Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

Is this bird for real?

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 26,00.html

Or is it TIME magasine doing some poor research and making stuff up?

I noticed the name around before and just now decided to google her, this was like the second link down.

nearly 13,000 reviews, thats alternatively a book a day for 35 years (see article).

She's 54, and the next sentence in the article is "Doesnt get paid to do this"

Assuming she started reading from day 0 (birth), its still 240 books a year.
2 books every 3 days (plus the time to post 13000 reviews).

That cant be right surely?

2 books every 3 days from the moment of conception it works out as.
Even if you were reviewing "Spot visits the zoo", you still wouldnt be able to maintain that pace for 35 years, surely.

Lets also consider that since amazon only started online in 1995 (source: Wiki) she's had to:

a)write over 3 reviews a day since amazon started.

b)remember some books she hasnt read in probably 40 years (assuming no rereads which would be even more fanciful)




My point is, someone confirm for me that this is either a scam, or a marketing group, or whatever. It surely isnt just one 54 year old woman.

If it is, given what i`ve outlined above - do her reviews count for shit?


Byron? Regulars?

Some more facts and figures for us:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Klausner

states that on the 22nd april 2008 she had written 15,500 reviews


http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110006483

states that as of mid-march 2005 she had written 8649 reviews


http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/AFVQZQ8PW0L


her profile as i check it now (13th may 08 ) states 16,398 reviews.


Just to put these figures into context then:

between april 22nd and now (may 13th), H.K. has written approximately 800 reviews assuming she was at 15,600 (rounded up) on 22nd april 2008.
Thats 21 days, OR alternatively 38.1 books per day average.


If we use exact figures:
16th december 2006 - 12,896 (source: the TIME magasine article)
today: 13th may 2008 - 16398.

total in 17 months: 3502 reviews.

In how many days?
365 (1 year) + 149 (dec. 16 2007 - 13th may 2008) . = 515 days.

Avg: 6.8 books per day.

Plus reviews, ONLY on amazon (she allegedly reviews on other sites too).

Now i know she's bogus.

You only have to look at the exponential increases in book reviews shown by these articles to see its blatant bollocks.

I don't like it when you talk about my mother like that. My mother is not a scam.

Serkanner Klausner? Has a ring to it.

12,896, as of this writing, almost twice as many as her nearest competitor. That's a book a day for 35 years.

Nonsense! If I wanted to I could easily spam way faster than her.

orald wrote:

12,896, as of this writing, almost twice as many as her nearest competitor. That's a book a day for 35 years.

Nonsense! If I wanted to I could easily spam way faster than her.

...you do

inhuien wrote:

orald wrote:

12,896, as of this writing, almost twice as many as her nearest competitor. That's a book a day for 35 years.

Nonsense! If I wanted to I could easily spam way faster than her.

...you do

Don't antagonize him, he's been good lately.

Actually, if someone would take a careful look at my posts s/he will notice I hardly ever post anything as simple as " " etc, so I dont, in fact, spam much.

I just have alot to say, 'tis all.

And lately I've been posting less, Diablo 2 is a harsh, time consuming mistress. But damn she's fine to play around with.

orald wrote:And lately I've been posting less, Diablo 2 is a harsh, time consuming mistress. But damn she's fine to play around with.

Ow shucks man I was just playing with you, and seeing as you're cuffing with the old "rot and eat you" have a look at Dungeon Siege it's mouse bashing-tastic

Maybe I will...someday...when I'm done with D2.

About 10 years from now?

Seriously, it's a time hog. And no, I don't have any char's with Dunish names, yet. Only ASoIaF ones. I'm a dirty traitor.

Oh, and of course my barbarian has the only name befitting one.

Ahem.

Yes, Loremaster, she's infamous and a real blot on Amazon's rep since they seem perfectly content to let her (and others!) get away with it.

If you read just a few of her "reviews", you can see that she is NOT a native speaker of English. And if you check what she has written about books you yourself know, most times you can find details which indicate that she has not read them at all.

I believe she's said that she reads about three or four books a day, if that helps.

I cannot stand reading her reviews. They are usually so far off its quite unfunny.

So if I'm to review Shitworms and say it's about fluffy pink bunnies fighting the evil Carrot hordes of Gardania about to engulf their homeland of OMGPINKBUNIEZWEEE, it's OK by Amazon?

orald wrote:So if I'm to review Shitworms and say it's about fluffy pink bunnies fighting the evil Carrot hordes of Gardania about to engulf their homeland of OMGPINKBUNIEZWEEE, it's OK by Amazon?

It seems like she writes the reviews faster than they can read them!

orald wrote:So if I'm to review Shitworms and say it's about fluffy pink bunnies fighting the evil Carrot hordes of Gardania about to engulf their homeland of OMGPINKBUNIEZWEEE, it's OK by Amazon?

If you give it four or five stars, YES.

(This was proven by one of the guys who hated the book and had his one-star review deleted: He reposted the same review and gave the book five stars. AFAIK, his review is still there.)

This is because TOR or the HLP or whoever "owns" the Sadworms page over on Amazon values the ranking score above everything else. They seem to want to hold the number of reviews at 101—who knows why—but the number of one-star reviews that have been deleted is around 20 (and probably well more than that).

It's one of the more dishonest things I've seen in a while.

Hmm, sounds like I have work to do...muah...muahaha...muahahahaha!

Unless I have to register to review it...I'm too lazy to.

orald wrote:Diablo 2 is a harsh, time consuming mistress.

Elemental Sorc?

Zookeeper?

Trapper?

I once had a lvl 67 trapper that could solo Hell, no problem. Then patch 1.10 came out and that was that. Still, a Trapper is the best character imo to start from scratch with. You can easily get into Hell without Uber gear. Fit her out in Uber Runewords and she's unbeatable.

Hands up who else did all the bosses by rightclicking as fast as they could while screaming

"Static field, static field!!!!"

Spice-Whats the character build trapper?

I found that one of the hardest was Necro with a Blood Golem Tank.

Can we open a D2 thread? As this was a simply masterful hijack.... so good i`m even joining in myself.

SandChigger wrote:If you give it four or five stars, YES.

(This was proven by one of the guys who hated the book and had his one-star review deleted: He reposted the same review and gave the book five stars. AFAIK, his review is still there.)

This is because TOR or the HLP or whoever "owns" the Sadworms page over on Amazon values the ranking score above everything else. They seem to want to hold the number of reviews at 101—who knows why—but the number of one-star reviews that have been deleted is around 20 (and probably well more than that).

It's one of the more dishonest things I've seen in a while.

Viciously expose them and their fraudulent activities to the press, imo.

Especially if you could prove that this is a general Amazon policy.

I'm not so sure that it would do any good.

And I'm not sure how widespread it is. Amazon refuses to discuss the deletions with anyone besides the person whose review was deleted. When mine was deleted, they claimed it was a database update error or some such BS. Other people have said they were given similar "explanations".

I didn't pay attention or keep track of how many negative reviews were posted for Grunters, so it's hard to say if they were doing the same thing to it. I'm not sure what they expect to achieve though, because we commented on what they were doing in the discussion threads linked to from the page.

Byron was showing up for a while with his namby-pamby "oh let's value everyone's opinion" wank, but even he doesn't bother anymore. (Unless he's one of the ball-less wonders deleting the reviews.)

Yea, I wouldn't mind opening a D2 thread...I could use some advice, I'm a total noob.

I can no longer play D2, I had about 10 characters all level 60 and higher and my motherboard and hard drive fried about 2 years ago. I am still mourning the loss and can't bring myself to try and revive those characters.

loremaster wrote:Hands up who else did all the bosses by rightclicking as fast as they could while screaming

"Static field, static field!!!!"

Spice-Whats the character build trapper?

I found that one of the hardest was Necro with a Blood Golem Tank.

Can we open a D2 thread? As this was a simply masterful hijack.... so good i`m even joining in myself.

Assassin, specializing in Traps. An under-appreciated class imo. Last time I played i had been away from the game for like two years, so I just went and bought a bunch of high runes and gears. I didn't have time to be all legit and stuff. I miss that game.

MOOOO!!!!!!!!

http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=685

Evidently, Amazon doesn't delete ALL one-star reviews. That makes me wonder who's in charge of the amazon pages.

It seems like they keep the reviews rated as helpful over the ones rated unhelpful. It would be interesting to experiment and see if a five-star review will get deleted with overwhelming "unhelpful" votes.

Although keeping the review count at 101 is really weird. I don't know why they do that.

Phaedrus wrote:Although keeping the review count at 101 is really weird. I don't know why they do that.

Ever wondered what's in room 101?