@abdlah, Unfortunately it's hard to avoid those people who give poor reviews. It's great that some sites let you actually report a bad review but I'm with you, I've really only had positive experiences, at least on Amazon, with the reviews. I actually enjoy reading negative reviews sometimes because those are usually the people who give out the most, from the heart, information well, because they are venting really. What's really cool with amazon is they show you up front the most popular positive review and the most popular negative review (or they used to? i'm not sure, haven't been on the site in a little while). In any case, I do like their review system.
LOL@ Mr. Roques. I would hope you take a little more caution if you were attempting to get away with cheating on the Internet, these days :). Thank goodness for privacy mode on certain browsers =P.
But seriously, I do agree. These sites know way too much about us and it certainly is a bit scary. The good ol' days of getting away with things on the Internet anonymously seem to be out the window and there's not many options around it unless you anonymize yourself and lets face it, the average user not only doesn't have the experience needed or wouldn't want to concern themselves with that 'extra work' in doing so.
I've always been scared of Amazon and Google. Mostly because they know what I'm looking for. If I have a abdominal pain, I ask Google what to do. If I buy 2 expensive diamond rings with different sizes, Amazon knows.
If now you link that to LinkedIn, you know who I am and that maybe I'm cheating on my wife or hiding something.
Customers should be verified but the reviews should be anonymous, if that makes sense. Amazon should know that you are a real person but it doesn't really need to know who you are.
I think there should be a rank system with paid moderators.
Yes, Amazon must work hard to ensure the integrity of the reviews on their site. I must say though that my experience in over a decade of using Amazon reviews to make a decision has been positive - it is the reported ability to fake that worries me.
Customer reviews have formed a basis of my buying decisions for a very long time now. So it would be a shame when we would have fake reviews being a norm.
Finding out ways to limit fake reviews would be very important, I have would have thought companies like Amazon would do a good job of controlling reviews as it is those who make a purchase who are allowed to review their purchase. Why on earth would I allow someone to pay me to lie to others about my experience when I bought something? Would it not come to haunt me someday?
For reviews to continue to play positive roles in a customer's experience, we will definitely need to find a way to protect their integrity.
Mostly yes...at some point this whole web paradigm of just passively putting things out there and letting the users build it won't cut it for many consumers who expect something more from an "anchor store". Better information, better delivery, better quality and guarantees. I think those who have been riding the back of free labor and service from users are going to have to add quality service...and that costs!
@Jabailo - reading reviews from other customers is a whole lot of work. The customer reviews on Amazon are one of their business assets, and Amazon should look at ways of ensuring the integrity of the information provided by this asset. Google expends lots of resources to ensure that their good-page / spam-page filter algorithm is working well. Amazon should invest in an algorithm that accurately filters out bogus reviews.
Actually, I sort of do this on Amazon already. If I read a review, I then look at other reviews the person has done, and try and see if they have history, or if they say the same types of things about every product and so on.
But to answer your question -- yes, as an online presense, I do want people to know exactly who I am and what I represent. I think this is the way the Web should operate...not just a bunch of nameless, faceless avatars with no history, a Facebook timeline, for example, gives people more information. At some point, I really think we need to have more web certifications...places you can link to and be validated for forms of experiences...diplomas of cybersphere.
Even then people would use different profiles like they use different ones for personal and professional use. You would not want random people swifting through your profile just to authenticate a review, would you?
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