Rather strangely, 10 of 21 customer reviews of “Murder in Samarkand” have been removed from amazon.co.uk, including most of the longest and more interesting ones. They have not disappeared in chronological order. In fact the one thing the ten had in common is that they were all five star. The overall rating has therefore unsurprisingly dropped. Anyone have an explanation?
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Can't explain that sorry Craig, but my review (Stevie) is still there.
The explanation must be that the security services manipulate the Internet. I've noticed that in my research of activities which I consider are sensitive to the government information just disappears or links are broken.
Even in normal websites but in opposition to the government things change. For example until a few days ago I was able to type in 'News Alliance' and it would come up first on page 1. Now it appears on page 6. This website supports the view that Princess Diana was murdered.
Craig,
I've just compared Google's cached version of the page with the current version, and yes, it appears at first glance that you've lost 10 reviews. But on further examination it seems that they've been transferred to the hardback edition.
Look, for example, for the review by "Adrian" which is one of the reviews which has moved.
It's probably in amazon.com's interest to sell more hardback copies. It would be interesting to see if this is a regular policy of theirs.
Kind regards,
Tom
Amazon well the .co.uk bit of them really suck at approving reviews. Maybe there's a lot of uk internal moderation reviewer politics going on.
btw: Amazon . com is more important than the .co.uk bit will ever be. I recently read a book (bonfire of the the brands) and despite being out, amazon uk decided that six reviews seemed to be enough for it. Go figure.
Mine was among the first (July 2006) and it's still there – in spite of my last line stating that I doubted it would remain for long. So, can't explain I'm afraid. A query to Amazon is probably in order?
Tom seems to be right. At present there are 11 reviews for the paperback (9 x 5 stars, 1 x 4 and 1 x 3) and 10 reviews for the hardback (all 5 stars). Not a bad record overall!
Amazon reviews can be very curious …go here
Friday, January 25, 2008
Joining the Dots Part 127 : Cambridge spies study the internet to 'Counter Militant Islamist Radicalisation on the Internet – Tony O'Reilly pays the bills
http://postmanpatel.blogspot.com/search?q=Amazon
for the curious cases of books that receive 5star revbiews before they are launched books such as ..
'Countering Militant Islamist Radicalisation on the Internet', (ISBN: 1-874-109-86-9) published by the Institute of European Affairs which was launched last year by the former chair of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee, Dame Pauline Neville-Jones.(Amazon)
…more than a passing resemblance to Ms. Plessington who on Christmas Day put up an Amazon review for Peter Neumann and MLR Smith, The Strategy of Terrorism,How it Works, and Why it Fails (Contemporary Terrorism Studies) Routledge, October 2007. ISBN 978-0-415-42618-3 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-203-93700-6 Amazon and an amazing US$130The book (published Dec 11th 2007)
oddly titles associated with people who
1. Get interviewed by BBC
2. Are associated with Dame Lady Baroness Jane Pauline Neville JOnes and the RUSI fan club
3. Have an obsessive interest in hoovering up academic funding for terrism.