Online News Industry News & Analysis
By Steve Outing, Wednesday, March 31, 1999
For a Web news site to allow its users to write reviews — of restaurants, movies, plays, night clubs, music, books, etc. — and have them published online is in general a wonderful thing. As I've long preached, this level of user interactivity can go a long way in getting users to feel "connected" to your site, and thus become loyal users.
But if you're going to offer this feature, you've got to keep close watch on what users are writing and publishing. Abuses are common, and you've got to make sure that they're caught and eliminated or your "user reviews" will quickly become viewed as worthless.
Amazon.com, the online book giant, provides a good example of the troubles you can encounter. Amazon allows its users to write reviews of books, and then appends those reviews to the book sales page, usually below a professional review. Increasingly, some of these consumer reviews are bogus or written as jokes.
Take a look at the consumer-written reviews for the Bil Keane book, "I Had a Frightmare." Keane is the cartoonist for the aging "Family Circus" comic strip, and this book is a compilation of his strips. Notice anything odd about the reviews? They're all written as jokes, and at this writing Amazon.com staff still hadn't removed them (though obvious spoofs are pulled periodically by Amazon.com's editors).
In case that page has been cleaned up by the time this column runs, here's an excerpted "consumer review" — giving 5 stars — of Keane's banal Family Circus book:
"'I Had a Frightmare' sees Bil Keane stepping out from the shadows of Schultz and Davis straight into the upper elcheon of comic artistes. What, you may ask, could Keane have done differently this time to earn a place at Mort Drucker's right side? I wish I knew, but it sure sounds good, doesn't it? Seriously, Bil Keane must've worked overtime on this collection. One cartoon traces Billy's walk 'down the block' to the bus stop. The amazing twists and turns this simple half-block walk takes requires a steady, patient eye in order to fully comprehend the joke. Keane manages to tie the whole she-bang together, giving the reader that same sense of glee after they put 'Pulp Fiction' or '12 Monkeys' together. Yes. It's that good."
Earlier this month, Salon Magazine published a funny piece by author Lev Grossman, who in "Terrors of the Amazon" recounts his experience of reading insulting consumer reviews of his first novel by Amazon.com customers. He became so upset that he posted his own complimentary reviews of his book under assumed names.
The lesson: Don't get caught in Amazon.com's trap. Consumer reviews require monitoring, lest they become known more as a joke than a useful service to consumers.