More or less self-explanatory, but I really can’t figure out how Amazon.com decides what order customer reviews will go in. I’ve written exactly one, and every once in a while I go back to check on it and see who found it useful (and to see what other crap is being spouted about a subject near and dear to my heart).
The order of customer reviews seems to be both totally random and constantly shifting. So far I don’t see a correlation with the date reviews are posted, their level of articulateness, length, subject matter knowledge, approval rating, or any other sensible criteria. Some of them have nothing to do with the book at all, and some are chock-full of typos and grammatical errors, and some are thinly veiled political diatribes.
So is it really random? Right now mine is the first of the customer reviews, but previously it’s been in every position from first to last. If it’s not random, then what are hte criteria, and on what do you base your judgment?
The default (for the entire mass of reviews as a whole) is by date in descending order. Last come, first served up.
The user can choose to re-sort the reviews by date (oldest first), or by popularity (worst reviews first, or best reviews first).
The spotlight reviews, which is what Eva Luna seems to be asking about, I don’t know. Maybe it’s random, maybe for the more prominent items amazon employees can manually pick out reviews they think are worth reading. I doubt they would hand-pick spotlight reviews for every single item. If it’s randomized, that would explain the crap reviews getting occasionally spotlighted.
The default (for the entire mass of reviews as a whole) is by date in descending order. Last come, first served up.
The user can choose to re-sort the reviews by date (oldest first), or by popularity (worst reviews first, or best reviews first).
The spotlight reviews, which is what Eva Luna seems to be asking about, I don’t know. Maybe it’s random, maybe for the more prominent items amazon employees can manually pick out reviews they think are worth reading. I doubt they would hand-pick spotlight reviews for every single item. If it’s randomized, that would explain the crap reviews getting occasionally spotlighted.