Have Online Reviews Lost All Value?
No, but I find myself gravitating much more towards the negative reviews. Not only are they more likely to be legitimate reviews, they tell me the reasons someone didn't like a product, which I find more valuable. Often because a failure for one person might not be an issue I care about: For example, if a reviewer for a book says, "Author spent too much time on the individual people and not enough time moving the plot forward" then I might view that as a <i>positive</i> if I like deep character building. It's a legitimate complaint, but from my perspective it's a feature, not a bug. Or I just might not care: "Item arrived broken" is not something I care much about when it's something that's easy to return/exchange, unless many people are also saying even when it arrived intact, It breaks too easily on use.