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How I accidentally became a Top Reviewer (and why I don't care)Feb 23 '02 Write an essay on this topic.
Popular Products in Books
The Bottom Line It's official. I'm now a Top Reviewer. Am I supposed to be excited about this?
INTERVIEWER: Ah, Mister lorendiac! Would you care to share a few words of wisdom with our readers? LORENDIAC: Words of wisdom on what issue, exactly? INTERVIEWER: On how to successfully strive for the title of Top Reviewer, of course! LORENDIAC: Why would anyone in his right mind want to make any special effort toward that goal? INTERVIEWER: Don't Top Reviewers get paid better when Income Share is handed out than ordinary Epinionators? LORENDIAC: No. We don't. You must be thinking of Editors. INTERVIEWER: Well, don't your ratings of other people's work get heavily weighted to make you more influential? LORENDIAC: Not that I've heard. Again, you must be thinking of Editors. (And I don't see how I would personally benefit from this "perk" even if I had it.) INTERVIEWER: I seem to recall that Top Reviewers are favored with having their product reviews get a higher priority than they would otherwise receive from whatever quantity of VH and MH ratings they have received, when competing for the top slot in a long list of reviews on a popular product. Don't you see that as a worthy benefit to gain? LORENDIAC: No. I have a long-standing policy of not posting a review on a book unless a) I will be the first one to review that book on this site, or b) my number of regular readers on the site has become sufficiently large that I am almost certain to end up at the top of the list of those who have reviewed the book, with or without using a sneaky little title to win the game of King of the Mountain. After all, I am constantly aware that just because I have the benefit of a title now doesn't mean I will still have that benefit two months from now when an outsider comes surfing over to Epinions looking for a review of a particular novel, and clicks on whatever review is presented to him as being at the "top" of the stack. INTERVIEWER: Well, doesn't having the red icon attached to your name make you more noticeable, more impressive, more likely to catch the eye of other Epinionators surfing through our site? LORENDIAC: Not significantly, no. I only noticed that icon popping up on the screen next to my name a few hours ago, and it only seems to show when you are already reading one of my book reviews, at which time you will learn that I am now rated as a "Top Reviewer" in that particular category. I suspect that in due time it will also show up on my Profile Page (but it has not yet done so). In other words, someone new to the site who happened to see a new book review by yours truly listed in the "Just In" section, or happened to see that someone named "lorendiac" had just rated the newcomer's first review, would not know that "lorendiac" was a Top Reviewer until after he had already taken the trouble to click on lorendiac's Profile or one of lorendiac's book reviews. INTERVIEWER: So what you're saying is . . . LORENDIAC: No one is likely to come rushing over to look at my reviews for the first time just because I'm a Top Reviewer now. After he has already made the decision to click on something that leads him to my work without his knowing whether I have a title or not, he will learn that I just happen to be a Top Reviewer at this moment in time. But to capture his attention in the first place, I'm going to need to depend on sheer luck rather than an almost-invisible title. Editors, of course, have their icon pop up under their names whenever they rate someone else's product reviews in the same category. INTERVIEWER: But each Category page has a link to the list of Top Reviewers for that category. I just checked, and your name has already been added to the list in Books. Doesn't that fill you with hope for the future? LORENDIAC: When was the last time you went down the list of Top Reviewers in your favorite Epinions category (whatever it may be), to see if there was anyone listed whose work you hadn't checked out for yourself yet? INTERVIEWER: Um . . . ah . . . that is to say . . . give me a minute, it'll come to me . . . LORENDIAC (generously): Take your time! INTERVIEWER: Back around Thanksgiving? Three months ago? LORENDIAC: And when was the last time before that? INTERVIEWER: Back around August, I guess. LORENDIAC: Let's just say that seeing my name on the list of Top Reviewers in Books does not prompt me to hold my breath while I wait for the book-review-loving online population to suddenly beat a path to my door and thus providing a sharp increase in my monthly hits. INTERVIEWER: Well, if you're not going to be holding your breath, perhaps you can take the time to answer my original question? About the proper way to grab hold of a Top Reviewer title? LORENDIAC (reflectively): Let me think back . . . my first brush with fame (in the form of being dubbed an Advisor in Books) occured in late June, 2001. During the next six weeks, I calculate that I posted 18 book reviews, all of which were rated VH by an estimated average of fifty Epinionators, give or take. I also tried to read, rate, and comment on a fairly broad selection of posts made by other people in the Books category during my tenure, although I don't have exact figures. In my youthful innocence, I may have foolishly dared to imagine that my performance meant I would be considered "worthy" to hang onto the title, even though I was already keenly aware that gaining the title had not given me any obvious benefit whatsoever in practical terms - it just looked kind of neat in my profile. Naturally I immediately lost my title in the next selection process in mid-August, when they terminated the Advisor concept in favor of the twin roles of the Top Reviewer and the Editor. INTERVIEWER: Didn't they explain why you failed to make the cut? LORENDIAC: Yes and No. I received a form letter in the email providing a long list of factors in the decisions for which Advisors would be carried over as Top Reviewers and/or Editors, etc. The list was so long (and had no personalized details regarding which of these factors had been found lacking in my own performance) that it essentially told me absolutely nothing about what I ought to change in the future if I wanted to become a Top Reviewer someday. Fortunately, I didn't really care. (And I already knew I didn't want to become an Editor, even if there was a little extra money in it.) INTERVIEWER: So, lacking specific instructions from the leaders of Epinions regarding how to mend your ways and rehabilitate yourself in their eyes, what did you actually do that resulted in this recent gain of a title? LORENDIAC: I suppose we should consider my review-posting habits . . . 5 book reviews in August (at least two of them after I had learned I was no longer the bearer of a title) and 9 in September. Followed by 4 in October. It would have been more in October, except that was when we learned they were cancelling the penny-per-member-hit royalties which had previously meant that each book review would (on average) bring in about fifty cents for me, give or take, regardless of the unreliable contributions of Income Share later on. The result was that in November, I didn't bother posting anything. In December, I posted three book reviews, and in January I posted two more. The second on January 13. At the time I learned of my promotion to Top Reviewer, just a few days ago, it had been over five weeks since I did any product reviews on here, with the result that I was quite startled to learn that five weeks of silence was being rewarded with a title. INTERVIEWER: Startled? Please, sir, let's have no false modesty here! You know you were diabolically clever! LORENDIAC: I beg your pardon? INTERVIEWER: Your insightful strategy puts the rest of us to shame! LORENDIAC: Strategy? INTERVIEWER: Most people would assume that the way to achieve a lofty position as a Top Reviewer was to post a large number of high-quality reviews every single month until they received the long-sought title! LORENDIAC: Er, yes. I suppose they would assume that. INTERVIEWER: But that method has never worked very well, for some reason. You, on the other hand, obviously realized that by the peculiar logic of Epinions, LESS is MORE and MORE is LESS! Thus you posted very little for about four months, including nothing at all for more than a month prior to this recent selection, and the result was that you attained the victory on the battlefield in a brilliant flanking maneuver that left all your competitors in the Books category scratching their heads and wondering what had happened! LORENDIAC: I did what? I don't really think of the other compulsive book reviewers of the Epinions community as being my "competitors" in any serious way. And permit me to point out that it's ridiculous to say I outdid "all" of them when I am far from being the only Top Reviewer in Books at the moment. INTERVIEWER: Don't confuse me with facts! They just distract me from the really important things in life! LORENDIAC: Oh. I apologize. What on earth was I thinking? But what makes you so sure that I was indulging in Machiavellian manipulations in order to deliberately secure the empty title of Top Reviewer? INTERVIEWER: The fact that you did in fact secure that title, of course! Are you asking me to believe it could have happened by accident? LORENDIAC: I don't recall asking you to believe anything - but you're expecting the readers of this interview to believe that I'm one of the sneakiest customers around, which raises the classic question: "If I'm so smart, how come I ain't rich?" If I had a secret method of securing a title, why didn't I secure the title of Editor instead? Editors actually get paid extra money for their trouble, which is more than any Top Reviewer can say. INTERVIEWER: Well, naturally! Editors actually rate large numbers of other people's opinions! Click-click-click-click-click-click-click! That takes vast skill, dedication, imagination, hand-eye coordination, empathy, and intelligence! Top Reviewers only write high-quality opinions of their own to add to the site's potential for educating the average online consumer, and any fool could do a little thing like that! LORENDIAC (drily): Thank you so much for that handsome compliment. INTERVIEW (hastily): Present company excepted, of course. But let's move on! Even if the title doesn't mean all that it could in a better world, I imagine that now you have it you'll feel more motivated to write lots of book reviews to prove you deserve to remain a Top Reviewer? LORENDIAC: Not lots of them, no. INTERVIEWER: But you will write some, won't you? LORENDIAC: Let me put it this way: Do you know which of my book reviews has scored the most hits during the calendar month in which it debuted? INTERVIEWER: No. LORENDIAC: My firm critique of the screenplay of Star Wars, Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, by a fellow named George Lucas. Posted in Mid-December of 2001, it got 198 hits by the end of that month. 46 from Epinionators and the other 152 from outsiders. I noticed this was a personal record, and was curious to see how that would be reflected in my Income Share. INTERVIEWER: And? LORENDIAC: Six cents. And the recent IS-for-January payment didn't add anything to that. One of the reasons I posted three reviews in December and two more in the first half of January was my curiosity to see what would happen when Income Share was handed out for my efforts in this new, post-royalties environment. I was underwhelmed by the results. I think near-exclusive online rights to my book reviews are worth a bit more than six cents. INTERVIEWER: More than six cents? You certainly have a high opinion of yourself! LORENDIAC: Heck, my most recent book review in January was only posted out of a feeling of obligation. INTERVIEWER: Obligation? LORENDIAC: It was a rewrite - basically a brand new review written from scratch - of a very short review I posted in my first few days on Epinions, last March, when I was just sticking my toe in the water to see if I liked it here. If, for example, no one had bothered to read and rate my first volley of reviews at all, I would have left quietly. But even at the time, I wasn't exactly satisfied with the length of these reviews - I just didn't want to waste too much time and effort on some things that might never be read, or only read by one other human being. Months later, having gone on to bigger and better things as I got acclimated, I deleted five of the least useful early specimens to tidy up my profile a little. INTERVIEWER: Ah, and last month you began replacing the already-deleted reviews with new and improved versions? LORENDIAC: Yes. One down, four to go - and after I've replaced the other four that were already deleted, I may carry on with some of my other early reviews, which could also stand some work but ought to be easier to repair than writing brand new reviews from scratch. Perhaps I feel I owe it to the community - or to myself - to correct past mistakes. INTERVIEWER: And that's all you intend to do in terms of book reviews on here in the near future? LORENDIAC: Yes. My plan, for want of a weaker word, is to maintain a minimal presence here for the next several months, posting one rewrite a month, let's say, and hoping against hope that Epinions will eventually realize that if it wants to make some of its more talented product reviewers keep cranking out high-quality work for the near-exclusive online use of Epinions, it'll have to treat them better. Slapping a totally meaningless and nonprofitable "Top Reviewer" title onto my profile doesn't change the problem at all. Paying me more money would help, or relaxing the claim to near-exclusive online use of my material would help - I might be willing to let them have exclusive rights for six months after I posted, provided I could then do anything I pleased with the material without needing to beg their permission first - but the current situation feels a little bit like being a voluntary accessory to being swindled. INTERVIEWER: Well, we'll see what the future brings. In the meantime, will you be willing to give me another interview after you lose your title as Top Reviewer, whether that happens a month from now or a year from now? LORENDIAC: Sure, why not? Maybe I will have uncovered exciting new depths to the Top Reviewer lifestyle that I never suspected before. Miracles do happen from time to time!  |
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