Goodreads Has No Incentive to Be Good

Re:Goodreads Has No Incentive to Be Good by a_bonobo on Friday June 30, 2023 @08:19AM (#36533562)

It's the same with IMDB, isn't it? Toxic subgroups and communities 1-star bombing movies that haven't even come out yet. The wikipage on review bombing doesn't even list Goodreads but has many examples from IMDB: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Review_bomb#Films,_television_...

So what could Goodreads do differently? It's true that the owners do as little as possible with the site, but that also means that overall the scoring system has very little impact. Would you trust it?

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Re:Goodreads Has No Incentive to Be Good by seventhson on Friday June 30, 2023 @08:35AM (#36533755)

Require reviews to show a substantial understanding of what the book was about? That means moderation which is always dangerous but probably better than the alternative.

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Re:Goodreads Has No Incentive to Be Good by prepend on Friday June 30, 2023 @08:58AM (#36534035)

If this worked I would like it, but I think it’s impossible to automate and validate. So I only imagine an implementation being worse than nothing as mods tried to arbitrarily approve items.

I think this would make people who like specific books be willing to spend time moderating and they would reject negative reviews so everything would be 5 stars.

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Re:Goodreads Has No Incentive to Be Good by prepend on Friday June 30, 2023 @08:56AM (#36534009)

> So what could Goodreads do differently?

Add a way to see ratings only from trusted people and friends.

They do this now by bubbling up ratings from my contact. Id like an option to just show their average ratings instead of site wide.

I do not trust any moderators that I don’t know. So I’d rather have them just show ratings from friends or people I’ve noted as reviewworthy. And maybe one degree from them.

I think this applies to everything and I don’t trust Amazon reviews or App Store reviews, but do trust reviews from some people I know (after I’ve filtered out the “I love everything including AntMan3 and StarWars9 and Justice League” friends).

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Re:Goodreads Has No Incentive to Be Good by barbariangrunge on Friday June 30, 2023 @10:10AM (#36535221)

> the owners do as little as possible with the site

The owner is Amazon, isn’t it? They’re working on a full ui overhaul I think

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