4 ms·

Conflating reviews of different editions is the straw that makes it impossible for the shopper. I was looking to buy a translation of 1001 Arabian Nights. Some

Conflating reviews of different editions is the straw that makes it impossible for the shopper. I was looking to buy a translation of 1001 Arabian Nights. Some reviews warned of scams, some spoke positively of the quality of the translation, but they were the same reviews on every translation and every edition. I gave up. That much seems like a simple change too... simpler than conflating them. The only explanation I can think of is to deceive the customer into thinking a product is more reviewed than it is.

not_a_cop75 7y ago
At least the good news is with 1001 Arabian Nights is you don't have to buy it. Project Gutenberg has at least one good version.
- TylerE 7y ago
  This is a complicated issue. Modern translations (written in the last 30 years, say) are way way better than the public domain editions, not least because they don't have puritanical Victorians editing out all the "scandalous" bits.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Were Victorians Puritan?
    - nimih 7y ago
      Historically speaking, the puritanical have never really been all that hindered by a lack of Puritanism.
  - kuzehanka 7y ago
    What were the scandalous bits?
    - TylerE 7y ago
      Sex (especially homosexulatity), drug use were major things
      - ben_w 7y ago
        Those parts were definitely not in any version I read, so I should consider finding a modern translation myself.
  - todd8 7y ago
    See, for example, the troubles the noted explorer and translator Sir Richard Burton had. His translations of the Kama Sutra and 1001 Arabian Nights were considered scandalous in Victorian England. He was an undaunted explorer and traveled widely and spoke 29 languages. He wrote extensively, but sadly his widow considered some of his papers too explicit to be published after his death and instead destroyed them. His search for the headwaters of the Nile are the basis for the film Mountains of the Moon . See [1]. [1] Historical Badass: Explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton
thaumasiotes 7y ago
It's not just the reviews. They conflate the different editions themselves (making it "logical" that there's only one set of reviews -- after all, there's only one product!), which usually gives absurd results when you go to view the kindle version of a book that exists in more than one edition. I'm not sure who's supposed to benefit from this. Fudging the editions seems like you're going to a lot of extra trouble just to hurt your customers.
- jandrese 7y ago
  This annoys me on Prime Video reviews when you see people rating a title poorly because the DVD comes in a cheap case or lacks extras.
stordoff 7y ago
I've stopped looking at Amazon reviews (on physical products) for more or less this exact reason. They too often don't apply (something along the lines of "Picture quality isn't up to modern standards", then I realise I'm looking at a review of the DVD version from a decade ago rather than the UHD release I was _actually_ considering), mention features the product simply doesn't have (because they have combined two barely related products in one listing), or are misleading ("this fits over a two-gang socket", when in fact only one of them does, and it's virtually impossible to notice as the only difference is opaque model codes / "this battery is also known as XX" when in fact it's one of the other types on the same listing). Even when the reviews do technically apply, they are often useless (multiple 1-star top reviews: "I tried to use it for HDMI to DisplayPort, but it didn't work"; description: "From DisplayPort to HDMI only (not bi-directional)"). I've also noticed that as I'm going off-site to find accurate information about the product anyway, I'm more frequently buying off-site. Looking around to save 50p or so usually isn't really worth it, but when I'm off Amazon _anyway_, it is. I can think of at least three orders in the few weeks to other sellers that in the past would have gone to Amazon, either because I was wanting the information from the reviews or I'm just in the habit of not going to Amazon first.
gordon_freeman 7y ago
This is my number 1 problem when buying books on Amazon especially the classic books (e.g. Meditations or Enchiridion etc.) that has many different translations and editions from various authors. All having the same reviews making it almost impossible for me to choose the right one.
moksly 7y ago
A few months back I was looking for an introductory book for a course I am going to teach. I picked up 10 books based on their reviews on various sites, but they were all terrible. Basically they were $15-40 poorly written versions of what you could get for free in the official tutorial and documentation. In the end I ended up looking up authors I knew from previous books to see if they had one covering the content, one of them did. It had mediocre reviews, and deservedly so because the editing isn’t great and there are flaws I needed to correct for my courses, but it was still miles ahead of any of the 4.5-5 star reviewed books. This is very anecdotal of course, but it did get me wondering. I have never written a customer review myself, but I always put that down to being busy/lazy and never saw myself as representative for that. But I asked around among my peers, people I would have wanted to read a review from, and it turned out I wasn’t the only one who’s never written a positive review. A lot of them, it turned out, write negative reviews for poor services quite frequently, but almost no positive reviews had ever been written. All completely anecdotal, but it seems to correlate with what other people on HN have experienced. Maybe we shouldn’t have outsourced book reviews to the anonymous population of the internet?

not_a_cop75 7y ago

At least the good news is with 1001 Arabian Nights is you don't have to buy it. Project Gutenberg has at least one good version.

TylerE 7y ago
This is a complicated issue. Modern translations (written in the last 30 years, say) are way way better than the public domain editions, not least because they don't have puritanical Victorians editing out all the "scandalous" bits.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Were Victorians Puritan?
  - nimih 7y ago
    Historically speaking, the puritanical have never really been all that hindered by a lack of Puritanism.
- kuzehanka 7y ago
  What were the scandalous bits?
  - TylerE 7y ago
    Sex (especially homosexulatity), drug use were major things
    - ben_w 7y ago
      Those parts were definitely not in any version I read, so I should consider finding a modern translation myself.
- todd8 7y ago
  See, for example, the troubles the noted explorer and translator Sir Richard Burton had. His translations of the Kama Sutra and 1001 Arabian Nights were considered scandalous in Victorian England. He was an undaunted explorer and traveled widely and spoke 29 languages. He wrote extensively, but sadly his widow considered some of his papers too explicit to be published after his death and instead destroyed them. His search for the headwaters of the Nile are the basis for the film Mountains of the Moon . See [1]. [1] Historical Badass: Explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton

thaumasiotes 7y ago

It's not just the reviews. They conflate the different editions themselves (making it "logical" that there's only one set of reviews -- after all, there's only one product!), which usually gives absurd results when you go to view the kindle version of a book that exists in more than one edition. I'm not sure who's supposed to benefit from this. Fudging the editions seems like you're going to a lot of extra trouble just to hurt your customers.

jandrese 7y ago
This annoys me on Prime Video reviews when you see people rating a title poorly because the DVD comes in a cheap case or lacks extras.

stordoff 7y ago

I've stopped looking at Amazon reviews (on physical products) for more or less this exact reason. They too often don't apply (something along the lines of "Picture quality isn't up to modern standards", then I realise I'm looking at a review of the DVD version from a decade ago rather than the UHD release I was _actually_ considering), mention features the product simply doesn't have (because they have combined two barely related products in one listing), or are misleading ("this fits over a two-gang socket", when in fact only one of them does, and it's virtually impossible to notice as the only difference is opaque model codes / "this battery is also known as XX" when in fact it's one of the other types on the same listing). Even when the reviews do technically apply, they are often useless (multiple 1-star top reviews: "I tried to use it for HDMI to DisplayPort, but it didn't work"; description: "From DisplayPort to HDMI only (not bi-directional)"). I've also noticed that as I'm going off-site to find accurate information about the product anyway, I'm more frequently buying off-site. Looking around to save 50p or so usually isn't really worth it, but when I'm off Amazon _anyway_, it is. I can think of at least three orders in the few weeks to other sellers that in the past would have gone to Amazon, either because I was wanting the information from the reviews or I'm just in the habit of not going to Amazon first.

gordon_freeman 7y ago

This is my number 1 problem when buying books on Amazon especially the classic books (e.g. Meditations or Enchiridion etc.) that has many different translations and editions from various authors. All having the same reviews making it almost impossible for me to choose the right one.

moksly 7y ago

A few months back I was looking for an introductory book for a course I am going to teach. I picked up 10 books based on their reviews on various sites, but they were all terrible. Basically they were $15-40 poorly written versions of what you could get for free in the official tutorial and documentation. In the end I ended up looking up authors I knew from previous books to see if they had one covering the content, one of them did. It had mediocre reviews, and deservedly so because the editing isn’t great and there are flaws I needed to correct for my courses, but it was still miles ahead of any of the 4.5-5 star reviewed books. This is very anecdotal of course, but it did get me wondering. I have never written a customer review myself, but I always put that down to being busy/lazy and never saw myself as representative for that. But I asked around among my peers, people I would have wanted to read a review from, and it turned out I wasn’t the only one who’s never written a positive review. A lot of them, it turned out, write negative reviews for poor services quite frequently, but almost no positive reviews had ever been written. All completely anecdotal, but it seems to correlate with what other people on HN have experienced. Maybe we shouldn’t have outsourced book reviews to the anonymous population of the internet?