chorus) Dream kitchen – hey, I do badly with tables and chairs. Do you really want me to try kitchen furniture? If so, please check one of the other tracks on this album Anarchy in the UK.

Brothers in Arms (Dire Straits) Money for nothing - anybody who pays money for something I've assembled gets nothing worth having. Dire straits - definitely.

Rays & Hail 1978-81 (Magazine) Song from under the floorboards – now I've really messed up.

Duets (Barbra Streisand) No more tears (enough is enough) - I'm really fed up.

60er: That's Nice (Various Artists) They're coming to take me away ha-ha – not before time.

Very best of Herman's Hermits Years may come, years may go – peace at last, for a while anyway.

Born to Be/Affectionately Melanie (Melanie) I'm back in town – Nooooooooooooo !!!!!!!!!!!

1 (Beatles) Yesterday – when all my troubles seemed so far away, now it looks as though they're here to stay.

Those were the days (Mary Hopkin) Goodbye again, hopefully never to assemble any more furniture.

Attitudes to Amazon reviews and reviewers

2011-07-13T02:19:00.000-07:00

Attitudes to Amazon reviews and reviewers

Some customers think reviewers are sad people

We all have our hobbies and interests. Some people support a football team throughout their life. Some of them support teams whose chance of winning anything except (where applicable) promotion and relegation is, quite frankly, remote to say the least. Just occasionally, their team might have a good cup run, which they enjoy knowing that it'll end in glorious failure. Yet they continue supporting their team through the bad times, sustained by dreams of the good times that they hope will come their way one day. And when they do come, however briefly, it will be at the expense of supporters of the teams that they beat during the good times. So it could be said that these supporters are really sad people for supporting mediocre teams that just occasionally shake off their mediocrity for a while before sinking back into another long spell of mediocrity. But they don't consider themselves sad. However bizarre it may appear from the outside, these people enjoy supporting their team. It is what they live for. I don't support a club, but I do follow football with interest. I sometimes wonder what pleasure those supporters get, but not being what they call a true football fan, I can never expect to fully understand. Nevertheless, I know that they do get a lot of pleasure out of their hobby, otherwise they wouldn't bother.

In the same way, I get a lot of pleasure out of writing reviews. Sometimes I go through phases of not being particularly interested while at other times I review prolifically. That's part of the fun. I can do as much or as little as I like, with no pressure from anybody and no time limitations. Unlike those football supporters, I don't have a fixture list or any other schedule to worry about. I started reviewing seriously in June 2002, so although I've written a lot of reviews, they're spread over a period of several years. Just think how much time you've spent on your hobby, or drinking in a bar with your friends while discussing the same old topics over and over (and I've done that too), in the same time. You might still think I'm sad, but I'm not. I just happen to enjoy doing something that some people can't imagine anybody enjoying. Wouldn't it be a dull world if everybody enjoyed the same things in life?

The professionals sneer

Some people like to sneer at the reviews appearing on Amazon. I noticed an extreme example in an article on the LA Times website some years ago. Personally, I don’t like all the reviews I see on Amazon either but I realize that everybody has to start somewhere. You never know, but maybe some people who start out writing very short reviews that say nothing useful may one day take it more seriously and become outstanding reviewers. I know that such cases will be rare, but every oak tree grows from a small acorn. Maybe an Amazon reviewer might end up writing reviews for the LA Times. I wonder what their editor will say then?

Most Amazon reviewers don't take it seriously

Even though reviewing on Amazon has increased in popularity through the years, those who take reviewing seriously are often regarded as sad people. This may be in part because, at the serious end, it is an intellectual hobby. Anybody from any walk of life who is an Amazon customer can post as many reviews as they like, and do so, but the vast majority don't take it seriously and just post the occasional review. Of course, those occasional reviews from such a vast number of people account for a lot of reviews. The serious reviewers may each post a lot of reviews, but they probably only account for a minority of the reviews to be found on Amazon. A lot of people who post occasional reviews don't see why anybody would take reviewing seriously.

Trivial compared to real world issues

Maybe so, but we all indulge in some trivial matters. Millions of people watch banal TV shows that serve no real purpose beyond entertaining the masses and earning money for the suppliers of those programs. Reviewers help other customers make better buying decisions, which can never be a bad thing.

As for the world issues like war, famine, financial crises, natural disasters and whatever else people care to name, I can't do anything about those even though I like to know what is happening in the world. I therefore concern myself with things that I can do something about. If other people don't like it, so be it. We are all different, with different interests, different attitudes and different priorities. Live and let live.

Image damaged by cheating

Cheating on Amazon by some reviewers doesn't help the image. I described this subject in Cheating or reviewing unethically on Amazon. However, some critics are so contemptuous of the reviewing system (even though, in some cases, they buy stuff from Amazon using Amazon reviews to help in their decisions) that they find cheating where none exists. I'll co-operate with anybody to help weed out the genuine cheaters but not with those who go beyond that. I give such people no credibility whatsoever.

Quality of reviews

With few exceptions, the people who post reviews on Amazon are all amateurs, and I am one such amateur, but some reviewers are more amateur than others. The few professionals include people who write reviews for magazines then post on Amazon after that edition has gone out of circulation, so a review appearing in an August magazine might appear in October on Amazon, satisfying both the magazine publishers and the reviewer. (It may be that some magazine reviewers are allowed to publish their reviews on Amazon while the magazine is still current, but I'd be surprised.)

Because the overwhelming majority of reviewers are amateur, the quality of the reviews they post varies considerably. The best reviewers, who aren't necessarily those with the highest rankings, take a professional approach to reviewing. Nevertheless, I resent those customers who think that top Amazon reviews should provide reviews comparable to professional writers. I've seen bad supposedly professional reviews, but the overall standard of reviews by professional writers is way in excess of that achieved by mere amateurs. Occasionally, I may write reviews that might not be out of place in a magazine or newspaper, but those are rare.

UK Vine Stazi (with a z)

The Vine™ systems in Britain and America are notorous for nastiness, but arguably the nastiest episode so far occurred when somebody updated the Wikipedia Amazon Vine page with a piece about the UK Vine Stazi (wrongly spelt with a z). The page was quickly updated to remove the offending comments, but the archived Wikipedia page remains.

Knowledge

In the pre-internet age, people who were knowledgeable in a particular area were classed as experts. Now that so much of that expertise has been posted on the internet, those who show their expertise are accused of copying and pasting, perhaps modifying and / or rearranging things to disguise their sources. Sadly, there are people who do just that, but I built up my knowledge over several decades from a variety of sources, although I continually add to that knowledge and some of the new knowledge comes from the internet. I actually prefer to write reviews offline without reference to other reviews or anything else on the internet. Even when I need to refer to the net, I avoid plagiarism. But some people are quick to condemn and that's life.

Star ratings

This is another bone of contention, which I assess in Star ratings on Amazon reviews. That post says at least as much about attitudes to reviews and reviewers as anything I've said in this post.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: I wanted to share that I'm not a sad person either.

I started writing Amazon reviews back in 1999 when the Amazon site had very skimpy product info and we didn't even know anything about the book other than the title and publication information. I wanted more info about niche books and often my only help was other customer reviews (when available). I did reviews on the ones I read in niche topics. My rank was up to 199 at one point.

I think I've gone as long as a year without doing a review. Life gets busy you know.

I have also avoided it sometimes on purpose due to negativity from people after the comments opened up. I even found I was being discussed on a blog! The blogger and commenters of that blog were speculating about me as a person based on my reviews!!

If there are a lot of 5 star praise reviews on something I love I often don't review it. If a book has 50-300 reviews (or more) no one needs my input. Why bother.

However with non-fiction books and children's books "with issues" that parents want to know about I will do negative reviews. I feel someone might want to hear my reasons and often what I say is useful to others. Just wanted to share why I sometimes post reviews that are less than 5 star ratings.

I had never heard of the "fan votes" thing. Craziness!; Thursday, November 13, 2008 2:17:00 PM

Badly behaved authors

2011-07-13T02:18:00.000-07:00

Badly behaved authors

A poem by Martin Niemöller


When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for the Jews, I remained silent; I wasn't a Jew. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

Bertrand Russell said ....

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

Martin Luther King Jr said ....

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

D. A. M.

The stories about my first Amazon nemesis, together with some interesting links, are to be found in D. A. M..

"C. H."

"C. H."'s blog posts are gone, but I've preserved them here for posterity. Blogger only removes personal attacks in response to court orders, as an inspection of their terms and conditions proves. Therefore, she must have deleted them voluntarily although the timing (so soon after posting about me) seems odd. Maybe she suddenly realized that her blog posts worked against her. Some of the posts were extremely offensive while others were only mildly so. My purpose in saving the contents here is to show how nasty she was.

"C. H."
On Amazon
Amazon profile page
Blog posts - text saved by me
The truth about the scam at Amazon and blogs
All hail Reba Belle
Grains of the hourglass
Faux writer has pique attack
Peter Durward Harris

The reviewer racketeer guide was posted under a different account but was almost certainly written by the same person.

V. L.

V. L.
Deleted by V. L., text saved by me
Thicker skin...
The pen IS mightier than the sword...
Living in a world of crazies...
On the "Romance readers" forum
V. L. on her official website
Your comments? V. L. column
V. L. blog entries
On the "Dear Author" blog
Does psychic V. L. foresee lawsuit in her future?
V. L. sends blogger threats from a lawyer
Wherein Jane sends email to V. L.’s editor
Unsubstantiated cease and desist letters under scrutiny
On the "Novel reads" blog by ChariDee
Authors getting even
More thoughts on authors getting even
Authors getting even - update
Where in ChariDee is threatened by an author that wanted revenges attorney...
In the immortal words of Tom Petty...
The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle
On the "Genrewonk" blog
How to be an asshat, literary edition
Spoof on the "Pickled cupid" blog
Author's death ruled an "act of God"

Romance readers forum

As already indicated, the romance readers forum was set up by a group of people who decided that they no longer wished to participate in Amazon's romance books forum. It was a great idea and, despite some early problems, it's got off to a great start. I'd recommend it to any romance book readers out there, although if they are supporters of D. A. M., they might be wise to keep quiet about it. Because of my involvement in the Reba Belle case, I was invited to participate in the forum, along with another person who had been involved the case but who, like me, isn't a romance book reader. The idea was that I should join in the fun threads (in the off-topic section of the forum) while also contributing to the section devoted to Amazon issues. Because of the divisions in the campaign against D. A. M., I was reluctant to accept. I sensed that intractable differences over Amazon issues would cause more trouble than my participation was worth, but ultimately the issues were resolved in a way that allowed me to be an active participant until I decided to move on to other things.

Been there, done that, want the T-shirt

2011-07-13T02:16:00.001-07:00

Been there, done that, want the T-shirt

I finally but unexpectedly acquired an Amazon top 10 reviewer badge courtesy of the Said Business School in Oxford, when I attended a conference there. It was actually a visitor identification badge, with my name above a basic description. Most people's description indicated either their university or occupation, but having neither and being there because of my Amazon activities, my description simply said Amazon top 10 reviewer, Only towards the end of the day did its significance dawn on me. Perhaps it was the only physical Amazon top reviewer badge in the world. The badges we normally see are ephemeral, appearing in cyberspace on a website for the duration of their qualification period, as anybody who has dropped down the rankings can testify. Although my badge hasn't scanned in well, it is obvious what it is. The picture shows the top of the clip at the back.

When I mentioned on a forum that my badge might be the only physical Amazon top reviewer badge in the world, somebody pointed me to a website that sells custom made badges. OK, so anybody can buy one and it will be much better looking, but even if an actual Amazon top reviewer buys it, they won't have acquired it as a reward for their Amazon activities.

So now I have a physical badge, but still no T-shirt. A reviewer designed one, but like Amazon's own badges, it only exists in cyberspace. Amazon's logo is likely copyrighted, so anybody who tries to produce an actual T-shirt without permission is likely to get done for it. Previous cases with other copyrighted images illustrate this time and again, notwithstanding that such a shirt would itself be good publicity for Amazon. So we have to wait until Amazon decides to launch its own range or licence a manufacturer to do so. In the case of the T-shirt (unlike my badge), I don't think anybody would give them away as reward for effort, so anybody who wants one will have to buy it.

Blame bad weather and Mill Reef

2011-07-13T02:15:00.001-07:00

Blame bad weather and Mill Reef

My interest in horseracing

I had no interest in any kind of sport at school. I actually hated it because I was useless at it. In 1970 (just over a year after leaving school), I was on one of my then-regular holidays in Montrose when, uncharacteristically, it rained the whole time. So I was stuck indoors and ended up watching the horseracing on TV. My interest in the sport was sparked by two things.

I got lucky with some small bets that I placed to sustain an interest, having braved the rain to get to the bookmakers and back again.

I saw an amazing performance by a young horse called Mill Reef, little knowing just what an impact he would make in the years to come, first on the racecourse and later at stud.

After that, I was hooked on horseracing. I learned that I could enjoy sport as a spectator but although I have since taken an interest in a variety of spectator sports, horseracing remains my favorite.

If I were to discuss all or even a fraction of the horses I remember fondly, I would go on forever, but I mention some of them in my reviews of horseracing books and I expect future reviews to provide an opportunity to remember others. Suffice to say here that in the seventies I followed racing at all levels, so my memories from that decade include handicappers of varying ability, though mostly the better ones.

I followed horseracing most avidly in the seventies, when I often visited racecourses at weekends, some of them several times. I had an ambition to visit all of them at least once, but I wasn't in any hurry to do so. After all, I was still in twenties and had plenty of time. Lanark and Wye both closed before I had a chance to visit them, but I went racing at Teesside Park (sometimes called Stockton) a few times; it closed in 1981, the site being used for a shopping centre that carries the same name.

After I went freelance in the eighties, I didn't have much time to go racing as I often worked away from home and the weekends were usually taken up with basic functions, although I managed to visit some racecourses that I hadn't previously been to. The eighties found me working freelance, often a long way from home. Since then I have been out of work for most of the time, so apart from the period when I was working, I haven't had money to do all the things I'd like. Nevertheless, I moved to the Midlands to look for work and that allowed me to visit most of the racecourses I hadn't already visited, and I visited two more during my last job.

These days, as far as the actual racing itself goes, I only get excited about the big races and the trials that give clues to future big races, but I also like to follow the international scene, which is very different from how it was in the seventies. I follow the races on the radio or in a betting shop where they show races on TV. I also buy the occasional book on the subject. The betting shops don't get much business out of me; my last bet was on Sea the Stars in the 2009 Derby, and the one before was some years earlier.

The only racecourses unvisited by me and still in business are Fakenham, Folkestone, Fontwell Park, Hamilton Park and the new one at Ffos Las. Another new racecourse opened at Great Leighs but closed again due to financial problems before I could visit it, and is unlikely to re-open.

When I am pensioned off, I will have more money to spend, but still not the kind of money I had when I was in a job. Still, I expect that I will spend some of that extra money on horseracing, though I doubt whether I'll attempt to visit all of the five racecourses currently operating that remain unvisited by me, as my priorities have changed so much since those days and none of the five are easy for me to get to by public transport from Leicester.

British racecourses
Visited by me
Aintree	Ascot	Ayr
Bangor-on-Dee	Bath	Beverley
Brighton	Carlisle	Cartmel
Catterick Bridge	Cheltenham	Chepstow
Chester	Doncaster	Epsom Downs
Exeter	Goodwood	Hamilton Park
Haydock Park	Hereford	Hexham
Huntingdon	Kelso	Kempton Park
Leicester	Lingfield Park	Ludlow
Market Rasen	Musselburgh	Newbury
Newcastle	Newmarket	Newton Abbot
Nottingham	Perth	Plumpton
Pontefract	Redcar	Ripon
Salisbury	Sandown Park	Sedgefield
Southwell	Stratford-on-Avon	Taunton
Teesside Park	Thirsk	Towcester
Uttoxeter	Warwick	Wetherby
Wincanton	Windsor	Wolverhampton
Worcester	Yarmouth	York

Bogus top 50 November 21, 2006

2011-07-13T02:13:00.000-07:00

Bogus top 50 November 21, 2006

This is of historical interest only

With the abolition of the second ranking system that was the only ranking system in use at the time, this page is now merely of curiosity value.

A glitch or an abandoned experiment?

There were problems with vanishing votes in November 2006, during which time a dramatically different ranking table sometimes appeared. I never saw these bogus rankings for myself but I'm grateful to Prisrob for posting the top 50 on the customer reviews discussion board. Most people think that the disappearing votes were the cause of the strange rankings, but during that time my votes total was greater than those for Marc Ruby and Barron Laycock added together because they each lost many thousands of votes while I only lost about 500. In these bogus rankings, both of them improved while I slipped. I therefore cannot believe the vanishing votes caused the problem. I think that Amazon were experimenting with the ranking algorithm although I find it hard to believe that Cindy Penn could have been ahead of me on any calculation at that time. However, Sherlock Holmes once said Eliminate the impossible and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth;. It appears to me that Amazon were experimenting with extra higher thresholds but they might have been trying other things too. Of course, there may be another explanation altogether.

As a basis of comparison, I've included the rankings for the start of 2007. Ranking movements throughout 2006 showed relatively little change so the fact that there is a six week gap between the two dates used here is irrelevant. I have adjusted the rankings to remove two people who were removed from the rankings (one was eventually reinstated but I left the table as it was during their absence), so there are only 48 people listed.

Bogus top 50 November 2006
November 21, 2006	January 1, 2007	Reviewer
1	2	Lawrance M Bernabo
2	1	Harriet Klausner
3	6	E A Solinas
4	4	Gail Cooke
5	3	Donald Mitchell
6	5	Rebecca Johnson
7	7	Joanna Daneman
8	9	Marc Ruby
9	11	Barron Laycock
10	8	Grady Harp
11	13	Taylor X
12	18	Lawyeraau
13	14	Daniel Jolley
14	10	FrKurt Messick
15	16	Wes Boudville
16	26	Deborah MacGillivray
17	19	Alejandra Vernon
18	23	J Scott Morrison
19	21	B Marold
20	59	Mike Tarrani
21	33	Mary Whipple
22	43	Francis J McInerney
23	81	Cindy Penn
24	15	Peter Durward Harris
25	24	Dennis Littrell
26	12	Robert Morris
27	35	Linda Linguvic
28	27	Jim Lovins
29	20	Robert W Moore
30	17	Kurt A Johnson
31	31	Jeffrey Leach
32	41	Daniel J Hamlow
33	40	Rolf Dobelli
34	45	Tim Janson
35	48	Gary F Taylor
36	22	Bernie Chandler
37	49	Jana L Perskie
38	89	Peggy Vincent
39	50	Robert D Steele
40=	52	John Kwok
40=	53	ChicBookFiend
42	54	Craig Matteson
43	56	Joe Sixpack
44	29	Pieter
45	30	Dianne Foster
46	25	Wayne Klein
47	55	N Durham
48	70	Michael B Richman

Amazon topics (Peter Durward Harris)

Questions about Amazon's reviewing system

Questions about Amazon's reviewing system

Introduction

Disclaimer

The intent

Terminology

Reviewers use some weird jargon. Can you explain some of the terms?

What is a sockpuppet in the context of reviewing?

Search, contact and notification

I can’t find what I want on Amazon. What can I do?

How do I switch between different Amazon websites?

Why do I get an error message saying the web address is wrong?

How do I contact Amazon customer service?

How do I find a reviewer's Amazon profile?

If that method fails, what else can I try?

How do I find a reviewer's account number?

How do I find reviews with star ratings by product?

How do I find reviews with star ratings by reviewer?

How do I find a specific review that is buried on a product's back pages?

How do I receive e-mails notifying me of comments on my reviews?

How do I receive e-mails notifying me of replies to my comments on other reviews?

How do I contact a reviewer?

How best can I find someone to review my book?

Votes

What do Amazon mean by “Was this review helpful to you?”?

Why do my reviews get unhelpful votes?

Unhelpful votes are often spiteful. What is the point of them?

Facebook don't have YES/NO votes, only a LIKE option. Why can't Amazon follow Facebook's example?

How can I report campaign voting to Amazon?

Why can't I vote for my wife's reviews?

Why do Amazon occasionally say that a reviewer has 100% helpful votes when they don't?

Why are votes on my reviews disappearing?

How can I tell which reviews are getting new votes?

Can I tell who is voting for or against my reviews?

Fans

What are fans as defined by Amazon?

What happens with votes after someone becomes a fan?

How many times can I vote for or against a particular reviewer before being designated a fan?

What were loyalty votes?

(For historians only)

Reviewer rankings and blue badges

Why did Amazon have two ranking systems?

(For historians only)

How did the second and current ranking systems differ?

(For historians only)

Will there be a fourth ranking system?

Why do Amazon rank book reviewers against gadget reviewers?

Do votes on images and comments count towards reviewer rankings?

Why do some reviewers have top reviewer badges that don't agree with their rankings?

I don't want to be part of the stupid rankings game. Can I opt out?

Why don't Amazon restore people's rankings if they want to opt in again?

When are rankings updated?

What is the reward for a high reviewer ranking?

How did Harriet Klausner become #1 reviewer?

What is the Hall of Fame?

Where can I find the Hall of Fame?

How can I improve my reviewer rankings?

What do those blue reviewer badges signify?

What is the official definition of a top reviewer?

What do those top reviewer badges truly mean?

Reviews

Are there any official rules about writing reviews?

How long should reviews be?

How do Amazon select spotlight reviews?

Why do Amazon allow pre-release reviews?

Are video reviews worth doing?

Why hasn't my review posted yet?

Why won't Amazon tell me exactly why my review has been held up?

Why did Amazon delete my review?

How much time should I spend writing a review?

Why do so many Amazon reviews carry five stars?

Surely five stars should be reserved for perfect products?

How can you love or hate purely functional items like cables and towels?

A lot of people give five stars for products that I know are bad. Surely this proves that Amazon reviews cannot be trusted?

Should I review a product I bought and used that has technical aspects if I do not understand how the technical aspects work?

Should I include my deeply felt personal beliefs in a review?

Why do I get an error message when I look through somebody's reviews and what can I do about it?

Why do I get a message saying I've already posted a review of that product?

Is it OK for an author to review his or her own book?

Reviewers use some weird jargon.
Can you explain some of the terms?

Facebook don't have YES/NO votes, only a LIKE option.
Why can't Amazon follow Facebook's example?

I don't want to be part of the stupid rankings game.
Can I opt out?

A lot of people give five stars for products that I know are bad.
Surely this proves that Amazon reviews cannot be trusted?

Why do my Amazon reviews appear on loads of websites?
I never knew most of these websites existed.

Amazon come up with weird recommendations.
Can I do anything to get good recommendations?

I have some ideas for improving Amazon’s software.
What do Amazon think?

I have some ideas for improving Amazon’s software.
What do you think?

Forum posters use some weird jargon.
Can you explain some of the terms?