When I go to Amazon.com and search, I see 'relevance' as my default, with 'featured', some price related ones, 'average', and 'new' as options. ('Featured' only seems to exist on some products, and be related to ads.)
Is it not the same for you?
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As for your main point (because I think that your complaint is still valid even with 'relevance' as the default), it sounds like what you want is a way to choose what factors are applied to your sort.
I'm not sure, but it seems likely that 'relevance' is doing more than just averaging, and so being able to select which parts you apply (eg, only use a statistical notion of best, don't consider availability or shipping times) would cover your usecase, right?
Well, you might want to be able to choose between a few models of 'best', but the real issue, the core need, is that you want control over the model that Amazon is using to sort what you see and to have some input on what that looks like. (And not just have 'lolsux' or 'Amznsort', to be a little glib.)
Gotta say, that actually sounds like a pretty reasonable ask. I'm not sure why it doesn't work that way, either.
Yeah, my above comment was not using a text search, hence no "relevant" option (i.e. if you just drilled down the department hierarchy to, say, the TVs department).
> the core need, is that you want control over the model that Amazon is using to sort what you see and to have some input on what that looks like
Indeed, but I'm not even looking to have that much granular control over it. I just want "sort by rating, but toss out all the obscure crap that has 1 or 2 ratings, because that rating is meaningless."
When I go to Amazon.com and search, I see 'relevance' as my default, with 'featured', some price related ones, 'average', and 'new' as options. ('Featured' only seems to exist on some products, and be related to ads.)
Is it not the same for you?
-----
As for your main point (because I think that your complaint is still valid even with 'relevance' as the default), it sounds like what you want is a way to choose what factors are applied to your sort.
I'm not sure, but it seems likely that 'relevance' is doing more than just averaging, and so being able to select which parts you apply (eg, only use a statistical notion of best, don't consider availability or shipping times) would cover your usecase, right?
Well, you might want to be able to choose between a few models of 'best', but the real issue, the core need, is that you want control over the model that Amazon is using to sort what you see and to have some input on what that looks like. (And not just have 'lolsux' or 'Amznsort', to be a little glib.)
Gotta say, that actually sounds like a pretty reasonable ask. I'm not sure why it doesn't work that way, either.