Post 123:
Amazon never had my custom. Besides being too expensive, its reviewing 'facility' is also annoying instead of being helpful.
- Comparable (but on a smaller scale) to how the wikipedia allows anyone to pretend they are scholars and allows them to write text-book articles, Amazon allows everyone to pretend they are critical reviewers. It gives equal legitimacy to all opinions - be they educated, hateful or ignorant. This is a great problem.
For instance, it has too many born-agains reviewing books - including science books that teach unChristian facts (warning potential Christian readers away from scientific theories that would cause them to doubt).
- Amazon's rating system is also very much abused. Good factual books lose deserved ratings, because of reviewers whose ideology has been offended (and who've mostly not even read the books) rushing up in unison and posting 1 star ratings along with incoherent arguments like how the book 'is not true, because it is not true'.
With Amazon's 'reader reviews' one never knows if a non-fiction book is bad for legitimate reasons (badly written, too technical, too non-technical, unfactual, biased) or because it goes against popular opinion.
- Amazon's reviewing facility also allows particular kinds of hatespeech. Example, there were several reviews by Christians warning others off from reading Buddhist books on the Dalai Lama - because of the Lama's 'satanist' teachings that will take followers to hell.
I don't even visit the Amazon site anymore.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->On July 4, Amazon spammed its customers with advertisement of Norman Finkelstein's virulently anti-Semitic book, Image and Reality of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict. On May 30, Amazon similarly advertised Beyond Chutzpah: on the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. I have never received any other ad from Amazon.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Probably there are anti-semitic nasties working in Amazon. Vote with your wallet. At the very least, you can take your custom to its competitors. It's what I do.
Amazon never had my custom. Besides being too expensive, its reviewing 'facility' is also annoying instead of being helpful.
- Comparable (but on a smaller scale) to how the wikipedia allows anyone to pretend they are scholars and allows them to write text-book articles, Amazon allows everyone to pretend they are critical reviewers. It gives equal legitimacy to all opinions - be they educated, hateful or ignorant. This is a great problem.
For instance, it has too many born-agains reviewing books - including science books that teach unChristian facts (warning potential Christian readers away from scientific theories that would cause them to doubt).
- Amazon's rating system is also very much abused. Good factual books lose deserved ratings, because of reviewers whose ideology has been offended (and who've mostly not even read the books) rushing up in unison and posting 1 star ratings along with incoherent arguments like how the book 'is not true, because it is not true'.
With Amazon's 'reader reviews' one never knows if a non-fiction book is bad for legitimate reasons (badly written, too technical, too non-technical, unfactual, biased) or because it goes against popular opinion.
- Amazon's reviewing facility also allows particular kinds of hatespeech. Example, there were several reviews by Christians warning others off from reading Buddhist books on the Dalai Lama - because of the Lama's 'satanist' teachings that will take followers to hell.
I don't even visit the Amazon site anymore.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->On July 4, Amazon spammed its customers with advertisement of Norman Finkelstein's virulently anti-Semitic book, Image and Reality of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict. On May 30, Amazon similarly advertised Beyond Chutzpah: on the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. I have never received any other ad from Amazon.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Probably there are anti-semitic nasties working in Amazon. Vote with your wallet. At the very least, you can take your custom to its competitors. It's what I do.