Amazon has a couldabeen-great feature that lets you focus on a particular reviewer and see all their reviews. So you could, for instance, see what the alpha reviewers - those in the top 10 are saying.
However, it’s a bit pointless because there’s no support for wading through the hundreds of reviews each of these guys post. Check out the UK uber-dude, Jason Parkes, at 898 reviews and counting. I get ten per page, and there’s no way to sort them, filter them, or categorise them in any way. And when I say categorise, I’d settle for something as simple as separating DVDs from books.
In an ideal world, I’d like several features:
- Filter on a category such as books or DVDs. This issue came up because I use Amazon’s DVD rental and was mining for recommendations.
- Sort, just like in the usual site, on criteria such as popularity and price.
- Sort or filter on the ratings themselves. Unless the guy’s got a really warped correlation with my own taste, I’m usually looking - not surprisingly - for higher ratings.
