What Makes A Good Reviewer?
I like to write the occasional review at Amazon.com. I don't go crazy trying to review every book, CD, movie or kitchen appliance I own. I review as the mood strikes me. I currently rank about No. 4,100. I have penned precisely 50 reviews, for which I have received about 450 "helpful" votes.
A while back I linked to a WSJ article about Harriet Klausner, Amazon's top reviewer. She is prolific, there's no doubt about that. She has written 9,608 reviews, garnering 60,221 thumbs-up from customers. I'm actually not sure why she's No. 1, because No. 2, Lawrance Bernabo has written more reviews -- 10,697 -- and had more "helpful" votes -- 61,719.
I also noticed a couple other ways you could crunch the numbers to see who is the "better" reviewer. One would be the number of "helpful" votes per review. For this metric, Klausner clocks in at about 6.3 while Bernabo come in at 5.8. I come in at 8.9.
Another thing to look at would be "unhelpful" votes. Unfortunately, Amazon doesn't seem to publicize how many total negative responses each reviewer gets. And I'm not about to sit there and tally it up for super-reviewers like Klausner. But a quick perusal of Klausner's contributions turned up page after page of reviews that had one or two "helpful" votes and eight or nine "unhelpful" ones. I think it's quite possible that Klausner has had as much negative feedback as positive. I have a total of 59 negative votes, and 15 of those came from a single review in which I have the Smashing Pumpkins' "MACHINA" album a single star with the headline "Face it, this CD sucks".
Anyway, while my output is about half of one percent of the top reviewers, I humbly submit that my entries are of better quality, as reflected in my higher positive votes and lower negative votes per review.
A while back I linked to a WSJ article about Harriet Klausner, Amazon's top reviewer. She is prolific, there's no doubt about that. She has written 9,608 reviews, garnering 60,221 thumbs-up from customers. I'm actually not sure why she's No. 1, because No. 2, Lawrance Bernabo has written more reviews -- 10,697 -- and had more "helpful" votes -- 61,719.
I also noticed a couple other ways you could crunch the numbers to see who is the "better" reviewer. One would be the number of "helpful" votes per review. For this metric, Klausner clocks in at about 6.3 while Bernabo come in at 5.8. I come in at 8.9.
Another thing to look at would be "unhelpful" votes. Unfortunately, Amazon doesn't seem to publicize how many total negative responses each reviewer gets. And I'm not about to sit there and tally it up for super-reviewers like Klausner. But a quick perusal of Klausner's contributions turned up page after page of reviews that had one or two "helpful" votes and eight or nine "unhelpful" ones. I think it's quite possible that Klausner has had as much negative feedback as positive. I have a total of 59 negative votes, and 15 of those came from a single review in which I have the Smashing Pumpkins' "MACHINA" album a single star with the headline "Face it, this CD sucks".
Anyway, while my output is about half of one percent of the top reviewers, I humbly submit that my entries are of better quality, as reflected in my higher positive votes and lower negative votes per review.
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