Wednesday, November 26, 2008

W.Boudville read NINE books today...

...and, needless to say, reviewed them all ! Well, before someone like L.E. Cantrell rushes in to remonstrate, précisons-nous: the latest earlier review was posted on the 23rd, so (today's being 25th) maybe W.Boudville spent two days, not just one working over these nine (9) books. I mean at least nine (maybe more reviews are coming? The day's not over yet).

PS. Do you think Harp is back at it? It's not 300 a week anymore, of course; but he is getting a goodly number quick, synchronously -- and, apparently, this number is intermittently being curtailed, as if Amazon were drawing in the reins a couple of times a day.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Plus Ça Change, etc.

For all its huffing and puffing, has Amazon advanced one inch in any honest effort to clean up the improprieties disfiguring its website?

True, there's been some reshuffling of Top Reviewers, but Amazon intends to keep BOTH its older, more corrupted classical ranking and its new, pretty baffling one, awarding a reviewer the numerical ranking which is the higher of the two. If honesty has any role besides commerce as usual in these recent changes, one has to wonder what it is?

Moreover, it looks as if the Maestro of the highly questionable vote totals, Grady Harp, is already well on his way toward figuring out how to game the new system, amassing bizarre helpful vote totals for the same sort of marginal or frankly wacky books which "earned" his often hastily composed reviews hundreds of yes votes in the past. Dispossessed of the #6 ranking last month, he's begun moving up again in the new ranking system, and he'll probably be # 6 here after only several discomfiting months of excessive posting and Mystery Voter helpfuls. Plus ça change, indeed!