First
up, in the interests of full disclosure, let me say I was harassed on Amazon
and by email by a malicious reviewer/troll. I discovered a series of fake one
star reviews on other peoples books and when I pointed that out on an authors
forum, she turned her attention to me. It took A LOT of emails to amazon to get
her reviews removed, despite proof in the form of emails, her IP address and the
threats from her email, proof that she was selling good amazon reviews on
Fourrer not to mention, her own review account’s extremely suspect behaviour. It
wasn’t so much a case that her review dragged down my average rating, they didn’t
by any a noticeable amount, it was that someone had threatened and harassed me,
and Amazon just wanted to ignore it. It wasn’t right that she be allowed to get
away with it (which is why I brought her to the attention of other authors she
had targeted) and considering the abundance of evidence I provided, it should not have been as hard as it was
to get her malicious reviews taken off.
Feel free to go read that saga if you’re up for it but it isn’t necessary for this post.
It’s
because of this incident that I’ve given this subject (how to ensure that reviews
are fair, without a knee jerk reaction) a lot of thought.
You’ll see some of my
earlier ideas in the comments of that thread. None of those were perfect (and
this probably isn’t either) but I believe it’s the best option to ensure
fairness for all parties, ie, reviewers, as well as the people, products and
businesses being reviewed.
So
what’s the answer?
There
are a few things first that we have to admit before we can have a reasonable discussion about this.
1) People
do leave fake malicious reviews. Sometimes to get back at an ex (or his new partner in one case i read of), because of a grudge or vendetta, or just because they're trolls.
