Sunday, September 28, 2014

Two star

It's not good to get only two stars out of five, but this isn't really such a bad review after all:
The amount of "Used" stickers on this book was a little much. Otherwise it is an amazing read with the author trying his best not to show his own opinions too often. It all honesty I prefer reading this book to listening to my professors lectures any day. This book also had a few annotations, but were in pencil so nothing serious! In conclusion, amazing book, was just sent quite an aged copy.

8 comments:

  1. Based on the actual text, the number of stars assigned obviously relate to the condition of the book purchased, not to the quality of what it contains. It's unfortunate that amazon's review system allows this sort of ambiguity in the ratings but it's probably unavoidable without making the system overly complex which is something that doesn't serve amazon, as a bookseller, or, ultimately, authors who are also in the business of selling, albeit less directly. In fact the text of the review is highly positive, belying the expectation one gets after looking at the quantity of stars!

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  2. And outside of our control as authors! That's the annoying part but really the whole review thing wouldn't be worth anything if authors controlled what gets placed there. So sometimes we just have to grin and bear it as they say. If I'd read that one of yours I'd offer a review to counterbalance the lone review now showing up there but, as yet, I haven't. (I did read Anscombe's Moral Philosophy and found it quite valuable but I haven't had a chance to comment on it yet. Used to do a lot of amazon reviewing but not much these days I'm afraid. I will try to make time to do it at some point though and to obtain and read Why Be Good?)

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    1. Thanks very much!

      I agree that authors shouldn't control the reviews. hopefully people actually read them rather than just going by the number of stars, especially when there are only a few reviews to read. Comments about timely delivery, etc. are surprisingly common on amazon, despite their complete irrelevance.

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  3. Perhaps amazon could make its guidelines for reviews clearer, or provide a different arena for commenting on service quality, product condition, etc, eh? Maybe someone could suggest it (though I'd bet it's already been proposed -- since this isn't a new problem -- and, since it hasn't materialized, rejected or ignored).

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    1. It does seem to be a good idea, but I bet you're right that it's been suggested before.

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  4. The title question gives me flashbacks to ethics professors cutting off discussion of it with a curt "that's metaethics, not ethics."

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    1. It's not a very sustainable distinction, although I suppose it has its uses. Cutting off discussion is not one that I have in mind though.

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