Ensuring That Internet Reviews Are Fair

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. 

Online reviews are a hot topic at the moment. People like Anne Rice are pressing for reviewers not to be allowed to be anonymous on sites like Amazon, while reviewers on Trip Advisor are being sued personally, for leaving bad reviews about establishments.

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. 

How to Defeat a Dragon

Do you know Smaug the dragon's one weakness? Well, his other weakness then? It's reviews.

Smaug absolutely loathes reviews, hates them with a fiery passion (especially positive ones). So much so, they make him bang his head against walls and tear his armoured scales off!

What's the up shot of this? If you want to help Thorin, Bilbo and company defeat Smaug the dragon, please leave me a review!

Okay, so I may have a slight case of Hobbit fever. Sue me! ;)

If the rest of this post doesn't interest you, please skip to the gratuitous Hobbit pic spam below.

Seriously though, reviews are one of a writers best selling tools, but the biggest and best site for reviews (Amazon) appears to have put a rather overzealous commuter program to use, trying to weed out untrue reviews. A few examples are the ones authors (such as John Locke) pay to be written, those left by friends, family and (as hit the newspapers headlines his year) author sock-puppet accounts. Quite how this program works, no one knows because Amazon won't tell. I can't even begin to fathom how you can tell which reviews were paid for and which weren't. From what I can gather though, reviews from people who live in the same genera zipcode/postcode area as the author, seem to be classified as friends of the author and bahleted with prejudice.