Psy, if you look closely at the reviewers of the blender, you selected at random, you will notice that they have written hundreds of reviews on various products. The 5th one down “Joanna Daneman†has written reviews on 8 sewing machines over the past few weeks (for a total of $2,300) along with over 100 reviews on several other products, over 500 in the past year and 2,500 total. Her history can be seen here (Joanne Daneman).
And if you look at her ratings, you can see she doesn't give everything 5 stars so that would seem to conflict with what you're saying. Also, she
seems to be the only "professional reviewer" out of the first page. The rest have reviewed anywhere from 1-4 products to several pages of reviews. My guess is Amazon tries to actively discourage the kind of astroturfing you're suggesting happens as it's in their interest to provide customers with accurate ratings. If it gets known that their rating systems are bad, customers will go elsewhere. It is indeed always going to be a back and forth fight, but additions like the "real name" system, and verification that you have indeed bought the product do help things. Such shenanigans don't go unnoticed and eventually the clever algorithms balance things out. Sadly, unlike amazon, we have no way here of, for example, verifying whether a poster is indeed a program parent as claimed or is instead a paid representative of say -- Aspen Education. Like you said, "
buyer beware".
The ones who had problems with their product have no history except the negative review.
Now that's
just no true at all. What about
this one (2 reviews, mixed ratings)? Or
this one (4 pages of reviews, mixed ratings)? Out of the three negative ratings on the first page, those two seemed to both rate products from time to time. The one with two reviews reviewed the other product very positively. So two out of three people who rated the product negatively both had rated other products and both had a history of rating things they liked positively.
If you're trying to argue that anybody who ever reviews a product positively is paid to do so -- well. That's just silly. You can try and tell me that all those people who liked the blender were paid zombies, but that doesn't jibe with the facts that most of the posters are verified real names (based on their credit cards), and most did not make a job out of rating stuff. Even if what you were saying was true. Wouldn't that mean that there should be more positive program reviews here, and not less?
If so many people are helped by programs as you claim, as your "study" claims, where are the positive reviews? Where are the hordes of new graduates out to share their thanks with the world for how their lives were saved? Why is it that the vast majority of program reviews are bad?You argue that if they show up, they're driven off, but more often what I've observed is a more of a Q&A sort of thing where questions are asked that lead the students to think about whether, for example, that French Maid's outfit and lapdance were really appropriate as therapy at Aspen Education's Mount Batchelor Academy. Here's even an interview with a
Carlbrook program parent. Other times it's with students (and i'm having a difficult time finding a good example as positive reviews of programs are hard to come by). And more often than not, their opinions change. To explain why, I'll quote Richard Ofshe on thought reform / coercive persuasion.
The surprising aspect of the situationally adaptive response is that the attitudes that develop are unstable. They tend to change dramatically once the person is removed from an environment that has totalistic properties and is organized to support the adaptive attitudes. Once removed from such an environment, the person is able to interact with others who permit and encourage the expression of criticisms and doubts, which were previously stifled because of the normative rules of the reform environment (Schein 1961, p. 163; Lifton 1961, pp. 87-116, 399-415; Ofshe and Singer 1986).
In other words. It's not like it's impossible to find positive reviews. It's just that if you ask the same person who wrote a positive reviews to rewrite it in a few years, the content and attitude would likely be wildly different. That's why you won't find positive reviews here. As soon as somebody is exposed to "heretical" information that contradicts the group dogma, they either shut off completely and leave the site in terror, or they find themselves absorbed in new and different ideas. Very often coming to the conclusion that their once positive views of their experiences in, for example, wearing a french maid outfits, were not so positive or healthy after all. That's why I think there aren't very many positive "reviews".
