Submission + - Are Amazon Vine reviews of technical books a joke?
jasax writes: As an Amazon frequent buyer, I rely quite a lot on reviews of the books I want. However, some caution is in order: the (bad) quality of Amazon's reviews and reviewers under the Amazon Vine program has already
been news in Slashdot.
Today I was shocked by a practical result of that program. This 2nd edition of a very specialized system identification book published in 2012 has 12 reviews: the oldest (dated 2007) certainly targets the 1st edition.
The remaining 11 reviews are all from "Vine Reviewers" (VRs). All seem to be ignorant of what really is "System Identification in the Frequency Domain". None of the reviews is tagged with a "Verified Amazon Purchase", most (if not all) are "small talk reviews" peppered with technical phrases cloning the publisher's book description, and some of the reviews are ridiculous, to say the least.
If this sample of reviewing by VRs really is the norm, then the bottom line is that the Vine program is totally irrelevant and unreliable — at least for technical books.
Today I was shocked by a practical result of that program. This 2nd edition of a very specialized system identification book published in 2012 has 12 reviews: the oldest (dated 2007) certainly targets the 1st edition.
The remaining 11 reviews are all from "Vine Reviewers" (VRs). All seem to be ignorant of what really is "System Identification in the Frequency Domain". None of the reviews is tagged with a "Verified Amazon Purchase", most (if not all) are "small talk reviews" peppered with technical phrases cloning the publisher's book description, and some of the reviews are ridiculous, to say the least.
If this sample of reviewing by VRs really is the norm, then the bottom line is that the Vine program is totally irrelevant and unreliable — at least for technical books.
