Why do you believe an anonymous review is usually more or less reliable than a review from a pseudonymous reviewer or a review from a legal-name reviewer?
I believe anonymous reviews are less reliable because if the review is coming from an anon instead of an established name (real or pseud) you don't know if the review is what the reviewer really thinks or if it's an attempt to spike a writer the reviewer has a grudge against/cramp a writer the reviewer considers too tough competition/or is even simply a means of causing wankery in the fandom for the puppeteer's amusement. (The Jundland Wastes reviewer was guilty of the first two, repeatedly. She was eventually outed because people could match her negative reviews to people who'd disagreed with her or edged her out to get published.)
There's also the question of a track record; when it's an unknown number of people using the same sock name/pseud, you have no idea if Review A, which you agreed with, is really tied to Review B, which was judged by a different person's criteria. (For example, there was a Post reviewer who I found an almost 100% accurate barometer for me. If he loved a movie, I'd hate it, and vice versa. After a while it didn't matter if he called himself Tom Shales or Constant Reader; I knew what to expect and how to scale my reaction accordingly. If it had been Tom, Dick, and Harry all writing under the same name, I would have not been able to rely on the reviews.)
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Date: 2009-05-07 10:30 pm (UTC)I believe anonymous reviews are less reliable because if the review is coming from an anon instead of an established name (real or pseud) you don't know if the review is what the reviewer really thinks or if it's an attempt to spike a writer the reviewer has a grudge against/cramp a writer the reviewer considers too tough competition/or is even simply a means of causing wankery in the fandom for the puppeteer's amusement. (The Jundland Wastes reviewer was guilty of the first two, repeatedly. She was eventually outed because people could match her negative reviews to people who'd disagreed with her or edged her out to get published.)
There's also the question of a track record; when it's an unknown number of people using the same sock name/pseud, you have no idea if Review A, which you agreed with, is really tied to Review B, which was judged by a different person's criteria. (For example, there was a Post reviewer who I found an almost 100% accurate barometer for me. If he loved a movie, I'd hate it, and vice versa. After a while it didn't matter if he called himself Tom Shales or Constant Reader; I knew what to expect and how to scale my reaction accordingly. If it had been Tom, Dick, and Harry all writing under the same name, I would have not been able to rely on the reviews.)