Since Grady Harp cheats and gives himself tons and tons of positive votes, if and when he surpasses Harriet K as #1 reviewer, do you think she will fight back? She hasn't been getting the positive votes she use to and I really think Grady is on his way to push her off the thrown.
If this does happen, the comment soap opera will be old news! Harriet and Grady mudslinging each other!
Joy :)
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3 comments:
I don't believe Harriet is a real person.
Kelly
I think it's been fairly conclusively shown that it will be impossible for anyone to bump Harriet Klausner out of first place unless she were to delete thousands of reviews. Remember, she has more than double the number of reviews as the person in the number two slot.
It seems the voting has very little to do with it. And even if she just received one positive vote per review that would still give her over 14,000 votes!
When KrossD was writing his hilarious reviews his ranking went up very quickly. And believe me, he did not get a lot of positive votes. Just the sheer number of reviews increased his ranking very quickly.
Even with his loyal following I don't think Grady Harp could come close to Harriet Klausner's number one spot.
I think you're right: it's logical that only the number of reviews really matters.
What Amazon is -- must be -- after is a mass of information-looking stuff that will help selling books (and the rest). The bigger this mass, the better, quite objectively; nothing wrong so far.
But even with all the preposterous garbage by shilling "Top Reviewers", there still remains a lot of books w/ no info at all. Actually, I'm surprised that publishers do not always supply a bit of info for every book they sell -- I see a lot of books with blank pages; and I'm not talking HK romances, I'm talking $150-250 per copy technical/scientific stuff. No info: how am I supposed to buy an expensive book like that if I have, in the most literal sense, no clue about its content and quality? Bookstores seem to carry a very small percentage of what's published; mostly general interest -- and not a long time (I guess, if a book doesn't sell quickly, they get rid of it). An awful lot of stuff is available only online or direct from the publisher. I wonder what would happen if they put a half of the energy they put into hiring shills into providing honest info about their books...
OK, back to the topic: so what do we have here? Votes and quantity.
Votes are way too easy to manipulate (either way), and in addition, they don't change the quantity of information available on site. Therefore votes can't count for much.
The only thing that's left is quantity. And since, again, it's obvious that the quality and even genuineness of the reviews is not of any concern to Amz, quantity must be it.
And indeed... if you look at the state of affairs there, it looks exactly like what it should: HK is No.1, etc. It all comes together.
But. If that's all true, why in the world does Grady Harp and Co. are so insistent about inflating their vote counts? I mean, why not instead do the W.Boudville thing and just dump a dozen reviews daily? Harp posts a lot, but less than the rest of our friends. And, if I'm not mistaken, he is above W.Boudville in the hierarchy, although JMG was above him, I think. Hmmm... I guess, not all is clear, after all :-) .
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