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Reviewing The Product Reviewers
from the only-good-reviews,-please dept
We've discussed before the problems involved with e-commerce sites that offer reviews. Last year, a glitch on Amazon's system revealed that some of those super positive reviews on certain books were actually written by the authors to give their own sales (or egos) a boost. That eventually resulted in Amazon disallowing any anonymous reviews. However, what about all those other sites that offer product reviews? On some e-commerce sites there's something of a conflict of interest. If a product has a bunch of negative reviews, then maybe it won't sell -- and that's not what an e-commerce site wants. So, according to this WSJ article (submitted by John) some sites have been rejecting negative reviews. It sounds like most sites are more reasonable about this -- and recognize that if there are no negative reviews anywhere no one will believe any of the reviews anyway. Other sites only reject reviews that seem off-topic or offensive. Either way, though, since there's no easy way to know what the sites' policies are, it isn't always easy to tell whether or not you can trust the reviews to be complete and accurate.
Reader Comments
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Instant Reviews
Too many positive reviews are written by people who have very recently purchased the product. I'd rather see positive reviews from people who have owned it and used it for a few months.
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Can anybody recommend a quality source for laptop
My Dell's had 3 motherboard replacements in the 15 months I've owned it, as well as the LCD, power supply, and case - all because of a bad physical design (yes, I do treat my laptop relatively well).
What's made it worse is the fact that Dell's next business day support has now twice turned into one-to-two week support.
So I'm done with Dell. Whatever I buy next, I want good design and good support. Any recommendations of a mag or site that does quality reviews of laptops, both from a design and a support standpoint?
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Take reviews with a grain of salt
Positive or negative reviews simply because people really REALLY need to remember an elemental axiom of the internet:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2004-3-19&res=l
Once you keep that FIRMLY in mind, you'll get more use out of it.
However, until the majority of people stop feeling entitled to act like idiots online because they feel anonymous, these sites will never be completely useful OR trustworthy.
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