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The Dog That Didn't Bark

So I was looking at the Amazon page for Kos' and Armstrong's book, Crashing The Gate, which is about how to use the net to take back America for progressive politics (or at least I'm surmising that's the theme, based on reviews and who wrote it), and I noticed something about the reviews. When a so-called "right-wing" book goes up (like by Michelle Malkin, or Ann Coulter, or even non-bombthrowers), the review section quickly becomes flooded by "reviews" from people who have obviously neither purchased or read the book, and are usually ad hominem attacks on the authors. Such "reviews" generally get one star in terms of their utility to the other Amazon visitors.

But I saw none of that among the reviews for Crashing The Gate. Admittedly, most of the reviews were by fellow Democrats, but I suspect that if there are any negative reviews, they'll at least be by people who've actually read the book, and have something intelligent to say about it.

I'm going to keep an eye on it, and see if my prediction is born out, over the next few days. And if it is, what does it say about the civility level of the two sides of the political spectrum?

[Update a few minutes later]

It's not at Amazon, but here's an example of a negative review by someone who has actually read the book. It's certainly not laudatory (though Trevino does have some good things to say about it), but it's also not the mindless feces flinging that often passes for many "progressive" reviews of "non-progressive" books at Amazon.

[Late evening update]

There's one other interesting characteristic of these drive-by trolls. They not only haven't read the book, but they aren't prolific reviewers in general. For example, consider the reviewers for Glenn's latest book. The majority of the reviews so far are one-star, never-read-the-book reviews. And when one clicks on "other reviews by this reviewer," one comes up almost empty in all cases.

This seems like something that Amazon could do something about. It's almost like spam, except it's a lot more personal.

Ideas as to how Amazon could (fairly and objectively) do something about it are welcome.

Posted by Rand Simberg at March 08, 2006 03:16 PM

Comments

While I understand your point I don't think silencing idiots is needed (you've never felt the need to silence me! :-) It might be useful if they included in the heading of the review itself some of the points you mentioned so you can see it at a glance rather than having to look it up.

After writing code for over a quarter century I've found that the less quantity and more specific the rules the better. IRC is a perfect example. 1st one in is in charge, you really don't need any other rule. Perhaps a filter by subject is useful.

The same type of thing for book review. 1st it's good if a book has any at all. Second, a filter might be useful.

Posted by ken anthony at March 8, 2006 11:21 PM

Maybe Amazon could simply enforce a "don't review concepts that ain't in the book" rule and pare down the trolls?

Posted by Alan K. Henderson at March 8, 2006 11:26 PM

I imagine that Amazon doesn't have someone sitting around reviewing the reviewers as this wouldn' be cost effective. What's needed is a filter which is automated. I suggest that a question should be asked of the "reviewer" before they are allowed to post on the book. The question should be in reference to some page in the book like "whats the 3rd word on page 234?". In order to spam the review section, someone who hadn't actually purchased the book would have to go to a store and check, way too much effort for the idiots who do this. It would be even more effective if there were 3 different questions asked at random. The questions could be submitted by the author as part of the forms for getting the book into Amazon in the first place.

Posted by K at March 8, 2006 11:48 PM

I haven't bought the book yet but it seems to me review trolls, oddly enough, are a great example of an Army of Davids (or at least, a Mongol Horde of Davids).

(BTW, skimming through, my favorite spam review was from "Liberal Teacher" from San Francisco.

The usual far-right crap about how Rush and Hanity and wingnut Freeper bloggers are going to censor the "big" media and pimp corporations and the GOP. This is just more examples of the vile Halliburton Enronism crony capitalism. In the "Army of Davids" it's all about oiloiloiloil, cowboyish disregard for allies, see the photo of Rummy and Hussein. I'd rename the book "Amry of Warmonger Chickenhawks Who Pimp For Wal-Mart and Karl Rove."

LT has reviewed exactly one item for Amazon, which makes me wonder exactly what LT teaches.)

But on-topic, Amazon could make that space more useful by ordering reviews by a derived usefulness rating for the reviewers. Something like:

(Number_of_Reviews_in_Category) *
  (Avg_Usefulness_to_Others_in_Category) *
    (1+Avg_Usefulness_of_Current_Review)

Higest rating review shows first.

Focusing on reviews within the current item category would prevent trolls who provide useful reviews of cookware from getting an unwarranted boost for knee-jerk political spam.

It would also encourage reviewers to be a little more thoughtful, I think, and discourage trolls who just want to see their superior cleverness displayed on an Amazon item. (Right now it looks like reviews are ordered by latests reviews. That's a very positive incentive to spam.)

Amazon has a very positive incentive for doing something like this; the more useful the reviews are to customers, the more likely customers are to use Amazon. Also, I note that Amazon only list four reviews right now for Reynold's book; I expect that's a function of some housekeeping they've done more than how many reviews they've recieved. (As I write this, the only post more than 24 hours old is a one line dismissal -- two stars, though -- by another single-review reviewer who posted well before An Army of Davids was released. Hmmmm......) By automating the rating of reviews, Amazon will very likely reduce the amount of human intervention trolls currently require.

Posted by Mark Poling at March 9, 2006 01:47 AM

Great post, great comments. But I have a question. How would you parody someone who genuinely professed the views of "Liberal Teacher"? I mean withough sarcasm tags and all.

Posted by moptop at March 9, 2006 04:37 AM

I've never reviewed anything on Amazon. Can you review something if you didn't buy it on Amazon?

If you can, Amazon should just limit who can review an item to those who actually bought the item on Amazon. This probalby would help.

Posted by Chris at March 9, 2006 05:17 AM

How about a formula:

If the number of "Not useful" votes is greater than X% of total book sales from Amazon, that review is deleted or hidden. Maybe a qualifier that sales must exceed 1000.

Posted by Leland at March 9, 2006 06:56 AM

In answer to a question above, yes, you can review a book that you have not bought on Amazon. You can even review if you have never bought anything on Amazon.

As for partisan reviews of political books, I don't think you can draw any conclusions. When it comes to politics, everybody on the net is outraged all the time, and everybody is pretty nasty. And the Amazon site proves nothing other than the fact that American political discourse is in an awful state and each side thinks the other is worse.

There are a number of things you have to keep in mind concerning Amazon's reviews. The first one is that the site is biased to _sell_ books and their software has this bias. I've noticed that in general, a good review of a book (ranked by stars, but also apparently by a moderate word count) will appear at the top for most books, regardless of the date it was posted. In other words, click on a book and chances are that the first review you see will be positive because Amazon wants you to buy the book, even if there have been five negative reviews written after that one.

Now that probably doesn't apply for intensely partisan political books, or books with dozens of reviews. I'm guessing that in those cases, Amazon doesn't try. But you'll notice it for most books with 8-30 reviews or so.

Their software is flawed, however. And their censoring criteria is unknown. I've had at least one of my reviews of a book eliminated for no reason that I can figure out--it was not a particularly negative review, but I did note that the book was published by a vanity press where the author paid to have it printed. Two days later and my review vanished without a trace, and Amazon never explained why. I've also noticed at least one case where a book author, writing under his own name, gave his own book five stars. And I've noticed another book (see New Moon Rising) where the same positive review was posted twice, increasing the rating. Amazon clearly doesn't pay too much attention to this stuff other than to eliminate anything that might be considered libelous.

I've also noticed that it's not really worth reading the reviews when there are dozens of them. The overall signal/noise ratio gets bad when there are lots of reviews, if only because you have to scroll through a lot of crap in order to find something useful. If there are between 5-30 reviews it might be worth the effort.

Personally, I've always wished that Amazon was a little more heavy-handed with eliminating worthless and poorly-written reviews. Lots of reviews are one-line comments that don't illuminate anything about the book and Amazon should just delete them. Go for quality. But that would take time and effort, and they're in the business of selling stuff, not running a literary journal.

However... I'll also say that occasionally I've found some real gems in the reviews, especially when you find a subject where the reviewers themselves are known experts or highly knowledgeable about a subject and can comment on its details. It's pretty amazing to come across a review by someone who says "Mr. so and so refers to my work in chapter 6 of his book and he has slightly misinterpreted what I wrote and here's why..." Suddenly you're reading something worthwhile that might educate you more than the book itself.

Posted by Tom Shembough at March 9, 2006 08:08 AM

Amazon does have a feature in which one can report a bogus review as being inappropriate content and, on occassion, such can be removed.

Posted by Mark R. Whittington at March 9, 2006 08:28 AM

When it comes to politics, everybody on the net is outraged all the time, and everybody is pretty nasty.

That's an outrageous thing to say. Uh, "moron."

(Needed to get the nasty points, or apparently I'd lose my Internet privileges. Nothing personal.)

Posted by McGehee at March 9, 2006 08:37 AM

It's just the furthering of the age-old Liberals Are Experts Because They Care syndrome. It’s the same lefty reasoning that allows Ted Danson to expound on our vital oceans, or that allows Barbara Streisand to rant about foreign affairs policy.

I don't object to their having an opinion, it’s their legal right. What frosts my stones, is that the MSM treats their opinion as fact. Dan Ratherism 101, sell they possibility not the fact.

Lets turn this around the other way, as to ability and experience anyway. George Bush should be able to get a sitcom and Condoleeza Rice should remake Funny Girl. Its no sillier than believing the Hollywood Talking Heads when they are asked about their opinion of the war on terror! Why should we believe George Clooney's liberal opinion of the world in Time or Newsweek, when those same media outlets question Mel Gibson's "real reason" for making The Passion of the Christ.

The sounding off on every subject with no research of information, because they FEEL something about the topic at hand is strictly a tactic of the left. Both sides can do knee jerking, but that ever constant, strident, outraged posting, reviewing, and whiney PCing is all from the left.

Being a good conservative, I don't usually jump into a subject without reading or studying first. But it's only after I get all my ideas from Rush Limbaugh that I take action. I only act the way I am told, mind numbed robot that I am.

Posted by Steve at March 9, 2006 09:15 AM

"Being a good conservative, I don't usually jump into a subject without reading or studying first. But it's only after I get all my ideas from Rush Limbaugh that I take action. I only act the way I am told, mind numbed robot that I am."

Great. What does this have to do with Amazon's book reviews?

Nothing.

Posted by at March 9, 2006 09:22 AM

I find this interesting.

Kos of Daily Kos and Krempasky of Red State do an "Odd Couple" Thing.

Kudos to both!

Posted by Bill White at March 9, 2006 10:43 AM

Posted by..... "Great. What does this have to do with Amazon's book reviews?

Nothing."

It has everything to do with liberalism, and the liberal comments in Amazons' reviews.

At least Steve has the guts to post his name and email address with his opinions.

Posted by Cecil Trotter at March 9, 2006 12:19 PM

Check out the current reviews of Army of Davids - the pruning has already begun. And read Shamm Gold's review.

Posted by Alan K. Henderson at March 9, 2006 02:41 PM

moptop wrote: "How would you parody someone who genuinely professed the views of 'Liberal Teacher'? I mean withough sarcasm tags and all."

It's obvious. That one IS a parody written by a conservative. It CAN'T be serious. Right? RIGHT?

Posted by Jim C. at March 9, 2006 09:17 PM


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