There’s a Top 100 Amazon.com reviewer named Loyd Eskildson — that’s what he calls himself anyway — who is not only prolific but, um, hyper-current as well. What do I mean by this? Well, it seems that any time you see a review by Eskildson, it is near the very top of a given book’s page of reviews — even though the review is often months old. Eskildson has apparently found a way to game the Amazon review system, re-dating his reviews so they always get prominent placement. I noticed this only because the same two-star review of Freakonomics kept magically appearing near the top of the reviews page. Eskildson’s preferences and predilections (including a fondness for exclamation points!) are pretty clear from a glance at his reviews, but his re-dating motives are, to me at least, less clear. It is also unclear if Amazon.com is aware of such trickery; I am guessing it does not, since it is otherwise pretty vigilant in policing non-compliant reviews. What is clear is that Eskildson would seem to owe me and Levitt a few bucks, since this paper by Judith Chevalier and Dina Mayzlin argues that negative customer reviews are pretty effective in dampening online book sales.
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About Freakonomics
Stephen J. Dubner is an author and journalist who lives in New York City.
Steven D. Levitt is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago.
Their book Freakonomics has sold 3 million copies worldwide. This blog, begun in 2005, is meant to keep the conversation going. Recurring guest bloggers include Ian Ayres, Jessica Hagy, Daniel Hamermesh, Sudhir Venkatesh, and Justin Wolfers.
Annika Mengisen is the site editor.
Comment of the Moment
Naked Self-Promotion
Freakonomics is bolstering book sales at airports because it’s sexy, reports TheBookseller.com -- with or without its Turkish cover.
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Archive
Recent Posts
November 18
(18 comments)
Would a Market for Organs Punish the Poor More Than They Are Already Punished?
Below is a fascinating statement issued by Physicians for a National Health Program, “a membership organization of over 15,000 physicians [which] supports a single-payer national health insurance program.”
You should read the whole thing but, in a nutshell: The people who receive donated organs in the U.S. nearly always have health insurance, while a significant fraction [...]
November 18
(22 comments)
Larry Summers for Treasury Secretary
Larry Summers
There is a lot of speculation about whether President-elect Barack Obama will choose Larry Summers to be his Treasury Secretary. But some people are openly opposing Summers’s appointment, in part because of controversial comments he made about women in science.
It’s a close question, but I’m hoping that Obama appoints Summers. I have three reasons:
First, [...]
November 18
(8 comments)
Boston Legal Way Classier Than Beauty and the Geek?
Thanks to all the readers who wrote in last week with news that Freakonomics was mentioned on the TV show Boston Legal.
It happened at the end, when the William Shatner character and the James Spader character were having their ritual end-of-the-episode scotch, musing about law and the world.
Alan Shore (Spader): Well, it’s possible [...]
November 18
(20 comments)
Is France Due for Riots?
Photo: cicilief
In my last post, I offered several reasons why the urban riot has gone out of style in the U.S.
However, France will not be spared the sword. I predict that the world will watch French cities light up in youth unrest in 2009, 2010 at the latest … 2011 for sure.
I have been [...]
November 18
(118 comments)
A Beet Paradox
Photo: Darwin Bell
Beets are the new broccoli. Or at least they will be after Obama takes office on January 20, as the president-elect recently revealed his distaste for this vitamin-laden root vegetable. And Obama is not alone: Even as beet salads have become popular in trendy eateries, most American kids I know also reject the [...]
Stuff We Weren't Paid to Endorse
1. Go to Hulu.com. 2. Choose Arrested Development. 3. Start with Season 1 and then watch every episode of all three seasons. 4. You can thank me later. (SJD)
I can scarcely tell a scarlet tanager from Scarlett O’Hara, but The Life of the Skies had me transfixed from the first page. Jonathan Rosen -- who happens to be a friend of mine -- writes with astounding insight, wit, and compassion. The story he tells here is the best kind of odyssey, an outward journey that ends up highlighting the beauty and daring that live inside of us. Here's a Times review of the book, and here's an earlier blog post about the book and the power of suggestion. (SJD)
Even if you don’t have a son fighting in Iraq, even if you don’t read poetry, even if you think you are immune to the power of a mother’s lament – pick up The Warrior and read it right away. Fran Richey has written some of the most powerful stories I’ve ever encountered. It is obvious that her life was changed by living these poems; yours may well be changed by reading them. (SJD)
From the Opinion Blogs
Necessary Steps
Inching Along the Edge of the World
In his last walk of the series, the author manages to avoid stepping out into thin air.
Abstract City
New York Cheat Sheets
All New Yorkers develop tricks that allow them to stay ahead of the pack in daily life. Here I offer some of mine in a couple of handy charts.
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Natal e o seu Bem-Estar
Acompanhei a discussão sobre perdas de bem-estar com os presentes de Natal há alguns anos. Mas o Liberal Order achou evidências de que o artigo de Waldfogel possui suporte nas evidências empíricas. Claro, na época, alguns me achavam (e Waldfogel)…
— De Gustibus Non Est DisputandumFor those of us who don’t speak Portugese (from http://www.freetranslation.com):
Christmas and his Welfare
I accompanied the argument about losses of welfare with the presents of Christmas there are some years. But the Liberal Order found evidences of that the article of Waldfogel I possessed to bear in the empirical evidences. Clear, in the epoch, some found me (and Waldfogel) …
— elkyleOther funny business in the Amazon reviews of Freakonomics: John Lott used his Amazon account to post a one-star review of Freakonomics, signing his name to the review. What he forgot was that he had used the same account to post an unsigned five-star review of his own book. Details are here.
— Tim LambertIn the form that allows you to post reviews, Amazon includes a hidden time value, named time. If they use that to determine the date and time of the review, it would allow you to build your own form that submitted to Amazon’s server, but changing the value of the time field to whatever date you’d like your review to have.
Amazon’s usually much better than that, it’s pretty surprising that the problem exists.
— jhillI met an author who had a work published by HBS Press. He mentioned to me that there are professional reviewers who are paid by the publishers to post reviews on Amazon.
I suspect that this a pro.
— doherjo1Well there are a few things to say about this. First Amazon has a system of placing reviews of top ranked reviewers at the top of the review pile. So I doubt Loyd Eskildson is “gaming” the system.
It is just a further exampe of how you and Levitt are real sloppy thinkers, who just get part way into stories and analysis (for details see:http://www.menrohm.com/2005/05/inside-mind-of-steven-d-levitt.html )
Also, you write:
“What is clear is that Eskildson would seem to owe me and Levitt a few bucks, since this paper by Judith Chevalier and Dina Mayzlin argues that negative customer reviews are pretty effective in dampening online book sales.”
Does this mean you owe money to realtors, teachers, sumo wrestlers and others you have said negative things about in your book?
— TheGreatObserverHe’s not the only one. Another is Glenn Whelan. He is another whose entries have the annoying property of staying first in the queue. It’s clear to anyone who has posted a review that most people don’t go past the first page of reviews. If you want recommendations, you need to be first. I fiddled around with the above-named person’s entries, and they tended to refresh if they received an “unhelpful” comment. The guy has hundreds of reviews, so I don’t see how he could be supervising all of his entries. I suspect an automated approach.
I guess the question, from a Freakonomics point of view, is what incentives are at work? Why should someone care enough to game the system?
— David McCuneGreatObserver,
— CommenterleinYou could have clicked through the link and seen yourself that Eskildson’s review of Freakonomics is dated 11/27/2005 - i.e., today! He is most definitely gaming the system. Which makes your comment about sloppy thinking pretty embarrassing, wouldn’t you agree?
Commenterlein,
You sound like a typical Freak groupie. You are actually even more confused than Dubner. First Eskildson’s review is dated 11/25/2005, not as you say 11/27/2005. It seems to be a recent review and posted sequentially.
Dubner doesn’t even make this mistake. He says: “it seems that any time you see a review by Eskildson, it is near the very top of a given book’s page of reviews—even though the review is often months old.”
Dubner is
A. Talking about the fact that Eskildson reviews on all books he reviews are near the top. Dubner doesn’t get it but this is because Eskildson is a Top 100 Book reviewer.
B. Dubner notes that they are at the top even when “the review is often months old” !!
Which I would say kinda proves that Eskildion isn’t changing dates to get his reviews to the top.
Dubner and you, because you are obviously drinking the same kool aid, are just hyper-ventlating in typical Freakdom half-logic.
— TheGreatObserverGreatObserver (7:43 p.m.) misses the point exactly. Perhaps I didn’t explain it in simple enough language for him. The Eskildson review is a) an old one, regularly re-dated; and b) I know this because I’ve seen the same review float to the top again and again. GreatObserver’s earlier guess that Top 100 reviewers get cycled into the front page as a matter of course is a nice one but doesn’t seem true. First of all, given Amazon’s spirit of transparency, it’s highly unlikely that its Top 100 review system would automatically re-date every Top 100 reviewer’s review just to keep them current. Second, if GreatObserver’s great observation were true, wouldn’t every front page of every book on Amazon feature a Top 100 review? (Hint: they don’t.) That said, I do get a kick out of a commenter who makes fun of another commenter for making a simple mistake (11/25 vs. 11/27) and then proceeds to misspell the name of the guy in question (Eskildson/Eskildion). People who live in glass houses and all that …
— Stephen J. DubnerI usually don’t spend too much time at this blog. There is just too much sloppy thinking and innuendo. But, hey, it’s Thanksgiving weekend and I have had much too much turkey, which usually puts me in a mean mood. So here is some more dumping on Dubner. He says, “There’s a Top 100 Amazon.com reviewer named Loyd Eskildson—that’s what he calls himself anyway…”
This is more typical Dubner-Levitt sloppy work and inuendo. He is implying there isn’t a Loyd Eskildson. Well if you go to Amazon’s profile of Eskildson, it identifies Eskildion as a real name, which means he must have a credit card with that name. Further it identifies him as a resident of Arizona. Well I went to SearchBug on the net and did a little search. There is a Loyd Eskildson in Arizona. He is 63 years old. His wife is named Denise.
So Freak groupies keep on drinking the kool aid, because Dubner and Levitt are two of the most sloppy authors on the planet. Follow them to the sea, I say. Follow them off the cliff.
— TheGreatObserverDear GreatObserver,
For goodness’ sake, you should at least spell “Eskildson” the same way twice. And I guess it’s sort of clever of you to resort to attacking a minor rhetorical fillip in my entry (”that’s what he calls himself anyway”) as opposed to acknowledging that you are simply wrong on every substantial point. And the superlative of “sloppy” is, um, “sloppiest.” Finally, the readers of this blog are not “groupies.” I’ve known groupies in my day and these, sir, are no groupies. Alas. That would require a level of commitment that even “Freakonomics” hasn’t yet inspired.
— Stephen J. DubnerStephen,
Please forgive me for misspelling Eskildson’s name, as I explained above I have had a lot of turkey this weekend.
As for your statement: “..wouldn’t every front page of every book on Amazon feature a Top 100 review.”
It may be a case that you haven’t looked at many other book reviews at Amazon other than your own, since I recall a number of occasions when Top Reviewers have had their reviews highlighted and in the top three for so for some time.
Indeed, I just randomly looked at a couple of books where it appears that Top Reviewers seem to stay at the top.
I am still not sure about this re-dating thing. Why would a 63 year old man, who reviews nearly 100 books, with all kinds of dates, decide to break into Amazon’s system to re-date his review of your book?
Is that your contention?
And I note that you chose to focus on my misspelling of Eskildion’s name, rather than focusing on the question I asked:
you write:
‘What is clear is that Eskildson would seem to owe me and Levitt a few bucks, since this paper by Judith Chevalier and Dina Mayzlin argues that negative customer reviews are pretty effective in dampening online book sales.’
I then ask, “Does this mean you owe money to realtors, teachers, sumo wrestlers and others you have said negative things about in your book?”
In fact, maybe you should send me a check for your commenting negatively about my earlier post…it really hurt my feelings.
What kind of commenter comments on a typo but ignores the meat of the post?
— TheGreatObserver“I’ve known groupies in my day…”
I’m sure you have :)
— TheGreatObserverAmazon’s system is more complex than simply pushing Top 100 reviews to the top of the list, and more complex than just using dates. I am sure that both of these can and do play a role in the automated decision making part of the system. Mr. Eskildson’s ability to keep his reviews near the top of the queue indicates that he understands how the review system works.
One of the things I noted is that he tends to “mix up” the number of stars he gives books in a way that does not always correspond to the review he rights. For example, he gives “The World is Flat” four stars but pretty much rips it to shreds in his review. On the other hand, he gives “Do As I Say (Not As I Do) : Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy” four stars and pretty much gushes over it. While I don’t know exactly how Amazon’s system operates, it seems clear that reviewers who rate everything “high” or everything “low” won’t get top reviewer status.
I am not saying that his reviews aren’t interesting, or that they are biased or ill-informed. I only read a half dozen of them. In my opinion several were well done and several were poorly done. Just that he definitely seems to understand the system well enough to keep his reviews near the top. Whether you characterize this as “gaming” the system or not is another matter.
— mathkingThis is not new. There are many ways to game the system. I saw a reviewer that would post multiple reviews on books related to a book that they had wrote (or were selling). Each review would have a subtle: This book was good, but not as good as . It’s pretty easy to see the list of reviewed books, and get an idea of their motives. This happens a lot with political books, where people who oppose the book politically will give it very few stars. I did a search on Amazon for Michelle Malkin’s latest, and found… LoydEskildson! With a one-star review… naturally ;-)
— EarlWerI did a brief experiment with the other review-system-gamer, Glenn Whelen. I selected 4 of his reviews from the past 2 months and gave them “unhelpful” feedback. The three for which the “unhelpful” feedback was the first ever feedback were all re-posted (now with no user feedback) within about 4 hours. The one that had a prior “helpful” user feedback was not reposted (because that would reduce the reviewers total number of “helpful” votes).
This is pretty clearly gaming the system. It happened so fast that I must conclude that either Glenn Whelen is obsessively checking his user feedback or he has an automated program for doing so.
Also, I think The Great Observer is guilty of confusing cause and effect. Many top reviewers are top reviewers because they write reviews that are good enough to be highlighted, rather than the case of the reviews being highlighted because they were written by top reviewer.
Finally, I can see why Amazon would want to have a useful reviewer system, but I can’t see why a rational adult (and Glenn Whelen seems rational from the reviews he writes) would put in the time and effort required to slowly crawl his way up the Amazon review system. What is his incentive? Is it just the natural tendency of people to want to “win the game”? It sure seems like a lot of work.
— David McCuneOops, the guy’s last name is “Whelan”.
— David McCuneMr Eskildson was luke-warm about my book too - apparently I wasn’t harsh enough about immigrants. I’ll keep an eye on the review to see where it ends up.
— TimHarfordDavid McCune posted: —What is his incentive? Is it just the natural tendency of people to want to “win the game”? It sure seems like a lot of work.—
I think that some of the reviewers probably just like the notoriety of being “at the top” of the review lists, so more people see their work. This really isn’t different than a columnist wanting more people to read his or her column. (Nice post, by the way. I am intrigued now to see if any of the other top reviewers have a system to avoid unhelpful feedback.)
— mathkingI checked the link and he was said to have no reviews written Huh?
— mike529I guess he didn’t like the attention and wiped his slate clean.
— Stephen J. DubnerActually, I think Amazon may have removed him for gaming the system. You can see that he still has over 3000 “helpful votes” but only one review.
— David McCuneLet me clarify - the second guy, Glenn Whelan, had his slate wiped but still has his > 3000 vote total listed (as of today). Loyd Eskildson was wiped clean and currently has no reviews. I guess someone at Amazon.com got wind of this thread.
— David McCuneReviews are indeed rigged…Now if can only convince my wife :-)
Check out my post on the topic…
Amazon.com reviews are rigged
— Jitendra