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Re:A harassment campaign on Goodreads by jshevek on Monday January 06, 2020 @04:54PM (#21973815)
It's absurd that pre-release reviews are available to the general public. This should be easy to fix, if GR cared to do so.
Re:A harassment campaign on Goodreads by halfcreative on Monday January 06, 2020 @05:03PM (#21973924)
Pre-release reviews is a problem on more than just books too. I wish there were more systems to verify that you've at least bought the book, movie, or the product in general before you can review it.
Re:A harassment campaign on Goodreads by klez on Monday January 06, 2020 @05:50PM (#21974378)
How can I prove that if I borrowed it from a friend or a library?
Re:A harassment campaign on Goodreads by jasondclinton on Monday January 06, 2020 @06:31PM (#21974764)
A number of copy-protection systems for mid-80's to mid-90's computer games asked that you opened the printed manual that came with the game and go to—e.g.—page 32 and type in the first word of the third paragraph. Doesn't seem that hard to automate doing that for ebooks, these days. After all, Goodreads is owned by Amazon so they have the corpus. Just use chapters instead of pages; that will work across all formats.
Re:A harassment campaign on Goodreads by sarah180 on Monday January 06, 2020 @06:59PM (#21975028)
I'm not sure that would help with organized brigading campaigns like this. In the Internet age, one person with the book could supply answers to these questions for hundreds of people posting fake reviews with only a nominal investment of time.
Re:A harassment campaign on Goodreads by djrogers on Monday January 06, 2020 @07:17PM (#21975184)
If each prompt were unique (and given the number of pages and words in a book, they could be) then no - it wouldn't be a nominal investment of time to answer all of them.
Re:A harassment campaign on Goodreads by _carl_jung on Tuesday January 07, 2020 @06:56AM (#21979126)
You have to answer a quiz
Re:A harassment campaign on Goodreads by bduerst on Monday January 06, 2020 @04:58PM (#21973864)
Goodreads is owned by Amazon, who is incentivized by the pre-release purchases that these reviews drive. They're not going to put a lock on pre-release reviews (nor should they) to solve a trolling/bad actor issue.
Re:A harassment campaign on Goodreads by halfcreative on Monday January 06, 2020 @05:06PM (#21973971)
Why shouldn't they? I think it's ridiculous to be able to review something which you have not experienced and I don't see a good reason why they should be allowed. The lockout should be until at least one person (ideally more) have experienced the fully released product.
Re:A harassment campaign on Goodreads by bduerst on Monday January 06, 2020 @08:14PM (#21975679)
Authors and publishers ship pre-release advance copies to popular reviewers, as part a part of the promotion leading up to launch, like movies do with prescreenings. Goodreads is notorious for having these types of reviewers, in fact, it's one of the carrots that serial reviewers go after.
Re:A harassment campaign on Goodreads by Vrondi on Monday January 06, 2020 @05:02PM (#21973913)
This book is still in editing, though. It isn't even available as a pre-release review copy at all yet.
Re:A harassment campaign on Goodreads by bduerst on Monday January 06, 2020 @08:12PM (#21975668)
I mean, this is assuming that pre-release reviews are from advance copies, not WIP.
Re:A harassment campaign on Goodreads by thiagomgd on Monday January 06, 2020 @08:12PM (#21975665)
It's amazing how I see this problem everywhere, not only with books. On trakt.tv, all movies and shows that are for from being released already have ratings...