Who are the people who vote on products... and should I trust them?

That's a good question. Honestly, I find it hard to believe that 47 people own it because it's a brand new toy. (I was waiting for the company to release it and asked EF to carry it as well). However, I often think many votes are form nonmembers who do not feel like joining, which I can understand

I'm with you--I always try to vote on the quality of the review as opposed to my personal opinion of the toy (I save that for comments).

I vote on product ratings occasionally, but I pretty much always trust reviews over product ratings. Not to be weird or anything, but I think a lot of those votes are VERY subjective and not really based on the quality of the product. I will use the SaSi for an example. It is not a toy that would suit a huge range of people, and it is very pricey...however it is top notch in quality. As a luxury toy, I can't see it being any lower than a 4 star product based off of the awesome quality and innovation of the toy...yet it has a star rating of 2.5 with 269 votes. Nuff said.

I don't give a product a star rating unless I have used it, but I also don't trust those ratings. I think some non-community people give the products star ratings based on what they think of the product from the site - not based on their own personal use opinion.

So when I go to purchase something I don't really pay much attention to the star rating. Instead I read the reviews and product specs and make a decision based on those. If the product only has 1 or 2 reviews I just use whether or not it is worth the $$ and has the features I want for my decision.
(I'm getting my first cup of coffee here, so forgive the odd speech)

I know this is an old old old thread but I wanted to comment on it! I think its annoying that people vote a product up or down because of what the material is, or they dont like how it looks, etc. I think Eden needs a more Adam&Eve or even Amazon.com type system, where you check if you own the product or not, and give more weight to reviews than just ratings- sure, people would lie, but I am so squicked by seeing products with zero real reviews rated high or low due to material or aesthetic reasons (especially since just recently there was a discussion about phalates in eden link, wherein the company defending them raised a valid point that the only research done was ingesting large amounts of them).
Not to mention.. it makes it impossible to see what's actually popular. I sort by rating.. and new toys end up getting shoved to the back of the bin, so to speak, while a toy that sounds good on paper will have an awesome 5 star review while the fact is that some people dont like it at all.

So.. haha, just my little rant.

I always base my choices on information given by the reviewers, never on the star ratings. That's why I appreciate it when a reviewer gets a bit detailed (about the product's material, texture, vibration levels, etc.) in their writings.