34 Responses so far

1. 1. Steve Buchheit on Aug 9th, 2007 at 12:25 pm

   Um, maybe she’s asking for a friend?

2. 2. Amy Sterling Casil on Aug 9th, 2007 at 2:22 pm

   Hi Toby - Harriet’s fans (or maybe Harriet herself) linked to my article about the fake Amazon reviews. There’s quite a controversy going among this group that follows the top Amazon reviewers. I can’t remember the guy’s name but in addition to being suspected of not reading the books he reviews - he seems to have some type of bot that votes “helpful” dozens of times immediately after his reviews are posted. The whole thing blows me away. Maybe I should ask Harriet?

3. 3. Hugh on Aug 9th, 2007 at 2:37 pm

   Speaking of Amazon, I was amused by a recommendation they made to me that I just came across; Harry Potter #7 was “Recommended because you purchased An Inconvenient Truth”.

   Though I usually don’t bother to click the helpful/unhelpful button, I generally find Harriet’s reviews to be not useful because she often does little more than restate the dust jacket copy. Thanks anyway, but I can read the dj copy all by myself, usually on the same Amazon page under “Book Description.” In that sense, her reviews are redundant, at best, and often less readable.

4. 4. Mfitz on Aug 9th, 2007 at 2:46 pm

   Apparently earlier this week on a SF/Romance writer’s latest book’s Amland page there was some sort of battle royal over Harriet’s reviews started by a group of people who live to trash her and/or her reviews. The book’s review page was swamped with one star “reviews” that were all about Harriet, and her reviews, and nothing about the book. People even came out and said as much in their rants. Others made nasty personal comments about writers she has given glowing reviews.

   From the between the lines gossip I’ve heard there are some people who are upset about; a) how many reviews Harriet does, b) how many Romance novels get good reviews, and they have been flash trashing Romances Harriet reviews over the last few weeks.

   As of this morning the site I had heard about was all cleared up but bunches of people are to be hopping mad about it.

5. 5. Jim C. Hines on Aug 9th, 2007 at 3:18 pm

   Oh, I believe she reads–rather, she skims–the book. She often posts details that she couldn’t get from the blurbs. But I don’t think she remembers anything about them.

   She posted two different reviews for Goblin Quest when the different editions came out, with no indication that she had read it before. (Happily, the second review was more positive.)

6. 6. Steve Buchheit on Aug 9th, 2007 at 5:41 pm

   Jim C. Hines, maybe she got more out of Goblin Quest the second time she skimmed through?

7. 7. Jeff VanderMeer on Aug 11th, 2007 at 12:32 pm

   In her review of Veniss Underground, she made mention of a rape. There’s nothing even approaching a rape in the book! And because her review was wrong and promulgated widely, it made it much darker than it already is!

   I didn’t think there was much of anything she couldn’t have gotten from other existing online reviews, the first few pages, and the press release. My feeling would be that, where possible, she just googles other reviews.

   Jeff

8. 8. The Book Swede on Aug 13th, 2007 at 3:27 am

   That’s disgusting. She shouldn’t get away with it. Particularly when it might and probably will influence an author’s sales.

9. 9. Malleus Maleficarum on Aug 13th, 2007 at 3:02 pm

   C’mon, boys, your just jealous of her success!

10. 10. Barbara Delaney on Aug 13th, 2007 at 5:02 pm

    I certainly do not live to trash Harriet Klausner, as one commenter said, but I have left numerous comments on her reviews pointing out some rather stunning inaccuracies. She has gotten the author’s name wrong on three occasions that I know of, main character’s names incorrectly identified frequently, and has transposed reviews and put the wrong review with a title. She also upset one author of Christian novels tremendously by stating in her review that her heroine was involved in an extramarital affair. In fact the whole point of the book was that this woman did not succumb to the wiles of the married philanderer.

    I’ve rarely read the books she reviews but when I have I do not recognize the book in her outlandish synopsis. Her “review” of Paul Auster’s novel The Scriptorium is a case in point. Although that review is unintentionally hilarious as Harriet uses the word existential in her summation. I would really like to hear Harriet’s definition of that word.

    At the blog The Harriet Klausner Appreciation Society members are free to discuss the fraudulent Klausner without running into her very vocal defenders who frequently resort to remarks of a personal nature. Grady Harp, who has an exceedingly well-trained cadre of “loyalty voters” is another frequent matter for discussion. Please drop by and check out the blog.

11. 11. Barbara Delaney on Aug 13th, 2007 at 5:24 pm

    By the way, I did actually read the book and Crystal Rain. Harriet pisses me off even more when she writes such a hackneyed review of a book I really liked. I knew she didn’t read your book.

12. 12. Malleus Maleficarum on Aug 13th, 2007 at 6:36 pm

    Having read the book you reviewed is NOT an Amazon requirement! (At least, according to Pam T : http://forums.prosperotechnologies.com/am-custreview/messages?msg=25872.22)

13. 13. Peter D Harris on Aug 14th, 2007 at 7:28 am

    >

    There’s a very good reason for that - it would be an unenforceable rule. Anybody who reads Amazon’s reviews sees plenty of “This sux” or “This rox” reviews. How could Amazon prove that these people read the book? One way would be to restrict reviews to items purchased from Amazon, but even then it still wouldn’t be possible to prove that they’d actually read the book. Most reviewers have, of course, read the book or (in the case of non-fiction) made enough use of the book to write a knowledgeable review. Remember that most non-fiction books are not meant to be read from cover to cover. I don’t think anybody would want to buy a cookbook based on a review by somebody who’d read it cover to cover and not tried any recipes.

14. 14. Tracy Vest on Aug 14th, 2007 at 12:12 pm

    In those books that I have read and Harriet has recapped, I have found glaring errors in character names, plot, and outcome. She even posts the wrong review for a book because she is so sloppy, something that became abundantly clear this week in one of her most recent postings:

    here

    Any author courting her for a review is just perpetuating her fraudulent practice in exchange for a 5-star payoff.

15. 15. Malleus Maleficarum on Aug 14th, 2007 at 4:52 pm

    PD Harris as always misses the point. We’ll spell it out: whether having read the book you reviewed is or is not an Amazon requirement is entirely immaterial! It is, however, a totally reasonable assumption that every reader of reviews makes.

    Therefore, the fact (if it IS a fact) that Amazon does not require their reviewers to act in good faith does NOT make the frauds legit. Instead, it destroys Amazon own credibility.

16. 16. Stanley H. Nemeth on Aug 14th, 2007 at 8:04 pm

    PD Harris is cut of the same cloth as Amazon commentators Gregory Callahan at his worst or Len Fleisig at his most typical. The thrust of the remarks of all three is finally to provide excuses for dishonesty rather than incentives toward excellence. Whistleblowers they routinely dismiss as advocates of ethical standards too rigid for the world of urbane grownups. Their behavior deserves Dr. Johnson’s judgment on his being told Boswell had invited a person of a similar stripe to dinner. Johnson declared he’d be willing to eat with such a person, but he required that Boswell perform a duty before said person went home for the night, namely to count the silverware to see it was all still present!

17. 17. Barbara Delaney on Aug 14th, 2007 at 9:31 pm

    Mr. Harris and other so-called “top reviewers” at Amazon can invariably find a multitude of excuses for lying, cheating and other forms of chicanery. He trots out the tired old cookbook analogy whenever it’s pointed out that these same top reviewers frequently have very little familiarity with the products they’re reviewing.

    PD Harris has another trait in common with Harriet Klausner. Both are so far above their readers that when mistakes in their reviews are pointed out to them they do not deign to take notice. One reader gently pointed out to Mr. Harris that he had mistakenly attributed the lyrics to the song Turn, Turn, Turn as being derived from the Book of Revelation instead of the correct biblical book which was Ecclesiastes. Mr. Harris ignored the correction just as HK always does. Being Number One, ( or number 17 like Mr. Harris), means never having to say you’re sorry, or wrong.

18. 18. Peter D Harris on Aug 15th, 2007 at 5:08 am

    I am not missing any point. I can’t stand Harriet Klausner or Grady Harp or a whole lot of other reviewers who indulge in practices that vary between unethical and cheating. Where we differ is in the issue of enforcement. There is no way that Amazon can enforce a rule about having read a book, listened to a CD or whatever, therefore it’s not in their guidelines. However, if somebody writes an Amazon review openly admitting that they haven’t read the book, listened to the CD or whatever, and if you then report that review to Amazon giving the title, author and ASIN, Amazon will remove it.

    As to the comment about whistleblowers, I’ve blown plenty of whistles in Amazon’s direction, some of which they’ve acted upon (I’ve contributed information that enabled Amazon to identify some cheats and take action) and others of which they haven’t. One of the latter is covered in great detail in my own blog that I haven’t yet officially launched. That blog is all about Amazon and anybody who reads it properly will see that while I am supportive of Amazon in some ways, I am critical in other ways.

    I’m sure that Grady Harp is cheating but knowing the way that Amazon works, I don’t think that evidence of the kind that Amazon would accept as confirmation is available. As to HK, she’s completely unethical and despicable but she’s not cheating in any way that Amazon would ever recognize as cheating. I therefore think that there’s a chance that Grady Harp will eventually be caught (though not any time soon) but whether we like it or not, HK is invincible.

    I think that many people miss some fundamental points about Amazon reviewers

    1) We are all amateurs - some more amateur than others.

    2) I don’t like a lot of the reviews I see on Amazon, especially those of the “This rox” or “This sux” variety, but I realize that if censorship for quality were introduced, it would be difficult to draw the line. It’s not a black and white issue - there are many shades of gray.

    3) I don’t see any of you offering practical solutions to the problems you highlight. Amazon can’t employ hundreds of staff checking every individual review as it is posted. It wouldn’t be cost-effective. Therefore, they have some software that scans for so-called “trigger words”. If anybody tries to post a review with a trigger word in it, that review is checked by somebody at Amazon before it is allowed to post.

19. 19. Stanley H. Nemeth on Aug 15th, 2007 at 11:44 am

    It’s good that PD Harris deplores the lying and cheating practices of certain Amazon reviewers, but he fails to explain why it’s the business of whistleblowers themselves to offer “practical solutions to the problems…[they] highlight.” I would have thought it Amazon’s business were it to take the complaints of increasing numbers of whistleblowers seriously and shake itself out of its self-serving complicity with patently shameless practices. The thrust of Harris’ remarks, unfortunately, is to let Amazon off the hook (”the many shades of gray” trope, the “cost-effective” trope) and instead blame the messengers for failing to provide effective solutions of their own to offer the company.

    As regards the “trigger-words” software, my own experience with it has revealed it to be just a ludicrous device searching for “dirty words.” In a review I posted of James Earl Jones’ “King Lear,” for instance, it wouldn’t allow the full name of a principal villain to appear, identifying him instead as Edmund, the […]. Such software, if this is its principal function, serves only to make Amazon laughable.

20. 20. Malleus on Aug 15th, 2007 at 6:50 pm

    Peter, no one’s even talking about any enforcement by Amazon. No one even talking about Amazon, for that matter. You keep missing this obvious point. The point is, no one — and that includes Harriet Klausner — can read that much.

    If this is not enough, no one can read that much and like it all.

    If that’s not enough, the usual quality of the HK reviews is quite consistent with the suspicion of her not having read the books reviewed.

    If that’s not enough, a native-born American with a Masters degree in library science cannot intermittently switch to communicating in broken English. It is simply impossible for a native speaker.

    The not-an-Amazon-requirement ‘argument’ was simply a piece of red herring from a likely astroturfer. It is funny — but only because of its imbecility. Again, the truth is, it is immaterial what Amazon requirements here are, and whether there are any at all.

    Do you get it now?

21. 21. Peter D Harris on Aug 16th, 2007 at 5:43 am

    Although I’m currently unemployed, I spent many years working as a computer programmer, albeit on technology that is now obsolete. Even though contemporary computers are very different from the mainframes of the seventies and eighties, I am fully aware of what computers are capable of and (equally important) what they are not. As a consequence, I understand that it is impossible to create software that could effectively filter out bad reviews. Sure, the current filtering software has room for improvement, but even then all it does is pass those reviews it detects to a human being.

    Given that computers can’t filter out bad reviews (however defined), it is then a matter of Amazon working out how many staff they can afford to police the system. And rather like the real police, they’ll only convict somebody (by removing their rank and maybe their reviews as well) if the case is proved beyond reasonable doubt. Anything less would create a different set of problems for them. We’d have blogs all over the place saying how Amazon don’t let people post their reviews and how the reviewing system is only for the chosen few, yada yada.

    Amazon continously looks for ways to limit abuse of its website. That’s why they now have a purchase requirement before people are allowed to review. I remember being one of several people who suggest this long before Amazon introduced it. They were reluctant to do so because of the torrent of complaints from people who claimed it infringed civil liberties (yes, really) but eventually the problem of shill reviews became so bad that they had to act, by which time some but not all oppenents to the idea accepted it as inevitable. It shouldn’t be necessary if everybody plays fair vut we know they don’t.

    Incidentally, abuse of voting buttons (especially the NO button) explains why Amazon’s ranking software takes far less notice of NO votes than YES votes. It’s reckoned that at least 90% of NO votes are cast by people who either don’t like the reviewer or who disagree with the opinions expressed by the reviewer or who simply think that the review isn’t up to the standard that they expect of a review. People abuse the YES button too but to a far lesser extent. Because of all this, Amazon’s ended up with a system that looks worse than it is, since Harriet generally gets more NO votes than YES votes.

    I am completely aware that Harriet cannot read all those books although I understand that she doesn’t have a job. I’ve spent some time thinking about how she does it.

    I don’t read romance fiction but a lot of people do. I’m told by such people that those books are very formulaic and once you’ve read a few, you know more or less what to expect. (It is reasonable to assume that there was a time when Harriet actually read books from beginning to end all the way through, in the days before she started reviewing. She used to be a librarian.) In that event, Harriet might feel that as she knows the formula, it’s enough to read the dust jacket, the first chapter, a middle chapter and the last chapter and that she could get away with writing a review based on those - doing that, it would be possible to review (sic) ten books a day. She clearly reads more than just the dust jacket because (so people say) her reviews include details not available on the dust jacket. And since most of her reviews are written pre-publication, she can’t get ideas from other reviewers. Unfortunately, Harriet’s reviews contain enough errors to show that she hasn’t read the books she reviews - but those errors are only apparent to other readers of those books, not to Amazon.

    Another possibility (less likely, given the number of errors in her reviews) is that Harriet is the front-person for a group of reviewers. If all the group were writing their own reviews and Harriet were posting them as written (like John Matlock), this would have been exposed by now. Harriet’s reviews are all of a very uniform style so they could only have been written by one person. People have tried to look for evidence of multiple reviewers but not found any. So the only way that the group reviewer idea could work is if Harriet were take everybody else’s reviews and rewrite them in her own style. But if this were her chosen method, there wouldn’t be the large number of errors in her reviews.

    People have been complaining about Harriet (no doubt including all the errors in her reviews) for many years, but Amazon haven’t acted. I’d be happy if they took away all her reviews but I doubt they ever will. Imagine what would happen if they did.

    I certainly don’t like Harriet’s reviews but I can’t do anything about them. If nothing else, her status as #1 reviewer on Amazon.com only serves to prove that ranking numbers shouldn’t be taken too seriously. They’re useful up to a point and they have a curiosity value but that’s about it.

    Aside from removing Harriet’s reviews altogether, it’s difficult to see what else Amazon could do without upsetting a lot of other customers. One easy change would be to alter the ranking software so that NO votes are equally as important as YES votes, This would certainly stop Harriet since her ranking would drop dramatically, but if you’ve seen the endless debate about NO votes on the Amazon discussion board, you’ll know how strongly some people feel about the issue. And it would be open season for the spite merchants. So if Amazon ever change the ranking system, they won’t do it purely to remove Harriet from #1.

    Yes, I see all the complaints about Amazon’s system but it doesn’t matter how many complaints there are if there isn’t a solution to the problem. I therefore urge those who complain about the system to come up with practical solutions. Amazon would be interested in them, I’m sure. Cynics suggest that Amazon ignores customer complaints. They don’t ignore all of them. I’ve sometimes (by no means always) been successful both in terms of whistleblowing and software changes, but it’s necessary to present a strong case.

22. 22. Steve Buchheit on Aug 16th, 2007 at 9:46 am

    “I therefore urge those who complain about the system to come up with practical solutions. Amazon would be interested in them, I’m sure.”

    I call red herring. Not my job. It’s their system, at best my part of this is to say, “it’s broken.” This is used to cover a weak argument by saying, “you don’t have a better idea.”

    If Amazon wishes to cover my advertising exec/business consulting/tech support rate, I’ll brainstorm for them. Until then, I’ll simply ignore their silly marketing schtick.

23. 23. Malleus on Aug 16th, 2007 at 2:50 pm

    Steve: exactly.

    And what’s interesting, the moment you raise these issues, there appears, as if out of the blue, a horde of red-herring throwers with all kinds of nonsense. They obviously just don’t like this being discussed, and if such a thing happens, they’ll come out in force and spew nonsense, provokation, and so on. It’s like someone hired a bunch of bastards to do this kind of shill-protection duty.

24. 24. Stanley H. Nemeth on Aug 16th, 2007 at 11:52 pm

    I’m distressed by the discrepancy between PD Harris’ wordy responses and the objections his critics are actually making. To accept anything corrupt simply because it occurs and its critics don’t come up with solutions is in fact to worship success, like Quislings or men of Vichy. Other ways of looking at things more wicked have been devised; none more vulgar. I am not suggesting that PD Harris in real life practices such groveling prostration before the fait accompli. I hope that Dr. Johnson’s “Rasselas” Chapter 22 gives the right picture of what his outlook amounts to in action - “The philospher rose up and departed with the air of a man that had cooperated with the present system.”

25. 25. Peter D Harris on Aug 17th, 2007 at 10:08 am

    So you don’t have a better idea than the existing system, nor do Amazon, nor do I, when it comes to the issues you are so concerned about. In that case, why not just take your business elsewhere and forget about Amazon as countless others have done before and will do so in future?

    As to your beloved “Harriet Klausner appreciation society” (sic) website, you and your friends are not content with attacking the obvious targets such as Harriet Klausner and Grady Harp, about whom most people accept that there are legitimate grounds for complaint. Not content with that, you attack completely innocent reviewers such as Robert Morris for no other reasons than that he is a quick reader and doesn’t bother writing reviews about stuff he doesn’t like. As I said earlier, people who review on Amazon do it for fun (they aren’t paid) and don’t necessarily enjoy reviewing what they don’t like so they don’t bother. Professional reviewers are told what to review and are therefore much more likely to post critical reviews.

    Your attacks on Robert Morris destroys any credibility you may have and show you up for what you really are. And YOU accuse ME of being self-righteous. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

26. 26. Malleus on Aug 17th, 2007 at 2:20 pm

    >In that case, why not just take your business elsewhere and forget about Amazon
    > as countless others have done before and will do so in future?

    In other words, why not leave them alone to continue with their bullshit? What a fresh line of thought! Well, the answer is, because. Fraud is an evil by itself, regardless of whether there’s anything a private individual can do vs a corporation such as Amazon. Rock on, says I. Even just talking about it is doing something; definitely better than not doing anything at all. Do what you can, however little that might be.

27. 27. Barbara Delaney on Aug 17th, 2007 at 6:47 pm

    I plan on continuing to do my small bit towards doing whatever I can to make Amazon uncomfortable. Amazon continues to sell magazines that promote cruelty to animals even after the Humane Society brought a lawsuit against them. With the case of NFL player Michael Vick in the news perhaps more attention will be brought to bear on Amazon’s part in promoting these cruel practices.

    And ALL of the Amazon shills are worthy of scorn.

28. 28. Steve Buchheit on Aug 17th, 2007 at 9:26 pm

    25. Peter D Harris, you might want to address your comments to the specific person your addressing, because it’s obvious you’re not addressing everybody in this thread. By addressing the specific person you feel aggrieved by it make you look less like someone with a persecution complex.

    “So you don’t have a better idea than the existing system, nor do Amazon, nor do I, when it comes to the issues you are so concerned about.”

    There’s that red herring again. Not my job, as they say.

    “In that case, why not just take your business elsewhere and forget about Amazon as countless others have done before and will do so in future?”

    You speak for Amazon now? I wonder how they would feel about you encouraging people to not use their business. That might fall under “injurious business practice.”

    “Professional reviewers are told what to review and are therefore much more likely to post critical reviews.”

    You might want to research this a little more. Some review shops run this way, most professional reviews (for books) don’t.

29. 29. Peter D Harris on Aug 20th, 2007 at 6:05 am

    >

    According to its dictionary definition, fraud is cheating to obtain advantage, but in legal circles (both in your country abnd mine) fraud is far more specific. It would be interesting to see a case brought against Amazon or one of its reviewers over the abuse of its reviewing system. I’d expect Amazon to win the case, just as they did when an author sued a reviewer over a negative review, whereupon Amazon supported the reviewer’s right to criticise the author’s book. It was a very expensive exercise for the author.

    >

    I don’t know anything about that case but if the Humane Society have won their case in court, then Amazon will be in big trouble if they continue to sell those magazines. If the case is still in progress, then Amazon (like everybody else) is innocent until proven guilty. I assume the case will at least partly rest on whether the judge and jury accept that the magazines really do promote cruelty to animals. As a horse-racing fan, I am well aware that cruelty is interpreted in different ways by different people, but I strongly object to genuine cruelty.

    >

    This case has hardly got a mention in my country, but I have heard about it. Dog-fighting really is cruel and if Michael Vick is found guilty he deserves to be sent to prison for a very long time. But again, he’s innocent until proven guilty.

    >

    I’m addressing everybody who is a member of the said group (appifany, JoeCali Becky K, Cathy, scotdog98, KrossD, Stephanie, Deborah Hern, MK, Italian_Goddess, Stanley H Nemeth, Dtktv, mrliteral, Edward DeVere, Viva, jeffpw, KG, Malleus, Spock and any others who join them) in particular, because anything said on that blog is, in effect, endorsed by all those people. After all, it’s set up so that anybody who isn’t a member can’t post a response there.

    But I’m also addressing anybody who happens to read this blog, because it’s important for those people to realize the nature of the “Harriet Klausner Appreciation Society”. Robert Morris happens to be a quick reader who doesn’t review stuff he doesn’t like and they attack him on that basis. Nobody is going to read a book unless they’re compelled to, such as when it’s part of a school syllabus. So any book they read voluntarily is likely to appeal to them. On the rare occasions that they start reading a book that they realize they don’t like, it is quite possible that they won’t even finish the book. A few peopl will, in such cases, post a review saying that they found the book so bad that they couldn’t finish it, but this strategy is itself controversial.

    I note that no member of the “Harriet Klausner Appreciation Society” has yet explained why Robert Morris is under attack from them. It’s actually a bad strategy. Back in 2003, a reviewer spotted a problem with certain reviewers posting reviews of the same product on different dates (this cannot now happen although old duplicates still exist - see toby_3196) and prepared a detailed complaint that he sent to Amazon. Not getting satisfaction, he posted his findings on the Amazon DB. As a long-term campaigner against cheating, I was interested in his findings although I thought he was unwise to post on the DB. Unfortunately, of the six people he accused, one of them was known to be a man of impeccable integrity (his duplicates were proven to be the result of software glitches and unreliable posting in Amazon’s early days) and the accuser lost all credibility. But I noted the names of the other five accused. One of them was a person who I’d long regarded as a cheat though nothing has ever been proved against him and he rarely reviews these days. Another, finding that he’d been accused, stopped reviewing on Amazon. I later learned that he, too, was suspected of cheating by several people. Yet another of the accused later had all his reviews deleted by Amazon because he’d been found guilty of plagiarism - far more serios than duplicate reviews. The other two are cstill reviewing although some people wonder if they were also cheating. So of the six accused, three were cheating and two may have been, but because the accuser was determined to net as many people as possible and included somebody who wasn’t cheating, his case was lost. If the “Harriet Klausner Appreciation Society” focused on the real cheats, they’d get more support. I do follow their blog to some extent because I like to see the names they come up with, but I’ll do my own research on those names to decide who the real cheats are.

    >

    No, I speak only for myself.

    +++++++++++++++++++++++++

    Responding here to comments on the other blog

    >

    Eliminating the rankings wouldn’t solve all the problems and would alienate a lot of customers who get some satisfaction from them, but why should they be eliminated just because a small minority abuse the system? I’d attach more credibility to that idea if an American government of whatever political party tightened the gun laws. The gun lobby say that you can’t blame the guns, only the small minority of abusers. But guns are a much more serious issue than Amazon rankings.

    >

    Actually, I think the ranking system itself is pathetic. I started a debate in 2003 (not long before that cheating case came up) in which I suggested radical changes to the system to improve its credibility. I was ranked around 140 at the time and was told that I was just looking for a quick fix to get near the top and that I would change my mind if I ever made the top 20. Well, I made the top 20 long ago but I haven’t changed my mindeven though, if my ideas were now adopted, I’d be likely to drop some way down the rankings. As to Harriet Klausner, she’d still be number one but as I explained earlier, it would be possible to make other changes to bring about a different number one.

    >

    If I didn’t like Amazon, I certainly wouldn’t waste time discussing them. There are other things in life.

    >

    I value my life. I’ve heard too many stories about have-a-go heroes. But I’d report it to the police when I got home if there weren’t many witnesses.

    >

    herself - Priscilla Robichaud

    >

    Top reviewers are not sainted - if only we were …

    >

    It’s only available to American residents but as I’m not online from home, I doubt it would benefit me anyway, even assuming I were interested in the products.

30. 30. Peter D Harris on Aug 20th, 2007 at 6:15 am

    Well it seems I confused the blog and my post didn’t appear correctly.

    The greater than signs appeared instead of text. Here’s the text, numbered.

    1) Fraud is an evil by itself, regardless of whether there’s anything a private individual can do vs a corporation such as Amazon.

    2) Amazon continues to sell magazines that promote cruelty to animals even after the Humane Society brought a lawsuit against them.

    3) With the case of NFL player Michael Vick in the news perhaps more attention will be brought to bear on Amazon’s part in promoting these cruel practices.

    4) you might want to address your comments to the specific person your addressing, because it’s obvious you’re not addressing everybody in this thread.

    5) You speak for Amazon now?

    6) We’ve already generated a whole host of ideas, first and foremost among them, eliminating the rankings. But I’m sure that idea would not appeal to PD Harris

    7) aka Number 17 among “Top Reviewers”.

    He’s saying nothing more, after all, than if you don’t like the way things are being run, even though you’re not in charge, leave the country.

    9) if PD Harris happened onto a robbery in progerss he’d say, well, there’s nothing I can do, so I just go home

    10) him or herself “prisrob”

    11) sainted top reviewers

    12) Amazon VINE (TM) participants.

31. 31. Peter D Harris on Aug 21st, 2007 at 4:50 am

    I see that Michael Vick has now said that he is to plead guilty. Great. Let him rot in jail.

32. 32. Malleus on Aug 24th, 2007 at 2:20 pm

    Oh! Finally we agree on something with P.D. Harris.

33. 33. Thomas M. Wagner on Jan 3rd, 2008 at 9:43 am

    I’m coming to this thread a little late but here is my assessment of Harriet Klausner: a) she’s a poseur who doesn’t read the books she “reviews,” and b) what she does is basically all about her, spreading her name around and being a “#1 Amazon reviewer.” She also has no sense of ethics or netiquette. Case in point:

    Over at my website, SF Reviews.Net, a pleasant little hobby, I have a Forum. One day about two years ago, I logged on to discover that, in the space of a half hour, Harriet Klausner had dropped by, sniffed around like a dog looking for a good place to mark, and flooded the Forum with no fewer than 50 of her “reviews.” Then she had evidently moved on.

    Okay, so the Forum is there for readers to speak their minds and even offer their own reviews if they wish to. But it’s one thing to be a Forum participant, part of the community that builds up around blogs and discussion boards and the like, and it’s another thing entirely to just drop by, dump a big flood of posts, then piss off like someone doing the online equivalent of cruising a bar for meaningless one-night sex. So as you see, no sense of etiquette or courtesy. Wherever Klausner thinks she’s found an outlet to expose her name, she’ll do it.

    Naturally I dumped all her posts and banned her IP at once. If she wants to dump 50 “reviews” somewhere, she can damn well shell out for hosting fees herself and not do it on my dime. Or stick to the cheap seats over at Amazon.

    As for her “reviews,” well…pfft. Reviews are what she doesn’t write. She writes book reports. You know, like we all had assigned to us in 8th grade English class? Two paragraphs of a synopsis, a third paragraph with a really shallow and banal “opinion.” About as useful as a football bat.

    I don’t like to dog on other reviewers, of course, but then I don’t exactly consider her a colleague. She’s a dilettante making a mockery of the whole exercise.

Pingbacks

1. Reviews and the People Who Write Them « Tez Says Pingback on May 4th, 2008 at 2:27 am