Are Amazon Vine Reviews of Technical Books a Joke?

First time accepted submitter 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 second edition (published in 2012) of a very specialized system identification book has 12 reviews: the oldest (dated 2007) certainly targets the first edition. The remaining 11 reviews are all from 'Vine Reviewers' (VRs). All seem to be ignorant of what 'System Identification in the Frequency Domain' really is. 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."

yeah it's a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Reviews need ratings so they can be flagged as spam.

Re:yeah it's a joke

[faffod]

Amazon has a rating system for reviews. Sure you can't flag something as spam, but that would be abused by the tolls so it's a balance they have to strike. Also, Amazon allows for comments to be added for reviews. With so few reviews on this book, it should be quick enough to make the reviews as not helpful and add in some cases add a comment on the egregious ones. In other words, the review system is only as good as the average of the reviewers - get some good reviewers to balance out the bad ones and it works well enough.

Re:Amazon needs their head read.

[GryMor]

If I'm looking at a book, the reviews had better be about the book rather than one of the 100+ sellers of the book. If you want to review that particular seller, there is a separate spot for that, and low enough service ratings will tank their visibility across all of their products. "Cover damaged, terrible service" on a review of Excession is useless spam. The same review on the seller itself is helpful.