Sunday, March 20, 2011

Hyper-negging by the Klausner Protection Squad

Poster "Helen" added a very insightful comment. Notice that the comment is closed due to a large number of negative votes on it. Here's how it looks when you first arrive to this page (click on the image for a full-size picture):

Now, let's open it (click on the image for a full-size picture):

An eminently reasonable comment, well articulated — read it: what is there so offensive that ten people negged it (the lone positive vote is mine)? Moreover, dusting off our old vote-observation skills obtained in Maestro Harp's trenches a while ago, I'll notice that the total was 0 of 5 when I arrived there. And what you see on the picture (1 of 11) appeared upon the next browser refresh, just a few minutes on — does it look like in this short time period five more people just happened to visit there and vote on this comment (and none in the hours afterwards) OR is it more likely that one obsessed idiot with ten sock-puppet accounts voted ten times in a row, hurriedly so as be finished before he is taken back to his padded room? The thread is "tracked by one customer", notice that too. So, once again: why does Amazon still allow no-purchase accounts to be used for comment voting? How is voting on comments different from voting on reviews? One more computer glitch that is amazingly shill friendly?

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