All of this suggests that there is in fact a subtle relationship between two different meanings of “helpfulness”: helpfulness in the narrow sense — does this review help you in making a purchase decision? — and helpfulness “in the wild,” as defined by the way in which Amazon users evaluate each others’ reviews in practice. It is a kind of dichotomy familiar from the design of participatory Web sites, in which a presumed design goal — that of highlighting reviews that are helpful in the purchase process — becomes intertwined with complex social feedback mechanisms. If we want to understand how these definitions interact with each other, so as to assist users in interpreting helpfulness evaluations, we need to elucidate what these feedback mechanisms are and how they affect the observed outcomes.