I'll say what I said somewhere else (I'm definitely wait and see, I don't think it's fair not to give someone a chance to fix things and explain, and give them time to explain because, honestly, they may not have a good idea of really what happened yet):

I hear tell Amazon is blaming a glitch (which, if it is meta data related is entirely possible, either accidentally or intentionally by a hacker/pissed off employee) and that has provoked a 'yeah, right' reaction - obviously from people not involved in the reviewer ranking fiasco of late. I have zero doubt of Amazon's ability to screw up anything that has to do with statistic, especially when they have to consider multiple factors (which may or may not be the case with sales rankings, but considering how convoluted their reviewer ranking system is - no one can actually figure it out, and Amazon will not explain it - I would not be surprised if book sales rankings were filtered through the cheese review algorithm on their way past the shoe sizing chart).

The one comment I found pretty interesting was the one about how a lot of people who are currently outraged would have found it funny if it'd been the religious books that had gotten scrubbed. And, sadly, I think that's very true.

After talking to my brother many times about programing (he's a compsci major) I know it's oodles of complicated and I really am willing to believe it was a fault in some convoluted code or an employee or hacker doing what him/her wanted for whatever reason (either a, because they believe it should be that way, or b, because they wanted to provoke just this reaction).

I mean, I know Amazon has its issues... but it's never come across prejudiced before that I know of. I would hate to have to find somewhere else online to shop.

So I'm trying to stay out of it and wait it out and see where the pieces lay. I mean, I do that with every LJ outcry... and hey, look, it's all still here, LOL.