Amazon ratings of Ghosts of Saltmarsh

Am I right in saying that you have to buy something on Amazon to rate it? And the street date was yesterday? I’m betting these people haven’t even read it yet!
 

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I very rarely review stuff and almost never give a one or five star review.

5 stars are the best of the best, a one star product is trash. If something's bad I would normally give it a 2/5.
 



Am I right in saying that you have to buy something on Amazon to rate it? And the street date was yesterday? I’m betting these people haven’t even read it yet!

Hmm... I think you need to buy "something", but not the product in question. If you've actually bought the product from Amazon, a written review has the tag "Verified Purchase". (Ratings... not so much!)

There's more than one review I've seen where they've criticised the shipping rather than the product.

Cheers!
 

True, but, that is generally how ratings are done. That's why most reviews skew so high. Really, a 7/10 should be a pretty high rating, it's higher than the majority of other similar stuff out there. But, unfortunately, what it really means is that it's a barely adequate product because the baseline is 9 or 10 out of 10.

Same goes for 5/5.

It makes reviews pretty much pointless in most cases.

This is cultural to the US (and presumably the UK, Canada, etc.). In other cultures and countries, they have different distributions; in some places, the median star rating for products and services is around 3/5.
 


This is cultural to the US (and presumably the UK, Canada, etc.). In other cultures and countries, they have different distributions; in some places, the median star rating for products and services is around 3/5.

I would agree with this statement, though I don't know that I speak for all Canadians. If a product is OK, just OK, it will get a 3/5. A good product will get 4/5. I'll give a 5 if something really wow's me - the product is better than anticipated or does stuff I did not expect it to do. It doesn't have to be a long term thing. I just have to be really impressed in the first few days.
 



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