Product Reviews: Part 11 - Amazon reviewer rankings have disappeared
Two weeks ago, I reached a milestone of 850 reviews at Amazon, and I noticed for the first time that reviewer rankings have disappeared.
About 6 months ago, I had commented that my ranking had been hovering around #3000 for quite some time, and that my ranking had continued to be relatively stable since that time period, so I'm not sure what to make of this development. Some light research in the community seems to indicate that rankings have disappeared in the past, albeit seemingly for specific individuals, but the Amazon ranking web page is no longer available, and I came across a Reddit post which seems to confirm that Amazon did away with their ranking system about 5 or 6 weeks ago.
Since the milestone when my reviews reached 3500 helpful votes about 6 months ago, Amazon merchants have provided a variety of free products that I've requested from them, but apart from an elliptical machine which I ordered and then canceled (due to target family member loss of interest) and an incredible 55-inch 4k smart TV from Samsung, most items I've ordered have been extremely practical consumables: as I mentioned in my last post, this largely consists of varied nootropics and whole food vitamins.
Last year was the first in which I permitted myself to surpass the $600 threshold of free product which requires income tax reporting, keeping in mind that the vast majority of consumables don't even contribute to total product amount received. Last year was an experiment to determine the impact of surpassing the $600 threshold, and because it was negligible I decided to permit myself to do so again this year, but only for products which are either practical or borderline practical. For example, the TV replaced a 32-inch TV that I purchased 11 years ago, but I mainly ordered it for family members since I don't really watch TV, and the old TV is good enough for my movie watching while running on my treadmill.
My top review, which resulted in my shooting up to a ranking of #1967 back in May 2012, was for Madeleine Albright's new memoir at the time entitled "Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948". At the time of that review, Amazon was still permitting downvoting in addition to upvoting, as well as commenting on reviews.
