More on the unfortunate trend of "guerilla reviews"

A while back, I watched a documentary about Michael Jackson preparing for the "tour that never happened" . Though I was never a big fan, and never actually owned any of his recordings, I was struck by the thought that those of us of a certain age never really knew a time in our adult lives when he wasn't a star, and when there wasn't one of his songs playing on the radio (that thing we listened to before music downloads).

So when I saw this book at the library, I thought I would brush up on the Michael Jackson story.

As I began reading, I found the book slow going, and as is common nowadays, went to look at some reviews to see if others felt this way. When I went to the Amazon reviews, I did notice many negative ones, but as I read them, I wasn't sure how much credence to put in them (I don't consider having a Michael Jackson tattoo or referring to him as "my man, Michael" on the part of the user as providing any special gravitas). So, I proceeded on, and finally finished the book.

So, I both was, and wasn't surprised to read that there was a concerted effort to once again hijack Amazon's review system, in a post on the Consumerist web site. The post was based on a story in the New York Times.


I had written about this phenomenon in an earlier post, when an activist group hijacked the reviews of a book (that they apparently hadn't really even read).

Is there an answer to this? Perhaps restrict reviews to those who have actually purchased the book through Amazon? A system of "certified" reviews?