Friday, May 25, 2007

Amazon and Harriet in on it together?

I was looking over the Harriet reviews and the soap opera of comments said today (I must admit has become my daily addiction to read them) and noticed something very interesting. One person popped up and gave a comment which wasn't bad in anyway, the next day she mentioned, (which was today) that all her reviews were given negative votes since she chimed in on the discussion. This was the first time in months she has commented on Harriet. This makes me think that Harriet is the invention of Amazon to get noticed so more people will come to the website and maybe their stock will go up in price because of it?
This whole negative voting thing has to be something Amazon's doing. I can not believe some loser is sitting there all day long looking for the commentors and voting negatively for every review.
Maybe I am looking way too much into this. Maybe aliens from outerspace are in on this by now!

11 comments:

Malleus said...

Well, no, I think there are people who would actually do it.

appifany said...

I think that soap opera defines it exactly!! I was quite surprised by the spite of the comments. Every time I check that one review it goes from 40 to 61 to 122 comments!

I find it funny that MM calls FTF "Sweet Pea." What's with that?

Misfit said...

It's up to 130 now, and KrossD and FTF were talking about meeting up at a club in LA or something. Sheesh.

I too think there are people who would sit down and go through page after page of reviews and give them neg votes. It's happened to me. I went a whole week without commenting and without a neg and one simple comment (I wasn't even ragging about HK, it was about that nasty author and her nasty comment) and within hours I had negs again.

It's somebody in that group, I don't think it's an Amazon thing. And besides, HK posts same reviews at B&N, and many many other places.

Stephanie said...

'...MM & FTF sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes..."

I agree. That is LOL funny :O

I think there are actually people that sit at the computer and instead of commenting along with us they hit us with "unhelpful votes." Everyone always mentions the neg. votes. Has anyone noticed any positive votes?

Deborah Hern said...

I agree that there are people out there who are either malicious enough, or bored enough, or both, to actually page through reviews and give negative votes. Sad, but most likely true.

I also sometimes wonder if there are 'voting bots' out there. It would explain how some reviewers post and within an hour get 60 'positive' votes. Other than that, I got nothing.

scotdog98 said...

This is something that I still don't understand. I have never even looked at my negative votes. Who cares?

Am I just being naive? I honestly could care less if someone else found my review helpful or unhelpful. My reviews help me remember what I liked vs didn't like. So much seems to center around this vote & it makes me wonder . . . what I am missing?

Is this just something that the top reviewers are worried about? How Joe Public receives their review? Still baffles me.

Deborah Hern said...

Good point. An overwhelming number of "not helpful" votes certainly hasn't hurt Harriet's position in any way. So, really, what IS the point of the vote system??

Maybe Amazon voting is the new opiate of the people.

Stephanie said...

I'm with you Scotdog98. I really don't care whether or not someone agrees with my reviews. I read so much that I use the review section the same way. To remember whether or not I liked the book and why. Everyone's different, though. Some really do want to be helpful and therefore do care that the review they put time and effort in is appreciated. And then some, like Klausner, is addicted to being 'number one.' For the record, I have another name that I post reviews under.

I believe the ones that vote unhelpful on our reviews are people that are following the comments, but don't comment and keep themselves unknown. And they obviously don't agree with us. MM said she does not give anyone unhelpful votes because to do that is silly. At least that is how I interpreted her comment. :O)

Misfit, you have a picture of a cat that pops up under your name. Cute kitty :O). What is his/her name? You don't have to answer if you don't want to. I was just curious. I am an animal person myself.

Misfit said...

I never cared much about negative votes before this whole mess started, everyone is entitled to their opinion. I just hate it when someone goes through review after review with spiteful negs.

Stephanie, the cat is named Misfit, and never was a name better suited to an animal. She was a little bit of a feral kitten who got lost in the warehouse at work, we didn't even know she was there until the guys started finding kitty poop in the stucco mix :-)

Anyway, after she was trapped we realized she was a wild one and had little hopes of socializing her. We had her spayed with plans of putting back in the wild, but she was too darn cute. We worked with her in a big cage until she got used to people. She is quite sweet and loving but always different. She loves her toy mice, throwing them by the tail, and drowning them in her water. LOL, one time I came home and found three of them in the toilet!

I love animals too. My other kitty is a Chartreux (the smiling blue cats of france, wonderful breed). She has kidney disease and needs daily care, so I'm not going anywhere this weekend either.

Stephanie said...

Chartreux are beautiful! Does she have the orange eyes? I am sorry she has kidney disease. That is not easy to go through. I had a family of Siamese. The father, mother and two of their babies. The father died at twelve from kidney failure. One of the babies ( who was twelve when he passed ) died of kidney failure, too. Not an easy thing! Like you said , they need daily and constant care. The mother had cancer of the mammary glands and bone cancer. I still have the last baby. He will be seventeen in July. I took him to the vet just before his 15th b-day because he had a sore that just would not get better. It turned out to be cancer. The vet found a few more spots I had not even noticed. He had them removed because they were painful and the vet said that he would live maybe 6 more months. It is now 2 years later. I am grateful! I try to help the stray cats and lost dogs around the neighborhood. I can’t believe how many stray cats there are! I take them in and foster them and try to place them in permanent homes. I get help from a local shelter with spaying and neutering and shots. I am fostering a dog right now. I found him inside a Circle K!

I have one cat that I have kept. Named him Marley. He is the one in the picture under my profile. He does the same thing as your Misfit with the toy mice with the feather tails. Except he puts them in his water bowl instead of the toilet. On one hand that is annoying, but on the other hand, cute!

Woo-hoo! My weekend has officially started!

Misfit said...

Stephanie, good for you working with strays. In a condo I think I'd have a hard time with that. Everytime I go to Petsmart and look at the adoption kitties I want to take them all home, but I know I can't.

Lucky for you to have a kitty live to the ripe old age of 17, I've only had one that ever made it that far. It's so hard when they get sick.