Up the Amazon without a paddle

One of the problems with our successful economy is abundence of everything. In many ways beneficial, the sheer amount of options can become burdensome when one is in the position to buy. I have recently had a hankering to purchase a camcorder (atrocioius name, I know, but one I necessarily must use). Frankly I know nothing about them and the bewildering variety of types of camcorder (ie dvd, mini-dv and for all I know thermo-nuclear quark powered dv) is baffling enough even before one considers the spec of each individual models.
In former times, such a situation would never have arisen. The few variants of a product would have been easilyassessed; but rather like science in the twentieth century, product information has almost entered a state of quantum-like abstraction, with a staggeringly long list of its attributes. In the case of camcorders, the details include sensor resolution (in kpix), effective sensor resolution, lens aperture (which is something like F/1.5-2.6), connector type (IxIEEE 1394 firewire enabled or would you prefer 2 x s-video?) etc etc. Unless you have a deeply knowledgeable friend, which I do not, it can be mind destroying.
So people like me rely on information and insights gained from the internet. Much of this info can be very good (ie from forums) and one can gain a basic understanding as to work the models actually do for the money. However, there are exceptions to this, and one such is Amazon.
Amazon has its own customer reviews listed beneath the products. The reviewers themselves give the product a rating (between 1 and 5 stars) give a little commentary and readers of this are invited to say how helpful this was. For a long time now I have been aware of how useless this system is.
Firstly, a lazy habit seems to have developed whereby the reviewer either gives a product 1 star or 5; very few give it anything in between (although these people's reviews are generally much more worth reading, they at least have given it some thought). Secondly, the readers of these seem, equally lazily, to mark the reviews on the basis of how helpful they find them but whether or not they agree with them, which is a crucial difference.
This tendency is especially marked with books of a controversial basis or things which involve a degree of personal taste such as music. You very often see a review with 5 stars with a commentary that reads nothing more than "This is the greatest album of all time!!!" which has received "46 out of 48 found this review useful" to be followed lower down with a 1 star " avoid this stinker" (no other comment) which apparently 23 out of 27 people found helpful.
Occasional a more thoughtful person will add a longer, more intelligent review, which always appears much lower down the page, if at all. The product will be given, say, 4 stars and an in-depth analysis, running to several paragraphs with many insightful comments. This will receive something like " 7 out of 22 people found this helpful". One wonders why such people bother really although we must be grateful they do.
Ordinarily thsi would be no more than a passing annoyance, except when one actually wants to buy something and needs a guide through the plethora of choices. Then the amazon game of playing favourites becomes very tiresome indeed. Looking for a camcorder, I am struck by how many are given a 5 star rating. Surely all these people do not really believe that their camcorder is the best it could possibily be? Surely they might be able to find a few ways in which it could be improved? I've rarely in my life encountered anything perfect, but apparently I am a majority among Amazon users.
Until such time as people learn to make sensible reviews of products, Amazons reviews will be virtually worthless. Its a pity intelligent reviews would actually mean that a good many people would save a lot of money and a lot of their valuable time having to search for information.