Amazon Reputation
Amazon.com uses reputation in weighting reviews that people submit, giving “higher quality” work greater prominence on the site.
So how do they determine quality and reputation? Good question.
We also look at who authored the content. If the author has a strong reputation (the product of community feedback about the author’s past works), it’s likely his or her new work is of high quality.
Past reviews contribute to the assumed quality of the present work, although I don’t see any mention of time in their calculations.
What is my reputation? Your reputation is based on the Community’s assessment of your activity (e.g. content you have authored) at Amazon.com. Positive votes on your content will improve your reputation.
An additional aspect to their reputation calculation is the concept of Real Name™ attribution. In essence, you make public your real name (based on the name used on your credit card) and this type of honesty positively weights your recommendations. In essence, revealing your true name is seen as a statement that you stand by what you have written.
More interestingly, though:
Sometimes we have very little information about a piece of content because the author is relatively new and/or because there are few votes on the content. This is where Real Name™ attributions come in.
So an additional property of a Real Name™ is that it helps newbies establish a reputation. In essence, it’s a step you can take for free that immediately puts you on good footing for future recommendations and transactions. I suppose that for a newbie it speaks of intentionality and interest in participating, but there is another aspect of fracturing identity within Amazon which I’m not so sure about. I like the idea of a “free” step, but I’m not sure I like how it can potentially penalize people who don’t take that step.