I think his simple test somewhat accounts for this. Botted reviews usually don't bother with the sophistication of generating noise in their ratings, banking in

I think his simple test somewhat accounts for this. Botted reviews usually don't bother with the sophistication of generating noise in their ratings, banking instead on the possible sale from a spendy shopper instead of trying to convince the already skeptical. With the assumption that most botted reviews aren't going to be any lower than the two highest options, the same suspicions the article raises should come into play here as well, botted responses or shill responses. Though, reviews in general are not really all that good. Southwark's Yelp episode was a long but cute take on it, but keep in mind that almost everyone sees reviews differently. On Newegg, it's incredibly common for a part/device to get 1 egg because it didn't work for whatever reason, even when it's the buyer's own fault (e.g., buying an incompatible CPU/mobo, which happens). DoA items, misconfigured computers (e.g., forgetting to plug in a power cable), and so on all warrant 1 star, even though they have nothing to do with the performance of the item in question. (DoA being an exception, though I would argue a device being DoA by chance is not the same as widespread DoA, and that the rating system should have a special category for DoA which gets its own tally and is independent of the ratings)