amazon apparently revealed names of anonymous reviewers last week on its Canadian site. And took a week to provide a fix. A lot of reviewers, as it turned out, were reviewing their own books. Or worse, trashing competing authors.

I'd like to think that the folks at Amazon did this on purpose. Just as a way of reminding reviewers that they shouldnt count on technology to be 100% infallible, and that if they are going to game the system they do so at their own risk...

Perhaps services like these should periodically permit a breakdown in order to instill accountability among users.